The Septuagint Explained | Origins and the Letter of Aristeas
RSS Feed Season 3, Episode 16
In this episode, Michael and Zach begin a new mini-series on the Septuagint—the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament that regularly appears in biblical studies and has come up throughout The Unseen Realm 2.0. They begin by explaining what the Septuagint, or LXX, actually is, why Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria needed a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, and why the name “Septuagint” points back to a tradition involving seventy-two translators. The discussion then turns to the Letter of Aristeas, the earliest surviving account of the translation’s origins: a story involving Ptolemy II, the Library of Alexandria, the Jewish high priest Eleazar, seventy-two elders, and a translation of the Torah completed in seventy-two days. Michael and Zach also examine the political and cultural setting behind the story, the Jewish community’s dramatic endorsement of the translation, and an important detail often lost in later retellings: Aristeas describes the translators working together toward consensus—not producing miraculously identical translations in isolation.
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