The Letter of Aristeas

'Aristeas to Philocrates' or 'On the Translation of the Law of the Jews'

Benjamin G. Wright

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9783110431490
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Ancient Religion

The Letter of Aristeas has been an object modern scholarly interest since the seventeenth century. It is best known for containing the earliest version of the translation of the Hebrew Law into Greek, and this story accounts for much of the scholarly attention paid to the work. Yet, this legend only takes up a small percentage of the work. Looking at Aristeas as a whole, the work reveals an author who has acquired a Greek education and employs both Jewish and Greek sources in his work, and he has produced a Greek book. Even though Aristeas has garnered scholarly attention, no fully fledged commentary has been written on it. The works of R. Tramontano, M. Hadas and others, often referred to as commentaries, only contain text and annotated notes. This volume fills the gap in the scholarship on Aristeas by providing a full, paragraph-by-paragraph commentary, containing a new translation, text-critical notes, general commentary, and notes on specific words, phrases and ideas.

III. TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY

Preface (§§ 1–8)

1. Having composed a noteworthy narrative, O Philocrates , about the meeting that we had with Eleazar, the high priest of the Judeans, since you place a high value, as you constantly mention, on hearing about the details and purpose of our deputation, I have attempted to expound it clearly for you, having realized the disposition you have to love learning. 2. For indeed it is the greatest thing for a person “always both to increase learning and to make progress,” whether through written accounts or through the actual reality that we experience. For thus is a pure disposition of mind constructed, taking up whatever is most beautiful; and when one has gravitated towards the most supreme thing of all, piety, it will provide an unerring standard, when it is employed. 3. Since we had a predilection for inquisitively looking into religious matters, we volunteered for the embassy to the aforementioned man, who is esteemed by both citizens and foreigners alike for integrity and reputation and who has won the greatest benefit for those around him and for those citizens in other places, for the translation of the divine Law, because it is written among them on parchments in Hebrew letters. 4. Indeed, we undertook the embassy eagerly, seizing an opportunity with the king concerning those who had been deported from Judea into Egypt by the king’s father, who first both had possessed the city and had taken over the government of Egypt. It is worthwhile to explain these things to you as well. 5. For I am convinced – since you, all the more, have a predilection toward matters most holy and toward the disposition of those people who conduct themselves according to the holy legislation, concerning which we propose to explain – that you will listen gladly, having recently come to us from the island, also desiring to hear whatever exists for the restoration of the soul. 6. And previously I transmitted to you, concerning those things that I considered worthy of mentioning, a record, which we received from the most learned high priests throughout the most learned (land of) Egypt, concerning the race of the Judeans. 7. For to you, as one who has an eagerness to learn about matters that can aid understanding, it is necessary that I communicate, on the one hand, most especially with all who are like-minded, and on the other, even more so with you who possesses a genuine purpose, who has been established in character as a brother not just according to descent but also being the same as we are, with an eager desire for beauty. 8. For delight in gold or any other contrivance valued by the vain-glorious does not have the same benefit that the training of education and attention to these things does. But lest we engage in idle chatter, talking at length of introductory matters, we will resume the thread of the narrative.

Textual Notes231

§ 1. Pelletier follows Zuntz’s emendation of ὑπομνήσκοντος, making the participle a genitive absolute, “as you constantly mention,” rather than the nominative singular ὑπομνήσκων of the Greek manuscript tradition.232§ 2. Ms K reads the comparative κυριώτερον, “more supreme.” § 3. Pelletier accepts the conjecture of U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff (followed by his student Wendland) of εἰς <τὴν πρὸς> τὸν προειρημένον ἄνδρα πρεσβείαν, which produces a grammatical phrase in Greek, “for the embassy to the aforementioned man” and which is the basis for my translation. § 5. Thackeray reconstructs the reading of the Greek manuscript tradition, δηλοῦντες μὲν ὥς σε, which is certainly corrupt, as δηλοῦν, ἀσμένως, which makes good sense in the context of “concerning which we propose to explain – that you will listen gladly.” § 8. For “training of education,” ms G has “ education itself,” and ms I reads παιδείας διαγωγή, “course of education.”

General Comment

Paragraphs 1–8 form the introduction to the entire work and set the stage. Scholars debate the overall genre of Aristeas, since it at least formally is presented as a personal communication to Philocrates , and indeed the introduction and epilogue do bear some epistolary characteristics. The author, however, refers to his project as a διήγησις, a prose narrative reporting a series of events (§§ 1, 8, and 322), a form that comprised part of the Hellenistic rhetorical curriculum, the progymnasmata.233 Other literary forms from the progymnasmata appear in Aristeas, demonstrating, at the least, the author’s literary pretensions.234 The author of 2 Maccabees also calls his work by the same name (see 2 Macc 2:32), and the author of the Gospel of Luke implies that his work is a διήγησις (see Luke 1:1–4 and Introduction section 8a). According to his “introductory matters” (τῶν προλεγομένων, § 8), Ps.-Aristeas’s purpose is (1) to narrate the “meeting that we had with Eleazar the high priest of the Jews,” which concerned the translation of the Jewish law (§§ 1–3), (2) to explain his role in the freeing of the Jewish captives (§ 4), and (3) to inform Philocrates about the Jews and their law (§§ 5–6). Of course, this explicit purpose is attributed to the pseudepigraphic narrator. (For the purpose of the Jewish author of Aristeas, see the discussion in the Introduction, section 10.)

Aristeas’s introduction mentions two works in what appears to be a series of three specific correspondences between Ps.-Aristeas and Philocrates, whom he calls his “ brother” (§ 7). The phrase “as you constantly mention” presumes an ongoing relationship between the two men. Paragraph 6 refers to a previous “record” (ἀναγραφή) that Aristeas sent containing information about the Jews that he had gotten from Egyptian priests. The use of the verb διαπέμπω in the immediate context does not make entirely clear whether this was an independent work that Aristeas composed or whether he transmitted to Philocrates the record as he had received it from Egyptian priests. Many scholars have noted that here our pseudonymous author might be trying to associate himself with a certain Aristeas, often called “the Historian,” who wrote a work entitled On the Jews, which is known from a fragment quoted in Eusebius of Caesarea’s Preparation for the Gospel 9.25, which he says he found in Alexander Polyhistor.235 It also forms part of the literary conceit of the book, since this previous knowledge explains why ‘Aristeas,’ a Gentile, knows so much about Judaism and why he has such concern for Jewish slaves. The present work, then, is the second in the series. In § 322, the author anticipates a third work in which “I will attempt to write down the remainder of those things worth saying.”

The author attempts to situate his work historically by mentioning two persons in the introduction. The first is Eleazar, “the high priest of the Jews.” Although Eleazar plays an important role in Aristeas, we learn few specifics about him. Josephus (Ant. 12.43) identifies our Eleazar as the brother of the Oniad high priest Simon I: “But as he [i.e., Simon I], when he died, left an infant son named Onias, his brother Eleazar … took over the priesthood.”236 Scholars differ in their opinions as to whether Josephus’s Eleazar is the same high priest as the one in Aristeas. Henry Meecham and Elias Bickerman, for example, maintain that Ps.-Aristeas is referring to the same high priest that Josephus mentions.237 James VanderKam makes the most detailed argument in favor of the identification of Aristeas’s Eleazar with the brother of Simon I identified by Josephus, both of whom lived in the third-century BCE. He argues that whatever other historical difficulties with Aristeas there might be Ps.-Aristeas has connected two historical figures, Ptolemy II and the high priest Eleazar.238 Erich Gruen rightly cautions, however, that Josephus might well have inferred (and thus created) such an identity as a result of the mention of Eleazar in Aristeas and that the name Eleazar “is a conventional name for Jewish spiritual leaders in Hellenistic literature”239; see, for example, the torture and death of a certain Eleazar by Antiochus IV narrated in 2 Maccabees 6 and 3 Maccabees 6. Indeed, Josephus’s reference comes as part of his paraphrase of Aristeas, and his identification together with Ps.-Aristeas’s character are the only references to a high priest by this name in this period , which certainly justifies Vander-Kam’s assessment of Eleazar as “an otherwise obscure high priest.”240 If Josephus’s identification depends on Aristeas, as Gruen suggests, we might wonder about whether Ps.-Aristeas invented this character, as he almost certainly did Philocrates and his narrator Aristeas.

Ps.-Aristeas identifies the second person without naming him. In § 4, he notes that he took the opportunity of the deputation to address the king concerning “those who had been deported from Judea into Egypt by the king’s father.” We learn in §§ 12–27 that the king who took the Judeans captive was “Ptolemy son of Lagos,” that is, Ptolemy I Soter. Thus, the king of Aristeas is his son Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who reigned from 283 to 246 BCE.

The author of Aristeas reveals many of his core values in these opening paragraphs, particularly as he explains the reason for his work. In § 1 he refers to Philocrates’s “ love of learning,” the importance of which he reinforces by the quotation “always both to increase learning and to make progress” (προσμανθάνειν ἀεί τι καὶ προσλαμβάνειν). This citation, given in iambic trimeter, may be a combination of two lines by Sophocles (Frags. 779 and 622) or a quote from some lost work of his.241 Learning, either through written texts or one’s own experience, leads to a “pure disposition of mind,” because it is concerned with things that are “most beautiful” (τὰ κάλλιστα). Such an attitude inclines one toward piety (εὐσέβεια), “the most supreme thing of all,” a word not used at all in the Septuagint.242 The culmination of thought in piety, which generally connotes reverence toward a god or gods, reflects a Hellenistic value, especially in conjunction with knowledge/learning. The theme of piety runs throughout the book and is connected with all of the main characters. Indeed, Ps.-Aristeas connects the value of loving learning that he imputes to Philocrates to that of piety, and thus he constructs an ethos for his narrator. Philocrates, also then, likely serves as a kind of stand-in for the readers that Ps.-Aristeas hopes to address, people who are like Philocrates ( and doubtlessly himself), who love learning and who are disposed towards piety.243 Pelletier notes that the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of treatises attributed to Hermes Trismegistus (the thrice-great Hermes) originating in the Ptolemaic, Roman and early Christian periods, contains a similar connection between understanding/knowledge, desiring the beautiful and piety; see vi.5:

If you understand god, you will understand the beautiful and good, the exceedingly bright whose brightness god surpasses. For this is incomparable beauty and inimitable good, as is god himself. As you understand god, then, also understand the beautiful and the good … If you ask about god, you ask also about the beautiful. Only one road travels from here to the beautiful – reverence (εὐσέβεια) combined with knowledge (γνῶσις).244

Ps.-Aristeas returns to the theme of piety again and again throughout his narrative, and it is especially prominent in the symposium section in the discussions of proper kingly behavior (see below § 12, § 42, § 210, § 215, § 229, § 255).

Notes

§ 1. Having composed. Lutz Doering, relying on the analysis of Gunther Zuntz, argues that the Greek participle συνεσταμένης means “has come about” and refers to a narrative previously in existence that the narrator has before him rather than to the present narrative .245 Yet, the verb συνίστημι often means “compose” when referring to an author or writing, and in the middle voice means “organize.” While Zuntz (and Doering) are correct that the sentence is difficult, I have taken the participle as a middle voice rather than a passive voice, and thus, it more likely refers to the narrative that Ps.-Aristeas is about to present to Philocrates, particularly in light of the subsequent “I have attempted to expound it clearly for you.” For more detailed discussion, see the Introduction section 8a.

Philocrates. The person addressed here is otherwise unknown, although the name is well attested in a variety of ancient sources; see, for example, Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.3.13 (1380b); Aeschines On the Embassy 2.6; Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Philosophers 7.185, 10.16; Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 264.

about the meeting which we had. Throughout the book, Ps.-Aristeas switches between using the first person plural, as here – often called the editorial plural – and the first person singular. The translation reflects this shift in person throughout.

high priest. Many scholars, including Hadas, Pelletier and Meecham note that ἀρχιερεύς is the usual Greek term for a high priest.246 It occurs often, for example, in 1–4 Maccabees. In the LXX/OG translations we find it only in Lev 4:3; Josh 22:13, 24:33. The more usual translation in this corpus is ὁ ἱερεύς ὁ μέγας, which is a word-for-word rendering of the Hebrew

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Judeans. Throughout the work, Ps.-Aristeas associates the geographical area Judea with the people who live there and who have ended up in Egypt. In § 6, we find the phrase τοῦ γένους τῶν Ἰουδαίων, the race of the Judeans. How to translate the Greek word Ἰουδαῖος has engendered a great deal of scholarly comment. Steve Mason has argued that in earlier periods the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Preface
• Contents
• I. INTRODUCTION
• II. GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY
• III. TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY
• Abbreviations
• Index of Names and Subjects
• Index of Ancient Sources
• Index of Modern Authors
• Fußnoten