This study highlights features of the Letter of Aristeas that reveal how that story conceives of the royal translation project. It will apply the concept of ‘auxiliary texts’ developed by Markus Dubischar based on the conversation theory of Paul Grice in order to show that Aristeas understands the Hebrew Pentateuch as a failing text. It will be shown that because Aristeas both respects the traditions and teachings contained within the Pentateuch, and recognizes the failure of the text outside of a particular context, it sees the translation as necessary for the Pentateuch’s survival. The study will compare the statements related in prologues from Graeco-Roman ‘auxiliary texts’ to statements in the Letter of Aristeas to underline the ways how the Greek translation of the Hebrew text is simultaneously conceived of as a correction of the problems inherent in the Hebrew text tradition, and is not attempting to entirely replace that tradition.
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Moses Hadas, Aristeas to Philocrates (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1973), 55-56; Sylvie Honigman, The Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria: A Study in the Narrative of the Letter of Aristeas (London: Routledge, 2003), 1, 13; Wasserstein and Wasserstein, Legend, 21. All of the above testify to the fact that this work neither follows epistolary formulae, nor does the narrator even claim to be writing a letter in any sense. Rather, it is pointed out that despite being addressed to a certain Philocrates, the narrator calls his work a διηγήσις, or narrative, from the start (§1). As to the narrator’s purported identity as a Greek courtier, Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 36, notes that this is a persona taken on in order to provide the text with greater credibility. A similar sentiment can be observed in Victor Tcherikover, “The Ideology of the Letter of Aristeas,” htr 51 (1958): 59-85, esp. 63.
John Bartlett, Jews in the Hellenistic World: Josephus, Aristeas, the Sibylline Oracles, Eupolemus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 16-17, argues on the basis of an analysis of Aristeas’s relationship to other literature, including Hecataeus of Abdera, the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, and Aristobulus, that a date in the middle of the second century bce is most likely.
Paul Grice, Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 26-29. Dubischar, “Survival,” 51-56.
Robert Carroll, “Jewgreek Greekjew: The Hebrew Bible is All Greek to Me, Reflections on the Problematics of Dating the Origins of the Bible in Relation to Contemporary Discussions of Biblical Historiography,” in Did Moses Speak Attic? Jewish Historiography and Scripture in the Hellenistic Period, ed. Lester Grabbe (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), 91-107, esp. 93.
Wasserstein and Wasserstein, Legend, 19-20. Paul Wendland, Aristae ad Philocratem Epistula cum ceteris de origine versionis LXX interpretum testimoniis (Leipzig: Teubner, 1900), vii-ix, allows that the practice may go back even further to larger editions of the Greek bible.
Dubischar, “Survival,” 47. See also Markus Mülke, “Die Epitome—das bessere Original?” in Horster and Reitz, Condensing Texts—Condensed texts, 69-89, esp. 74-76.
Cf. Honigman, Septuagint, 119-39; Wright, “Pseudonymous,” 49-50; Zuntz, “Aristeas,” 109-26.
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This study highlights features of the Letter of Aristeas that reveal how that story conceives of the royal translation project. It will apply the concept of ‘auxiliary texts’ developed by Markus Dubischar based on the conversation theory of Paul Grice in order to show that Aristeas understands the Hebrew Pentateuch as a failing text. It will be shown that because Aristeas both respects the traditions and teachings contained within the Pentateuch, and recognizes the failure of the text outside of a particular context, it sees the translation as necessary for the Pentateuch’s survival. The study will compare the statements related in prologues from Graeco-Roman ‘auxiliary texts’ to statements in the Letter of Aristeas to underline the ways how the Greek translation of the Hebrew text is simultaneously conceived of as a correction of the problems inherent in the Hebrew text tradition, and is not attempting to entirely replace that tradition.
All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 276 | 55 | 5 |
Full Text Views | 222 | 7 | 0 |
PDF Views & Downloads | 108 | 17 | 0 |