Greek Old Testament = Son of Torah

The Torah! In Judaism, the Torah is God’s law, as revealed to Moses and recorded in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is considered the most sacred of the ancient Hebrew texts.

When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC, he was received as a liberator of the Egyptian people. The following year, Alexander established his new Hellenistic Greek capital and named it Alexandria. Alexandria became home to the Royal Library of Alexandria, the largest repository of knowledge in antiquity. After Alexander’s death in 323 BC, one of his generals, Ptolemy, a Macedonian Greek, was appointed Satrap of Egypt. The title of satrap referred to a provincial governor in the Persian Empire. By 305 BC, Ptolemy declared himself Ptolemy I, Soter, pharaoh of Egypt. Soter is the Greek word for “ savior. “

Under the Greek reign of Ptolemy I, many Jewish immigrants settled around Alexandria. There, the primary spoken language was the beautifully-sounding Greek spoken throughout the Aegean and Mediterranean world. After Ptolemy’s death in 283 BC, his son became Ptolemy II,  Philadelphus, Pharaoh of Egypt. Philadelphus comes from the merging of two Greek words: friend and brother. Like his father, he continued transforming Alexandria into a Hellenistic cultural and learning center.

Over time, generations of Jews born in Egypt no longer spoke Hebrew as their mother tongue. As a result, Egyptian Jews could not follow the sacred text during the synagogue service. Since reading the law was essential to worship in the synagogue, it needed to be understood by the exclusively Greek-speaking congregations. A need emerged to translate the Torah into Greek.

Whether Ptolemy II or the Jewish elders identified the need, in about 250 BC, Philadelphus ordered the translation of the Torah into Greek. According to an apocryphal letter written by Aristeas of Alexandria, Philadelphus is supposed to have requested a copy of the five books of Moses and 72 scribes of the Torah from the Jewish High Priest. The resulting translation was named the Septuagint, from the Latin word Septuaginta, for the number seventy— after the 72 scribes— six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel.

The scribes supposedly produced 72 identical versions of the Torah in Greek independently. This claim is likely a gross exaggeration that suggests some divine intervention in the translation. This version is also known by the Roman numeral for the number “70” – “LXX.” Perhaps the Romans rounded off the number to shorten the name.

After the emergence of Christianity, the pre-Christian Septuagint became synonymous with the “Greek Old Testament.” In fact, since Greek was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, early Christian churches utilized the Greek translation rather than the Hebrew version. It is recognized as a significant source for the Apostles of Jesus Christ.

The Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria wrote in his historical account:

“they, like men inspired, prophesied, not one saying one thing and another, but every one of them employed the self-same nouns and verbs, as if some unseen prompter had suggested all their language to them.”

There has been criticism from certain historians regarding the source of the letter and its authenticity; some consider it complete fiction. At this point in history, the opinions of those who doubt the account are irrelevant to our purposes.

The point remains...

•      After generations of living in Greek-speaking Egypt, the Jews did speak Greek as their primary language.

•       Ptolemy II was working to enhance the Library of Alexandria, and

•       the Torah was translated into Greek during the reign of Ptolemy II.

Logically, the translation occurred. The oldest known copy of the Torah dates from between 1155 and 1225 AD and is said to be housed at the University of Bologna. If that is the case, how was the Torah handed down from the 2nd century BC to the 12th century AD?

Given the persecution and slaughter of the Jewish people throughout history, along with the destruction of sacred Hebrew texts, it remains a mystery how the Torah is read today in synagogues around the world. One possibility is that manuscripts of the Septuagint, dated to the 2nd century AD, were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in the 1940s. Thus, the Septuagint was the likely source of portions, if not all, of the modern Torah.

The great-grandson of Philadelphus, Ptolemy V Epiphanes, whose name in Greek means “Illustrious,” would continue the work of his ancestors. Epiphanes issued a decree in Memphis in 196 BC carved in stone. To ensure that his decree could be understood by everyone, the stone was inscribed in three versions: the top in Egyptian hieroglyphs, the middle in the ancient Egyptian Demotic text, and the bottom in ancient Greek.

Thanks to Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, the decree was discovered in the summer of 1799 and is now universally known as the Rosetta Stone, which is located in the lobby of the British Museum.