Aristeas letter

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The so-called Aristeas letter is a pseudepigraphic writing by a Jew from the epoch of Hellenism . He describes and justifies the translation of the Pentateuch from Hebrew into Greek ( Septuagint ).

Author and dating

The author of the letter has taken the pseudonym Aristeas and claims to be a supporter of the Greek religion. He gives himself the impression of holding a high office at the court of the Egyptian king Ptolemaios - meaning Ptolemy II Philadelphos (285–246 BC) - to hold. In the letter he tells his alleged friend Philocrates about the circumstances in which the Septuagint text was created. In reality, however, the author is an Egyptian Jew from Alexandria targeting a Jewish audience. The content does not provide any useful criteria for dating. For formal reasons related to the style of the alleged official documents inserted in the letter, it can be assumed that the letter of Aristeas dates back to the second half of the 2nd century BC. Was created.

content

In the letter, Pseudo-Aristeas reports that at the suggestion of the royal librarian Demetrios of Phaleron, Ptolemy sent him to Jerusalem to meet the Jewish high priest Eleazar, with whom he had conversations about the allegorical meaning of Jewish religious commandments. Then he returned to Alexandria with Torah scrolls and 72 translators (6 men each from the Twelve Tribes of Israel ). They would have translated the Pentateuch into Greek in 72 days. The later further embellishment of the legend, according to which the 72 translators worked independently of one another and nevertheless all produced the same Greek text through divine inspiration, is not yet to be found in the letter to Aristeas. In contrast, the table discussions of the 72 scholars with the Egyptian king are reported in detail, in which Ptolemy posed philosophical questions to the Jews over the course of seven days; each of the 72 answered a question. The translation had been approved by the Jews in Alexandria. It is thus authorized, and anyone who changes anything should be cursed. Then the work was submitted to the king, who wished to have it in his library (the famous library of Alexandria ). The letter also reports that, at the request of Aristeas, the king gave freedom to all Jewish prisoners of war who were slaves in his kingdom.

Pseudo-Aristeas turns out to be enlightened and very open to the Greek way of thinking. He thinks that Zeus is simply another name for HaSchem . As a devout Jew, he rejects Greek polytheism, but avoids polemics, especially since he claims to be Greek. He has the high priest Eleazar put forward a euhemeristic interpretation: The Greek gods were excellent people, who achieved divine honors through their significant achievements.

With a view to his Jewish readership, the author tries to present the project to translate the Pentateuch into Greek as justified and successful and to counter the doubts of his Jewish contemporaries about the correctness of the translation text.

Tradition and research history

More than 20 manuscripts of this letter have come down to us, which is also mentioned and quoted in many other texts. It is written in perfect Greek. A copy in German is for example with Cod. Pal. germ. 10 (early 16th century) given.

The letter was recognized early on as a forgery due to philological text criticism. Humphrey Hody wrote his Contra historiam Aristeae de LXX interpretibus dissertatio in 1684 , in which he stated that the letter was a late forgery by a Hellenized Jew. However, Isaac Vossius (1618–1689), the librarian of Queen Christine of Sweden , contradicted him in the appendix to his edition of the Pomponius Mela .

expenditure

  • Emil Kautzsch (ed.): The apocrypha and pseudepigraphs of the Old Testament . Vol. 2: The Apocrypha of the Old Testament . Darmstadt 1962 (2nd, unchanged reprint of the first edition from 1900).
  • André Pelletier (Ed.): Lettre d'Aristée a Philocrate , Paris 1962 [critical edition with French translation]
  • Norbert Meisner: Aristeas letter , in: Kümmel, Werner Georg; Lichtenberger, Hermann (ed.): Jewish writings from the Hellenistic-Roman period . Vol. 2: Instruction in narrative form , Gütersloh 1973, pp. 35–88.
  • Shutt, RJH: Letter of Aristeas , in: Charlesworth, James Hamilton (ed.): The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha. Vol. 2: Expansions of the "Old Testament" and Legends, Wisdom and Philosophical Literature, Prayers, Psalms and Odes, Fragments of Lost Judaeo-Hellenistic Works, Garden City, New York 1985, 7-34.
  • Kai Brodersen (Ed.): Aristeas: The King and the Bible, Greek-Dt. , Reclams Universal Library 18576, Stuttgart: Reclam 2008. ISBN 3-15-018576-9

literature

Web links

Wikisource: The Letter to Aristeas  - German translation by Paul Rießler

Remarks

  1. ^ Karlheinz Müller: Aristeasbrief , in: Theologische Realenzyklopädie , Volume 3, Berlin 1978, p. 724.