Category:Letter of Aristeas (text)

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The Letter of Aristeas (see Online Text) is a Second Temple Jewish document, now included in collections of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha or Jewish Hellenistic Literature.

Overview

Manuscript tradition

The Letter of Aristeas in Scholarship (History of research)

The Letter of Aristeas was first printed in translation--by Mattia Palmerio in 1471 (Latin), by Dietrich Reisach in 1502 (German), and by Lodovico Domenichi in 1550 (Italian). The editio princeps of the Greek text was published in 1561 by Simon Schard, with Latin translation by Matthias Garbitius. New translations followed, including its first translations in Hebrew (1574) by Azariah de' Rossi, and in English (1633) by John Done.

The Letter was initially seen as a faithful account of the translation of the Septuagint by an eyewitness, but already in 1522 Luis Vives published a philological analysis of the text in his XXII libros de Civitate Dei Commentaria, in which he suggested that the letter were a forgery, being written by an author living half a century after Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 B.C).

The historical reliability of the Letter was then conclusively questioned by Humphrey Hody (1685), who also published in 1692 a new edition of the Greek text with Latin translation, and in 1705 a 2nd ed. of his dissertation, in which he replied to his critics, in particular to Isaac Vossius.

What could be considered the first critical edition of the document was published in 1870 by M. Schmidt, until the definitive edition by Henry St. John Thackeray in 1902.

The pseudepigraphical and Jewish nature of the Letter was by now commonly accepted and its author was recognized not a Gentile at the court of Ptolomy II but an Alexandrian Jew living long after the narrated events. The early critical approach viewed the document as a Jewish work of propaganda, with little originality of thought, solely motivated by the missionary prospect of presenting the superiority of Judaism to a pagan audience. But already in the early 20th century some scholars began expressing their dissatisfaction with such an approach. Motzo and Kahle suggested that the Letter could be a defense of the Septuagint against the appearance of rival translations. More specifically, Arnaldo Momigliano pointed out to the possibility that "a version accepted or edited by the priests of Leontopolis circulated in competition with that of the Septuagint."

A 1958 article by Victor Tcherikover signaled the radical shift of perspective: "The Letter of Aristeas was not written with the aim of self-defence or propaganda and was addressed not to Greek but to Jewish readers."

Even since, scholars have been exploring the complexity of Jewish society in Alexandria, in order to understand what urged the need for an apology of the Septuagint, one century after its composition. In 1991 Gabriele Boccaccini suggested that the Letter of Aristeas should be read as a response to the Prologue of Sirach, which in the second half of the 2nd cent. BCE had been translated into Greek and had claimed the superiority of the Hebrew text of the Bible over the Greek.

Contemporary interpreters, like Benjamin Wright, emphasize the theological aspects of the Letter, which is a much more complex text than a simple narrative about the origin of the Septuagint. The Letter wanted to argue for harmonious relationship between Jews and Greeks, while keeping their distinctive identity and maintaining the superiority of their (philosophical) way of life.