The First Bible Translation?

Dan McClellan Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan. And

Dan Beecher I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Thing, I'm, look, I'm doing better than you are. I don't have a cold. So that's good.

Dan McClellan Yep, getting over, getting over a bit of a cold. If I sound a little congested, it's because I am a little congested. So, um-

Dan Beecher Blame Disneyland ... well spotted.

Dan McClellan Yes. Blame D- Well, it's, uh, I either blame Disneyland or blame Canada. Those are the two options, and it sounds like this time, uh, it's gonna be Disneyland. So.

Dan Beecher Okay. You know, I

Dan McClellan had a great time, though.

Dan Beecher It's, it's, it's always one or the other. Uh- Yeah ... that's just... Anyway, uh, today I'm excited because we're gonna be talking about a thing that I had never heard of until you brought it up, but I still think it's fascinating. It's, uh, this is a worthy thing to be talking about- Yeah ... uh, in, in the history of the Bible. And this is a letter. It's called the Letter of Aristeas, and, uh, and we're gonna be talking about it as a What Is That, because it's gonna get us sneakily into understanding what the Septuagint is- Hmm ... and where that came from- Hmm. Yes ... and why it's called that, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Uh, we've, we've, we've touched on that before, but, uh, this is, this is the good stuff. So I think you're gonna like it. So let's dive into What Is That? So this week's What Is That, uh, I mean, we could call it the Septuagint, just what is that part. But, but we're starting with this letter of Aristeas.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And, uh, and it's a letter that you made me read, and I, I- ... resent you for that a little bit.

Dan McClellan Did you read the whole thing?

Dan Beecher Well, I skimmed a few parts, I'll be honest.

Dan McClellan So no. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no. That's fine. That's fine.

Dan Beecher Why would I do that? It's long.

Dan McClellan No. It was long. Yeah, it is. Uh, and there's a, there's a lot of stuff in there that you're like, "Why would anyone care about this?"

Dan Beecher Right. And I'm not gonna read the names of all the elders. I'm just not. I'm sorry.

Dan McClellan Yeah. No, no. There's no, no need for that. But it, the, if you haven't heard of the Letter of Aristeas, and for whatever reason you're listening to our show, you probably have heard the word Septuagint. Right. Which is a reference to the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And some people might wonder, where does Septuagint come from? Well, it comes from a Greek word for 70. Sept, uh, might sound familiar.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, and the, the notion that the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible had something to do with the number 70 actually derives from the tradition that we find in the Letter of Aristeas.

Dan Beecher Indeed.

Dan McClellan So, so you have seen the, the, uh, the results, the outcome, the workings of the Letter of Aristeas if you have seen the word Septuagint before.

Dan Beecher Though, objection, Your Honor.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher Um, Septuagint does refer to the number 70. That's not the right number.

Dan McClellan Right. The right number would be 72. Uh, because... And, and this is just, you know, in the ancient world, you just kind of spitballed some things. It was, uh, it's-

Dan Beecher We're just gonna round it up. It's fine.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We, you squint-

Dan Beecher Round down. We'll round down.

Dan McClellan Yeah, you squint at it. It, it works. But, um, the Letter of Aristeas is a letter that purports to tell the history of where we got the Septuagint from. And, and the idea fundamentally is that there were 72, uh, Hebrew scholars, six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, that traveled down to Alexandria, Egypt, and translated the Pentateuch, so the first five books of Moses, into Greek. And technically, in, uh, in its narrow sense, the Septuagint is really just the translation of the first five books of Moses. But, uh, commonly, scholars and, and lay folks use Septuagint to refer to the whole Hebrew Bible translated into Greek.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So if you've heard that tradition before, that there were 72 scholars who translated, uh, the Hebrew Bible into Greek or the Pentateuch into Greek, that's where it comes from. And this letter claims to be from a dude named Aristeas of Marmona, or Marmora, excuse me, um, to his brother, Philocrates.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And, and, and so this, this is a, this is not a Jewish person. This is, this is a, a, a Greco-Roman person, and he claims to be a, a... And, and here's where I betray the fact that I've only ever read this word. Is it courtier or courtier? Courtier.

Dan Beecher Uh-

Dan McClellan Courtier, okay, claims to be a courtier of Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Now, this was, this was a ruler who reigned from, uh, like, the early to mid-3rd century BCE. Okay. It's like 280, 245-ish, somewhere in there BCE. Uh, it's very clearly not historical. It was probably written somewhere around 100 years after, uh, Ptolemy II, uh, was, was done reigning. So, uh-

Dan Beecher It does read a little suspiciously like it's telling you a story- Yes ... rather than, like, I'm telling you my story. It becomes this I'm telling you, "Sit down, children- " Yes ... "and listen as I tell you."

Dan McClellan Gather round and you shall hear.

Dan Beecher That's right. That's right.

Dan McClellan Yes. And, and, you know, we, we talked about how long it is.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Like, I don't know who wrote letters this long- ... uh, in, in this time period, and, you know, 'cause the person who's, who's reading or listening to this letter is gonna be like, "Get on with it." Um, but basically the, the story is this: Uh, the, the ruler, Ptolemy, is, wants to, uh, collect- 500 volumes of literature from around the world in the library in Alexandria. Famous library, everybody knows about it. Uh, so they're getting stuff together. Everybody's doing a, a, a bang-up job, and then Demetrius of Phalerum, who's the-

Dan Beecher Sorry, you said 500, uh, volumes of literature. I- Where did I read that it was 500,000?

Dan McClellan Or no, 500,000. Excuse me.

Dan Beecher Uh, yeah.

Dan McClellan 500,000.

Dan Beecher I, I, I just wanted to make sure that we were, uh Yeah,

Dan McClellan that was, that was just a brain fart on my part.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Begging your pardon. I, I apologize- Yeah ... uh, for that.

Dan Beecher 'Cause 500, frankly, not that impressive.

Dan McClellan No, not that impressive. 500,000. Excuse me. Um, and so Demetrius of Phalerum, who is the king's, uh, librarian- Yeah ... he comes to the king and says, "Yes, yes, we're doing great. We've got more than 200,000 books, O King. Uh, and we- we'll get there. We'll be all right." But he says, "It has also been reported to me that the laws of the Jews are worthy of transcription and of inclusion in your library." And the king says, "What is there, therefore, to prevent you from doing this?"

Dan Beecher Yeah. Okay, then go do it, man. Why are you, why are you telling me

Dan McClellan this? Yes. And he says, "For everything that you need has been provided to you." But Demetrius said, "Translation is still required, for in Judea they use their own characters, just as the Egyptians use their own arrangement of letters inasmuch as they also have their own language. The Judeans are supposed to use Syrian. This is not so, but they use another style." And, and I think Syrian is, is probably intended to refer to Aramaic. Uh, but I could l- I could be wrong about that. Uh, and so after, uh, Demetrius tells the king about this, the king contemplates these things, and he says, "You know what? We're gonna write to the high priest of the Judeans, and, uh, we'll, we'll figure out how to, to get this done." And so ultimately what happens is Aristeas and others, uh, go to Jerusalem and talk them into sending along six Hebrew, uh, experts from each of the 12 tribes of Israel, 'cause, you know, all of the 12 tribes of Israel were still, um, integrated, and still everybody knew, uh, what tribe they were from and everything- Right ... in this time period. Uh, and they travel back to Alexandria, and the king, uh, throws this seven-day feast, and, and I love this part of the story because every night they're at this banquet, and, and the king is just like, "Regale me with, uh, with your Judean tales." And-

Dan Beecher "Tell me all the tales of your Jewness. Let's have- " "... let's have some more, some more Jew tales. I love those."

Dan McClellan And, and the idea is to basically, uh, kind of defend the Jewish laws and customs as rational- Mm ... as philosophically defensible.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So when it comes to the things that, that don't make much sense, uh, uh, at least according to how we think about these things philosophically. So when it comes to, you know, why there are certain, uh, seafood that is, that is inappropriate to eat- Right ... they're, they go into, like, "Well, that's because they have so many legs, and this is a symbol of this kind of thing, and that's inappropriate," and so forth. And, and so every question that comes up, the, uh, the 72 elders have a philosophically informed and rational response. And so- It...

Dan Beecher Yeah, it- ...

Dan McClellan part of the letter is, is a defense of the rationality of the Jewish customs.

Dan Beecher Well, I mean, if there's going to be a group of people who will have thought deeply about everything that they're tau- uh, everything in their whole, in their scriptural heritage, it will be a bunch of rabbis. They will- Yeah ... they will have thought about all of this stuff, so.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So this is, um... And if, if you happen to, if you look up the Letter of Aristeas, you can get a, a, a decent translation online. It's a little outdated. If you want a really good one, Benjamin Wright III's The Letter of Aristeas, uh, from the Commentaries on Early Jewish Literature by De Gruyter, I think, is, is the best current, like, translation and commentary on it. But, uh, it's, it's broken up-

Dan Beecher And the letter, the letter's originally in Greek?

Dan McClellan The let- Yes. Yes. Was... Or it, it claims to have been a translat- Or no, yeah. It, it... I'm pretty sure it was, uh, claims to have been originally written in Greek because it's from the dude Aristeas, who's in- Right ... uh, Alexandria. Uh, but it's divided into paragraphs, and, uh, you've got the, the intro is, like, paragraphs one through eight, and then you hear about Demetrius and the royal library project in paragraphs nine through 51. So that's a lot of paragraphs- Yeah ... to say the king wanted to fill the library, and they needed the Jewish law. Like, it- Right ... it goes into, um, excessive detail. Uh, you might even say a plethora of, uh- ... of paragraphs. And then the, the-

Dan Beecher Do you know what a plethora is?

Dan McClellan And then the embassy to Jerusalem is, uh, paragraphs 52 to 82, and then we've got the descri- And then we, you know, you've got another almost 100 paragraphs describing Jerusalem and the temple and praising the law. And then we have the selection of the 72 translators, and they name them, uh, which is, which is, you know, riveting.

Dan Beecher Just a lot of fun. Just real good- Yeah ... reading right there. Yeah, for sure.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then, uh, 187 to 300, that's where we get our, uh, our philosophical symposium, uh, over the course of the seven-day banquet, uh, and where we get the questions about ethics and governance and wisdom and, and basically they, they demonstrate to the king just how awesome, uh, Jewish customs and, and ideas of ethics and governance and w- and wisdom are. And then they basically lock him on the island of Pharos. So Ph- that, that's the famous lighthouse in Alexandria- Mm ... and all that. And so everybody gets their own room. 72 men Over the course of 72 days, each one of them translates the entire Pentateuch on their own, and at the end, they come back together and they compare all 72 translations, and they all match word for word.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan Hallelujah.

Dan Beecher Amazing.

Dan McClellan Yes. So, and, and y- they never could have planned that. You know, it's like, "Well, you're all gonna all do it yourself-

Dan Beecher Mm

Dan McClellan ... just entirely independently of each other, and, uh, take as long as you need." And, um, miraculously, it all, uh, takes 72 days, and every word, uh, matches identically. And then, uh, paragraphs 308 to 321, this is where we get kind of the, the thesis of the, the whole letter. This is, this is kind of where everything culminates. They read the translation publicly to the Jewish community in Alexandria. So this is hearkening back to, um, your, uh, your early Jew- earlier Jewish ideas in the Persian period. You have Ezra reading the, uh, the law out to everybody.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan So it's, it's kind of, uh, alluding to that.

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting. I didn't catch-

Dan McClellan And-

Dan Beecher I didn't catch that allusion. I just... Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then-

Dan Beecher It just seemed like they, like, gather all the Jewish people. We are now going to have, uh, y- they all now have to suffer through the entirety of the Hebrew Bible.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, it, and it's just the, the Pentateuch, so luckily they didn't have to listen to, uh, everything. The Psalms would've been difficult to-

Dan Beecher The Psalms would've been a lot. That's true

Dan McClellan ... to slog all the way through. Yeah. Um, so we get a lot of, uh, uh... They read the, the legislation. It is, uh, one said, "Because the legislation is sacred and has come about through God, and God struck some of those who did undertake it, and they, they ceased to attempt." So they're, they're saying, like, this, they tried to do this before, and it didn't work, and this is the one time it worked, which means it must be approved by God. The fact that it took 72 days, the fact that it matched word for word, all of this is an indication that it has been approved by God. Uh, and then we get the, uh... And, and basically this is all a way to tell the story in a way that proves, "Hey, this has to be the one. This is the right translation." And also, it's okay that this happened, because there would've been people in the time period who would've been like, "It's, it's not the scriptures because it's a translation." Like, today, the Quran is not valid except in, in Arabic-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... uh, in, in a lot of people's minds. And so, uh, it would've been very similar anciently. But the idea is, look at all this divine approbation of this translation. The translation is good, and it's okay. And so this is a way for, uh, to defend and to validate Greek-speaking Jewish people, Jewish folks in Alexandria particularly, but anywhere, who spoke Greek, the lingua franca, and maybe didn't speak Hebrew well enough to read the scriptures, or didn't speak Aramaic well enough to read the scriptures in, in the Targumic translations. And so it's, it's a way to say, "It's okay to be Jewish and to speak Greek and to encounter the scriptures in Greek as well." Uh, so that's one of the rhetorical points, uh, of the, the end of the Letter of Aristeas. But also, you get the, uh, the curse against everybody, anybody who would add to or take away from.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Which, which itself is alluding back to, uh, Deuteronomy 4- ... where you have the same thing, uh, about cursing anyone who adds to or takes away, and you get the same thing in, at the end of the Book of Revelation.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan A curse for anyone who adds to or takes away from any of the words of this book, which is, uh, another way to say, "Hey, this, this is all God's doing, so, uh, it's gotta stay exactly as it is."

Dan Beecher Well, it d- it does strike me as interesting that every one of them was adding to somebody else's book. So it just, it feels like, feels like, "Aren't you cursed, then? You're, you're- ... you added. What, why, why can't I add?" I don't know.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And this is a... We see this, this tradition being reflected in, like, Philo of Alexandria. So he was a, he was a, a, a Jewish philosopher, a politician fr- who was born probably around 15 to 20 BCE, and lived to around 50 CE, so actually lived, uh, across the entire life of J- uh, of Jesus of Nazareth.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan But he talks about the tradition and, and, um, narrates parts of the Letter of Aristeas. Josephus talks about this tradition. Like, it is pretty widespread. And so for a long time, that was understood to be the, the actual historical origins of the Septuagint, and, and no doubt the Letter of Aristeas helped spread the, uh, the authorization, the legitimacy of, uh, the Septuagint around the Greek-speaking Jewish world. And, and who knows if that tradition is a reason that, uh, that people like Philo and Josephus could consider themselves, uh, you know, legitimate, authoritative voices within Judaism, uh, because, uh, it, it might not have been as acceptable to be a Greek-speaking Jewish person in the first, uh, century CE if not for this letter, uh, defending the Septuagint.

Dan Beecher Let me ask you this. W- do we have a sense of why this letter would be needed? I, w- is it just because of that, to somehow, as a, as a means of legitimizing, uh, Greek-speaking Jews? Or is it... Like, I, it seem- it, it, it seems like it wants to have a reason that it exists.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I think that's probably the, one of the main reasons. I- There's also the argument that because a large chunk of the letter is a philosophical defense of the rationality of Judaism, it might also be, uh, a, you know, as a, whether it's the primary or secondary or tertiary rhetorical goal, just making Judaism sound reasonable and philosophically defensible to a Greco-Roman audience might- Hmm ... also be in the mix.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan So the, I, I'm s- I'm sure there are a variety of different things going on, but, um, you, you do seem to... The letter does seem to be speaking to Jewish people, but also to non-Jewish people. And th- so it is, it is an apologetic letter to, to some degree, both internally and, and maybe externally as well, although maybe the, the defenses of the philosophical rationality of, of Judaism are really internally oriented as well. Maybe it's intended to, to convince folks who are like, "No, we're, we're different. We're, we gotta be isolationists," or, "We gotta be," uh, something like that. Maybe it's an attempt to say to them, "No, we should be integrated into the broader world because, you know, we, we fit with the way they think and talk about things." So this time period would've been... This is probably occurring somewhere within a couple of decades of the Maccabean Revolts.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And, and a big part of that was, to what degree is Judaism, uh, you know, integrated into broader Hellenistic society? And I, and I think you would say the author of the Letter of Aristeas is kind of on the, uh, on the more integration side of things rather than on the, the less integration side of things that folks like the, the Essenes at Qumran would've been, who were very much separatists and isolationists.

Dan Beecher Right. Right.

Dan McClellan So yeah, so I, I don't think we know for sure what the main thrust of, of the, the reasoning is, but I, but I think there are a number of possibilities that kind of, uh, accrete around this, uh, apologetic, uh, rhetorical goal, whether it's exclusively internal or internal and external.

Dan Beecher Well, and I, I suppose that, like, by saying six of each of the tribes came to do this thing, it's all, it's, it's basically saying, "This should be acceptable to all of you. To every, every Jew should, should find this an acceptable endeavor, this translation, because we all agreed to it, uh, you know, at this point." We, you know what I mean? Like, a, the, I'm telling a story of how this was done by us, for us, with our, you know, with, with the, uh, the, the consent and, and even the approbation of the, the leaders of our groups.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And th- and this is something that was desirable to the outside world. This is something that, uh... And, and a l- most sch- for a long time, this was considered historical. A lot of people just assumed that this was the way things went down, or that this preserved some kind of social memory- Right ... of the broad outlines of how this went down. Uh, and it was really, like, in the 1600s and 1700s that there were scholars who were like, "Yeah, no." "This is all, this is all myth. None of this happened." Uh, and, and I think that's more or less the consensus view today. There are certainly scholars who will say, "This is, you know, was written a century later, and this is mostly made up, but it's not outside the realm of plausibility that the king might have requested this." Uh, and, and I, I would be on the side of scholars who would say it seems more likely that the Septuagint was translated, uh, based on internal impulses and motivations, that, that it was needed among Jewish folks. Right. And when you, when you look at the translation of the first five books of Moses, it's very clear they were not all translated at the same time, because- Oh, okay ... they're, and not by the same people. There are very different translation techniques across the different, uh, books of the Pentateuch. For instance, Genesis, which is clearly the first one translated, has a pretty free yet faithful style. In other words, the translation is, is pretty good, but the result is closer to, like, idiomatic Greek, literary stylings in Greek, than it is to, like, a wooden, uh, very Semitic-sounding translation. And as you go through Exodus and Leviticus and the other texts, the translation style gets less and less free and more and more literal. Hmm. So that, uh, by the time you get to Deuteronomy, the translation is much less good let- literary Greek and much more, uh, you, you have more occurrences of Semiticisms in the translation, and you even have more, like, transliterations- Hmm ... of Hebrew words. So, uh, so there, it's definitely a project that, that occurred over a long period of time, and there's definitely different translators who are working on it. And, uh-

Dan Beecher But probably not 72 of them.

Dan McClellan Uh, probably not 72 of them, correct. And, uh, and I think that there, there's a theory out there that the translation of at least the, the Pentateuch, I don't know if the theory, I don't remember if the theory includes the whole Hebrew Bible, but the idea is that it was, it was basically a tool that was supposed to function as kind of an interlinear. So, uh-

Dan Beecher I don't know what that means ...

Dan McClellan uh, an interlinear would be where you have both the source language and the, uh- Okay ... and the target language, and it would basically be for you to compare.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Uh, and, and so there's, uh, there's a theory out there that it, it wasn't intended for Jewish folks who spoke Greek and did not speak Hebrew, but for folks who could speak both languages and, uh, and wanted to, uh, to- To be able to compare and see how-

Dan Beecher Hmm

Dan McClellan ... the Greek would compare to the Hebrew. I think they call that the interlinear theory. It was, it was big when I was, uh, at Oxford. Uh, my, my thesis there was on the Septuagint, textual criticism of the Septuagint, so I was a lot more involved in Septuagintal studies back then. But that was, that was also going on 17 years ago, so, um, I don't know if the interlinear theory is still considered viable, but, um-

Dan Beecher Now, remind me, the m- I have vague memories of things that we have talked about in the past.

Dan McClellan I don't. You're doing better than me, so.

Dan Beecher But, uh, there, one of the things that we've talked about is sort of the lineage of our English translations-

Dan McClellan Uh-huh

Dan Beecher ... that came f- that came, you know, from the Latin, which then came from the Greek. Am I right? Like, all of our, all of our translations basically descend from the Septuagint. Is that correct?

Dan McClellan Uh, not, not quite.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So, so the Septuagint was definitely the authoritative version of the Hebrew Bible for Christianity up until Jerome toward the end of the fourth century CE.

Dan Beecher Oh, right, right, right. Okay.

Dan McClellan So there, th- and there were Latin translations that existed prior to Jerome, and they s- stuck to the Septuagint. In fact, I, uh, when I talk about, uh, Exodus 21:22-25, which is where we have this idea that I keep bringing up, that a, that a fetus was treated more as a property than a person, uh, the, the, uh, they call it the, the Vetus Latina. Uh, the old Latin version, which is the pre-Jerome translation, which was directly con- dependent on the Septuagint, translates the Septuagint's variant reading of that verse. And then, uh, Jerome introduced, uh, this idea that became known as the Hebraica Veritas, so the, the truth of the Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And he pivots to say, "No, the Hebrew is right, and it's the Septuagint that is the later altered text," which most of the time that's correct. And so there, there are publications of, of the Vetus Latina and the, the, uh, Vulgate, which is how his translation became known, side by side, and you can compare, and the Vulgate overwhelmingly is giving preference to the Hebrew.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it's the Vulgate that-

Dan Beecher That's it. Uh-huh

Dan McClellan ... becomes the, the, the edition of the Hebrew Bible within, uh, the Orthodox tradition all the way down to Martin Luther and William Tyndale and the Reformation. Uh, and so there were, uh... And, and the Vulgate included the apocryphal books, and most of those only existed in Greek 'cause they were composed in Greek.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so, uh, the, the Vulgate is going from the Greek there. And there, there are places where the Vulgate is, is dependent on the Greek. But on- once we start getting into English translations, most of the translations, starting with Luther and Tyndale, went back to the Hebrew. So they're giving preference to the Hebrew. However, there are a number of places and a number of ways where the Septuagint preserves an earlier reading.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And so we've, we've never said we're ignoring the Septuagint entirely. We've always been willing to say, "Well, the Septuagint preserves this reading, and we think that might be better here." And so we'll incorporate-

Dan Beecher Because we don't, we don't have any Hebrew... Before Qumran, we don't have Heb- we don't have Hebrew versions that predate the Septuagint. Is that right? Something like that, right?

Dan McClellan Yeah. Yeah. The, the oldest, uh, versions of the, the text that we have come from Qumran, and they're very, very fragmentary. I, I think somewhere between 20 to 25% of the entire Hebrew Bible is represented, which is, which is not a, a large portion of it. And, and you see different kinds of traditions in there. You see some of the Septuagint readings in some of the Hebrew. You see some more Masoretic Text readings, uh, in the Hebrew. The Septuagint would have been translated right around the time the Qumran manuscripts are beginning to be transcribed.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So the translation of the Septuagint is about contemporaneous, uh-

Dan Beecher Okay

Dan McClellan ... with those manuscripts. But w- because we have the entire Hebrew Bible in later manuscripts of the Septuagint, for the longest time, that was the oldest version of most of, the overwhelming majority of the Hebrew Bible to which we had access.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So it was like we have the Masoretic Text from 900 to 1000 CE. That's our oldest manuscript. Or we've got, uh, or, or we've got the Septuagint, which is, you know, almost 1,000 years older in, in the earliest manuscripts, but it's a translation.

Dan Beecher Right. Okay.

Dan McClellan So the Septui- so Septuagint has always been text critically important, and, and even today, there are lots of places where translations are going to give preference to the Septuagint. And the Dead Sea Scrolls, in, in their own way, have demonstrated that there are many places where, yeah, the Septuagint is very clearly based on a variant Hebrew source text and not just the translator going, "La-di-da, I'm gonna do whatever I want here," which is, which is kind of how some people thought the, uh, the variants crept into the Septuagint. And so-

Dan Beecher Right

Dan McClellan ... certainly that is what's going on in, in some places, but most of the time, they're faithful renderings of, of their source text. So it, it gets really, really complex when you get into the weeds of, um- ... Septuagint textual criticism. But, uh, but the Letter of Aristeas is, is an important tradition that influenced how a lot of people thought about the origins of the Septuagint. Down to today, there, there's people today who are like, "Yeah, that's definitely what happened." Not scholars. Most scholars are in agreement that that's definitely not what happened.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But, uh, but if you, even if you've never heard of the Let- Letter of Aristeas, if you've heard of the tradition that 70 or 72 scholars translated it all at the same time, then you've heard the story-

Dan Beecher Yeah

Dan McClellan ... from the Letter of Aristeas. Uh, and, and I think, I think it's, it's helpful to know where that story comes from and, uh, and to hear, uh, the scholarly perspective on it.

Dan Beecher Absolutely. Well, I think that's fascinating. Uh, go ahead and read the Letter of Aristeas if any of you r- really want to. Uh, you know. It's... Don't, don't be like me. Don't. You- It, it's, it's not that good. Great. Have, have ChatGPT give you a, a write-up on it or something.

Dan McClellan A breakdown.

Dan Beecher Uh, anyway, that's it. If you would like to become a part of making this show go and also get access to our, uh, our show early and ad-free, and you can get access to the after party which we record. We, we did a really fun, uh, talk. You, if you go, you'll find out what we're talking about for the future. Uh, you can do that by going over to patreon.com/dataoverdogma. Sign up there, and, uh, we... Become one of our favorite listeners/viewers. Uh, that's-

Dan McClellan Yeah

Dan Beecher ... that's always the best thing that you can do. Otherwise, thanks so much to Roger Goudy for editing the show. Like, comment, subscribe, all those things, and we will talk to you again next time.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.