The seventy-two elders of the Letter of Aristeas: An ancient midrash on Numbers 11?

Noah Hacham
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Abstract

According to the Letter of Aristeas, the ancient treatise on the creation of the Greek translation of the Pentateuch, the high priest Eleazar chose seventy-two elders and dispatched them to Egypt where they translated the Torah into Greek. Scholars discerned the meaning of this number, indicating the affinity to the seventy elders who joined Moses and Aaron in the Sinai covenant (Exod. 24) and the fact that this number represents all the tribes of Israel equally, thus sanctifying the Greek translation in a similar way to the Torah. Particular attention was paid to Epiphanius, the fourth century church father, who explicitly states that the seventy-two elders provide equal representation to all the constituent tribes of Israel. Rabbinic literature, however, has been entirely absent from this discourse. In this article I point to Sifre on Numbers, a second century midrash, that notes that seventy-two elders experienced the Divine revelation (Numbers 11): seventy in the Tabernacle and Eldad and Medad in the camp. I suggest that based on a similar ancient interpretation of Numbers 11, the Letter of Aristeas chose the number seventy-two in order to bestow the aura, authority and sanctity of the seventy-two elders of Number 11 on the Greek translation. This example also highlights Rabbinic literature as an integral element of the cultural context of Jewish-Hellenistic literature.
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《阿里斯提亚信》中的七十二长老:关于数字11的古代米德拉什?
根据《阿里斯蒂亚斯的信》,这是一篇关于《摩西五经》希腊语翻译的古代论文,大祭司以利亚撒选择了七十二名长老,并将他们派往埃及,在那里他们将《摩西五经》翻译成希腊语。学者们发现了这个数字的含义,表明了在西奈之约中加入摩西和亚伦的七十位长老的亲和力(出埃及记24),以及这个数字平等地代表了以色列所有部落的事实,从而以类似于Torah的方式使希腊文译本神圣化。特别值得注意的是埃皮法尼乌斯,四世纪的教会之父,他明确指出,七十二位长老为以色列的所有组成部落提供平等的代表。拉比文学,然而,已经完全缺席这种论述。在这篇文章中,我提到了《民数记》,一本写于二世纪的米德拉书,书中提到七十二位长老经历了神的启示(民数记11章):七十人在会幕,伊利达和米达在营中。我认为,基于对数字11的类似古代解释,《阿里斯蒂亚的信》选择了数字72,是为了赋予数字11的七十二长老的光环、权威和神圣性。这个例子也突出了拉比文学作为犹太-希腊文学文化背景的一个组成部分。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.40
自引率
33.30%
发文量
13
期刊介绍: The last twenty years have witnessed some remarkable achievements in the study of early Jewish literature. Given the ever-increasing number and availability of primary sources for these writings, specialists have been producing text-critical, historical, social scientific, and theological studies which, in turn, have fuelled a growing interest among scholars, students, religious leaders, and the wider public. The only English journal of its kind, Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha was founded in 1987 to provide a much-needed forum for scholars to discuss and review most recent developments in this burgeoning field in the academy.
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