{"title":"The seventy-two elders of the Letter of Aristeas: An ancient midrash on Numbers 11?","authors":"Noah Hacham","doi":"10.1177/09518207211022299","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"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.","PeriodicalId":14859,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.4000,"publicationDate":"2021-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/09518207211022299","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
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.
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.