The Letter Of Aristeas — Large Print

Introduction

There are certain books that arrive in history not merely as texts but as events — documents whose very existence reshapes the world around them, whose stories become inseparable from the stories of entire civilizations. The ancient letter you are about to read is one of those rare and extraordinary artifacts. It purports to be a firsthand account of one of the most consequential intellectual undertakings in the ancient world: the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, a project that would ultimately determine how billions of people across two millennia would encounter the sacred texts of Judaism, and through them, the foundational narratives of Christianity and Western civilization itself. Whether you approach it as history, as legend, as religious document, or as a window into the fascinating cultural crosscurrents of the Hellenistic world, this text rewards careful and curious reading in ways that few ancient documents can match.

The story it tells is almost impossibly rich. We are transported to the court of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, one of the most ambitious and culturally voracious rulers of the ancient world, who reigned over Egypt from approximately 285 to 246 BCE. His capital, Alexandria, was in the process of becoming the intellectual capital of the known world, home to the legendary Library that sought — with breathtaking ambition — to gather every book ever written under one roof. Into this dazzling setting steps Aristeas, a courtier and official in Ptolemy's service, who claims to have witnessed and participated in an embassy to Jerusalem, a diplomatic mission designed to secure the services of seventy-two Jewish scholars who would undertake the unprecedented task of rendering the Torah — the five books of Moses — into the Greek language. What follows is a narrative of surprising depth, sophistication, and beauty: a tale of royal generosity, philosophical dialogue, diplomatic ceremony, and ultimately, miraculous scholarly collaboration.

To read this text today is to be reminded of how much the ancient world was capable of imagining and how much it genuinely achieved. The Hellenistic period — that remarkable era following the conquests of Alexander the Great, when Greek culture spread across the eastern Mediterranean and collided productively with the ancient traditions of Egypt, Persia, Judea, and Babylon — was a time of extraordinary intellectual ferment. Cultures that had existed in relative isolation for centuries suddenly found themselves in intimate and sometimes uncomfortable contact. Languages mixed. Religious ideas cross-pollinated. Philosophical traditions argued and borrowed from one another. It was, in many ways, the first great age of globalization, and the translation project described in this text stands as one of its most enduring monuments.

The Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures — known to history as the Septuagint, from the Latin word for seventy, a number derived from the legendary account preserved in this very letter — became the Bible of the early Christian church. When the authors of the New Testament quoted scripture, they overwhelmingly quoted the Septuagint. When the great theologians of the early church — Origen, Jerome, Augustine — wrestled with the meaning of sacred texts, it was often the Greek version that lay open before them. When Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, it carried with it the Septuagint as its scriptural foundation. The theological vocabulary of Christianity — words and concepts like 'logos,' 'messiah,' 'covenant,' 'grace' — was shaped in profound ways by the choices made by those ancient translators as they struggled to render Hebrew concepts into Greek. In this very real sense, the translation described in this letter is not merely a historical curiosity but a document whose consequences are still being felt in every church, every seminary, every theological debate in the world today.

Yet the text is not simply a religious document, and to read it only through a theological lens is to miss much of its richness. It is also a political document, a philosophical treatise, a work of cultural diplomacy, and — perhaps most fascinatingly — a kind of idealized portrait of what the relationship between Jewish and Greek culture could and should look like. Aristeas, whoever he actually was, was deeply invested in demonstrating that Jewish wisdom and Greek philosophy were not merely compatible but complementary, that the God of Israel and the God of the philosophers were one and the same, that a cultivated Hellenistic reader had every reason to approach the Hebrew scriptures with respect and even reverence. This apologetic dimension of the text — its desire to build bridges between cultures and to present Judaism in the most favorable possible light to a Greek-speaking audience — gives it a contemporary resonance that is almost startling.

Before you begin reading the text itself, it is worth spending some time with the questions that have fascinated scholars for centuries: Who actually wrote this letter? When was it composed? How much of what it describes actually happened? These questions do not have simple answers, and the uncertainty surrounding them is itself part of what makes the document so compelling. What we can say with confidence is that the text as we have it was almost certainly not written by an Egyptian courtier of the third century BCE. The scholarly consensus, built up painstakingly over more than a century of careful analysis, places the composition of the letter somewhere in the second century BCE, and identifies its author as a Greek-speaking Jew writing within the vibrant Jewish community of Alexandria. This means that the 'letter' is, in the technical sense, a pseudepigraphon — a text written under an assumed name — and that its claim to be an eyewitness account of events from a generation or two earlier is a literary fiction.

But to call it a fiction is not to dismiss it. The ancient world had a very different relationship to the concept of historical authenticity than we do. Pseudepigraphical writing was a common and respected literary practice, not a form of deception but a way of claiming authority, of situating one's ideas within a tradition, of giving weight and gravitas to arguments that might otherwise seem merely personal opinions. When the author of this letter chose to write in the voice of a Ptolemaic courtier, he was not trying to fool anyone in the crude sense we might imagine; he was participating in a literary convention that his readers would have recognized and understood. The fictional frame allowed him to explore real and urgent questions — about Jewish identity in a Greek-speaking world, about the value of the Hebrew scriptures, about the relationship between divine revelation and human reason — with a freedom and creativity that straightforward argument might not have permitted.

Moreover, even if the specific events described in the letter are legendary rather than historical, the letter preserves genuine and invaluable information about the world it describes. The details of Ptolemaic court life, the descriptions of Jerusalem and its temple, the accounts of Jewish dietary law and religious practice, the philosophical dialogues between the king and the Jewish sages — all of these reflect the real concerns, real knowledge, and real cultural context of a sophisticated Jewish intellectual of the Hellenistic period. Reading the letter carefully, we can hear the authentic voice of a community wrestling with profound questions about its own identity and its place in a rapidly changing world. That voice speaks to us across more than two thousand years with a clarity and urgency that is genuinely moving.

A World of Scrolls and Sovereigns

To fully appreciate what you are about to read, it helps enormously to have a vivid sense of the world in which the events of the letter are set — the glittering, turbulent, intellectually intoxicating world of Hellenistic Alexandria. When Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE, he left behind an empire that stretched from Greece to the borders of India, and no mechanism whatsoever for governing it. His generals, the Diadochi or 'successors,' spent the next several decades tearing that empire apart in a series of brutal wars, and when the dust finally settled, three major dynasties had emerged: the Seleucids in Syria and the East, the Antigonids in Macedonia, and the Ptolemies in Egypt. It was under the Ptolemies that Alexandria would rise to become the undisputed cultural capital of the Hellenistic world.

Ptolemy I Soter, the founder of the dynasty, was a canny and cultivated ruler who understood that cultural prestige was as important as military power in the new world Alexander had created. He invited scholars, poets, scientists, and philosophers to his court, endowed institutions of learning, and began the process of building the great Library that would become the most famous intellectual institution of antiquity. His son, Ptolemy II Philadelphus — the king who plays such a central role in our text — continued and dramatically expanded this project. Under his reign, Alexandria became home to the Mouseion, a kind of ancient university where scholars from across the known world gathered to study, debate, and write, supported by royal patronage on a scale that had never been seen before. The Library itself, according to ancient sources, aimed to collect every book ever written in any language — an ambition so staggering that it still takes the breath away.

It is entirely plausible, and indeed likely, that the project of translating the Hebrew scriptures into Greek was connected in some way to this broader intellectual enterprise. Whether the initiative came from the royal court, from the Jewish community of Alexandria, or from some combination of both is a question that scholars continue to debate. What is clear is that by the middle of the third century BCE, Alexandria was home to a substantial and well-established Jewish population — one of the largest Jewish communities outside of Judea itself — and that this community had, over the course of several generations, largely adopted Greek as its primary language. For these Greek-speaking Jews, a translation of their sacred texts was not merely a luxury but a genuine necessity. The Hebrew scriptures had to be accessible in Greek if they were to remain at the center of Jewish communal and religious life.

The letter presents this translation project as a royal initiative, driven by the enthusiasm of Ptolemy's chief librarian, Demetrius of Phalerum, who reportedly informed the king that the Jewish laws were worthy of a place in the royal collection but that they existed only in Hebrew, a language inaccessible to Greek readers. The king, fired with enthusiasm, dispatches an embassy to the High Priest in Jerusalem, requesting that learned scholars be sent to Alexandria to undertake the translation. This framing — the Greek king as patron, the Jewish sages as honored guests, the translation as a gift from one civilization to another — is clearly idealized, but it captures something real about the cultural dynamics of the period. The Ptolemaic court genuinely was a place where different cultural traditions met and mingled, and the relationship between the Jewish community and its Greek-speaking rulers, while never simple, was often genuinely productive.

The Jerusalem described in the letter is itself a fascinating creation — part accurate description, part idealized portrait, part apologetic argument. The author's account of the Temple, its furnishings, its rituals, and its priesthood is written with evident pride and deep familiarity, and it reflects genuine knowledge of Jewish religious practice. But it is also shaped by the desire to present Jerusalem as a city that any cultivated Greek would find impressive and worthy of respect — a city of magnificent architecture, sophisticated administration, and profound religious seriousness. The High Priest Eleazar, who receives the royal embassy and selects the scholars who will travel to Alexandria, is portrayed as a man of both deep religious learning and genuine philosophical sophistication, someone who can converse as an equal with the most educated Greek. This portrait of the ideal Jewish leader — learned in Torah but also at home in the world of Greek intellectual culture — is one of the letter's most revealing and enduring contributions.

The seventy-two scholars who are selected for the translation project — six from each of the twelve tribes of Israel — are similarly idealized figures. They are described as men of the highest learning and the most impeccable character, equally versed in Jewish tradition and Greek culture, capable of producing a translation that is not merely accurate but inspired. The number seventy-two itself is significant, combining the sacred symbolism of the number twelve (the tribes of Israel) with the number six, and the slight rounding to seventy that gives the Septuagint its name reflects the way legendary traditions tend to simplify and schematize over time. What matters is not the precise number but the symbolic weight it carries: this was not a project undertaken by one man or a small committee, but a great communal undertaking, representative of the entire Jewish people and sanctioned by the highest religious authority.

The account of the scholars' arrival in Alexandria and their reception at the royal court is one of the most charming sections of the entire letter. Ptolemy, we are told, received them with extraordinary honor, rising from his throne when they entered, ordering a great feast in their honor, and engaging them in a remarkable philosophical symposium that extended over seven days. At each dinner, the king posed a question to each of the scholars in turn — questions about kingship, justice, wisdom, self-control, friendship, and the good life — and each scholar answered with a response that combined practical wisdom with theological depth, invariably grounding his answer in the principle that true wisdom comes from God and that the ruler who acknowledges his dependence on the divine is the ruler who will govern most justly and most successfully. These symposium scenes are among the most philosophically interesting passages in the letter, and they deserve to be read slowly and carefully, because they represent a genuine attempt to articulate a Jewish philosophy of governance and human flourishing in terms that a Greek-educated reader would find compelling and familiar.

The actual translation work, when it is finally described, is accomplished with miraculous speed and perfect unanimity. The scholars are housed on the island of Pharos — the same island that bore the famous lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world — and they work each day, comparing their translations and reaching agreement on every passage, until the entire project is completed in exactly seventy-two days. The symmetry is obviously deliberate and symbolic: seventy-two scholars, seventy-two days, a perfect correspondence that signals divine orchestration rather than mere human effort. Later traditions would elaborate this miracle further, claiming that each scholar worked in complete isolation yet produced a translation identical to all the others — a legend that the letter itself does not quite assert but that its logic seems to invite. The completed translation is then read aloud before the entire Jewish community of Alexandria, who receive it with enthusiasm and declare that it should never be altered in any detail — a declaration that itself carries enormous weight in the ongoing debates about textual authority that would occupy Jewish and Christian scholars for centuries to come.

Why This Text Still Matters

Having set the scene and sketched the narrative, it is worth pausing to ask a question that every reader deserves to have answered before investing time in an ancient text: why does this matter now? What does a document written more than two thousand years ago, describing events that may or may not have happened in the way it claims, have to say to a reader in the twenty-first century? The answer, I think, is both more practical and more profound than you might expect.

On the most practical level, the text matters because its consequences are still with us. The Septuagint — the translation whose origins this letter describes — remains a living document. It is still the official Old Testament of the Greek Orthodox Church, used in liturgy and theological reflection by hundreds of millions of Christians worldwide. It is the version of the Hebrew scriptures that shaped the theology of the New Testament writers, which means that understanding the Septuagint is essential for understanding the New Testament itself. Scholars of early Christianity, of rabbinic Judaism, of the Dead Sea Scrolls, of ancient philosophy, and of Hellenistic history all find themselves returning again and again to the questions raised by this text. Its influence on Western intellectual and religious history is, without exaggeration, incalculable.

But the text matters in deeper ways too, ways that have less to do with its specific historical consequences and more to do with the perennial human questions it engages. At its heart, the letter is about what happens when cultures meet — when people who speak different languages, worship in different ways, and organize their lives according to different principles are forced to find common ground. The author's answer to this challenge is neither assimilation nor isolation but something more creative and more demanding: genuine dialogue, mutual respect, and the willingness to discover that the deepest truths of one's own tradition may be recognizable, in different forms, in the traditions of others. This is not a naive or sentimental position. The author is well aware of the tensions and dangers that come with cultural encounter. But he insists, with considerable eloquence, that those tensions can be navigated without sacrificing either intellectual integrity or religious fidelity.

This message resonates with particular force in our own era of cultural globalization, religious pluralism, and anxious identity politics. We live in a world where the questions the letter's author was wrestling with — How do we maintain our distinctive identity in a world that constantly pressures us to assimilate? How do we engage with other cultures without losing ourselves? How do we find common ground with people whose fundamental assumptions differ from our own? — are more urgent than ever. The author of this letter does not provide easy answers to these questions, but he engages them with a seriousness and sophistication that puts many contemporary discussions to shame.

There is also something deeply instructive about the letter's vision of intellectual life and its relationship to political power. The portrait of Ptolemy as a king who genuinely values learning, who honors scholars regardless of their ethnic or religious background, who understands that the pursuit of wisdom is not a luxury but a necessity for just governance — this is, of course, an idealized portrait, but it is an ideal worth taking seriously. The symposium scenes, in which the king engages the Jewish scholars in genuine philosophical dialogue and receives their wisdom with humility and gratitude, represent a vision of the relationship between power and knowledge that is both ancient and eternally relevant. Good governance, the letter insists, requires wisdom, and wisdom requires humility — the recognition that no individual, however powerful, has a monopoly on truth.

The letter's treatment of translation itself is also remarkably sophisticated and deserves special attention. Translation is not merely a technical exercise, the letter suggests; it is a profound act of cultural interpretation that requires not only linguistic skill but philosophical depth, moral seriousness, and genuine reverence for the text being translated. The seventy-two scholars are chosen not simply because they know both Hebrew and Greek but because they are men of exceptional character and wisdom, capable of grasping not just the surface meaning of the words but their deeper spiritual significance. This insistence on the moral and spiritual dimensions of the translator's task anticipates debates about translation theory and practice that continue to this day, and it speaks to something real about the challenges and responsibilities that come with the work of making one culture's most precious texts accessible to another.

For readers approaching this text from a Jewish perspective, it offers a fascinating window into the world of Hellenistic Judaism — a world that was in many ways the seedbed of both rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity, and that has been somewhat overshadowed in popular consciousness by the later traditions that grew from it. The Alexandria of the letter's author was home to a Jewish community of extraordinary intellectual vitality, producing thinkers like Philo of Alexandria whose synthesis of Jewish scripture and Greek philosophy would prove enormously influential in later centuries. The letter itself is one of the earliest and most important documents of this tradition, and reading it alongside later works of Hellenistic Jewish thought — the Wisdom of Solomon, the writings of Philo, the works of Josephus — reveals a continuous and coherent intellectual tradition of remarkable depth and sophistication.

For readers approaching from a Christian perspective, the significance of the text is even more direct. The Septuagint is, in a very real sense, the Bible of the New Testament, and the story of its origins is therefore part of the story of Christianity itself. The letter's insistence that the translation was accomplished under divine guidance, that it represents an authoritative and inspired rendering of the Hebrew scriptures, directly informs the way the early church understood and used the Greek Old Testament. Reading this letter is, among other things, an act of recovery — a chance to encounter the foundational document of a tradition that has shaped Western civilization more profoundly than perhaps any other.

For readers with no particular religious investment in the text, it offers pleasures that are no less real for being more secular. It is a genuinely good read — lively, intelligent, full of vivid detail and memorable characters. The portrait of Ptolemy's court is fascinating in its own right, a glimpse into a world of extraordinary luxury, intellectual ambition, and political complexity. The philosophical dialogues of the symposium are engaging and often surprisingly profound. The descriptions of Jerusalem and its temple are among the most detailed accounts we have of the city in the pre-Roman period. And the story of the translation itself — seventy-two scholars, seventy-two days, a perfect and miraculous harmony of minds — has the quality of a great legend, the kind of story that lodges in the memory and continues to resonate long after the reading is done.

It is worth saying something, finally, about how to read this text. Ancient documents of this kind reward a particular kind of attention — patient, curious, willing to pause and consider, ready to follow the text into unexpected territory. Do not rush. When the letter pauses to describe the gifts that Ptolemy sent to the Temple in Jerusalem, linger over those descriptions: they tell you something important about how the author imagined the relationship between material splendor and spiritual significance. When the king poses his philosophical questions to the scholars, pay attention not just to the answers but to the questions themselves: they reveal what the author thought were the most important challenges facing anyone who sought to live wisely and govern justly. When the translation is finally completed and the community gathers to hear it read aloud, try to imagine what that moment would have meant to its first listeners — the sense of a community finding its voice in a new language, of an ancient tradition making itself at home in a new world.

The text you are about to read is, in the end, a love letter — a love letter to learning, to wisdom, to the possibility of genuine understanding between people of different backgrounds and beliefs. It was written by someone who cared deeply about both the tradition he had inherited and the world he lived in, and who believed, with a conviction that comes through on every page, that those two things were not in conflict but in conversation. That conviction, and the eloquence with which it is expressed, is what has kept this remarkable document alive and relevant across more than two millennia of human history. It is why you are holding it now, and it is why, once you have read it, you are unlikely to forget it.

The Letter of Aristeas

Chapter 1

Since I have gathered material for a memorable account of my visit to Eleazar, the High Priest of the Jews, and since you, Philocrates, lose no opportunity of reminding me how eagerly you wish to hear about the motives and purpose of my mission, I have tried to set the matter out clearly for you. I can see that you have a natural love of learning, which is the finest quality a person can possess — that constant desire to add to one's knowledge and understanding, whether through the study of history or through direct participation in events. It is by this means, by taking into itself the noblest elements, that the soul is established in purity; and having fixed its aim on piety, the noblest goal of all, it uses that aim as an infallible guide and so arrives at a settled purpose. It was my own devotion to the pursuit of religious knowledge that led me to undertake the embassy to the man I have mentioned — a man held in the highest esteem by his own people and by others alike, both for his virtue and his dignity, and one who had in his keeping documents of the greatest value to the Jews of his own country and of foreign lands, for the interpretation of the divine law. Their laws are written on leather parchments in the Hebrew script. I undertook this embassy with enthusiasm, having first found an opportunity to plead with the king on behalf of the Jewish captives who had been transported from Judea to Egypt by his father, when he first took possession of this city and conquered the land of Egypt. It is worth telling you this part of the story as well, since I am convinced that you, with your disposition toward holiness and your sympathy for those who live according to the sacred law, will listen all the more willingly to the account I intend to set forth — especially as you have lately come to us from the island and are eager to hear everything that tends to build up the soul. On a previous occasion I also sent you a record of the facts I thought worth relating about the Jewish people, a record I had obtained from the most learned high priests of the most learned land of Egypt. Since you are so eager to acquire knowledge of the things that can benefit the mind, I feel it my duty to share with you everything in my power. I would feel the same obligation toward anyone who shared your disposition, but I feel it most strongly toward you, whose aspirations are so noble, and who are not only my brother in character no less than in blood, but are at one with me in the pursuit of goodness. Neither the pleasure derived from gold nor any other possession prized by shallow minds confers the same benefit as the pursuit of culture and the effort we invest in securing it. But rather than tire you with too lengthy an introduction, I will proceed at once to the substance of my narrative.

Demetrius of Phalerum, the director of the king's library, was provided with vast sums of money for the purpose of collecting, as far as he possibly could, all the books in the world. Through purchase and transcription he carried out the king's purpose to the best of his ability. On one occasion when I was present he was asked how many thousands of books the library contained, and he replied: "More than two hundred thousand, O king, and I shall make every effort in the near future to gather the remainder as well, so that the total may reach five hundred thousand. I am also told that the laws of the Jews are worth transcribing and deserve a place in your library." "What is to prevent you from doing this?" the king replied. "Everything necessary has been placed at your disposal." "They need to be translated," answered Demetrius, "for in the land of the Jews they use a distinctive alphabet and speak a distinctive dialect. They are commonly supposed to use Syriac, but this is not the case; their language is quite different." When the king had grasped all the facts of the matter, he ordered a letter to be written to the Jewish High Priest so that his purpose might be accomplished.

I judged that the moment had come to press the request I had often laid before Sosibius of Tarentum and Andreas, the chief of the bodyguard — the request for the emancipation of the Jews who had been transported from Judea by the king's father. By a combination of good fortune and courage that king had brought his campaign against the whole region of Coele-Syria and Phoenicia to a successful conclusion, and in the course of reducing the country to submission he had transported some of its people and reduced others to captivity. The number of those he transported from the land of the Jews to Egypt amounted to no fewer than a hundred thousand. Of these he armed thirty thousand picked men and settled them in garrisons throughout the country. As I have already noted, Ptolemy selected the best of them — men in the prime of life and distinguished for their courage — and armed them; but the great mass of the rest, those who were too old or too young for military service, and the women as well, he reduced to slavery. He did not do this of his own free will, but was compelled by his soldiers, who claimed them as a reward for their services in war. Having obtained, as I have said, an opportunity to secure their emancipation, I addressed the king with the following arguments. "Let us not be so unreasonable as to allow our actions to contradict our words. Since the law which we wish not only to transcribe but also to translate belongs to the entire Jewish people, what justification can we offer for our embassy while such vast numbers of them remain in a state of slavery in your kingdom? In the fullness and richness of your clemency, release those who are held in such miserable bondage — for, as I have taken pains to discover, the God who gave them their law is the same God who upholds your kingdom. They worship the same God, the Lord and Creator of the Universe, as all other peoples do, as we ourselves do, O king, though we call him by different names, such as Zeus or Dis. This name was very fittingly bestowed upon him by our earliest ancestors, to signify that he through whom all things are endowed with life and come into being is necessarily the ruler and lord of the Universe. Set all mankind an example of magnanimity by releasing those who are held in bondage."

After a brief interval, during which I was offering up an earnest prayer to God that He would so dispose the mind of the king that all the captives might be set at liberty, the king raised his head and, looking up at me with a cheerful expression, asked, "How many thousands do you think they will number?" Andreas, who was standing nearby, replied, "A little more than a hundred thousand." "It is a small boon indeed," said the king, "that Aristeas asks of us!" Then Sosibius and some others who were present said, "Yes, but it will be a fitting tribute to your magnanimity to offer the liberation of these men as an act of devotion to the supreme God. You have been greatly honored by Almighty God and exalted above all your forefathers in glory, and it is only right that you should render to Him the greatest thank-offering in your power." Extremely pleased with these arguments, he gave orders that an addition should be made to the soldiers' wages in the amount of the redemption money, that twenty drachmas should be paid to the owners for every slave, that a public order should be issued, and that registers of the captives should be attached to it. He showed the greatest enthusiasm in the business, for it was God who had brought our purpose to complete fulfillment and had moved him to redeem not only those who had come into Egypt with the army of his father but any who had come before that time or had been subsequently brought into the kingdom. It was pointed out to him that the ransom money would exceed four hundred talents.

I think it will be useful to insert a copy of the decree, for in this way the magnanimity of the king, who was empowered by God to save such vast multitudes, will be made clearer and more evident. The decree of the king ran as follows:

"All who served in the army of our father in the campaign against Syria and Phoenicia and in the attack upon the country of the Jews, and who became possessed of Jewish captives and brought them back to the city of Alexandria and the land of Egypt or sold them to others — and likewise any captives who were in our land before that time or were brought here afterwards — all who possess such captives are required to set them at liberty at once, receiving twenty drachmas per head as ransom money. The soldiers will receive this money as a gift added to their wages, the others from the king's treasury. We consider that it was against our father's will and against all propriety that these people should have been made captives, and that the devastation of their land and the transportation of the Jews to Egypt was an act of military excess. The spoil which fell to the soldiers on the field of battle was all the booty they should have claimed. To reduce the people to slavery in addition was an act of absolute injustice. Since it is acknowledged that we are accustomed to render justice to all men, and especially to those who are unfairly held in servitude, and since we strive to deal fairly with all men according to the demands of justice and piety, we have decreed, with regard to the Jews who are in any condition of bondage in any part of our dominion, that those who possess them shall receive the stipulated sum of money and set them at liberty, and that no man shall show any tardiness in discharging his obligations. Within three days after the publication of this decree, they must submit lists of slaves to the officers appointed to carry out our will and immediately produce the persons of the captives. We consider that bringing this matter to a swift conclusion will be to our benefit and to the benefit of our affairs. Anyone who wishes may report those who disobey the decree; if the man is proved guilty, he will become that informer's slave, but his property will be handed over to the royal treasury."

When the decree was brought to be read over to the king for his approval, it contained all the other provisions except the phrase "any captives who were in the land before that time or were brought here afterwards," and in his magnanimity and largeness of heart the king himself inserted this clause. He also gave orders that the full amount of money required for the redemption should be deposited with the paymasters of the forces and the royal bankers, and so the matter was decided and the decree ratified within seven days. The grant for the redemption amounted to more than six hundred and sixty talents, for many infants at the breast were emancipated together with their mothers. When the question arose whether the sum of twenty drachmas was to be paid for these as well, the king ordered that it should be done, and thus he carried out his decision in the most comprehensive way possible. When this had been accomplished, he ordered Demetrius to draw up a memorandum concerning the transcription of the Jewish books. For all affairs of state used to be carried out by means of formal decrees and with the most painstaking accuracy by these Egyptian kings; nothing was done in a slipshod or haphazard fashion. I have therefore inserted copies of the memorandum and the letters, along with the number and nature of the gifts that were sent, since every one of them excelled in magnificence and craftsmanship. The following is a copy of the memorandum.

The Memorandum of Demetrius to the great king: "Since you have given me instructions, O king, that the books needed to complete your library should be collected, and that those which are defective should be repaired, I have devoted myself with the utmost care to fulfilling your wishes, and I now have the following proposal to lay before you. The books of the law of the Jews are absent from the library. They are written in Hebrew characters and in the Hebrew language, and have been carelessly translated; they do not represent the original text accurately, as I am informed by those who know, for they have never had a king's care to protect them. It is necessary that these should be rendered accurately for your library, since the law which they contain, being of divine origin, is full of wisdom and free from all blemish. For this reason literary men, poets, and the mass of historical writers have held back from referring to these books and to the men who have lived and are living in accordance with them, because their conception of life is so sacred and religious, as Hecataeus of Abdera observes. If it please you, O king, a letter shall be written to the High Priest in Jerusalem, asking him to send six elders from every tribe — men who have lived the noblest lives and are most skilled in their law — so that we may determine the points on which the majority of them are in agreement, and having thus obtained an accurate translation, may place it in a prominent position in a manner worthy of the work itself and of your purpose. May continual prosperity be yours!"

When this memorial had been presented, the king ordered a letter to be written to Eleazar on the matter, giving also an account of the emancipation of the Jewish captives. He gave fifty talents weight of gold and seventy talents of silver and a large quantity of precious stones to make bowls and vials and a table and libation cups. He also gave orders to those who had the custody of his coffers to allow the artificers to make a selection of any materials they might require for the purpose, and that a hundred talents in money should be sent to provide sacrifices for the temple and for other needs. I shall give you a full account of the workmanship after I have set before you copies of the letters. The letter of the king ran as follows:

"King Ptolemy sends greeting and salutation to the High Priest Eleazar. There are many Jews settled in our realm who were carried off from Jerusalem by the Persians at the time of their power, and many more who came with my father into Egypt as captives. Large numbers of these he placed in the army and paid them higher wages than usual, and when he had proved the loyalty of their leaders he built fortresses and placed them in their charge, so that the native Egyptians might be kept in check by them. When I ascended the throne, I adopted a kindly attitude towards all my subjects, and more particularly towards those who were citizens of yours. I have set at liberty more than a hundred thousand captives, paying their owners the appropriate market price for them, and wherever your people have suffered wrong through the passions of the mob, I have made them reparation. My motive has been the desire to act piously and render to the supreme God a thank-offering for maintaining my kingdom in peace and great glory throughout the world. Moreover, those of your people who were in the prime of life I have drafted into my army, and those who were fit to be attached to my person and worthy of the confidence of the court I have established in official positions. Now, since I am anxious to show my gratitude to these men and to the Jews throughout the world and to the generations yet to come, I have determined that your law shall be translated from the Hebrew tongue, which is in use among you, into the Greek language, so that these books may be added to the other royal books in my library. It will be a kindness on your part and a mark of regard for my zeal if you will select six elders from each of your tribes, men of noble life and skilled in your law and able to interpret it, so that in questions of dispute we may be able to discover the verdict on which the majority agree, for the investigation is of the highest possible importance. I hope to win great renown by the accomplishment of this work. I have sent Andreas, the chief of my bodyguard, and Aristeas — men whom I hold in high esteem — to lay the matter before you and present you with a hundred talents of silver, the firstfruits of my offering for the temple and the sacrifices and other religious rites. If you will write to me concerning your wishes in these matters, you will confer a great favour upon me and afford me a new pledge of friendship, for all your wishes shall be carried out as speedily as possible. Farewell."

To this letter Eleazar replied appropriately as follows: