Letter of Aristeas

Beginning of the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 11th century.

The Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates is a Hellenistic work of the 3rd or early 2nd century BC, considered by some Biblical scholars to be pseudepigraphical.[1] The letter is the earliest text to mention the Library of Alexandria.[2]

Josephus,[3] who paraphrases about two-fifths of the letter, ascribes it to Aristeas of Marmora and to have been written to a certain Philocrates. The letter describes the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible by seventy-two interpreters sent into Egypt from Jerusalem at the request of the librarian of Alexandria, resulting in the Septuagint translation. Some scholars have since argued that it is fictitious.[4]

  1. ^ Harris, Stephen L., Understanding the Bible. (Palo Alto: Mayfield) 1985; André Pelletier, SJ, La Lettre d'Aristée à Philocrate (Paris) 1962.
  2. ^ The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature, edited by Kevin R. McNamara, p.36
  3. ^ Antiquities XII:ii passim (Online in Greek and English at York University)
  4. ^ The narrative is "open to the gravest suspicion, and the letter abounds with improbabilities and is now generally regarded as more or less fabulous," observed The Classical Review 335/6 (August–September 1919:123), reporting H. St.J. Thackeray's The Letter of Aristeas, with an Appendix of the Ancient Evidence on the Origin of the LXX..