Texts in Conversation
In Exodus 24, Moses goes up the mountain and stays forty days and nights to receive the law. The Letter of Aristeas has the seventy-two translators work in a quiet place and finish in seventy-two days, a detail that recalls Moses on Sinai.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Exodus 24:18
Hebrew Bible
14 He told the elders, “Wait for us in this place until we return to you. Here are Aaron and Hur with you. Whoever has any matters of dispute can approach them.” 15 Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 The glory of the Lord resided on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day he called to Moses from within the cloud. 17 Now the appearance of the glory of the Lord was like a devouring fire on the top of the mountain in plain view of the people. 18 Moses went into the cloud when he went up the mountain, and Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights.
Letter of Aristeas 1:307
Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates
Pseudepigrapha, Hebrew Bible Expansions
translating the particular passage on which they were engaged, and I put the question to them, Why it was that they washed their hands before they prayed? And they explained that it was a token that they had done no evil (for every form of activity is carried out by means of the hands) since in their noble and holy way they regard everything as a symbol of righteousness and truth. As I have already said, they met together daily in the place which was delightful for its quiet and its brightness and applied themselves to their task. And it so happened that the work of translation was completed in seventy-two days, just as if this had been arranged deliberately.
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Notes and References
“... There is quite a long list of legendary elements in the story as told in the Letter of Aristeas. As Moses was sent to the top of a mountain in order to write the Law of God, so the translators were sent to a peninsula for the translations. Moses spent forty days and nights on his hilltop, and the seventy-two worked for seventy-two days. The language used in the Letter of Aristeas, the issues described and the miraculous agreement of the translators on the entire translation turns the Letter of Aristeas into a beautiful literary fiction. ...”
De Troyer, Kristin
"The Septuagint" in Paget, James Carleton, and Joachim Schaper (eds.) The New Cambridge History of the Bible, Volume 1: From the Beginnings to 600
(p. 273) Cambridge University Press, 2013
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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