CHAPTER I - The Alexandrian Greek Version

Summary

1. A Greek version of any portion of the Old Testament presupposes intercourse between Israel and a Greek-speaking people. So long as the Hebrew race maintained its isolation, no occasion arose for the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into a foreign tongue. As far as regards the countries west of Palestine, this isolation continued until the age of Alexander; it is therefore improbable that any Greek version of the Scriptures existed there before that era. Among the Alexandrian Jews of the second century before Christ there was a vague belief that Plato and other Greek philosophical writers were indebted for some of their teaching to a source of this kind. Thus Aristobulus (ap. Clem. Al. strom. i. 22; cf. Eus. praep. ev. xiii. 12) writes: κατηκολούθηκε δὲ καὶ ὁ Πλάτων τῇʾ καθ ἡμᾶς νομοθεσίᾳ, καὶ φανερός ἐστι περιεργασάμενος ἔκαστα τῶν ἐν αὐτῆ λεγομένων. διηρμήνευται δὲ πρὸ Δημητρίου ὑφʾ ἑτέρου, πρὸ τῆς ʾΑλεξάνδρον καὶ Περσῶν ἐπικρατήσεως, τά τε κατὰ τὴν ἐξ Αἰγύπτου ἐξαγωγὴν τῶν ʾΕβραίων τῶν ἡμετέρων πολιτῶν καὶ ἡ τῶν γεγονότων ἁπάντων αὐτοῖς ἐπιφάνεια καὶ κράτησις τῆς χώρας καὶ τῆς ὅλης νομοθεσίας ἐπεξήγησις—words which seem to imply the existence before b.c. 400 of a translation which included at least the Books of Exodus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua.