The Letter of Aristeas tells the story of how Ptolemy Philadelphus
of Egypt commissioned seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew
Bible into Greek. Long accepted as a straightforward historical
account of a cultural enterprise in Ptolemaic Alexandria, the
Letter nevertheless poses serious interpretative problems. Sylvie
Honigman argues that the Letter should not be regarded as history,
but as a charter myth for diaspora Judaism. She expounds its
generic affinities with other works on Jewish history from
Ptolemaic Alexandria, and argues that the process of translation
was simultaneously a process of establishing an authoritative text,
comparable to the work on the text of Homer being carried out by
contemporary Greek scholars. The Letter of Aristeas is among the
most intriguing literary productions of Ptolemaic Alexandria, and
this is the first book-length study to be devoted to it.
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