IsraelLetter of Aristeas
Epistole Aristeou
Anonymous (writing pseudonymously as "Aristeas," a fictional Greek courtier) · c. 150-130 BC; critical scholarship rejects its claimed 3rd-century BC eyewitness setting at Ptolemy II's court · Alexandria (Egypt) · letters
A pseudonymous Greek narrative claims to describe seventy-two Jerusalem elders translating the Torah into Greek for the Ptolemaic library, actually written a century later in Alexandria to legitimate the already-existing Septuagint's authority for diaspora Jews.
Descends from
- Septuagint · translated c. 280-100 BC; the Pentateuch first, traditionally dated c. 250 BC, with the remaining books following over the 2nd-1st century BC
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