So none of these 17 witnesses said anything more
than was (or was supposed to be) in the Letter of Aristeas.
Now let's see what it actually says, in its official form.
As I said before, the Letter of Aristeas
is available in two main translations: RH Charles' from 1913, and
Henry St. John Thackeray's in 1903. Working from RH Charles' copy,
the Letter of Aristeas in English has, after you remove
the verse and chapter numbers, 19,407 words.
That is equal to a 98 page book, with no formatting,
no headings, and no table of contents.
So the Letter of Aristeas is not a letter, at all.
It's a book! And it's a book of propaganda.
It's supposed to be a letter from a Gentile guy named Aristeas
to his brother, Philocrates.
But what brother would write this in a letter:
"And I suppose that the thing will seem incredible
to those who will read my narrative in the future.
But it is unseemly to misrepresent facts
which are recorded in the public archives.
And it would not be right for me to transgress
in such a matter as this. I tell the story
just as it happened, conscientiously avoiding
any error."
It sounds like he declared his purpose: to set up a supposed "letter,"
for people in the "future" to read. This is exactly what a con would do,
when setting up a letter and then pretending it is old.
"See? It says people will read it
in the future. So it must be in the past!"
Methinks he doth protest too much. Somebody is
faking his readers out.
Now, if that were all, we could say I'm totally wrong.
But let's find out more about this supposed "letter."
Thackeray noted, "...the letter is not
what it professes to be..." which he describes as
"a contemporary record of a Greek
who played a prominent part in the actions described..."
First, who is Aristeas?
He was not a contemporary of Ptolemy Philadelphus.
We can see that, because "Aristeas" writes
"as though he were looking back over an epoch of
a long dynasty of Ptolemies." (Check out sections 28 and 182).
From section 28:
"For all affairs of state used to be carried out
by means of decrees and with the most
painstaking accuracy by these Egyptian kings,
and nothing was done in a slipshod
or haphazard fashion."
Then from 182:
"For this arrangement had been made by the king
and it is an arrangement which you see
maintained to-day."
So someone clearly wrote well after the fact,
intending for the letter (or book) to be public.
And who is Demetrius? He's supposed to be
King Ptolemy Philadelphus' confidential friend
and over the library. But we know that
Demetrius voted for Philadelphus' older brother Keraunos,
so Demetrius was exiled to northern Egypt,
got bitten by a snake, and died right after 283 BC.
And that's another problem.
Epiphanius of Salamis and many scholars
say the Septuagint was translated in the 7th year
of Philadelphus' reign. That would be at the latest
276 BC.
Then they quote Aristeas, which says
the high priest was Eleazar.
But the lists of high priests don't say that.
They say that Onias I was high priest until 280 BC.
Then Simon I was high priest from 280-260 BC.
Then Eleazar, another son of Onias I,
was high priest from 260-250.
Aristeas would make Eleazar a priest in 276-283,
16-23 years too early.
That's not all.
In sections 180-181, Philadelphus said of their arrival,
"It happens also that it is the anniversary
of my naval victory over Antigonus."
No, it wasn't. He confronted Antigonas Gonatas
in 260 BC, at least 16 years later,
and lost -- horribly.
He didn't defeat him until 245 BC,
31 years later.
Something doesn't add up.
Again, who is Aristeas? I used a Greek minor deity
called Aristeas, because it doesn't actually exist,
and I think Aristeas didn't actually exist, either.
Both Thackeray and many Jewish writers I have read,
have agreed that the Letter of Aristeas is
"Jewish propaganda under a heathen mask."
In other words, whoever wrote
the Letter of Aristeas was a Jewish person,
not Greek.
I've been chipping away at the Letter all through these vlogs,
and as you may have noticed. So let me say,
I believe the Letter of Aristeas is a complete fabrication,
a fraud, a fiction, and it doesn't even have
a grain of truth.
If I'm right, who could have written it?
I'll answer that after we tackle
the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Ever since scrolls and 17,000 bits of scrolls
were found in caves near the Dead Sea starting in 1946,
people have been looking for evidence of ancient Bibles.
They have found some astounding things,
like scrolls that are virtually identical with the Leningrad Hebrew Codex
I showed you and other Masoretic Texts.
But some people have been desperate
to find a BC Septuagint. Take a look at this:
This is a Nahal Hever Greek text,
found in a cave near Hebron. It has Micah 5:4-6
on the right side.
I decided to take a digital text of
the Nahal Hever Greek, and compare it to
what we call the Septuagint. I really gave it
the benefit of the doubt. When it had only part of a word right,
I granted those letters. It looks like this.
The yellow is what is the same. It's not the same text.
Lots of different word choices. It's a translation
of the Hebrew, alright, but the Greek
is very different from what we call the Septuagint.
So just because people tell you
the Dead Sea Scrolls have Greek, doesn't mean they're Septuagint.
That said, there are some fragments of texts
which do match what we call the Septuagint.
Carsten Peter Thiede, author of "The Jesus Papyrus,"
wrote in another of his books, "Rekindling the Word,"
that there are six fragments with a few words
that match what we call the Septuagint.
Just six of them are "reliably identified."
But he says, all the "Greek fragments
can be dated to the period from the middle of the 1st century BC
to the middle of the 1st century AD." This means that
Even these "Greek texts are the most recent of all
manuscripts found in Qumran."
So after all this investigation across centuries,
all the scholars and all the investigation,
and we end up with the oldest Greek words
on a piece of papyrus or leather are only reliably dated
to the 1st century, at the time before 68 AD
when the Romans came through Israel?
That does it. I cannot believe in a BC Septuagint.
But I can and do believe there was something made
in the 1st century AD.
But let's remember what this means.
1. If there is no BC Septuagint, there is no acceptance
of a BC Greek text. That means the Hebrew speaking
Hebrew synagogues in Israel used ...
surprise! Hebrew!
2. If they used Hebrew in Israel -- and even the writers in Alexandria
including Origen admit this freely -- then there is no way
that Jesus or the apostles could have quoted the Septuagint.
That means they did not quote or reference
a Greek Apocrypha, either. Only the Septuagint
had the Apocrypha, not the Hebrew,
as even Origen and Jerome both admitted.
3. If there is no way that Jesus or the apostles
could have quoted the Septuagint, then how did words
similar to Jesus' and the apostles' end up in
an Old Testament Greek text?
Simple. Whatever Greek texts
were made in the first century were modified later,
by people who had the New Testament
sitting in front of them!
So the Greek Old Testament was made during or after
the life of Jesus. Even if it came out,
in Alexandria, by that late date,
do you really think the Hebrew-using Hebrews
would abandon the Hebrew for an untested Greek
that was so different from the Hebrew,
as everyone admits?
No way.
So Jesus and the apostles not only did not quote the Septuagint.
They did not use it, either.
So who DID create the Septuagint? And when?
I can only go by the information that history has allowed us.
One guy had motive. He wanted to make
the Hebrew Old Testament something he could play with,
to make allegories and analogies, and to compare
with Greek philosophy. For that,
he wanted and felt he needed a Greek Old Testament.
2. One guy had means. He was born wealthy.
His family was contemporary with the Ptolemaic dynasty.
He had both social and family connections
to the Hasmonean and Herodian dynasties,
and even the Julius-Claudius dynasty in Rome.
He was educated in Roman, Greek and Egyptian culture,
and in Judaism, especially.
3. And one guy had opportunity. He had access to the priests
in Jerusalem. He could go back and forth
as he pleased. He had visited the Temple
in Jerusalem at least once. He was a representative of
the Alexandrian Jewish community. And he seems he had
plenty of time to pull it off.
That man is Philo of Alexandria. He had motive, means,
and opportunity. If he did it,
then he completed it before he passed away
about 50 AD. The story would spread,
because of his influence. Who would question him?
Then the Letter would spread all over,
to support his Greek Old Testament with Apocryphal stories
that the Alexandrians liked, all in one book.
He could have afforded to pay for the people to do the work.
And there is ample time after that for Josephus, then Aquila,
Symmachus and Theodotion to do their own work.
And there is plenty of time for the Alexandrian religious people
to mess with that Greek. I'll stop there.
But we don't have to worry if there is no BC Septuagint.
We have God's words, preserved from
the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament,
passed down and translated accurately,
all the way down to our King James Bible,
God's preserved words in one book for us,
in one language.
Now think about this. If there is no BC Septuagint,
if this Greek Septuagint with Apocrypha
isn't God's work, then you can bet
the Devil is involved.
What's the Devil's end game?
I'll answer that in another vlog.
God bless you, and have a wonderful day.