anaveno: неделава го читам A.H.M. Jones односно неговата книга "The Decline of the Ancient World" (Holt, Reinhart and Winstonk, Inc., New York, 1966).
....
Kako odgovor na ova,bi prodolzil so prethodnoto za DEMETRIUS PHALEREUS.
Zalosno sto nikoj nas ne istrazuva za nego.
Nesto imav napisano prethodno za nego,no sega pak-direktno...
Cosmology and Eschatology in Jewish and Christian Apocalypticism
The translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek was one of the major events in the history of the world. Without the translation, Christianity, the religion which inspired the civilisation of the West,
could not have developed in the form that we know.
In Judaea and Galilee, when Christianity first emerged in the first century CE, most educated people spoke Greek, and the Bible in Hebrew was the preserve of a few.1
It seems that even the great Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, an older contemporary of Jesus of Nazareth, knew little or no Hebrew and used only Greek.2
Against a background of the turbulent events of the age, but without a translation of the Bible
into Greek, who then could have known that the prophecies in the Scriptures had at last come true?3
The translation of the Bible thus enabled the early Greek-speaking Jews, the founders of Christianity, to use the Jewish scriptures, in order to establish a new base of their own.
In the words of one modern scholar, 'All Christian claims for Christ [in the New Testament] are grounded in verses from the Old Testament; all Christian claims to be the true Israel are underwritten by proof texts drawn from the Pentateuch….
Cut the history and the religion of Israel out of the New Testament, and Christianity vanishes'.4
But when was the Bible translated into Greek?
Why was it translated?
And who initiated this seminal event?
It seems that the process began when the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, were translated into Greek in Alexandria, the capital city of Ptolemy II, also called Ptolemy Philadelphus. According to an ancient report called the Letter of Aristeas, a proposal for the translation did not come from the Jews, but was made by the Greek politician and philosopher, Demetrius of Phalerum, who was employed by Ptolemy II in the library in Alexandria, and who was seeking to increase the collection of books.
Ptolemy II agreed to his suggestion, provided that the translation was written in Alexandria.
This would fulfil two objectives in one.
Not only would Ptolemy add to his books, but scholars who were experts in Hebrew and Greek would be brought into the city, where the king could tempt them to stay at his court.
This would establish Alexandria and its library as a centre of learning, which would reflect the glory of Ptolemy II.
But the account in the Letter of Aristeas is thrown into doubt by many details in the story that are difficult to believe.
For example, there are several suspicious repetitions of the number seventy-two.
Aristeas notes that there were seventy-two translators who were asked seventy-two questions at a seven-day banquet hosted by the king.
These seventy-two translators then made a translation of the Pentateuch in seventy-two days.
Also described are the huge costs of the translation, including lavish gifts to the translators and to the Temple in Jerusalem, and the monetary redemption of over one hundred thousand Jewish slaves, including trained soldiers.5
Can these stories be true?
Would anyone – even Ptolemy II – spend so much on a book?
Would any king free his slaves, including his soldiers, for the sake of a book?
It is interesting to note that the freeing of the slaves is reported only by Aristeas and those probably dependent on him, but is not confirmed by an independent source.6
Disquiet over the reliability of the account of Aristeas came to a head in 1684, when Humphrey Hody, Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, published a detailed critique of the Letter of Aristeas.7 Since then many scholars have followed his lead.
They claim that although Aristeas states that he intends to describe the translation of the Pentateuch into Greek, and although there may be a kernel of truth in his work, the real intention of Aristeas was not to write history but to provide an apologia for Judaism in the Hellenistic world.
It is possible, say these scholars, that a translation of the Pentateuch was made in Alexandria and that Ptolemy II was somehow involved.
But most of the detail of Aristeas cannot be correct.
In particular, it is claimed, the translation was not produced at the suggestion of the Greeks, although Ptolemy II might have facilitated the work.
The conclusion of these scholars is challenged in this book.
They dismiss the evidence of Aristeas who describes, without polemic, that the initiative for the translation came from Demetrius of Phalerum, who was fully supported by Ptolemy II, and offers no hard evidence in its place.
Instead, the claim of these scholars is based on a speculative analogy drawn from the history of targum, the early translation of the bible into Aramaic.
According to this theory, just as the Jews who returned from Babylon in 438 BCE used an oral
Aramaic translation of the Bible because they had forgotten their Hebrew tongue, so also the Jews of Hellenistic Egypt needed a written translation of the Bible in Greek, because they could no longer deal with the Hebrew texts.
The latter may be true, but as the discussion in this book will show, is probably irrelevant to the question in hand.
Indeed, far from requesting a translation into Greek, there is evidence that the Jews attempted in vain to prevent the work.
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