NOTICE
The following minor work is by Epiphanius, A *On the Seventy Translators, and on those who translated wrongly*, that is to say, on those who, in translating, corrupted the Scripture. It is an epitome of those things which Epiphanius recounts in the book *On Weights and Measures* regarding the various translators; and it differs more than once from that more detailed narration. Whether this epitome was compiled by Epiphanius himself, or by another, is not so easy to determine. However that may be, this work is produced from two codices: the Royal, namely 1807, and the Vatican, both of which appear to have been described in the tenth century and by the same hand.
BOOK OF SAINT EPIPHANIUS ON THE SEVENTY TRANSLATORS
(Montfaucon, Prolegomena to the Hexapla of Origen, p. 77.)OF SAINT EPIPHANIUS ON THE SEVENTY TRANSLATORS, AND ON THOSE WHO TRANSLATED WRONGLY.
Ptolemy the Second, surnamed Philadelphus, having prepared libraries at Alexandria in the *Brucheion*, as they call it, which is a district of the city, entrusted the same library to one Demetrius of Phalerum, and commanded him to collect from everywhere the books of poets and other writers. When he had collected fifty-four thousand books, the king then sent a letter to those in Jerusalem, and a solid golden table weighing one hundred talents, in place of the table taken from the holy place of Jerusalem, asking that all the Scripture of the Hebrews be sent to him. Then they, with joy, sent back the books written in golden Hebrew letters; twenty-one in number—which are numbered among them as twenty-two of the Old Testament—and seventy-two apocryphal ones. B The king, having received and read them, and being unable to understand them, was compelled to write a second letter to them, requesting that interpreters be sent to him who could render them for him from the Hebrew into the Greek dialect. Then the teachers of the Hebrews chose seventy-two interpreters, and sent to the king men from each tribe, according to the pattern which Moses once followed when he ascended the mountain by the command of the Lord, having heard: *Take with you seventy men, and ascend the mountain* (Exod. xxiv. 12); and he took six from each tribe, seventy-two in all. In the same way, they too acted and sent seventy-two, who, by the king’s command, slept in pairs, two in each of thirty-six chambers, so that they could not communicate with one another, and thus they applied themselves to the work. For Ptolemy had caused the aforementioned small chambers to be constructed C as doubles, and he shut them in—two by two—from morning until evening, along with two servants to prepare and serve food, and with stenographers who were likewise shut in. And he made no windows in the walls, but opened them in the roofs—what are called *anaphotides*. In this way, from the first light of dawn until evening, with the doors bolted, they—
translated. To each pair a single book was given—for instance, the book of Genesis to one pair, Exodus of the children of Israel to another pair, Leviticus to another, and so on for the rest; and thus the Scripture was translated thirty-six times. When the books were completed, the king sat upon a high throne, and the thirty-six readers sat below him, having the books before them. As one read aloud, no discrepancy was found, but it was a wondrous work of God, showing clearly that those men possessed the gift of the Holy Spirit. Where they had removed something, they had all removed it together; and where they had added, there was need for it. B In this way, the books were translated into the Greek language and placed in the first library. And thereafter he built another, which they called the daughter of the former, located above in the Serapeum.
And the time of Ptolemy and Cleopatra passed by... The Lagidæ reigned for [some] years. Then the Roman emperors follow.
Augustus reigned for 56 years; in the 42nd year of his reign, Christ was born. Tiberius reigned for 23 years; in his 18th year, the Lord was crucified. Forty years and some days passed from the cross to the destruction of Jerusalem. From Augustus to Hadrian, there are 180 years. In the 12th year of Hadrian, Aquila was becoming known, so that from the time of the translation of the Seventy until Aquila the interpreter and the 12th year of Hadrian, there are 430 years, 4 months, and 9 days. This Hadrian, having gone up to Jerusalem and wishing to rebuild it, took the aforementioned Aquila, who was a Greek, just as Hadrian himself was a Greek. Now this Aquila was the emperor's father-in-law C and was from Sinope in Pontus; he appointed him to oversee the works in Jerusalem, having bestowed upon the city his own name and the designation of the imperial name—for even as he was officially called Aelius Hadrianus, so he named the city Aelia.
Aquila, then, dwelling in Jerusalem and seeing the disciples of the apostles flourishing in faith and performing great signs of healing and miracles (for they had returned from the city of Pella to Jerusalem itself and were living in it; for just when the city was about to be captured by the Romans and laid waste, all the disciples had been warned by an angel to depart from the city, and having become refugees, they had stayed in the city of Pella beyond the Jordan), Aquila, being pricked in his heart, believed in Christianity. And after a time, having requested the seal in Christ, he received it. But he did not change from his former habit when he thought in the manner of the Greeks. D For he had been thoroughly trained in the vain art of astronomy, and even after he became a Christian, he did not abstain from such error, but daily observed the position [of the stars] of his own nativity. He was rebuked by the teachers, who admonished him daily to no avail; for he would argue back concerning fate...
A and, abjuring Christianity, took on circumcision and became a Jew. Then, moved by vehement zeal, he gave himself over entirely to learning the Hebrew language and its elements. Having achieved a perfect knowledge of these, he fashioned an interpretation according to his own inclination, not using a right mind, but so that he might twist certain sayings of Scripture, contrary to the mind of the Seventy Interpreters, toward another meaning; so that he might deflect the testimonies concerning Christ expressed in the divine Scriptures and prepare for himself and his own shame an absurd apology.
This interpretation of Aquila, which is the second, was published B after the aforementioned time, namely four hundred and thirty years later. But after these things, in the times of Commodus Severus, a certain Samaritan named Symmachus, one of the wise men of that nation, since he was not honored by his own people, and laboring under the disease of ambition and coveted primacy, being indignant against his own tribe, approached the Jews and became a proselyte, and was circumcised a second time. For as many as flee from the Jews to the Samaritans are circumcised again; and likewise those who come from the Samaritans to the Jews. Nay, even such runaways, after their circumcision, were made uncircumcised by a certain medical technique involving sutures and various remedies, just as the Apostle says: "Was any one at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was any one at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision" (1 Cor. vii, 18). They say that this nefarious error was first invented by Esau. Therefore, Symmachus, in order to overturn the interpreters of the Samaritans, published a third translation.
After him, a short time having elapsed, under the second emperor Commodus, a certain Theodotion of Pontus, from the succession of the heresiarch Marcion, stemming from Sinope itself, being also angry at his own heresy, turned to Judaism and was circumcised; and having been instructed in the Hebrew tongue and its elements, he also undertook an edition of his own. He expressed many things that were in harmony with the Seventy Interpreters, since he was accustomed to their frequent use.
Regarding the fifth and sixth editions, I cannot say whence or by what authors they were produced. Only this can be said: that after the persecution of Severus, in the reign of Antoninus Caracalla, the son of Severus, the fifth was found hidden in jars D at Jericho among other Hebrew books. And under the emperor Alexander, son of Mammaea, was found the sixth edition at Nicopolis by Actium, which itself also lay hidden in jars.
In the reign of Decius, Origen flourished, who, as has been said above, just as he used the asterisk, so too did he use the symbol of the obelus. For he arranged six interpretations and the Hebrew Scripture in Hebrew words and terms in one column, and placed another column adjacent to it, using Greek letters but Hebrew words.