Septuagint and Homeric Scholarship in Alexandria

<p>The <em>Letter of Aristeas</em> tells the story of how Ptolemy Philadelphus of Egypt commissioned seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. <br>Long accepted as a straightforward historical account of a cultural enterprise in Ptolemaic Alexandria the <em>Letter</em> nevertheless poses serious interpretative problems. Sylvie Honigman argues that the <em>Letter </em>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.<br>The <em>Letter of Aristeas</em> is among the most intriguing literary productions of Ptolemaic Alexandria and this is the first book-length study to be devoted to it.</p>