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Bavakasha…. please clarify my confusion:
Backstory: The other day, I started listening to a Modern Scholar Series audio-book on Literature by a prominent professor.
During said lecture, this professor used the example of how 70 versions of the Greek Septuagint were translated by different scholars and all were identical [and he may have said something about only one word being off, or maybe I’m remembering that from what I’ve heard about the Torah] and that was a miracle.
Question: Is that what happened (70 versions in “Greek” and it’s a “Greek miracle” (can’t be, right?)?
I thought that there were 70 versions of Torah in Hebrew?
Did the Greeks s tell the Torah story as their own? Or did I just mix up Chazal’s teachings? What am I missing?
If you know what I’m talking about and/or have an idea, then please fill in the blanks.
Super duper thank YOU in advance! 🙂
That’s not what happened.
It’s a gemara in Megilah, daf 9.
King Talmi (Ptolemy) put 72 scholars in 72 rooms, without revealing to them the reason.
He then told each of them to translate the Torah into Greek, and Hashem gave each of them the same ideas to alter several translations, identically, for various reasons.
Jewish. They obviously knew the Greek language.
It sounds like the professor got it totally wrong.
“I thought that there were 70 versions of Torah in Hebrew?”
No, there is only one version. That is a basic principle of faith, the Torah we have is the Torah that Moshe got on Sinai. I think you are referring to that there are 70 different ways of understanding the Torah.- meaning different layers of meaning behind each word.
The best place to learn Torah is from someone who learns it.
There are a few Greek translations of the 24 books of the Tanach. These were non-Jewish translated by different people at different times. However, the Septuagint (“Translation of the Seventy”) was translated by presumably good Jews, probably Talmidei Chachamim, for Ptolemy (one of many with that name) king of Egypt. Although they worked independent from one another, Hashem guided them to create identical translations, which included a number of identical changes from our original Hebrew. This is mentioned in the Gemara Megilla. Rashi on the Chumash also points out a number of those changes as he comments on certain pessukim. He writes things like, “And this is one of the places that were changed for Talmi Hamelech.”
For anyone who disputes with Christian missionaries about what the Bible “really” says, the following is worth noting. Sometimes, when we confront them with the blatant distortions (“lies”) that appear in the NT, some of them try to defend themselves by claiming that the NT is based on the Septuagint. As if to say, “it’s the fault of the Septuagint and its (Jewish) translators.”
This is false. The NT is NOT based on the Septuagint!! It is mostly taken from the other Greek translations. In any case, the Septuagint is only the five books of the Torah, and NOT Neviim and Kesuvim. So, all the NT distortions and mistakes in the other books cannot be “blamed” on the Septuagint.I’m going with the professor is going off the incorrect sources, based on what I believe from Judaism here.
Bingo
Some of these mis-translations are quite amusing. I remember reading an article a few years ago about how some mysterious ‘structure’ was found on a satellite photo on Turkey’s Mount Ararat, and some people believed it to be Noah’s Ark. Google was able to find that article for me (from National Geographic, April 2010):
“The whole notion is odd, because the Bible tells you the ark landed somewhere in Urartu,”—an ancient kingdom in eastern Turkey—”but it’s only later that people identified Mount Ararat with Urartu,” said Jack Sasson, a professor of Jewish and biblical studies at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
The ‘scholar’ of that article is obviously not aware that the bible was originally written in Hebrew, and that Ararat is not a mis-translation of the Greek or English (or whatever) Urartu!!!!
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