Babylonian Talmud

English

For it was taught: [This is] the case of Ptolemy the King, who gathered seventy-two elders and entered them into seventy-two houses, and he did not reveal to them for what he gathered them. He then met each of them individually and he said to them: "Write for me the Torah of Moses your teacher [in Greek]." The Holy One, Blessed Be He put counsel into the heart of each one, and all of them harmonized to one understanding. And they wrote for him: "God created in the beginning." (Genesis 1:1) "I shall make a human in image and likeness." (Genesis 1:26)

Sefaria Community Translation · cc0

Hebrew / Aramaic

b. Megillah 9a (Vilna) · cc-by-sa

Notes

The rabbinic bench's own account of how the Greek Bible came to read as it does, and the first two items on the list are the two verses the Latin bench builds its plurality on. Ptolemy shut seventy-two elders in seventy-two houses and told each to write him the Torah of Moses; God put counsel in each one's heart and they all agreed on one understanding. And they wrote for him: 'God created in the beginning' — Elohim bara bereshit, the divine name moved to the front so that bereshit could not be read as the subject, that is, as a deity who made God — and 'I shall make a human in image and likeness', singular, for the plural na'aseh of Gen 1:26. Both changes are aimed at plurality in the opening of Genesis. Neither is in the Septuagint the Church actually inherited: its Gen 1:1 keeps the Hebrew order, en archē epoiēsen ho theos, and its Gen 1:26 keeps the plural, poiēsōmen anthrōpon. So the baraita is a tradition about a Greek Torah rather than a description of one, and the Latin reading of both verses exists in the space the described changes would have closed.

Threads

• → echoes · Bereshit Rabbah
  The same anxiety twice, once as exegesis and once as translation history. R. Yitzḥak proves from the singular verbs that no one can say two authorities created the world; the elders before Ptolemy move the divine name to the front of the sentence — 'God created in the beginning' — so that bereshit cannot be read as the subject of bara, that is, as a power that made God. Both are defending the first verse against a reading that finds more than one maker in it.
• → contests · Bereshit Rabbah
  The elders reverse the word order that R. Yudan and Ben Azzai explain and praise. For the Bavli's baraita the sequence bereshit bara … Elohim is a danger to be removed for a Greek reader; for Bereshit Rabbah it is the Holy One's modesty — a mortal king proclaims his name and produces his works afterwards, but God acted first and was named after. The same three words are a liability in Alexandria and a virtue in Caesarea.
• → parallel · Peter Abelard
  The baraita reports the elders removing from the Greek exactly the two features the Latin bench builds on, and neither removal reached the Church. The first item on their list is the word order of Gen 1:1; the second is the plural of Gen 1:26 turned singular. The Septuagint as transmitted has neither change. Abelard's argument needs the plural noun standing next to a singular verb in the first verse, which is what the elders are said to have rearranged, and Bruno's needs the 'let us make' of Gen 1:26, which is what they are said to have made singular.
• → contests · The Seventy
  Phase 4. The baraita says the seventy-two elders wrote 'God created in the beginning' for Ptolemy, moving the divine name to the front so that bereshit could not be read as a subject. The Septuagint as transmitted has not moved it: en archē epoiēsen ho theos keeps the Hebrew order. The change the rabbinic bench remembers making is not in the Greek the Church inherited, and the Latin reading of the verse stands in the space it would have closed.