By Lambros Karpodinis
We left off in Alexandria, Egypt, where the Jews had migrated in large numbers and became thoroughly Hellenized. Egypt was under the Ptolemaic dynasty, the lingua franca was Greek, the Old Testament was translated into Greek, thereby enabling Greek-speaking Jews to have access to the Torah, without having to learn Hebrew. In Alexandria, the first house of proseuchē (House of Prayer) or, less often, a synagogē (Congregation) was established, where the Torah would be studied in Greek.
The term proseuchē was appropriate because prayers, long and prescribed, were one of a Judaean‟s principal religious duties. In their House of Prayer some of the community‟s Judaeans would gather every day of the week for noon and evening prayers, and on Sabbath days the community as a whole would come together to pray, to listen to a reading from the scrolls, to hear the most learned man in their midst expound the meaning of the reading, and to worship Adonai with psalms, music and thanksgiving. “Adonai” is an alternative word for “Yaweh”, or God, in Hebrew. The term Adonai, not well known to non-Jews, but mentioned frequently in the Old Testament, meant “Lord, or someone who has authority over their people.
In the third century B.C., relations between the Ptolemies and the Judeans were very amicable. An inscription on a synagoge wall, discovered tells us ““In honor of King Ptolemy and Queen Berenike, his sister and wife, and their children.” The Ptolemy in question was Ptolemy III Euergetes (benefactor), who ruled from 246 to 221 BC. This is very revealing because the Ptolemies were incestuous, a practice abhorred by the Jews and the Greeks, but widespread and encouraged in Egyptian society. Moreover, the fact that the Ptolemies were worshiped as gods, another practice rejected by the Jews, did not dissuade them from being good subjects of the Ptolemies. The fact that the Ptolemies did not interfere in Judean religious practices was a factor in the amicable environment.
Prophets and their prophesies were significant in Judaism. The books of the three major and the twelve minor prophets had been narrowly circulating all along, but few copies had been made. The prophets – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Twelve – had prophesied in Hebrew, but by the fourth century BC, Hebrew was no longer in use as a spoken language in the southern Levant, having been displaced by Aramaic.
Unlike these prophetic books, the books of the Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy, otherwise known as “the five books of Moses”) and of “the Former Prophets” (Joshua through Kings) had not been accessible to the public at all until their translation into Greek. They had been part of the temple archive in Jerusalem, available for the scribes and higher priests, but not something that the laity or the lower priesthood needed to know. This was a sensible arrangement, since these books too were entirely in Hebrew, and even most of the literate inhabitants of Jerusalem would not have been able to read or understand them.
So, as we see, before those books were translated into Greek, because they were written in Hebrew, they were accessible only to the priests and scribes. This fact explains Christ’s anger and disappointment at the scribes’ and priests’ hypocrisy, of their selfish and self-benefiting interpretation of Jewish law.
The Septuagint greatly increased the Jews’ interest in what they believed was their past. They learnt the history of the Jews, and didn’t fail to notice that “Adonai”, was occupied almost exclusively with their well being, or chastising them, when they displeased Him. They were the “chosen people”The Septuagint translation for elohim was simply ho theos, “the god, ” and the Hebrew adonai became kyrios (usually translated as “the Lord,”
The great story of Adonai provided many details about his dealings with individuals: the patriarchs, Moses, Samson, Gideon, Elijah, Jonah and many others. But Adonai‟s ultimate concern was not with the individuals themselves but with the corporate entity of Israel (the only survivors of which were the Judeans, since all other Israelites had been re-branded as “Samaritans”). The Judeans in Egypt, considered themselves as the latest “actors” in the long history of God’s involvement in their affairs.
When the Septuagint was read, the Judaeans could picture the Lord helping the people of Israel and devastating their enemies, displaying his limitless power by making the sun stand still, or by sending an angel to slay 185,000 Assyrians in a single night. The miraculous stories of Noah‟s Flood, Moses‟ parting of the Red Sea, Jonah and the whale, Elijah‟s ascent into Heaven on a chariot of fire. These tales and many more enchanted the congregation. The Septuagint provided Judaeans with a history that stretched from the creation of the world to their own time. Neither the Hellenes nor the Egyptians, nor anyone else, had such an interesting and continuous history. It quickly became the armature of Judaism and then of Christianity, and would prove to be an invincible weapon in the Lord’s victory over the gods of the Gentiles.
BLESSED CHRISTMAS TO EVERYONE.
