Bible Canon

THE BIBLE CANON : M. M. NINAN
However not all Sages were happy about the translation from the Divine language to Greek
which they considered as an evil plan. In Megilat Ta'anit, the Sages described the event as
follows:
"On the 8th of Tevet, the Torah was rendered into Greek during the days of King Ptolemy,
and darkness descended upon the world for three days.' To what may the matter be
likened? To a lion captured and imprisoned. Before his imprisonment, all feared him and fled
from his presence. Then, all came to gaze at him and said, 'Where is this one's strength? "
Mainstream rabbinic Judaism rejected the Septuagint as valid Jewish scriptural texts. But to
the Christians which emerged during the period climax of Greco-Roman culture, it became
the standard canon of the Old Testament for them. The earliest gentile Christians of
necessity used the LXX.
http://www.ou.org/chagim/roshchodesh/tevet/translation.htm comments on this as follows:
"Once the Torah was imprisoned in the Greek translation, it was as if the Torah were
divested of reverence. Whoever wished to, could now gaze at the Torah. Anyone who
wanted to find fault with its logic, could now do so, based on the translation. The Sages,
therefore, likened the event of this day, to the day on which the Golden Calf was made. For
just as the Golden Calf had no reality, and yet its servants regarded it as having real
substance, likewise the translation, devoid of the true substance of Torah, allowed non-Jews
to imagine that they already knew the Torah"
Whether the legend is true or not, it is certain that this translation was done in Alexandria
under the cooperated efforts of many Jewish scholars. Philo of Alexandria, who relied
extensively on the Septuagint, says that the number of scholars was chosen by selecting six
scholars from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. This legend, with its miraculous details,
underlines the fact that some Jews in antiquity wished to present the translation as
authoritative canon of Judaism.
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