Give Me Your Slave!

This is one of the imprisonments of Paul.

He’s a career criminal is what he is.

Yes. Yeah, I think there were 34 felonies that he was convicted of.

No, no, no, that’s somebody else. I think you’re thinking of someone else.

Hey, everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And you’re listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation. How are things today, Dan?

It’s a good day. It’s a—it’s a good day for some—some expounding on—on—on biblicality. I don’t know.

Biblicality. Yes, yes. And gonna get into some expositional weeds here.

We’re gonna get into some weird stuff, man. I mean, the—the first—so our first thing, we’re gonna do a—a Chapter and Verse, and we’re gonna cover the entire book of Philemon , which does not take long. It turns out it is—it’s one of those blessed short ones that—

That—

That are scattered hither and thither throughout the holy text.

Or hither and yon, if you’re nasty. Yeah. Only 335 words in Greek, the whole book.

Oh, okay.

Which sounds like a lot. And that resolves to 25 verses. So, yeah, not going to take long to get through, but some interesting stuff in there.

Yeah. I can’t wait to have you explore it with me, because I am—there’s a couple moments that just made me go, “Yeah, so there’s that.” And then in the latter half of the show, we’re going to be talking about something that—that is near and dear to your heart because it was part of one of your master’s theses. We’re going to be talking about the Septuagint.

The Septuagint, which is the best it’s ever been pronounced.

It’s the seventh in the series, I understand.

70th. It’s—

It’s between—oh, 70th. All right. I was—

Oh, yeah. Septuagenarian. All right, fine. It’s the 70th. The translation of the 70, as it is known.

And we’ll—we’ll talk about the tradition that—that is the reason that it’s called the Septuagint.

Yeah. And why—you’re—you’re probably using it wrong, but also, it doesn’t matter.

See, I’m using it wrong. I just—I literally just used it wrong, so—

Well, not you. You. I’m talking to the audience, if there is still an audience.

Oh, they’re out there.

You are.

You guys are out there, right? Hello? Are you there? So let’s, let’s just dive in with Chapter and Verse. And for Chapter and Verse, here it is. We’re looking—we said it—it’s Philemon. I like that on the Bible website that I’m looking at with the NRSVUE, it’s listed as Philemon 1 , Philemon 1 . I don’t—I don’t know that there’s

more than one, you know. So

anyway, yeah, it’s just the one book and the one chapter in the one book.

That’s a problem.

And here’s—here’s the thing. It starts out and it’s—it’s a Pauline epistle. Is that—is that correct?

It is Pauline. It is undisputed—that is to say that there are no scholars who believe this is pseudonymous, that believe someone other than Paul wrote it. Okay, everyone, pretty much everyone. I’m sure there’s somebody out there, but everyone who has ever published on it agrees: this is Pauline. Wait, wait, wait.

I might—

No, no, I can think of somebody.

Oh, okay.

Who is—who has challenged its authenticity. But that is actually a rather new publication, so we’ll see how that goes.

How the—how the—the rest of academia comes crashing down on them. I’m gonna say, and we’ll get to it later on, but I am suspicious that this isn’t actually Paul, but we’ll get to why later on. Okay. Starting off, verse one basically just says—and we are already to a place where you’re going to have to clarify something for me because I know it doesn’t mean what it seems like it means. Okay, it says, “Paul, a prisoner of Jesus Christ,” or of “Christ Jesus,” and “Timothy our brother.”

No, the idea is that he is imprisoned because of Christ Jesus, who—

Who has imprisoned him.

This is something that we don’t know. This is what Paul usually says when he has been imprisoned somewhere because of. And this is how the book of Revelation starts as well, that John was exiled for his testimony of Jesus. And so Paul is apparently in prison and we’re not sure. It could be Philippi, could be Caesarea, could be Rome. In the Book of Acts , Paul is imprisoned in those three places. Actually, now that I come to think of it, in 2019, when I was in Israel, Palestine, Caesarea, we visited Caesarea, which is where there’s a hippodrome, there’s Herod’s palace, there’s a bunch of cool stuff. I had a lovely parfait in the little cafe overlooking the actual little port thing that had been built there. And then I went back in 2020—I don’t remember the year—2023, I think it was.

They had uncovered a prison there. So they were like, this is probably where Paul was imprisoned. And it was actually underground. So it was a place that I had walked around on previously and they had excavated it and there was this whole area underneath the ground there. So that was pretty cool. So I had seen—

You can’t dig a hole in Israel, Palestine without bumping into something.

It is, it’s pretty common that. And in fact, anytime you want to do any construction anywhere, whether it’s roads or housing or anything like that, the Israel Antiquities Authority has gotta come in and do their little exploratory excavation, see if there’s anything there. And then, you know, they may be like, “Oh, we found a temple.” And then you’re like, “Ah, then you can’t build there.” But that’s literally what happened like six or seven years ago. They found a temple.

Where the—

The road was going to go.

And so they just had to build the highway over top of it.

I remember, I remember you mentioning that. And I looked it up and you can see them continuing the dig underneath the freeway. The freeway goes over them. So.

So we don’t know where he’s imprisoned, but this is one of the imprisonments of Paul and it may be one that we don’t know about.

That guy’s just in a—he’s a career criminal is what he is.

Yes. Yeah, I think there were 30, 34 felonies that he was convicted of.

No, no, no, that’s somebody else. I think you’re thinking of someone else. Anyway, Paul is writing to “our beloved coworker,” as the NRSV would have it.

Does everybody call it coworker or do other people say coworker? Feels to our—to our beloved.

Synergo is the word in Greek which literally means “work with.”

Okay, there you go.

With-worker or work-with-er.

A work-with-er.

I like “work-with-er” even better. So I’m—so I’m going to start saying that in my daily life. Anyway. To our beloved coworker—work-with-er Philemon, to our sister Apphia, to our fellow soldier Archippus and to the church in your house. Okay. I guess so. So what do we know about Philemon? Do we know anything about this recipient of a letter?

Not really. Philemon is a name that occurs in Greek. In fact it is—I think there’s an old legend with somebody named Philemon or like a Greek myth or something like that. Really all we know is what we see in this text and the idea that there’s a church in your house. This is pretty common. And in this time period when Paul is going around setting up churches it’s not like, “Okay, we got the permits, we’re going to break ground next month and then, you know, we’ll have everything up and running.” They would make converts and then they would be like, “Anybody got a living room that could host this for a while?” And usually it was—and a lot of women were patrons of the church. They would use their homes for church meetings. And so it seems that these folks—I don’t know if Philemon and Apphia and the others are related or what—but it seems like they are the patrons.

They are the hosts for one of the congregations that is meeting.

Are you aware of, of the modern day sect that called. That doesn’t actually have a name but they’re sometimes called the Two by Twos. Have you heard of them?

Don’t think I have.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s a, a, a somewhat secretive Christian sect but they aim to sort of do things the old way. And one of the things that they do is they’re, they’re apostles or their, you know, their leaders.

They’re sent out two by two without purse or scrip.

They do, they go, they literally don’t have any money. They stay at members houses and you know, and hold services in the houses and, and yeah, that’s, that’s kind of their whole thing.

I, that sounds like something I have witnessed myself personally but probably, but probably not that specific sect because I think that kind of thing has been done many times. There’s, since the Great Awakenings in the U.S. There are who are like we got to get back to biblical Christianity.

You really.

Minus the communism, right?

Yeah, exactly.

But but not the parts we don’t

like, but the parts that are weirdo. That. That’s interesting.

But they’ll isolate one passage like that and be like, we’re going to build a church on that passage.

Yeah. All right, well, let’s see what. What Paul has to say to Philemon. Yeah, he. He first says some nice stuff about, whenever I mention you in my prayers, I thank God because I hear. I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the partnership of your faith may become effective as you comprehend all the good that we share in Christ. Blah, blah, blah. That’s nice. Then he says. He kind of.

Okay, I’m going to just say, time for the pivot.

And Paul goes full. Like, there are multiple moments of Paul being very passive aggressive. There’s all these, like, moments of. Now, listen, I could totally pull rank on you and order you to do stuff, but I’d rather. I’d rather just ask out of love. That is not how you ask out of love. That is just straight out the bat. Yeah. When you say, verse eight just says, though I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love. And I, Paul, do this as an old man and now also a prisoner of Jesus Christ.

It kind of has. You wouldn’t hit a guy with glasses kind of thing, too. He’s like, I’m just an old man and I’m a prisoner of Christ. And if I wanted to, you know, I could say jump, and you’d have to say, how high?

But yeah, but I’m not. I would never pull rank with you. I would never do that. I’m just telling you I could. And now I’m asking you kindly to please do what I’m commanding you to do. And what he’s asking, he says, I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose. Whose father I have become during my imprisonment, which when I first read My Child, I was like, wait a minute. Paul had children? I have heard many times, Dan say Paul does not like the idea of even sex. So.

Yeah, yeah. So the not literal child.

Yes, yes.

And the idea that he converted him, and so he is his spiritual father. So.

Right. He’s in. He’s in his downline.

You got to imagine him in a beet field. And just like you have planted this seed in the earth, now I will plant my seed in you.

Oh, my goodness.

That’s. That’s from The Office. But yes.

Okay. All I’m saying is it. Yeah, it has a very multi level marketing feel to it. I’m just saying. Anyway, so initially, Onesimus is in Paul’s downline. He says.

Yeah. Something coerced, but not forced.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And the thing that he—the good deed that he’s talking about—seems to be letting him, letting Paul keep Onesimus because he used to be Philemon’s slave. Is that correct? Am I reading that right?

So a couple things to start, though. The name Onesimus means useful. Okay. So it’s kind of—it’s kind of a stock name for an enslaved person.

Oh, okay. Was it an actual name that was applied to people? Okay, so. So you have a slave and you call them useful.

Hey, useful, get over here and pour me a drink.

Useful can reach on high shelves. You know, you get a whole battery of names, but the little play on words there is, formerly he was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful.

Yeah, I don’t know why he was useless before, but.

Okay, well, he’s just kind of got to say this. Although the word in Greek is not Onesimus, it is euchreston, which really means profitable. But the idea is that Onesimus is probably a runaway slave. And so he is unprofitable to Philemon in the sense that he ran away and he was of no use to him in his escaped state. But now that he’s with Paul, Paul is like, hey, guess what? You’ve been given a chance to make your runaway slave, who was formerly useless to you, useful once again, useful to you and to me.

Yeah, yeah. He says, perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for the long term. No longer as a slave, but more than a slave, a beloved brother. Especially to me. But how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord? That’s very interesting. He’s sending this guy back and saying, don’t make him a slave again now that he has converted to being our Christian brother. Is that right?

That is debated. And I think the majority of scholars would say Paul is not telling him to manumit Onesimus. Paul is saying, well, to begin, the idea that he’s his brother and you should accept him like a brother fits with other Pseudo Pauline texts like Ephesians, where it talks about the duties of a slave to their master and the duties of a master to their slave. The idea is that if you’re Christians, you are brothers in the sense that you are both now children of God. You see this across the New Testament. It’s in Paul, it’s in John. We find it in other writers that to become converted, you become children of God and or of Jesus, and that makes you brothers. And so in Ephesians, the idea seems to be the slave master relationship, which is temporal, is maintained. Like, it doesn’t obliterate that. But you’re both brothers in the gospel, and so the treatment should be one that is, you know, indicative of that parity in your relationship to each other.

So Paul’s not saying, release him. Paul’s saying, receive him as your spiritual brother, because that’s what he is. Treat him better than you would treat any one of your other slaves. But a lot of scholars have pointed out it would be pretty problematic of Paul to say, hey, release your slave. Philemon had legal rights over Onesimus as his slave. That would be probably crossing the line to say, hey, give up your legal rights over him. And also, if Philemon has got a bunch of other enslaved folks in his household, which he almost certainly does, and one of them comes back and says, I’m a Christian now, so you have to release me. And Philemon goes, all right, fine, you’re released. What do you think all the other enslaved folks are going to suddenly do?

Suddenly you got a lot of Christians in that household.

Yeah, yeah. And so it’s tricky, but the majority of scholars would say, in fact, there’s a commentary I really like on this in the New Testament Library series that points out that there’s absolutely no indication that Paul was asking him to release him. What we have here is Paul did not lead a revolt against the slave system in his dealings with Philemon and Onesimus. In fact, he makes no plea for the manumission of Onesimus. Not a single word expresses the wish or the command that Onesimus be legally emancipated. Nor is Philemon condemned for the fact that he owned a slave. So Paul’s trying to thread a very tiny little needle here. He’s like, I like this guy. He needs to be treated better. He ran away from you for a reason. I’m honoring the social contract.

I’m honoring the relationship. I’m having him obey the laws of the land by returning him to you. But in his kind of rhetorical speaking down to him where kind of like I could just snap my fingers, but you know, I’m gonna give you the chance to choose to do this.

Yeah, he does. I mean, yes. So going back to that verse 13, he does say, I wanted to keep him with me, but I needed, I want your consent, etc. etc. It is interesting to me if it’s not about releasing him from slavery, it’s so razor thin close to that.

He literally says, no longer as a slave, but more than a slave. In, in the next, you know, in, in verse 17, he says, so if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me. That’s. That feels like, like I was assuming based on all of that language that it was definitely like, release him. He’s no longer your slave. He’s just our, our brother.

I, I think the idea is more that Paul wants to, wants to uphold the law, wants Onesimus to do the right thing, but he also does not want to see Onesimus hurt because of this, or even executed. Yeah, he’s a runaway slave. I mean, it would be well within Philemon’s rights to, to treat him quite harshly. Right. And so what I, what I think he’s trying to emphasize is that Paul’s like, treat him as you would treat me. Trying to extend the protective wing of his authority over Onesimus so that the slave-master relationship is technically retained. But, but Paul is putting an awful lot of weight on Philemon to not, you know, beat the crap out of him, have him executed, you know, give him dish duty for a month or whatever. I don’t know what kind of punishments they, non-corporeal punishments they would have used back then.

But Paul I think is, is. I can imagine the conversation that Paul and Onesimus had where he was like, look, I don’t see any way around this. We got to send you back, but. Right, I’m going to write a letter. I am going to lean on Philemon to make sure that he doesn’t give you too hard a time when you get back. I’m going to ask him to send you back to me so you know, you’re only home for the weekend and hopefully you know, everything’s cool and. And then you can come back and we can get back to work ministering to each other in prison. I think that’s probably a little closer to what’s going on than that makes

sense to me. That, that sounds about right. With one caveat and that is I’m still holding to the, to my theory that this is pseudepigrapha. I almost had the big word.

I don’t know, you got pretty close.

Pseudepigraphal.

Pseudepigraphical.

You could say pseudepigraphy. You know, that’s close enough.

Anywho, here’s what. Here’s my personal theory. Okay. And it’s based on verses 18 and 19, which, which is. And my theory is based entirely on the idea not that it was written by someone claiming to be Paul for like any kind of other reason, but just I think this was written by Onesimus. By Onesimus. And he just said he. Because it feels a little too much it. In.

In verse 19, a little too on the nose here.

He says, I, Paul, writing this with my own hand, I will repay you. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. Like it all it just feels a little much. I. I think. I think Paul, he like he wrote this for Paul and just went. Leaned a little too hard and you

know, we talked with Candida a bit ago about enslaved folks being used to write

letters and things like that. So it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility. And, and Paul seems to be trying to. Whoever’s writing, trying to make it seem like Paul is the one who’s.

It just seems like it’s real, real hard. No, this is me, Paul. I promise there’s nobody else writing this, just Paul. Earlier in the, earlier in the chapter, I, Paul, do this as an old man, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, no, so yes, he, he, Paul does. This is a really hard lean. Paul says if he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me. I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand. I will repay it. I say nothing about. I love this, this line. Look, I’m not. I’m not even mentioning the fact that you owe me even your own self. Like I’d. Look, I. I’m not even bringing it up. What. Again, the backhanded.

The, the, yeah, I’m gonna bring this up to let you know that I don’t even have to bring this up.

Right. Right. I would never. I would never. But, you know, let’s both remember it anyway. So, so he’s. So that, yeah, he says, let, yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ, confident of your obedience. I am writing to you knowing that you will do even more than I ask.

Yeah, there’s. It’s laying it on pretty thick here, like. And I don’t even, I don’t even have to worry. I know you’re actually going to go above and beyond.

Yeah, you’re probably going to send me more than him. You’re probably going to send me a couple more slaves. I don’t know. Who knows what you’re going to do. And then he says, and then the last line is this weird thing where he says, and one thing more. Prepare a guest room for me, for I’m hoping through your prayers to be restored to you. Now, my guess is that’s saying, buy my way out of prison and I’m going to come and live with you. Is that, what are your thoughts on that?

I don’t, I don’t think he’s, he’s asking him that. I, but I, but I think it’s, I think this is kind of a criticism sandwich.

Say nice stuff. You get your, your criticism in there, your constructive criticism, and then you follow it off with nice stuff.

He’s like, I, it’s kind of like, I gotta borrow money. Oh, by the way, if you want to come spend the night at any point, you know, you need a couch to crash on. That’s, that’s cool. I, I, it sounds to me like he’s, he’s just trying to put another, another stroke of butter on him and just try to make him feel good. But you’re the one I’ve been thinking about this whole time.

Even when I’m with him.

I’m coming to visit any day now. I’ll come for a bit. I don’t mind the fact that I’m in prison. That’ll. That’s fine. I’m, I’m in and out of that, you know? And then he literally says, and by the way, a bunch of my fellow prisoners say hi. Yeah. So there you go.

That’s Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke, my coworkers.

And is that, Is that Mark? Mark and Luke. Luke.

I, I think there are folks who think it is Mark. If you go to. In Acts, it refers to John, whose other name was Mark, as somebody who was often found gallivanting around with. With Paul. And Luke is supposed to be Paul’s missionary companion.

In the book of Acts . So. So I think they. The idea is that, yeah, these are. These are to be identified with those folks. Now the reality is that the authorship of Mark and Luke is a secondary addition. So these were not the actual folks who actually wrote those texts, or at least are very, very unlikely to be. But I think traditionally, yeah, they are identified with the Gospel authors.

Okay, interesting.

And this is the. This is the last in the canonical order of Pauline epistles. This is the very last one. They were kind of organized according to size, length started with Romans and then you got. And you go from there. So longest to shortest. So Philemon is last. And Philemon, just as a little aside, I just think.

So one of my questions to you, having read this multiple times and basically I’ve just read the entire book on our show. Yeah, I don’t. I skipped a little bit here and there, but not, yeah, one or two verses. Why is this in the Bible? It doesn’t. I don’t feel like anything is gained. Anything is like. Like you say, he’s not. He’s not changing the rules of slavery. That’s an important point, expounding on anything useful. It just seems very strange.

I. I think this was probably something that was preserved. That was a letter from Paul. And when Paul started to get hot and, you know, these letters started being considered as scripture. This was just part of the collection because. Yeah, there’s. There’s not a lot in the way of. There aren’t really many Christian principles. There’s no, you know, deep storytelling going on here. Yeah, it’s just this letter.

He’s.

Yeah, they’re kind of leaning on. On a buddy.

There’s nothing to be gained spiritually that I can see from this. Or, you know, there’s no parable here of the. Of the slave returned to his master. But yeah, it’s. It’s very interesting.

But every time that someone brings up the fact that there’s no part of the New Testament or the Hebrew Bible, no part of the Bible period, that questions, much less condemns or prohibits the practice of buying, selling, or owning other human beings, enslavement, people will bring up Philemon.

And so, but that, that is certainly one of the, one of the ways it has been deployed historically and more on the closer end of history than on the further end of history. But it has certainly been deployed as a means of endorsing an anti-slavery and abolitionist perspective.

Right. Which, which even if it’s wrong, obviously I would like it if it were, if it were anti-slavery. That would be nice.

But I think you’re right. You know, having had you sort of explain it to me, looking back at it, I, I think it’s clear. He is just saying, he’s saying like, don’t kill him, send him back to me. I want him. Him. Yeah, he’s not saying he’s not a slave anymore. He’s saying, “I want him to be my slave, not your slave. Give him to me, have him work for me.”

Because if he releases him, it’s not like he’s under his authority anymore.

Right.

He’s like, “Release him so that he can come back to me,” not “Release him and then send him back to me.” It’s like he’s… if you release him, he’s not yours anymore to command. So.

Right.

But yeah, and elsewhere, you know, there are constant references to slavery, including Christian enslavers and Christian enslaved. That never says, “Oh, you’re a Christian, you don’t have to be enslaved anymore. Oh, you’re a Christian, you have to release all your slaves.” Like, there’s nothing that remotely hints at any such thing. So this seems like a unique situation that I think we probably shouldn’t generalize to Paul’s overall view on slavery. However, having said that, the places where Paul quote-unquote talks about the Greco-Roman, you know, household codes and all that kind of stuff, those are limited to the Deutero-Pauline or at least the disputed Paulines. So those things were probably not written by Paul.

Right. Well, all right, that was interesting. I actually, that’s a fascinating little snippet there.

And one, oh, one other thing. I want to recommend a book.

It is called Slavery in Early Christianity by Glancy. There’s a second edition, fairly recent, phenomenal book on slavery and Christianity. What we can reconstruct from the material data, from the archaeological data and other historical texts and things like that. So if you’d like more on that, highly recommend that.

Cool. Excellent. All right, well, let’s move on to our next segment. What is that? And the “that” this time?

Is this the “that”?

This. The “that” is the Septuagint.

Yeah. So you have said that word many, many times on this podcast. And we’ve sort of vaguely explained what it is before, but I think it bears diving into because what is that?

What is that? That is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And you know, that sounds pretty banal. Okay, it was translated into Greek. But it’s actually quite fascinating because until we discovered the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Septuagint was the oldest version of the Hebrew Bible that we had. Like, the complete Hebrew Bible was non-existent in any Hebrew manuscript prior to around 900, 1000 CE. We had fragments and stuff like that.

But if we go back to the great uncial manuscripts of Early Christianity, the 4th century, Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, they preserve a version of the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And it was probably executed between probably the middle of the third century BCE down to around the turn of the era.

And so it’s. So, wait, sorry, just so that I’m processing this, the Septuagint is what? Because for whatever reason, my brain has just thought that’s what Christians used as their, as their sort of their version of the Hebrew Bible.

But were the Jewish people of, you know, the early Common Era also using the Septuagint or what?

Yes, that’s why Christians used it, because originally they were Jewish and they were just using the same thing that the earliest followers of Jesus used. So the reason it was translated is because the largest population center of Jewish folks outside of Jerusalem was in Alexandria, Egypt.

Which spoke Greek. And so there were an awful lot of folks living in Alexandria who were Jewish who could not access the Hebrew Bible in Hebrew adequately.

And there’s even a theory, it’s called the Interlinear Theory. It’s not really, I don’t think it’s… it has fallen on hard times. Let’s say that the idea is that the Septuagint was never meant to be a formal translation so that people who did not speak Hebrew could read the Hebrew Bible. Their idea was that it is to facilitate better understanding. It’s like an interlinear translation that’s just intended to be a guide as they read the Hebrew. That’s one theory. But Septuagint means 70. And this is based on a very, very famous tradition of how we got the Septuagint. The reality is that each book, and sometimes, you know, parts of books were translated by different folks. We can go through and look at translation philosophy and style and all this kind of stuff, and they differ significantly from book to book. But there’s this tradition known as the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that is quoted in Josephus.

He paraphrases large chunks of it. It’s talked about in Philo of Alexandria. He’s got a text called the Life of Moses where he quotes chunks of it as well. There’s an excerpt in… so it’s preserved in a text called Preparation for the Gospel by Eusebius, who was a buddy of Constantine. But what he does is he quotes a bunch of other authors and one of the folks he quotes is Aristobulus of Alexandria, who was writing around the middle of the 2nd century BCE. And Aristobulus quotes a bunch of the Letter of Aristeas. But this is a tradition that tells the story mainly of a ruler in Egypt known as Ptolemy II Philadelphus, okay, who ruled between 281 and 246 BCE. And according to this letter, Ptolemy hires or appoints somebody to take over the curation of the library of Alexandria, Demetrius of Phalerum.

After he had been appointed over the king’s library, Demetrius of Phalerum was furnished with much money in order to collect, if possible, all the books in the world and make purchases and transcriptions. He brought to completion as much as he could, the king’s plan. Thus, while we were present. And so Aristeas is writing to his bro Phil, and he’s like, “Hey, remember when we were there, we were present.” He was asked how many thousands of books have been obtained. He said, “More than 200,000, O King. I will hasten in a short time to fulfill the remainder of 500,000. But it has also been reported to me that the laws of the Jews are worthy of transcription and of inclusion in your library.” And then the king says, “What is there therefore, to prevent you from doing this?” And he responds and says, “For everything that you need has been provided to you.” But Demetrius said translation is still required, for in Judea they use their own characters, just as the Egyptians use their own arrangement of letters and inasmuch as they also have their own language.

And so he says, we need to translate this. We don’t have the means to do that here. So the king writes to the high priest in Jerusalem and says, “Hey, you want to send some translators?” And so he sends six translators from each of the 12 tribes of Israel from Jerusalem down to Alexandria. And this is a fanciful procession. They’re received like visiting dignitaries. Six times 12 is 72, rounded off to 70.

I don’t like it. I want there to be. I want it to be the Septuagint do a gent.

But so that’s where the name 70 comes from. And according to the tradition, they were all locked in a tower. I think it’s the Pharos. I think it’s the, the, the big lighthouse thing in Alexandria.

But they’re all kept on their own. And they all translate the Torah, so just the first five books of Moses. And this is gonna be a point later on, but they’re all alone.

But this time actually word for word identical, at least according to the tradition.

Okay, and, and this sounds unlikely or, or rather it sounds like one guy just started, started dictating and everybody else just wrote what they heard.

Well, if you, if you historicize it. But this is, this is the stuff of legends. Right? Right. And they take this as, as a sign of divine approbation. And then they have this grand party and pronounce blessings on, on everything. And then pronounce curses on anybody who should take anything away from, add to or take anything away from this text in a very Deuteronomistic style and a very Apocalypse of John style.

Right.

Which is basically a way to say this has God’s sign-off. Yes, this was all miraculous and so this is a good thing and don’t nobody change it. And, and one of the things this does is this is a way to make Greek-speaking Jewish folks feel like their translation, their non-Hebrew scriptures are actually A-OK. That they’ve been given the divine stamp of approval. And so it, in some sense the Letter of Aristeas is functioning as an apologetic not only for the quality of the translation but also for the use of the translation, the existence of the translation. This is still scripture. This is still the inspired word of God, no matter what you, you know, anti-Greekites are, are saying. Right. About the anti-dentites and, and the rest.

But it’s, it’s basically a, a reproof against the, the Robert Frost quote. That poetry is what’s lost in translation. They’re saying this is scripture is not what’s lost in translation when it’s this translation.

Yeah, God. If God has their hand in it, then screw you. Robert Frost reminds me of the old Simpsons episode where, where Homer meets his mom, but he thinks she’s buried in the tomb on the top of the hill. And the guy’s like, have you ever gone up there? And he goes up there and, and pulls away the vines and the ivy and everything and it says Walt Whitman. And he’s like, Walt Whitman, leaves of grass my ass. And starts kicking the, the, the headstone. Oh, it’s hilarious. Okay, so, so Robert Frost, I, I shake my fist at thee. So, so that’s the, the legend that was probably written not too long after the setting. Like it’s not historical. Scholars don’t think this is at all historical. But that’s what gave the Septuagint its name. At least the Torah.

At least the first five books. Okay, so there are a lot of folks who will be like, push their glasses up on their face and say Septuagint only refers to the first five books of Moses. And technically that’s true. That’s, you know, the name comes from the Letter of Aristeas, which is just about the books of Moses. It’s not about Isaiah, it’s not about Kings, it’s certainly not about Haggai. So but those, all the Haggai

thing is right out that’s yeah, that is rejected from the jump.

Yeah, don’t make me laugh. And so this is the name that was given to the first five books of Moses, but before too long it gets expanded as a, as a reference to, to everything. So, like, either usage is fine if you want to be very pedantic about it. And you know, far be it from me to yuck anyone’s pedantic yum. But it would only refer to being a pedant yourself.

You would never.

Yes, I, I.

On the pedantry of others.

And, and so, yeah, sometimes you’ll see people say that and, and technically true. But, you know, let’s all, let’s all live by the golden rule. Don’t be a dick. Yeah. And so the Septuagint is. I use it, and a lot of other folks use it to refer to the entirety of the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, which was probably executed shortly after the first five books of Moses. And most scholars think the first five books of Moses were definitely translated first before everything else.

But everything else followed shortly thereafter. And, and this was the Bible. This was the Scriptures for the earliest followers of Jesus, for the authors of the New Testament, for the earliest Christians. And there’s a wonderful book written by my thesis supervisor from the University of Oxford, T. Michael Law, called When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible, which I think is a wonderful discussion of the dynamic of the, the Hebrew Bible to the Septuagint, to early Christianity, to what’s going on and, and how it ultimately changed. So if anybody’s interested in learning more about the role of the Septuagint in early Christianity, that’s a wonderful book. And then there’s also, if, if you want an introduction to the Septuagint. Yeah, that’s a. There’s a wonderful book by Jennifer Dines, D-I-N-E-S, just called The Septuagint. And I think it’s got to be probably from 2003 or 2004.

And, and it’s a, it’s a great introduction. It is pretty detailed. But if you’re looking to, to get into the weeds a little bit on the background of the Septuagint, that’s a great discussion.

Let me, I’m still wrapping my head around the, the sort of timeline here.

Okay, you.

So you said that this appeared somewhere in the, in which centuries? The second century.

So no, third century BC is when most scholars date the, the earliest translations. So that would have been like the, the Books of Moses, okay, so 250, 225.

In there somewhere. And, and then other parts are being added over the next 200, 250ish years or something like that. So.

Yeah, it’s not, it’s not completed until around the turn of the era, maybe a little before. And there are also other texts, like the, the Apocrypha is part of the Septuagint.

Right. All right, that’s fair.

Yeah. And there are other, other texts as well.

So my question is at what point? I mean, surely, like, because it was translated, there were Hebrew versions of it that existed at the same time for quite some time.

And then we lost those. Like, when did those disappear?

Well, what happens is, and we’ve talked a little bit about this before, Jewish folks are copying and transmitting their manuscripts.

Right.

But when a manuscript gets old and is no longer able to be used in a service or something like that. Do you remember where we put it?

Yeah, in the room.

In the room. Right, the room where it happens.

The bad, the bad scroll room.

The, in the geniza. And, and so what I said, and so what we don’t have are. And these are on scrolls, most of them are not on, on codices.

Right.

And with the scrolls, each book is on a different scroll, except for, like the Minor Prophets, those are shorter books. And so the 12 Minor Prophets might be on a single scroll. And so if those survive, they’re mostly going to survive in a geniza. And we’ve got to find the geniza. And so we do have genizas with manuscripts of individual scrolls, but not, you know, they didn’t have the extra long scroll that had the entire Hebrew Bible on it. And so you don’t have the full copies of the whole Bible until the medieval period when they start copying them on codices. So the Aleppo Codex, the Leningrad Codex, that’s actually a departure from the traditional practice of copying the Hebrew Bible on scrolls. That’s where everything was written into a codex. And so those are the oldest codexes. Codices, codexes. Oh, my gosh. I’m usually so careful about that. Those are the oldest codices that have survived down to us.

But before that and all the way back to the Dead Sea Scrolls, pretty much everything was on. On scrolls. And so if we find a geniza, you know, maybe we find some, some, you know, a copy of Isaiah from 500 CE or something like that, but we don’t have the full Hebrew Bible.

Was the original Septuagint on scroll.

It almost certainly would have been. This is why the books would have been translated independently, but by the time Christianity transitions to using the Codex, and, and this was quite a significant, like, technological innovation.

Right. I remember I was talking about that. You know, we, we mentioned it when we talked about Codex Vaticanus and all that sort of thing.

Yeah. And so by the time we get to the use of the Codex and our, what we call our great uncial manuscripts, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and the rest in the 4th century CE, the Septuagint is being copied onto codices.

And so, yeah, our earliest versions of the Septuagint, at least like full copies or mostly complete copies are on codices. And our earliest full or almost complete copy of the Hebrew Bible is on a codex. And so the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was quite fortuitous because that was a whole cache of all of it.

Right.

And so we get to see, you know, virtually the whole Hebrew Bible, at least all the books of the Hebrew Bible in one fragmentary state or another.

So is Codex Vaticanus. Is that, is that one in Latin?

No, no, no, that is, that’s Greek.

Okay, so it is just a, a version of the Septuagint all together on a codex.

And the New Testament.

And the New Testament. Right, right. Okay, got it. All right. I. Man, keeping it all straight. I don’t. I. It’s. It’s like you almost have to get a PhD in the damn thing to keep it all straight.

Or. Actually, I know Sinaiticus is, Has the whole. No, Sinaiticus is missing some of the Pentateuch. Oh, I’m pretty sure Codex. Let me. What is Codex Vaticanus? The majority of the Old Testament. Okay, so it’s not the entire thing. 617 sheets of the Old Testament. Yeah. So it preserves the overwhelming majority of it.

Okay, well, there you go.

Indeed.

It’s fascinating. And, and I, and like you said, like this, this Septuagint, this, this Greek version is what the people who wrote the, the New Testament would have been experienced, would have. That’s how they would have read the, the Hebrew Bible. Right. They wouldn’t because they were writing and reading in Greek rather than in Hebrew.

There are, there are some indications that some writers may have had some facility in Hebrew and were maybe consulting with some Hebrew. Well, but overwhelmingly. Well, where we can identify where it is distinguished from the other. The Septuagint is what we see in, in the New Testament. So folks like Paul probably could, could, you know, deal in Hebrew, but were generally using the Septuagint. And, and this is still debated. Too. So but the, the majority of scholars would would agree that the Septuagint is the Old Testament of the New Testament.

The Old Testament of the New Testament.

There you go.

I like it. Well, I think I, that’s, that’s a great place for us to end it. Thanks so much to all of you for tuning in. If you would like to become a part of helping make this show go and also get a, an early and ad free version of every episode as well as access to the after party which is bonus content. You can become a patron over on Patreon. Just go to patreon.com/dataoverdogma and, and sign up there. Do it on the web, not on your phone because if you’re on an iPhone at least and you’re on the, the, the app, they’ll charge you extra and woof. That’s, that’s frustrating.

And if you want to just try it out. By the way, I, I, I haven’t ever mentioned this before but all of our after parties, recent after parties, a new thing happened on Patreon. They’re for sale. You can just buy a single afterparty.

Oh really?

And, and just check it out, see if it, if you like it. But I recommend just signing up and being a patron and then you’re helping us out and, and you’re also getting access to all of that cool stuff. If you’re interested in coming, coming to any of the live shows when we go on tour in April and May, you can find the link here in the show notes to go and do that. We’d love to see you out there on the road. If you want to contact us, it’s contact@dataoverdogmapod.com and we’ll talk to you again next week.

Bye everybody.

Give Me Your Slave!

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology