King Ptolemy and the Seventy-Two Elders Who Agreed

It happened with King Ptolemy that he gathered seventy-two elders and placed them in seventy-two separate houses, and did not reveal to them why he had brought them in. He went in to each and every one and said to him, "Write for me the Torah of Moses your teacher." The Holy One, blessed be He, put [wisdom] into the heart of each one, and their understanding agreed as one, and they wrote for him: "God created in the beginning" [reversing the order so none would say "In the beginning" was a separate divine power]; "I shall make man in image and likeness" [singular, not "Let us make"]; "And He finished on the sixth day and rested on the seventh day"; "male and female He created him"; "Come, let Me go down and there confound their language"; "And Sarah laughed among her relatives"; "for in their anger they slew an ox and in their wanton will they uprooted a stall"; "And Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them upon a carrier of human beings"; "And the dwelling of the children of Israel who dwelt in Egypt and in other lands was four hundred and thirty years"; "And he sent the youths of the children of Israel"; "And against the youths of the children of Israel He did not stretch out His hand"; "Not one precious thing of theirs have I taken"; "which the LORD your God apportioned to give light to all the peoples"; "and he went and served other gods which I did not command to be served." And they wrote for him "the short-legged one" and did not write for him "the hare" [arnevet], because the name of [Ptolemy's] wife was Arnevet — so that he should not say, "The Jews have mocked me and put my wife's name in the Torah."