Ptolemy Could Not Receive Torah While Jews Wore Chains in His Kingdom

The Library Wanted What the Prison Was Holding

Ptolemy's library in Alexandria wanted everything. It sent agents across the known world to find books that had not yet been copied. When the question of the Hebrew Law came up, the librarian Demetrius proposed acquiring it. The king agreed. An embassy would go to Jerusalem, request the text, and bring back scholars capable of producing a Greek translation.

Before the embassy could be prepared, Aristeas put a problem in front of the king that the library's appetite had overlooked. The law they wanted to translate belonged to the Jewish people. A significant portion of the Jewish people was currently in bondage in Egypt, held as slaves by Ptolemy's own subjects, taken as captives in his father's campaigns. What justification, Aristeas asked, can we offer Jerusalem for our embassy while vast numbers of those same people remain in bondage here?

Torah was not a collectible object that could be separated from the people it belonged to. A king who wanted the law of Moses for his shelves would first need to address what was happening to the people of Moses in the streets below those shelves.

Six Hundred and Sixty Talents

Ptolemy understood the argument. Within seven days, he issued a decree authorizing the release of all Jewish slaves in his kingdom. The price was fixed at twenty talents per person. For infants at the breast, who would be freed together with their mothers, the same price applied. The king did not negotiate down. He instructed that the calculation be carried out in the most comprehensive way.

The final sum came to more than six hundred and sixty talents. An enormous expenditure. The king paid it.

Then he ordered Demetrius to prepare the memorandum for the translation. The library's acquisition of the Torah could now proceed because the people of the Torah were no longer property. The scrolls and the humans who carried the tradition they described had been addressed in the right order.

Seventy-Two Elders From Jerusalem

The High Priest in Jerusalem chose six elders from each of the twelve tribes, seventy-two in total. Each was both a scholar of the law and fluent in Greek. They came with a letter from the High Priest to the king, naming each man and reminding Ptolemy that once the translation was complete, the scholars should be safely returned. The list of names the Letter of Aristeas preserves covers all twelve tribes, six names from each.

In Alexandria, the court official Nicanor arranged their reception. Special provision was made for their dietary requirements. The king had standing orders for this: however many cities had specific customs around eating and drinking, their visitors were to be accommodated according to those customs, so that no discomfort would trouble the enjoyment of their visit. The Jewish scholars' halakhic requirements were no different from the requirements of any other group with specific practices. The court accommodated them without discussion.

A King Who Asked the Right Questions

The Letter of Aristeas records a banquet at which Ptolemy questioned the seventy-two scholars over seven days. The questions were not about Jewish law. They were about governance, wisdom, and virtue: What keeps a kingdom safe? What maintains gratitude? What is the foundation of justice?

Each scholar answered from the assumption that God inspires right judgment in those who seek it. The king who asked these questions was hearing Jewish wisdom applied to Hellenistic political philosophy. He received the answers with courtesy and was told repeatedly that his own good qualities were a sign of divine favor.

The dialogue is diplomatic and carefully designed, but it encodes something real: a Jewish author was insisting that the wisdom tradition of Israel had answers to the questions that exercised Hellenistic courts, and that those answers did not require abandoning Jewish categories to enter the conversation.