After Alexander the Great died in 323 BCE, his empire shattered into warring kingdoms. Ptolemy, son of Lagus, seized Egypt—and Jerusalem along with it. Josephus records that Ptolemy used treachery to take the holy city: he entered on a Shabbat (the Sabbath) pretending to offer sacrifices, knowing the Jews would not fight on their day of rest. He then ruled the city "in a cruel manner," carrying off many thousands of captives to Egypt. But he also recognized the Jews' fierce loyalty to their oaths, and he stationed Jewish soldiers in his garrisons because he trusted them more than his own people.
The real transformation came under Ptolemy's son, Ptolemy Philadelphus. His librarian Demetrius of Phalerum was building the greatest library the world had ever seen—already two hundred thousand scrolls—and told the king that the Jewish books of law deserved a place among them. The problem: they were written in Hebrew characters and could not be read by Greeks.
Ptolemy Philadelphus wrote to the High Priest Eleazar in Jerusalem. He freed 120,000 Jewish slaves in Egypt as a gesture of goodwill, paying their owners twenty drachmas each from the royal treasury. Then he asked Eleazar to send seventy-two elders—six from each of the twelve tribes—who could translate the Torah into Greek.
The translators arrived with magnificent Torah scrolls written in gold lettering. The king received them with a seven-day feast, peppering them with philosophical questions at each meal. Josephus records that the king was so impressed by their wisdom that he said he had gained more from their conversation than from all the philosophy books in his library. The seventy-two elders worked on the island of Pharos, comparing their translations until they reached consensus. The result was the Septuagint (שבעים, Shiv'im)—the Greek Torah that would carry Jewish thought across the ancient world. Ptolemy bowed his head before the scrolls when the work was complete.