72 Translators, 15 Alterations: the Greek Translation of the Torah Commissioned by King Ptolemy (Megillah 9a-b)
The Translation of the Torah (=Pentateuch) to Greek by 72 Jewish Elders
This sugya deals with the exceptional rabbinic permission to read the Torah in Greek for ritual purposes; limited strictly to the Five Books of Moses and not the rest of the Bible. R' Yehuda asserts that this allowance stems from one historical precedent: the incident with King Ptolemy II of Egypt.1
As the story goes, Ptolemy gathered 72 Jewish elders, placed each in a separate room, and demanded they translate the Torah. The goal was to prevent collaboration. But miraculously, all 72 produced identical translations, including the same deliberate changes.
These edits were not arbitrary. The translators adjusted 15 verses, each crafted to avoid theological, political, or interpretive pitfalls. They altered anthropomorphic language and plural references to God (e.g., changing 'Let us make man' to 'I shall make man'), removed ambiguities (e.g., clarifying the timeline of Israel’s sojourn in Egypt), and tactfully avoided potential offense (e.g., omitting the word 'hare' because Ptolemy’s wife had that name).
These modifications reveal the complex pressures of translating sacred texts into a dominant language, striking a balance between fidelity to Torah and sensitivity to foreign perceptions.
The outcome: a translation that preserved theological integrity while satisfying Greek royal demands. This extraordinary episode justifies, in the eyes of the rabbis, a one-time exception: Greek is permitted, but only for the Torah (=Pentateuch), and only because of that miraculous alignment of intention and result.
The Septuagint
See Wikipedia, “Septuagint” (with adjustments):
The Septuagint [...] sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy [...], and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew.
The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285–247 BCE) by 72 Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
Biblical scholars agree that the first five books of the Hebrew Bible (=Pentateuch) were translated from Biblical Hebrew into Koine Greek by Jews living in the Ptolemaic Kingdom, centred on the large community in Alexandria, probably in the early or middle part of the 3rd century BCE.
The remaining books were presumably translated in the 2nd century BCE.
Some targums translating or paraphrasing the Bible into Aramaic were also made during the Second Temple period.
Few people could speak and even fewer could read in the Hebrew language during the Second Temple period; Koine Greek and Aramaic were the lingua francas at that time among the Jewish community. The Septuagint, therefore, satisfied a need in the Jewish community.
And see “Letter of Aristeas”:
The Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates is a Hellenistic work of the 3rd or early 2nd century BCE [...]
The letter describes the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible by seventy-two interpreters sent into Egypt from Jerusalem at the request of the librarian of Alexandria, resulting in the Septuagint translation.
Outline
Intro
The Septuagint
The Passage - 72 Translators, 15 Edits: the Greek Translation of the Torah Commissioned by King Ptolemy (Megillah 9a-b)
Greek Permitted for Torah (=Pentateuch) Only, not the rest of the Bible
The Story of Ptolemy's Commission
Ptolemy ordered each one to translate the Torah; Miraculously, they all produced identical translations
List of the 15 deliberate changes in the Greek translation of the Torah
Appendix 1 - Table summarizing the 15 changes in translation made by the Elders in their Greek translation of the Torah for King Ptolemy, as recorded in the sugya
Appendix 2 - The Story on the Temple Mount of Rabban Gamliel and the Aramaic Translation of Job (Shabbat 115a)
Appendix 3 - Onkelos’ Aramaic Translation of the Torah (=Pentateuch), and the Dramatic Story of Yonatan ben Uzziel’s Aramaic Translation of the the Prophets Section of the Bible (Megillah 3a)
Appendix 4 - Textual Variants Found in Three Torah Scrolls in the Second Temple (Soferim 6:4)
#1 - Ma‘on
#2 - Za’atutei
#3 - Hu
The Passage
Greek Permitted for Torah (=Pentateuch) Only, not the rest of the Bible
R' Yehuda restricts the use of Greek to the Torah (=Pentateuch) and prohibits its use for the rest of the Bible (=Prophets and Writings).
[...]
תניא
אמר רבי יהודה:
אף כשהתירו רבותינו יונית —
לא התירו אלא בספר תורה,
ומשום מעשה דתלמי המלך
[...]
it is taught in another baraita that
R' Yehuda said:
Even when our Rabbis permitted Greek,
they permitted it only for Torah, and not for other books of the Bible, which must be written only in Hebrew.
And this was due to the incident of King Ptolemy
The Story of Ptolemy's Commission
According to a baraita, King Ptolemy gathered 72 Jewish Elders.
He separated them to prevent coordination.
דתניא:
מעשה בתלמי המלך
שכינס שבעים ושנים זקנים
והכניסן בשבעים ושנים בתים
ולא גילה להם על מה כינסן
as it is taught in a baraita:
There was an incident involving King Ptolemy of Egypt,
who assembled 72 Elders from the rabbis of Israel,
and put them into 72 separate rooms,
and did not reveal to them for what purpose he assembled them, so that they would not coordinate their responses.
Ptolemy ordered each one to translate the Torah; Miraculously, they all produced identical translations
Ptolemy ordered each one to translate the Torah (or: part of it).
Miraculously, they all produced identical translations.2
ונכנס אצל כל אחד ואחד,
ואמר להם: כתבו לי תורת משה רבכם.
נתן הקדוש ברוך הוא בלב כל אחד ואחד עצה
והסכימו כולן לדעת אחת.
He entered and approached each and every one,
and said to each of them: Write for me a translation of the Torah of Moses your master (רבכם)
God placed wisdom3 in the heart of each and every one,
and they all agreed to one common understanding (דעת)
Not only did they all translate the text correctly, they all introduced the same changes into the translated text.
List of the 15 deliberate changes in the Greek translation of the Torah
The Talmud lists 15 of these changes, which fall into three categories:4
Avoiding Theological Misunderstanding (These edits aim to negate dualist or anthropomorphic readings):
#1 - Genesis 1:1: Instead of “בראשית ברא אלהים” (“In the beginning God created”), they changed the word order and translated the equivalent of “אלהים ברא בראשית”5
#2 - Genesis 1:26: “Let us make (נעשה) man (Adam)” was changed to “I shall make (אעשה) man”6
#3 - Genesis 2:2: “And on the seventh day He finished” became “on the sixth day”7
#5 - Genesis 11:7: “Let us descend (נרדה)” was rendered “Let me descend” 8
#13 - Deuteronomy 4:19: Added “to give light” 9
#14 - Deuteronomy 17:3: “Which I did not command” was clarified (by adding a word) to “which I did not command to serve them”10
Harmonizing Internal Textual Contradictions:
#4 - Genesis 5:2: The wording “Male and female He created him [=Adam]” (בראו) replaces “them” 11
#6 - Genesis 18:12: Sarah's laughter was changed from “within herself” (בקרבה) to “among her relatives”12
#9 - Exodus 12:40: “400 years in Egypt” became (with added words) “400 years in Egypt and other lands”13
#10-11 - Exodus 24:5, 11: “Na’arei” (נערי - “youth”) and “atzilei” (אצילי - “leaders”?) were replaced with ‘za’atutei’.14
Preventing Political or Personal Insult:
#7 - Genesis 49:6: “They slew a man” became “they slew an ox”15
#8 - Exodus 4:20: “A donkey” became “a carrier of people”16
#12 - Numbers 16:15: “I did not take one donkey” was changed to “one item of value”17
#15 - Leviticus 11:6: “The hare” (ארנבת) was replaced with “the short-legged creature,” since Ptolemy’s wife was named Arnevet.
וכתבו לו:
״אלהים ברא בראשית״.
״אעשה אדם בצלם ובדמות״.
״ויכל ביום הששי, וישבות ביום השביעי״.
״זכר ונקבה בראו״,
ולא כתבו ״בראם״.
״הבה ארדה, ואבלה שם שפתם״.
״ותצחק שרה בקרוביה״.
״כי באפם הרגו שור, וברצונם עקרו אבוס״.
״ויקח משה את אשתו ואת בניו, וירכיבם על נושא בני אדם״.
״ומושב בני ישראל אשר ישבו במצרים ובשאר ארצות ארבע מאות שנה״.
״וישלח את זאטוטי בני ישראל״.
״ואל זאטוטי בני ישראל לא שלח ידו״.
״לא חמד אחד מהם נשאתי״.
״אשר חלק ה׳ אלהיך אתם להאיר לכל העמים״.
״וילך ויעבוד אלהים אחרים אשר לא צויתי לעובדם״.
וכתבו לו: ״את צעירת הרגלים״,
ולא כתבו לו ״את הארנבת״,
מפני שאשתו של תלמי ארנבת שמה,
שלא יאמר:
שחקו בי היהודים
והטילו שם אשתי בתורה.
And they wrote for him:
God created in the beginning [bereshit], reversing the order of the words in the first phrase in the Torah that could be misinterpreted as: “Bereshit created God” (Genesis 1:1).
They did so to negate those who believe in the preexistence of the world and those who maintain that there are two powers in the world: One is Bereshit, who created the second, God.
And they wrote: I shall make man in image and in likeness, rather than: “Let us make man in our image and in our likeness” (Genesis 1:26),
as from there too one could mistakenly conclude that there are multiple powers and that God has human form.
Instead of: “And on the seventh day God concluded His work” (Genesis 2:2), which could have been understood as though some of His work was completed on Shabbat itself, they wrote: And on the sixth day He concluded His work, and He rested on the seventh day.
They also wrote: Male and female He created him,
and they did not write as it is written in the Torah: “Male and female He created them” (Genesis 5:2), to avoid the impression that there is a contradiction between this verse and the verse: “And God created man” (Genesis 1:27), which indicates that God created one person.
Instead of: “Come, let us go down, and there confound their language” (Genesis 11:7), which indicates multiple authorities, they wrote in the singular: Come, let me go down, and there confound their language.
In addition, they replaced the verse: “And Sarah laughed within herself [bekirba]” (Genesis 18:12), with: And Sarah laughed among her relatives [bikroveha].
They made this change to distinguish between Sarah’s laughter, which God criticized, and Abraham’s laughter, to which no reaction is recorded. Based on the change, Sarah’s laughter was offensive because she voiced it to others.
They also altered the verse: “For in their anger they slew a man and in their self-will they slaughtered an ox” (Genesis 49:6), to read: For in their anger they slew an ox and in their self-will they uprooted a trough, to avoid the charge that Jacob’s sons were murderers.
Instead of: “And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon a donkey” (Exodus 4:20), they wrote: And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon a carrier of people,
which could be understood as referring to a horse or a camel rather than the lowly donkey.
Instead of: “And the residence of the children of Israel, who resided in Egypt, was 430 years” (Exodus 12:40), which when read literally is imprecise, for they did not dwell in Egypt that long, they wrote: And the residence of the children of Israel, who resided in Egypt and in other lands, was 400 years.
Instead of: “And he sent the youth of the children of Israel, who brought burnt-offerings” (Exodus 24:5), which evokes the question of why young men were sent to perform that service, they wrote: And he sent the elect [za’atutei] of the children of Israel.
The same term was substituted again several verses later, rendering the verse: “And upon the nobles of the children of Israel He laid not His hand” (Exodus 24:11), as: And upon the elect of the children of Israel He laid not His hand.
Instead of Moses’ assertion: “I have not taken one donkey [ḥamor] from them” (Numbers 16:15), they wrote in more general terms: “I have not taken one item of value [ḥemed] from them,”
to prevent the impression that Moses took other items.
To the verse that discusses the worship of the sun and the moon, about which it is written: “Which YHWH your God has allotted to all the nations” (Deuteronomy 4:19), they added a word to make it read: “Which YHWH your God has allotted to give light to all the nations,”
to prevent the potential misinterpretation that the heavenly bodies were given to the non-Jews so that they may worship them.
The verse: “And has gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or the moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded” (Deuteronomy 17:3), could be understood as indicating that God did not command their existence, i.e., these entities created themselves.
Therefore, when these Elders translated the verse they added a word to the end of the verse to make it read: Which I have not commanded to serve them.
And in the list of unclean animals they wrote for him: The short-legged beast [tze’irat haraglayim].
And they did not write for him: “And the hare [arnevet]” (Leviticus 11:6),
since the name of Ptolemy’s wife was Arnevet,
so that he would not say:
The Jews have mocked me
and inserted my wife’s name in the Torah.
Therefore, they did not refer to the hare by name, but by one of its characteristic features.
Appendix 1 - Table summarizing the 15 changes in translation made by the Elders in their Greek translation of the Torah for King Ptolemy, as recorded in the sugya
Appendix 2 - The Story on the Temple Mount of Rabban Gamliel and the Aramaic Translation of Job (Shabbat 115a)
אמר רבי יוסי:
מעשה באבא חלפתא
שהלך אצל רבן גמליאל בריבי לטבריא,
ומצאו שהיה יושב על שלחנו של יוחנן הנזוף
ובידו ספר איוב תרגום,
והוא קורא בו
R' Yosei said:
There was an incident involving my father, Ḥalafta,
who went to the esteemed Rabban Gamliel of Yavne in Tiberias,
where he found him sitting at the table of Yoḥanan HaNazuf19
and in his hand there was a translation of the book of Job,
and he was reading from it.
אמר לו:
זכור אני ברבן גמליאל אבי אביך
שהיה עומד על גבי מעלה בהר הבית,
והביאו לפניו ספר איוב תרגום,
ואמר לבנאי: שקעהו תחת הנדבך.
אף הוא צוה עליו וגנזו
Ḥalafta20 said to Rabban Gamliel of Yavne:
I remember Rabban Gamliel, your father’s father,
who was standing on top of a step21 on the Temple Mount.
And they brought before him a translation of the book of Job,
and he said to the builder: Bury this book under the course of bricks (נדבך)
When he heard of that incident, Rabban Gamliel of Yavne ordered that it be buried and he buried it.
Appendix 3 - Onkelos’ Aramaic Translation of the Torah (=Pentateuch), and the Dramatic Story of Yonatan ben Uzziel’s Aramaic Translation of the the Prophets Section of the Bible (Megillah 3a)
ואמר רבי ירמיה
ואיתימא: רבי חייא בר אבא:
תרגום של תורה —
אונקלוס הגר אמרו
מפי רבי אליעזר ורבי יהושע.
תרגום של נביאים —
יונתן בן עוזיאל אמרו
מפי חגי זכריה ומלאכי,
§ The Talmud cites another ruling of R' Yirmeya or R' Ḥiyya bar Abba.
R' Yirmeya said,
and some say that it was R' Ḥiyya bar Abba who said:
The Aramaic translation of the Torah used in the synagogues
was composed by Onkelos the convert
based on the teachings of R' Eliezer and R' Yehoshua.
The Aramaic translation of the Prophets
was composed by Yonatan ben Uzziel
based on a tradition going back to the last prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi
ונזדעזעה ארץ ישראל ארבע מאות פרסה על ארבע מאות פרסה.
יצתה בת קול ואמרה:
מי הוא זה שגילה סתריי לבני אדם?!
עמד יונתן בן עוזיאל על רגליו ואמר:
אני הוא שגליתי סתריך לבני אדם,
גלוי וידוע לפניך
שלא לכבודי עשיתי,
ולא לכבוד בית אבא,
אלא לכבודך עשיתי,
שלא ירבו מחלוקת בישראל.
The Talmud relates that when Yonatan ben Uzziel wrote his translation, Eretz Yisrael quaked over an area of 400 parasangs [parsa] by 400 parasangs,
and a bat kol emerged and said:
Who is this who has revealed My secrets to mankind?!
Yonatan ben Uzziel stood up on his feet and said:
I am the one who has revealed Your secrets to mankind through my translation.
However, it is revealed and known to You
that I did this not for my own honor,
and not for the honor of the house of my father,
but rather it was for Your honor that I did this,
so that discord (מחלוקת) not increase among the Jewish people.
In the absence of an accepted translation, people will disagree about the meaning of obscure verses, but with a translation, the meaning will be clear.
Appendix 4 - Textual Variants Found in Three Torah Scrolls in the Second Temple (Soferim 6:4)
R’ Shimon ben Lakish recounts that there were 3 Torah scrolls in the Second Temple: They were referred to as the Ma’on scroll, the Za‘aṭuṭei scroll, and the Hu scroll.23
Each contained a textual variant. In each case, the reading supported by 2 scrolls was adopted and the single divergent reading was discarded:
Deuteronomy 33:27 – One scroll read ‘ma‘on’ (“dwelling”), 2 read ‘me‘onah’
Exodus 24:5 – One scroll read ‘za‘aṭuṭei’, two read ‘na‘arei’ (“young men”).
Pronoun gender in 11 places – One scroll used ‘hu’ (masculine “he”), two used ‘hi’ (היא - feminine “she”).
א"ר שמעון בן לקיש:
שלשה ספרים נמצאו בעזרה:
ספר מעונה
ספר זאטוטי
ספר היא
R. Simeon b. Laḳish said:
Three scrolls of the Torah were found in the Temple court:
the Ma’on scroll,
the Za’atutei scroll,
and the Hu scroll.
#1 - Ma‘on
באחד מצאו כתוב: “מעון”
ובשנים כתוב: מעונה אלהי קדם (שם לג)
וקיימו שנים
ובטלו אחד
In one of these they found the expression of ma‘on,
and in the other two it was written, The eternal God is me‘onah (a dwelling place),
so they adopted the reading of the two scrolls
and discarded that of the one scroll.
#2 - Za’atutei
באחד מצאו כתוב: וישלח אל זאטוטי בני ישראל
ובשנים מצאו כתוב: וישלח את נערי בני ישראל (שמות כ״ד:ה׳)
וקיימו שנים
ובטלו אחד
In another of the scrolls they found it written, And he sent the za’atutei (nobles) of the children of Israel,
and in the other two they found written And he sent na‘arei (the young men of) the children of Israel,
so they retained the reading of the two
and abandoned that of the one.
#3 - Hu
באחד כתוב: אחד עשר הוא
ובשנים מצאו כתוב: אחד עשר היא
וקיימו שנים
ובטלו אחד
In one of the scrolls hu was written 11 times,
but in the other two hi was written 11 times,
so they adopted the reading of the two
and discarded that of the one.
On this story, see also Hebrew Wikipedia, “תרגום התורה ליוונית”, especially sections “הסיפור התלמודי” and “השינויים”.
And see also Wikipedia, “Septuagint”, section “Composition > Jewish legend”.
Including identical intentional alterations that avoided theological confusion or offense, as discussed in the following sections.
עצה - literally: “counsel”.
This three-part categorization is mine.
Interpretations in parentheses/footnotes are based on ed. Steinsaltz.
Notably, for two of them, the Talmud itself explains, but for the rest not.
I bolded the words that were altered/added by the 72 translators according to the Talmud.
The list item numberings are based on numbering the list in order from #1-15.
See also the summary table in the appendix.
To prevent misreading “Bereshit” as a deity, who then created “Elohim”.
Removing plural language that could suggest multiple gods.
To avoid the potential misunderstanding that God continued Creation into Friday night/Shabbat.
ארדה - for similar reasons as #2 earlier - removing plural language that could suggest multiple gods.
להאיר לכל העמים .
To clarify that celestial bodies are not objects of worship but natural luminaries.
לעובדם - closing off the possible reading that God didn’t create these entities.
בראם - ensuring consistency with the earlier verse that implies the creation of single person, Adam, as opposed to the creation of two people, i.e. both Adam and Eve at the same time.
בקרוביה - marking it as a public and therefore more problematic act.
ובשאר ארצות - making it more clearly aligning with historical chronological calculations.
On this word and this passage, see Ben-Yehuda Dictionary , entry “זטוט”, footnote 2.
He first cites the passage from R’ Shimon ben Lakish in tractate Soferim, that I quote in an appendix at the end of this piece, “Appendix 4 - Textual Variants Found in Three Torah Scrolls in the Second Temple (Soferim 6:4)“.
Then he writes, my translation:
Nevertheless, Immanuel Löw already concluded, in his note to Krauss, that the decisive version is the one reported by R’ Shimon ben Lakish [in Soferim 6:4].
He dismisses the attempts by some scholars to derive the word zaṭuti or zaʿṭuṭi from a Greek origin.
He concludes instead that it is an elongated form of the Aramaic word zuta, meaning ‘small’ or ‘young’.
It should be assumed that this word—zaṭut or zaʿṭut—was so common in spoken Hebrew at that time that a scribe used it naturally within the biblical text in place of the word na’arim.
Deflecting accusations of murder by Jacob’s sons Shimon and Levi.
נושא בני אדם - to avoid derogatory association of donkey with Moses.
חמד - broadening the scope and avoiding a focus on a single type of property.
On this story, see Hebrew Wikipedia, “התרגומים הארמיים לאיוב”, section “רקע”.
יוחנן הנזוף - “Yoḥanan the Excoriated”.
The Hebrew term “excoriated” (נזוף / נזיפה) is typically used in Talmudic literature in the context of formal ostracism by one or more rabbis.
Ed. Steinsaltz: “Yoḥanan”; but this is unlikely.
מעלה - or: “promenade”, see my previous extended note on this.
Previously quoted in a footnote in my “Nakdimon ben Guryon, the Roman Hegemon, and the Water Loan Miracle in the Late Second Temple Period (Taanit 19b-20a)”, on the intro.
These nicknames are based on the textual variants found in each, as described subsequently.