brought from Palestine to give authority to the work. But we need not
believe with later legend that each of the seventy translators was
locked up in a separate cell for seventy days till he had finished the
whole work, and that when they were let out they were all found to
have written exactly the same words. Philo gives us a version of the
event, romantic, indeed, but more rational, in his "Life of
Moses."[19] He tells how Ptolemy, having conceived a great admiration
for the laws of Moses, sent ambassadors to the high priest of Juddea,
requesting him to choose out a number of learned men that might
translate them into Greek. "These were duly chosen, and came to the
king's court, and were allotted the Isle of Pharos as the most
tranquil spot in the city for carrying out their work; by God's grace
they all found the exact Greek words to correspond to the Hebrew
words, so that they were not mere translators, but prophets to whom
it had been granted to follow in the divinity of their minds the
sublime spirit of Moses." "On which account," he adds, "even to this
day there is in every year celebrated a festival in the Island of
Pharos, to which not only Jews but many persons of other nations sail
across, reverencing the place in which the light of interpretation
first shone forth, and thanking God for His ancient gift to man, which
has eternal youth and freshness." It is significant that Philo makes
no mention in his books of the festival of Hanukah, while the Talmud
has no mention of this feast of Pharos; the Alexandrian Jews
celebrated the day when the Bible was brought within reach of the
Greek world, the Palestinians the day when the Greeks were driven out
of the temple. At the same time the celebrations in honor of the
Septuagint and of the deliverance from the Ptolemaic persecution[20]
are remarkable illustrations of a living Jewish tradition at
Alexandria, which attached a religious consecration to the special
history of the community.