o 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.

It is not correct to say with Philo that the translator rendered each
word of the Hebrew with literal faithfulness, so as to give its proper
force. Rather may we accept the words of the Greek translator of Ben
Sira: "Things originally spoken in Hebrew have not the same force in
them when they are translated into another tongue, and not only these,
but the law itself (the Torah) and the prophecies and the rest of the
books have no small difference when they are spoken in their original
language."[21]

From the making of the translation one can trace the movement that
ended in Christianity. By reading their Scriptures in Greek, Jews
began to think them in Greek and according to Greek conceptions.
Certain commentators have seen in the Septuagint itself the infusion
of Greek philosophical ideas. Be this as it may, it is certain that
the version facilitated the introduction of Greek philosophy into the
interpretation of Scripture, and gave a new meaning to certain Hebraic
conceptions, by suggesting comparison with strange notions. This
aspect of the work led the rabbis of Palestine and Babylon in later
days, when the spread of Hellenized Judaism was fraught with misery to
the race, to regard it as an awful calamity, and to recount a tale of
a plague of darkness which fell upon Palestine for three days when it
was made;[22] and they observed a fast day in place of the old
Alexandrian feast on the anniver