Aristeas to Philocrates: Letter of Aristeas

by Moses Hadas

The work commonly known as the Letter of Aristeas presents an account of the genesis of the Septuagint, & incidentally reflects currents of religious thought at a significant period of history. The book is a work of conscious literary art, composed according to the canons of the Greek schools, & the exaggerations & inaccuracies that have marred its credit in the past are marks not of the author's ignorance or bad faith but of the genre to which it belongs. Considered against its historical & intellectual background, Aristeas to Philocrates is a document of first-class importance & a unique specimen of its kind in the literature of the period. Professor Hadas' edition studies the book from the point of view of its literary as well as religious affinities & significance. His introduction fixes the place of the book in the history of Greek literature as well as of the religious development of the Jews, & his running commentary similarly illustrates the text from both points of view. The translation is in straightforward English. The Greek text is that of H. St. J. Thackeray & the brief critical notes that accompany it are by Hadas.

233 pages, cloth

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Moses Hadas (1900–1966) was an American teacher, one of the leading classical scholars of the twentieth century, and a translator of numerous works.

Raised in Atlanta in a Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish household, his early studies included rabbinical training; he graduated from Jewish Theological Seminary of America (1926) and took his doctorate in classics in 1930. He was fluent in Yiddish, German, ancient Hebrew, ancient Greek, Latin, French, and Italian, and well-versed in other languages.

His most productive years were spent at Columbia University, where he was a colleague of Jacques Barzun and Lionel Trilling. There, he took his talent for languages, combined it with a popularizing impulse, to buck the prevailing classical methods of the day—textual criticism and grammar—presenting classics, even in translation, as worthy of study as literary works in their own right.

This approach may be compared to the New Criticism school: even as the New Critics emphasized close reading, eschewing outside sources and cumbersome apparatus, Hadas, in presenting classical works in translation to an influx of post-war G.I. Bill students, brought forth an appreciation of his domain for those without the specialized training of classicists.

His popularizing impulse led him to embrace television as a tool for education, becoming a telelecturer and a pundit on broadcast television. He also recorded classical works on phonograph and tape.