The Swerve: How the World Became Modern

by Stephen Greenblatt

Fantastic efforts were made not only to amass vast numbers of books but also to acquire or establish definitive editions. Alexandrian scholars were famously obsessed with the pursuit of textual accuracy. How was it possible to strip away the corruptions that inevitably seeped into books copied and recopied, for the most part by slaves, for centuries? Generations of dedicated scholars developed elaborate techniques of comparative analysis and painstaking commentary in pursuit of the master texts. They pursued as well access to the knowledge that lay beyond the boundaries of the Greek-speaking world. It is for this reason that an Alexandrian ruler, Ptolomey Philadelphus, is said to have undertaken the expensive and ambitious project of commissioning some seventy scholars to translate the Hebrew Bible into Greek. The result—known as the Septuagint (after the Latin for “seventy”)—was for many early Christians their principal access to what they came to call the Old Testament.