Now for witness number 7, Flavius Josephus,
who lived from 37 to about 100 AD, over 300 years after
the supposed Septuagint was made.
In 37 AD he was born Joseph ben Matthias,
son of a Levite priest.
He was well educated and respected
among the Jewish people.
He bounced around from hermit's disciple to Pharisee
to negotiator before Nero to free some priests.
Then in 66 AD he objected to the Jewish rebellion against Rome.
But then he joined the resistance, raised an army,
fortified cities, until the next year, 67,
where he retreated and then surrendered.
Though he was imprisoned, he became friends
with Commander Vespasian, who two years later in 69 AD
became emperor.
Then Josephus served under Vespasian's son Titus,
urging his fellow Jews to submit and surrender to Rome.
They didn't.
In 70 AD Jerusalem was destroyed.
But Titus liked Josephus and took him back to Rome.
In 79 AD Titus became the next emperor.
Josephus became his client, and got great pay,
became a citizen and adopted the emperor's family name, Flavius.
He was set for life.
Now as Flavius Josephus, he began writing history books,
in a manner pleasing to the Romans.
What seems most likely is that Josephus got a lot of information
from other people's books, and even remembered stories
that he was told, and then put them all together
in a history of Biblical times and the Jewish people.
You can see how Josephus used other people's stories
in his version of the Letter of Aristeas.
You can find it in his book, Antiquity of the Jews,
Book 12, Chapter 2.
Josephus literally took the Letter of Aristeas
and paraphrased 100 of the 322 sections.
Yes, I counted.
Where Aristeas said, I, Josephus put, He.
He removed the sections where Aristeas talks to his brother,
the list of translators, descriptions of Jerusalem,
and the philosophical questions that the king asked.
He didn't say anything, though, that disagreed with Aristeas at all.
In fact, in 12.2.12, Josephus said you can check
the Book of Aristeas for more information.
Everything Josephus says matches the Letter of Aristeas,
as we have it.
Josephus doesn't get us anything new at all.
The only thing he does show is that by 93 AD,
the Letter of Aristeas was already written
and circulating in Rome.
I'll deal with the rest when I go over the Letter of Aristeas.
So witness number 7 is excused.
That's the end of the Hellenistic Greek Jewish writings.
And there is still no real evidence to consider.
No one has proven the existence of a BC Septuagint.
So now for the so-called Christian witnesses.
Witness number 8, Justin Martyr, AD 100-165,
over 400 years after the supposed Septuagint was made,
he wrote in his first Apology, chapter 31,
a story that has so many important, changed details,
you have to hear it yourself.
"...there were then among the Jews certain men
who were prophets of God, through whom the prophetic spirit
published beforehand things that were to come to pass,
ere they ever happened.
Now when Ptolemy, king of the Egyptians,
was forming a library and endeavored to make a collection
of all men's writings, he heard tell among the rest
of these prophecies, and sent to Herod,
who was then king of the Jews, with a request that the books
of the prophecies might be transmitted to him.
And king Herod sent them, written in their native Hebrew tongue
of which I have spoken.
But since the Egyptians were unacquainted
with the things written therein, he sent yet again,
and requested him, Herod, to dispatch men
to render them into the Greek language.
This was done, and the books remained with the Egyptians
and are there to this day."
This one took me by surprise.
Justin is a saint to the Roman Catholics.
But this was a big mistake, or a bald-faced lie.
First, Justin wasn't referring to Ptolemy II Philadelphus.
The only one alive during the reign of King Herod
was Ptolemy XV, Caesarean, son of Julius Caesar
and Cleopatra VII.
And how could Justin talk about Caesarean as king?
He was king in name only.
Cleopatra ruled as queen.
Caesarean was only 10 to 17 years old
during Herod's reign, which began in 37 BC.
And Caesarean and Cleopatra both died in 30 BC.
They had only those 7 years in common with Herod
to arrange for the Septuagint to be translated,
if the story were true.
Besides, the Library of Alexandria had been around
since the late 200s BC, started by Ptolemy I, Soter.
No way was Caesarean just forming a library.
So now Justin said that it was the prophecies,
not the law, that Ptolemy wanted translated.
Justin rewrote the story to fit his argument
about Hebrew prophecies, it seems.
There's nothing accurate about it.
But let's give Justin the benefit of the doubt.
What if it was a case of mistaken identity?
You see, in 36 BC, Cleopatra had a son
with Mark Antony, her third child with him.
Do you know what she named him?
Ptolemy Philadelphus.
Ha ha, like him?
But Egypt was taken over by Rome before he turned 6.
You don't suppose Justin Martyr thought that
Cleopatra's baby was the Ptolemy Philadelphus
of the Septuagint story, do you?
If so, he really got his wires crossed.
I was taught that Justin Martyr was a reliable Christian witness.
But now I am stuck with three possibilities.
Either he got his history book from the bargain bin,
or he completely changed the story to suit his apologetic lesson,
or he mistook a baby in 36 BC with the second Ptolemy in 276 BC.
Regardless, he didn't verify the facts.
His account is completely unhelpful.
His testimony is, to say the least, not reliable.
Witness number 8 is excused.
That was the real Justin.
But there is also a fake one.
Witness number 9, pseudo-Justin.
We have no idea who wrote in Justin's name,
or exactly when.
Obviously it was sometime during or after Justin's life,
so at least 400 years after the Septuagint was supposedly written.
Let me just sum up the story from pseudo-Justin's writing,
Exhortation to the Greeks, Part 13.
First, in this story Ptolemy asked for 70 wise men, not 72.
Second, he had the Hebrew translators stay on the island
where the Pharos lighthouse was built.
But the Pharos wasn't finished until years into Philadelphia's reign,
or after he died, around 247 BC.
Third, this fake Justin then claimed,
These things which we declare unto you, men of Greece,
are no myths nor fictitious history.
We ourselves have been in Alexandria, and have seen the traces,
still preserved, of the cells on the island of Pharos,
and have heard this story which we tell you from its inhabitants,
who have had it handed down as a tradition of their country.
You may learn it from others also, and chiefly from those
wise and distinguished men who have written of it,
Philo and Josephus.
But there are many others besides."
Philo and Josephus both were wrong.
Calling them wise and distinguished doesn't make their story
any more accurate.
We declare unto you?
Who's we?
We don't even know who wrote this.
The author lied about his name, saying he was Justin.
How can we believe anything else he wrote?
So witness number 9 is excused.
Witness number 10 is the famous, often quoted,
Irenaeus.
He wrote from 180 to 202 AD, over 450 years
after the Septuagint was supposedly created.
He declared that he learned from people who learned from John
and the other apostles.
But no other early church people mentioned Irenaeus
in their writings.
So we'd have to trust him, without any evidence.
But he claimed that all the apostles said that Jesus
was 40 to 50 years old when He was crucified.
Jesus was really about 34.
You can see this from the dates of the rulers in Luke,
the Passovers and the age of the temple in John,
and other early church events that show this clearly.
Irenaeus is deceived or deceiving.
Irenaeus is also credited as the first person to justify
infant baptism.
If that is true, Irenaeus might have triggered people
into removing Acts 8.37, that says you may be baptized
if you first believe in Christ with all your heart.
And of course a baby can't do that.
So either change the doctrine, or remove the scripture.
And you know which they did.
It's possible that someone he talked to
might have heard John in an Ephesus church service
before he died.
But again, there is no evidence from any source
that Irenaeus got any of his information from them,
or who they would be.
It's hard to believe that anyone who paid attention
to the apostles would say such inaccurate things
as Irenaeus claimed.
And there is no way to check up on anything
Irenaeus claims he heard.
I don't see any compelling reason to believe what he wrote.
Let's face it, I don't trust the guy.
This Septuagint legend is found in his Against Heresies
311.2, sections 3-4.
He stated that it was the first Ptolemy, Ptolemy I Soter,
the one who ordered the Alexandrian Library built,
and not Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who arranged for the Hebrew
and Greek language and culture-knowing Hebrews
to come to Alexandria.
He's the only guy in history to move the story back so far,
from the son Ptolemy II to the dad Ptolemy I.
Irenaeus comes across as an unreliable historian at best,
and a liar at worst.
Witness number 10 is excused.
Witness number 11 is Clement of Alexandria,
who lived from 150 AD to about 215 AD,
close to 500 years after the Septuagint
was supposedly made.
He was an instructor of the school of Alexandria
before Origen.
He's the guy I told you about in the vlog Origenal Sin,
who wrote that it was okay to lie to people
if he didn't feel they were worthy of his secrets.
His story from Stromatis I, sections 148-149,
just blended the stories from Pseudo, Fake, Aristobulus,
and the unreliable Irenaeus.
Then he added a few other doozies.
First, he added that Ptolemy I or II asked the Hebrews
to translate
"...the scriptures both of the law and of the prophets."
That's Justin Martyr's story, blended in.
Second, he doesn't ever mention again
a part about translating the law.
Clement wrote that each of the 70 elders, not 72,
translated each prophecy and added the story
that they were written in the form of,
get this, Greek prophecies.
Third, he lied and claimed that the scriptures
totally perished during the Babylonian captivity of Judah,
probably between 586-536 BC.
Then he made up the second lie that Esdras, Ezra,
"...was inspired to revive and prophesy afresh
all the ancient scriptures, literally from nothing."
No way.
Clement's lie would mean that God's words perished
and that He broke His own promise to preserve His words.
I am amazed that Clement said this.
Do you see why I don't trust these guys?
The more you look, the more these
proto-Catholic guys stink.
We can trust the preserved words of God.
They never perished.
In witness number 11, Clement of Alexandria
has proved himself to be a liar.
He should have been locked up, not just excused.
That's not a mistake.
That's full-out perjury.
Witness number 12 is Tertullian, from about 155 to about 240 AD,
again almost 500 years after the Septuagint
was supposedly written.
He wrote his version in his Apology Part 18.
Let's talk about what stands out in his testimony.
First, he said that Philadelphia sent
Demetrius of Philarum as the superintendent
over the Library of Alexandria.
He said that Demetrius was
"...the most eminent philologist of his time,"
a guy who studied ancient books and determined
if they were authentic.
It would be hard to say that Philadelphus put such trust
in Demetrius of Philarum, to send him over his library.
Demetrius, it turns out, voted against Philadelphus,
to make his brother Ptolemy Caraunos
to be ruler instead of Philadelphus.
So when Philadelphus finally took the throne,
he got his revenge, by exiling Demetrius to upper Egypt.
And shortly after 283 BC, Demetrius died of a snake bite,
right at the beginning of Philadelphus' reign.
There is no way that Demetrius of Philarum
was a friend of Philadelphus.
Second, he said that the 72 translators
were held in high esteem by the philosopher Menedemus,
after they answered all the king's questions.
But Menedemus lived far away in Greece, in Eritrea,
and was never said to have visited Alexandria, Egypt.
But it is very likely that his writings
were in the library at Alexandria, for whoever made up this stuff.
And third, he claimed that the libraries of Ptolemy
are still shown in the Serapeum, a branch library
in the Temple of Serapis.
That's all that's left today, with the actual Hebrew documents
that were used by the translators.
We can't verify that, since the entire Alexandrian library,
including the Serapeum, were destroyed in 391 AD.
So two out of the three we know are wrong for sure.
That makes Tertullian's testimony unreliable.
So witness number 12, Tertullian, is excused.
Witness number 13 is a Catholic saint named Anatolius of Laodicea,
who lived from the early 200s to 283 AD,
over 500 years after the Septuagint was supposedly made.
He grew up in Alexandria, Egypt, in the time of Origen,
ran an Aristotelian school, and wrote 10 books on mathematics.
Only fragments of them survive today.
He wrote in Canons Concerning the Passover,
the Pascal Canon, and was quoted by Eusebius
in Ecclesiastical History 732.
It's so short, I can read through the whole quote.
The famous Aristobulus, who is enrolled among the 70,
who translated the holy and divine scriptures of the Hebrews
for Ptolemy Philadelphus and his father,
he also addressed to those same kings books in which
he expounded the meaning of the Mosaic Law.
There are two things clearly wrong here.
First, the famous Aristobulus is really pseudo-Aristobulus.
It's a fake letter, as you saw.
Second, no account anywhere claimed Aristobulus
was enrolled among the 70 translators.
Even the fake story about a guy who was telling about an event
that happened over 100 years earlier.
Just because you're smart in math, geometry, physics,
astronomy, rhetoric and dialectic, like Anatolia's,
doesn't mean you're good at history.
Witness number 13 is excused.