The Septuagint: the Torah in Greek
King Ptolemy shuts seventy-two elders in separate rooms and demands a translation of the Torah — and all seventy-two versions come out identical.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus, ruler of Egypt and builder of the Library of Alexandria, wanted the Jews' book in Greek. According to the Talmud he summoned seventy-two elders, placed each in a separate house, and without explanation ordered each: 'Write out for me the Torah of your teacher Moses.'
The plan was transparent — compare the versions and find the discrepancies. Instead, the Talmud says, God placed the same understanding in each of their hearts, and all seventy-two wrote identically, including some fifteen passages where they identically departed from the literal wording to prevent dangerous misreading. For 'In the beginning God created' they wrote 'God created in the beginning,' lest the king conclude that a being called 'Beginning' created God. For 'Let us make man in our image' they wrote 'I shall make man,' to avoid the suggestion of many gods. The hare, whose Greek name matched that of Ptolemy's wife, they rendered by a description, so the king would not take it as mockery.
Tradition's attitude is double. On one side, an evident miracle. On the other, the sages established a fast on the 8th of Tevet, saying that when the Torah was written in Greek 'darkness came into the world for three days.'