I am trying to get my head around this one. There was a festival. Gmirkin writes:In Mos. 2:25–40 Philo gives a summary of the traditional account of the origin of the Greek translation. His version is in basic agreement with the story of the translation given in the Letter of Aristeas. There are also important differences, however.3 Philo connects his story about the translation of the Laws of Moses into Greek with the annual celebration of this event on the island of Pharos. He then probably recounts the traditional aetiological story which was part of this festival. Thus, Philo is hardly in a direct way dependent upon the Letter of Aristeas, but both of these versions may draw on Alexandrian traditions about the translation. To Philo, therefore, the Septuagint translation has a theological and ideological importance. When it was translated under king Ptolemy II Philadelphus, that is, more than two centuries before the time of Philo – it was the event in history at which the Laws of Moses revealed their beauty to the Greek half of the world (Mos. 2:26-27). This universal aim is also expressed in Philo's description of the work of the translators on the island of Pharos:
... taking the sacred books, [they] stretched them out towards heaven with the hands that held them, asking of God that they might not fail in their purpose. And He assented to their prayers, to the end that the greater part, or even the whole, of the human race might be profited and led to a better life by continuing to observe such wise and truly admirable ordinances (Mos. 2:36).
In their worship and in their work as translators they were priests and prophets and went hand in hand with the purest of spirits, the spirit of Moses. Thus the Greek words used correspond literally.
But isn't this argument by assertion? I mean Philo makes clear the festival was a celebration of the translation of the text into Greek.Philo, The Life of Moses 2.41—42. The common scholarly conception of a unique new Alexandrian festival celebrating the Septuagint (cf. Thackeray, The Letter of Aristeas, xiv-xv; Meecham, The Oldest Version of the Bible, 156) is probably incorrect. The solemn festival, accompanied by prayers and hymns (The Life of Moses 2.42), was likely Pentecost, although not named as such by Philo. At The Life of Moses 2.29-43, Philo made various comparisons between the Septuagint translation and the giving of the law by Moses. The books of Moses, starting with the creation account in Genesis, are categorized as "law" (2.31, 34, 37); the translators were said to have been inspired as prophets "in the spirit of Moses" (2.40). Pentecost celebrated the giving of the law at Sinai, and Philo appears to intimate that the Alexandrian observation of Pentecost celebrated the Septuagint as a second giving of the law. The Letter of Aristeas 310-11 described the first reading of the Septuagint translation in phraseology reminiscent of Exod 24:3-10, suggesting that in ca. 150 BCE Pseudo-Aristeas (Aristobulus) was already aware of the Alexandrian association of the Septuagint with Pentecost. Not too much should be read into the location of the festival at a deserted beach on the island of Pharos (Philo, The Life of Moses 2.34, 41). The Jews of Alexandria are also seen gathering on an isolated beach to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles at Philo, Flaccus 116. Since the war at Alexandria in 47 BCE, Pharos stood largely abandoned (Strabo, Geography 17.1.6), and Jewish gatherings on its beaches at festival times probably only began after that date (and possibly only during the disturbances of 39 CE).
So either there was a festival or there wasn't a festival. If the festival existed then clearly it was a celebration of the translation of the text into Greek. If it was a celebration of the writing of the Pentateuch at Pharos one would presume that knowledge would have been fairly widespread that the text wasn't older than Alexander. Am I missing something here?And there is a very evident proof of this; for if Chaldaeans were to learn the Greek language, and if Greeks were to learn Chaldaean, and if each were to meet with those scriptures in both languages, namely, the Chaldaic and the translated version, they would admire and reverence them both as sisters, or rather as one and the same both in their facts and in their language; considering these translators not mere interpreters but hierophants and prophets to whom it had been granted it their honest and guileless minds to go along with the most pure spirit of Moses. (41) On which account, even to this very day, there is every year a solemn assembly held and a festival celebrated in the island of Pharos, to which not only the Jews but a great number of persons of other nations sail across, reverencing the place in which the first light of interpretation shone forth, and thanking God for that ancient piece of beneficence which was always young and fresh. (42) And after the prayers and the giving of thanks some of them pitched their tents on the shore, and some of them lay down without any tents in the open air on the sand of the shore, and feasted with their relations and friends, thinking the shore at that time a more beautiful abode than the furniture of the king's palace. (43) In this way those admirable, and incomparable, and most desirable laws were made known to all people, whether private individuals or kings, and this too at a period when the nation had not been prosperous for a long time. And it is generally the case that a cloud is thrown over the affairs of those who are not flourishing, so that but little is known of them; (44) and then, if they make any fresh start and begin to improve, how great is the increase of their renown and glory? I think that in that case every nation, abandoning all their own individual customs, and utterly disregarding their national laws, would change and come over to the honour of such a people only; for their laws shining in connection with, and simultaneously with, the prosperity of the nation, will obscure all others, just as the rising sun obscures the stars.
In order for Philo's testimony to be dismissed he has to be DELIBERATELY lying about the existence of the festival and/or the purpose of the festival as a celebration of the TRANSLATION of the text into Greek.