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The story of the 72 translators is also in b. Meg. (8b-9b), but rather differently:

Once again, it happened that King Talmai assembled seventy-two elders and had them live in seventy-two houses. He did not reveal to them the purpose for which he had assembled them. He went to see each of them and said to them: ›Write me the Torah of Moses, your teacher.‹ God gave insight into the heart of every individual, and they agreed in their judgment; each wrote him a Torah in which they changed thirteen passages.⁴²

These passages from the Torah are then listed where the Greek translation supposedly diverges from the original Hebrew text.⁴³

The extra-talmudic tractate Soferim 1.7⁴⁴ declares the day on which the LXX was completed to be as fateful a day for Israel as that of the Golden Calf:

It happened that five elders had written the Torah in Greek for King Talmai. This day was as consequential for Israel as the day when the Calf was made. For the Torah could not be translated adequately.

The LXX translation was therefore idolatrous.

A clear departure from the »classical« LXX legend is evident here. While »the 72« independently translated from Hebrew to Greek identically in their cells, in the rabbinic perception it was the 13 divergences on which the 72 translators agreed. In fact, there are countless deviations from the Hebrew in the LXX, in the Torah and in all the writings of the Hebrew Bible. Thus, for instance, the text of the book of Jeremiah in the LXX is one-eighth shorter than in the MT (although this short version was found in Hebrew at Qumran).⁴⁵ On the other hand, in Psalm 151 the LXX Psalter presents one psalm more than the MT Psalter. So, the rabbis’ list is actually a reminder that a translation can never adequately render what is written in the source language.