When God Spoke Greek

The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible

By: Timothy Michael Law

Narrated by: Stephen McLaughlin

How did the New Testament writers and the earliest Christians come to adopt the Jewish scriptures as their first Old Testament? And why are our modern Bibles related more to the Rabbinic Hebrew Bible than to the Greek Bible of the early Church? The Septuagint, the name given to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures between the third century BC and the second century AD, played a central role in the Bible's history. Many of the Hebrew scriptures were still evolving when they were translated into Greek, and these Greek translations, along with several new Greek writings, became Holy Scripture in the early Church.

Yet gradually the Septuagint lost its place at the heart of Western Christianity. At the end of the fourth century, one of antiquity's brightest minds rejected the Septuagint in favor of the Bible of the rabbis. After Jerome, the Septuagint never regained the position it once had.

Timothy Michael Law recounts the story of the Septuagint's origins, its relationship to the Hebrew Bible, and the adoption and abandonment of the first Christian Old Testament.

Download the accompanying reference guide.©2013 Oxford University Press (P)2014 Audible Inc.

Wonderfully written and read!!!

I can't recommend this intro to the early churches use and view of the LXX enough! Wonderful!!!

Superior!

Exceeded my expectations on Septuagint history, theology, ancestry and more. I now own it in paperback, ebook and audiobook formats for future reference and listening.

Engaging and well-needed but some cautions

Tim Law has done a wonderful job in bringing an otherwise neglected issue to the forefront of biblical and theological studies. LXX has long been deemed a stepchild when it was the progenitor for the writers of the NT text. Yet, there are 2 cautions:
- the emphasis on the diversity of the OT text seems to be stretched beyond allowable evidence. True, the LXX is an authoritative text but that does not imply that the OT text was completely in a state of flux.
- the downplaying of the value of seeking after one authorial and authoritative text is also unnecessary and does not follow from the evidence presented.
Nonetheless, the book is excellent and educational.

awesome review. every Christian should read

as above. every Western Christian needs to understand the Septuagint's rightful place in the can on and scripture itself

A Word of Caution

The author has an extremely low view of scripture. He argues largely that there is no point in seeking original documents or truth because the bible is all just re-worked, made-up tradition anyway. And then has the nerve to cynically "advise" the church to embrace the Septuagint out of the enertia of tradition and the calculations of utility. This book may have some limited use for scholars of arcanum and antiquities, who are more interested in Greek or historical intrigue than in the bible itself. If you are looking to grow in your understanding of God's word, I'd skip this one.