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When God Spoke Greek

The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible

Timothy Michael Law author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press Inc

Published:15th Aug '13

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When God Spoke Greek cover

Most readers do not know about the Bible used almost universally by early Christians, or about how that Bible was birthed, how it grew to prominence, and how it differs from the one used as the basis for most modern translations. Although it was one of the most important events in the history of our civilization, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the third century BCE is an event almost unknown outside of academia. Timothy Michael Law offers the first book to make this topic accessible to a wider audience. Retrospectively, we can hardly imagine the history of Christian thought, and the history of Christianity itself, without the Old Testament. When the Emperor Constantine adopted the Christian faith, his fusion of the Church and the State ensured that the Christian worldview (which by this time had absorbed Jewish ideals that had come to them through the Greek translation) would leave an imprint on subsequent history. This book narrates in a fresh and exciting way the story of the Septuagint, the Greek Scriptures of the ancient Jewish Diaspora that became the first Christian Old Testament.

Law should be commended for complicating conservative and fundamentalist theologies of scripture vis-à-vis his discussion of the Septuagint ... Law has opened an important conversation about the relevance of the Septuagint today (especially for American Christianity) and wisely points to the past and the east for interlocutors. * James Covington, Journal of Religion *
It is a gripping tale, beautifully told, and should be of profound interest to any reader of the Jewish or Christian BibleTimothy Michael Law has written the first introduction to the LXX that can be read by people outside the guild. It is a remarkable book, full of fascinating detail that I cannot evoke in a short review, a book that tells a rich story that no reader of the Bible can afford to ignore. * Kevin Hart, Los Angeles Review of Books *
Law has opened an important conversation about the relevance of the Septuagint today (especially for American Christianity) and wisely points to the past and the east for interlocutors. * James Covington, Journal of Religion *

ISBN: 9780199781713

Dimensions: 160mm x 239mm x 18mm

Weight: 476g

240 pages