When God Spoke Greek

When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible by Timothy Michael Law, 171 pages

After Alexander the Great conquered the Persian empire, Hellenistic culture - including the Greek language - became the dominant culture from the Adriatic Sea to the Indus River.  In the centuries that followed, Jewish scholars, centered in Alexandria and traditionally seventy-two in number, translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.  This translation (or rather series of translations), called the Septuagint, became the authoritative scriptures for Diaspora scholars such as Philo, and would become the accepted Old Testament for the New Testament authors and the early Church.

When God Spoke Greek serves as a general introduction to a version of the Bible that is not well known in the West.  Indeed, it would be better to speak of versions, since as Law makes clear, there was no one single "Septuagint", but multiple translations and revisions, leading up to the Hexapla of Origen in the third century.  The ancient Greek texts hold keys to ancient versions of the Hebrew Scriptures which differ from the medieval Masoretic text generally accepted as the standard.  Some of the differences in these translations proved vital for the development of early Christian theology, not least of all in the writings of St Paul.  Finally, Law demonstrates how, even after the divergences between the Septuagint and the rabbinically approved Hebrew texts became known, many early Christians continued to accept the Septuagint as inspired, and others did not see a problem with accepting both the Greek and Hebrew versions of the same books.

A solid introduction to a vital but little-known chapter in the history of both Judaism and Christianity.