When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible
Of Gods and Languages: On "When God Spoke Greek"
Kevin Hart reviews Timothy Michael Law's book on the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures that served as the early Church's Bible. Law shows how the Septuagint preserves older textual traditions and sometimes offers striking theological differences from the received Hebrew text, such as portraying God as a peacemaker rather than a warrior. The review explores how this Greek Bible shaped Christian thought and why its study remains vital.
The LXX allows Paul in his mature theology to develop his view that God's saving plan includes all human beings, not just the Jews.
- gampleman
This is clearly written from a western Christian view. It should be noted for completeness that the Eastern Orthodox Church still uses the Septuagint (in Greek speaking churches in the original, in others with suitable translations thereof; in English I like https://www.amazon.co.uk/Orthodox-Study-Bible-OE-Some-NKJV/d...).
I’d be curious to know if this difference in scriptural base also contributed to the great schism?
- abrenuntio
I would say LXX and Hebrew versions share a common theological vision. None of the examples mentioned in this article convince me otherwise.
Example: bringing the Law to the nations and bringing fear of the Lord to the nations refers to the exact same future, because fearing the Lord is a positive thing in Scripture. Israel itself was to be a spiritual sign of mankind fearing the Lord. And that future came to pass. God is bringing fear to the nations. Not the trembling fear for a dangerous oppressive army, but wholehearted conversion. By the time Messiah arrived, Jerusalem was already visited by eager "phoboumenoi": pagan "God-fearers" who had understood that the creator God of Israel was not like any of the pagan "gods".
An example of a translation truly deviating is for instance that made by Jehovah's Witnesses. An example: they translate ruach as "active force", not as a one-off choice because some human translator on some particular day in his own cultural context thought it just sounded better, but because JWs reject trinitarianism. You will not find a single actual Christian (or Jew!) accepting this as a (systematic) translation choice.
In fact, it's a testament to the divine inspiration of Scripture that Christians and Jews have never relied on an absolutely letter-for-letter standardized text to know the voice of their Shepherd.
- monideas
The Septuagint was only the Torah (five Books of Moses). It wasn’t until much later that Greek translations of the rest of the Hebrew Bible were done. These are often referred to as the Septuagint but that is not accurate, these later translations were not done by some official group of 70 Rabbis.
- Alien1Being
Depending on your religion, God speaks:
Sankrit,
Avestan ,
Classical Mandaic,
Hebrew,
the Arabic in the Hijazi dialect of 6th century Arabia,
Punjabi
or Ardhamagadhi.
- itchingsphynx
Note, this article is from 2013.
>We do well to remember that “scripture” and “canon” are different things, and of course we should never make the mistake of thinking that early Christians had Bibles like our own.
Reading any of this ancient text is like tourism.