Reading the Hebrew Bible…in Greek

In an interview for today’s On the Square , Collin Garbarino interviews Timothy Michael Law on his book,  When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible . They discuss whether or not it’s appropriate to refer to an “original text” of the Bible, the politics behind the move from the Septuagint to Hebrew texts, and the unique contributions to Christian theology the Septuagint has made:

The Septuagint, and not the Hebrew Bible, explicitly shaped some early Christian theology. For example, it was the Septuagint version of Isaiah, not the Hebrew Bible’s version, that shaped the most theologically profound book in the history of Christianity, Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. The primacy of the Septuagint continues after the first century, and one could not imagine the development of orthodoxy without it. None of this would be terribly significant if the Septuagint were merely a translation of the Hebrew; however, the Septuagint in many places contains a different message.

Read the rest here .

Of course, you haven’t experienced the Bible until you have read it in its original Klingon .