Kevin Hart reviews Timothy Michael Law's book When God Spoke Greek, published by Oxford University Press. The Septuagint, the Greek version of the Old Testament, was not simply a translation but a revelation of God's word for the early Church. Law explains how this Greek Bible changed to become a Hebrew and Greek Bible.

The work preserves older versions of parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, some predating the settled Hebrew canon. The Latin word septuaginta means seventy, inherited from Josephus, who detailed its formation in Antiquities of the Jews. Law traces the legend of seventy-two translators from each tribe, commissioned by King Ptolemy II of Egypt to translate the Torah into Greek for the Library of Alexandria.

Modern scholarship suggests a single Jewish author wrote the Letter of Aristeas in the second century BCE to promote Jewish wisdom and Ptolemaic loyalty among diaspora Jews. The number was later trimmed to seventy, giving rise to the abbreviation LXX. The Septuagint was a work in progress for centuries, with prophetic and wisdom books translated during the second century BCE.

Law's account offers profound interest to readers of the Jewish and Christian Bibles, revealing the complex history behind the texts.