Timothy Michael Law’s When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible is scheduled to be released by Oxford University Press on July 19th and this blog will be the coordinating hub for a book blog tour. I am excited about this book. Law has described it as a “…narrative history of the Septuagint’s origins and influence in early Jewish but especially Christian history,” which means it “does not attempt to be another introductory textbook…but narrates the story in an original way.” Since the Greek Bible proved to be very influential for incipit Christianity this study should be attractive to readers of this blog.
Tentatively, this is the schedule for the tour, i.e., what chapters will be reviewed, by whom, and when:
BRIAN LePORT (Friday, July 19th)
Introducing the blog tour
JOEL WATTS (Sunday, July 21st, http://unsettledchristianity.com/)
1 Why this Book?
2 When the World Became Greek
ANDREW KING (Tuesday, July 23rd, http://blogofthetwelve.wordpress.com/)
3 Was There a Bible before the Bible?
4 The First Bible Translators
KRISTA DALTON (Thursday, July 25th, http://kristadalton.com/blog/)
5 Gog and his Not-so-Merry Grasshoppers
6 Bird Droppings, Stoned Elephants, and Exploding Dragons
ABRAM K-J (Saturday, July 27th, http://abramkj.com/)
7 E Pluribus Unum
8 The Septuagint behind the New Testament
JESSICA PARKS (Monday, July 29th, http://facingthejabberwock.wordpress.com/)
9 The Septuagint in the New Testament
10 The New Old Testament
AMANDA MacINNIS (Wednesday, July 31st, http://cheesewearingtheology.com/)
11 God’s Word for the Church
12 The Man of Steel and the Man who Worshipped the Sun
JAMES McGRATH (Friday, August 2nd, http://www.patheos.com/blogs/exploringourmatrix/)
13 The Man with the Burning Hand vs. the Man with the Honeyed Sword
14 A Postscript
the archives near Emmaus 
Preordered it several days ago.
Reblogged this on The Blog of the Twelve.
Good decision! You’ll have to follow along our tour and hold us accountable in our reviews.
Reblogged this on Facing The Jabberwock.
Nice format for this too, where different bloggers participate. Nicely done.
Reblogged this on Cosmos the in Lost and commented:
This is a significant new book about the Rabelaisian mess of scriptural history. One famous church historian endorses it (perhaps too enthusiastically?) with a joyous stab to the back of his opponents:
“Law overturns the assumptions of most Christians about their sacred scripture. He points out that the Greek text of the Septuagint was the early Church’s Bible, that it predates the Hebrew Scripture now commonly accepted, and that it presents plural traditions of ancient Hebrew biblical texts, many now lost to us. Fundamentalists will find these unpalatable truths; others will find that Law points to new delights in their reading of scripture.”
–Diarmaid N.J. MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church, Oxford University