When God Spoke Greek Quotes

“The narrative of the virgin birth is told in Matthew and Luke, but the citation of Isaiah 7:14 in Matthew 1:23 contains the prophecy: “‘Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel,’ which means, ‘God is with us.’” The Greek word for virgin is parthenos, but the Hebrew word in Isaiah 7:14 is ‘almah, which has the meaning “young girl.” Christian tradition has read the verse as a prediction of the “virgin birth” of a Messiah, even though the translator’s choice of parthenos was just one of several acceptable translation equivalences for the Hebrew ‘almah. Whatever the Septuagint translator intended, there can be no doubt that Matthew wished to emphasize a miraculous birth of Jesus.”
― Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible

“The result of Alexander the Great’s victory over Darius in 330 BCE not only shifted the balance of power in the ancient world to the Macedonian general but also instigated a political and cultural transformation that has shaped the course of Western history down to the present day. Although the fall of Constantinople in 1453 brought an end to Greek cultural dominance in the Mediterranean world, the legacy of Greek thought never met the same end.9 As we shall come to see, it was this singular event in world history that led to the translation of the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, which paved the way for the creation and expansion of Christianity. For many centuries, the fortunes of the church would be tied intimately to those of Greek culture, and the direction of Western history would be closely related to that of the church.”
― Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible

“has been diminished in modern Christian thought. Some Definitions and Notes on Use It is important in a book like this to define some key concepts from the outset. I refer often to the scriptures, or scriptural text(s), which are authoritative texts in a religious community. Their appearance in individual scrolls and manuscripts”
― Timothy Michael Law, When God Spoke Greek: The Septuagint and the Making of the Christian Bible