Swordsman's Notes
Necassary to the student of the Bible
"This book presents the Septuagint (LXX) in parallel columns of Greek and an English translation. If you cannot read Greek, then the English translation is available for you to use. If you can read Greek, then the English is available to help clarify things when the torturous LXX Greek seems overwhelming.

The New Testament authors largely used the LXX whenever they quoted the Old Testament, and it sometimes differs from our Hebrew text. It seeded the theological language of the early church and the New Testament in a more fundamental way than even the King James Bible has for the English speaking theology of today.

To fully understand the New Testament, we must familiarize ourselves with the LXX. For example, the NT authors primarily used two words for the Church, "ecclesia" and "synagoge." These words were used almost exclusively in the OT for Israel. The NT authors' usage of these words can only mean that the Church and Israel are the same in their minds. I am an evangelical, but this fact challenges fundamentally some of the dominant teachings of our churches. Without the LXX, I would not have understood much NT doctrine. This includes far more than beliefs about the Church. Work through it and discover the others for yourself.

That said, this book suffers from some fatal flaws. First, it divides the Apocryphal books from the rest of the books, and it does so with the Apocryphal portions of accepted OT books. The early Church did not look at them this way. While the Apocryphal portions of Daniel do not exist in our modern Protestant Bibles, most of the early Church read them without any indication that they were different. The division is artificial and changes the reading for us and polluting our studies in the LXX.

It also does not document well where the text came from. If you are curious what manuscripts Brenton got his information from, you won't find it in the book. The textual apparatus is short and does not list many variant readings.

With those flaws, I almost gave it three stars, but the value of the LXX in general forces it to have no less than four stars. If you are serious about learning the Bible, then you must study the LXX. It will enrich every area of study you embark on." (amazon.com customer review)