The Septuagint and the Defense of the Christian Bible: How the Ancient Greek Bible Emends the Biblical Text and Best Presents the Case That Jesus Was the Christ

The Book asserts that the Septuagint is essential to defend the validity of the Christian Bible. It is a work of apologetics much more than history. First, however, this book seeks to familiarize the reader – at a 30,000-feet level – concerning the Bible’s message, how and when it was written down, how it evolved during several significant stages of transition and translation (from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English), and what its key influencers were in the early life of the Church shaping the Bible we have today. And it seeks to shed light on how essential biblical truth has remained the same for 2,000+ years. The book emphasizes how the Septuagint provides a Greek translation of the most ancient Hebrew scripture based on a textual tradition hundreds of years older than what was used as the basis of the Masoretic Text. The book recaps the types of alterations made by the rabbis of the second century to obfuscate the fact that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. Essentially, the Messianic prophecies were corrupted in some cases and the chronology of the primeval timelines of the book of Genesis Chapters 5 and 11 was shortened by 1,500 years in an attempt to invalidate the claim of Christian evangelists that Jesus was the Christ. (It was believed that the Messiah would come 5,500 years after Adam - the Masoretic Text was altered to present a timeline of 4,000 years from Adam to the time of Christ.) Key topics include the contest between Alexandria and Antioch to articulate the core truths of Christianity, how the Old Testament was transmitted, how the New Testament mirrors nearly perfectly what the original authors wrote, why certain books were excluded from the canonized Bible, how Higher Criticism has harmed rather than helped our faith, Justin Martyr's witness to the authenticity of the Septuagint, and how we should defend the Bible by appealing the Septuagint when quoting Old Testament verses asserting messianic prophecy. The book is just short of 100,000 words. It provides an accessible version of the information detailed in the author's two books, Rebooting the Bible. This book is, in part, the second edition of the book, A Biography of the Christian Bible. Almost two dozen photos and charts were added along with 5,000 additional words to explain certain subjects better. Finally, the book is thoroughly edited with over 1,000 "tweaks" fixing grammatical errors, verb tenses, and punctuation, but mostly changing the prose of the book to employ the active voice rather than the passive to make for more enjoyable reading. It is impeccably formatted to be "easy on the eyes" when reading. The Table of Contents and an exhaustive index are gateways to the topics covered.