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The Old Testament of the early church.

The Septuagint is the Greek Old Testament that Jesus quoted, the apostles built on, and the church read for centuries. Read it free, in Greek beside two public-domain English translations.

1,104 chapters · 53 books · open code, no paywall.
OpenLXX
Isaiah 7 ▾
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14 Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and he shall be called Emmanuel [God-with-us].

ἰδοὺ ἡ παρθένος ἐν γαστρὶ λήψεται, καὶ τέξεται υἱόν.

παρθένοςthis verse · across editions
Thomson 1808 “the virgin shall conceive” · Brenton 1851 “a virgin shall conceive in the womb”
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The case

For its first 300 years, the church read Greek.

The Septuagint was the Old Testament of Jesus, the apostles, and the early church. The Hebrew text most Bibles translate today, the medieval Masoretic Text, became the default far later. Here is the record, in four parts.

The case for making the Bible of Jesus and the apostles your first Old Testament.

Not because the Greek is more accurate than the Hebrew. That is a separate debate. Because it is the Bible the New Testament quotes and the church has always read.

See the difference

Same verse. Two texts.

Flip each passage between the medieval Hebrew tradition and the Septuagint. The Greek side is quoted from the editions in the reader.

Ready to read

Three public-domain editions.

Not mock-ups. The full corpus is transcribed, verified, and served as open data.

1808

Charles Thomson

The first English translation of the Septuagint, by the secretary of the Continental Congress. Transcribed and vision-verified page by page.

39 books22,840 versesEnglish
Read Thomson →
1851

Brenton English

Sir Lancelot Brenton’s translation, the standard English Septuagint for over a century, including the books the Hebrew canon lacks.

53 books28,616 versesEnglish
Read Brenton →
Greek

Brenton Greek text

The Greek text printed alongside Brenton’s translation, aligned verse by verse with the English for side-by-side reading.

53 books28,597 versesAncient Greek
Read with Greek →
Ω

Greek on demand

Read in English; show the Greek beside any verse when you want it.

Compare translations

Set Thomson, Brenton, and the Greek side by side, verse aligned.

Every verse, a permalink

Any verse has its own page, showing it in all three editions at once.

Start where the New Testament starts.

Open the reader and see the Greek beside two English translations. Free, every chapter, no sign-up.

Scripture as a commons.

The Greek text and its historic translations are public domain. The reader itself is built in the open: versioned, reviewable, free to reuse.

Texts & dataCC0 / public domain
Reader source codeMIT
Historic translationsPublic domain