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The Orthodox Study Bible, Hardcover: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today's World

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The FIRST EVER Orthodox Study Bible presents the Bible of the early church and the church of the early Bible. I have mixed feelings about this Bible, which deeply saddens me. I really wanted to like this Bible. But like others I have spoken to, they too are a bit disappointed with this Bible. The Orthodox Study Bible started out as the New Testament and Psalms, and with massive funding they started a project to publish the Old Testament with the New Testament. So it is nice to have the full Bible in one volume, especially when so many people publish just the New Testament for the price of a full Bible. What authority then does the Septuagint possess? After all, the Jewish people who made it abandoned it quite early. The Dead Sea Scrolls, which were found in 1947 in a cave in Qumran on the west bank of the river Jordan, date from just before or during the time of our Lord Jesus Christ. They provide indisputable evidence that at the turn of the era, before the birth of Christianity, the texts of at least some books of the Hebrew Bible were circulating in more than one form. Many of the scriptural texts found in the Scrolls are very similar to the text of the Septuagint that we have today. From the first century AD Christians and Jews both used the Greek Bible, but they understood it differently, and as a result tension arose, and much polemical disagreement. The use made of the Septuagint by Christians was the primary reason that Judaism abandoned the Septuagint to the Church and produced new Greek translations of the then Hebrew text. In the second century A.D. the Septuagint began to be supplanted among the Jewish people by the successive recensions of the scholars Aquila, Theodotion and Symmachus, all of which were designed to assimilate the Greek text more closely than the older Septuagint to the then-current Hebrew. Only fragments of these three versions survive. Of them, Aquila’s version seems to have been so extremely literal that it could hardly have been understood without a very good knowledge of Hebrew. It remained in use in the synagogue until the sixth century A.D. Insightful commentary drawn from the Christian writers and teachers of the first ten centuries after Christ

Prof. Dr. Jennifer Mary Dines. The Septuagint. Ed. Michael Anthony Knibb. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2004. 196 pp. ISBN 9780567084644 Full color Maps provide a visual representation of meanings, themes, teachings, people, and places of Scripture Supple Leathersoft material that gives the appearance of a genuine leather look and feel and has the longevity needed for daily Bible engagement Who wrote the Bible and when? Why are certain books in the Bible and not others? Who decided what would be in the Bible? In this special 16-part series, Dr. Jeannie details the interesting answers to these questions and more... But this Bible is not just for Orthodox Christians. Countless others will find the Orthodox Study Bible an invaluable roadmap for their spiritual journey. Those exploring Christianity for the first time and those Christians waiting to discover their own spiritual roots will see this Bible as a source of inspiration and challenge.The Orthodox Study Bible, Ancient Faith Edition, Leathersoft: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today’s WorldUnique features (in addition to those of previous edition of the Complete Orthodox Study Bible, Old and New Testament): Kevin Mayhew Publishers has printed the translation by Peter King, SJ, in four volumes ( The Pentateuch 2010, The Historical Books 2012, The Wisdom Literature 2008, and The Prophets 2013), which are now available (along with King's translation of the New Testament) as The Bible. King's work, however, is difficult to obtain in the US. I've been using this study Bible as a Protestant to learn more about Orthodoxy and the Church Fathers. Very insightful in that regard, and I absolutely adore the iconography included--one of the main components that drew me to this one. In addition, readers will find sections included, based upon rabbinical traditions used in the making of the Septuagint, such as Psalm 151 and Job 42:18-22, that are not in other translations. The addition in Job actually does seem to flesh out the book better in my opinion to a more complete ending. That said, it was a rewarding experience. I’d read most of the Bible before, but never all of it in one shot. This reading has reaffirmed my love for the Old Testament in particular. Those pseudo-Marcionite Christians (and there are sadly many of them) who ignore the Old Testament, thinking it has somehow been made irrelevant by the New, are frankly practicing a faith with little substance. The Old Testament is the content of our faith; the New Testament—the firstfruits of Scripture—is the spiritual light by which that content is illuminated. The New Testament is entirely submerged in the symbolic economy of the Hebrew Scriptures; and we ought to be as well. Plus, the Old Testament is a fantastic read in its own right: patriarchs, prophets, priests, kings, warriors, mystics, poets, court historians; tales of alluring darkness, mystery, sensuality, and violence; cosmogony, national epic, prophetic lament, and sage advice. It is a literary treasure-house, a gift for the entire human race.

It was commissioned at the behest of the Egyptian King, Ptolemy, who wished to expand the celebrated library of Alexandria to include the wisdom of all the ancient religions of the world. Because Greek was the language of Alexandria, the Scriptures therefore had to be translated into that language.The medieval Hebrew text became the basis of virtually all vernacular Old Testament translation, especially in English, even though it distorted the relationship between the Old Testament and the New. Before his death in 1536, William Tyndale had translated about half of the Old Testament directly from the Hebrew Masoretic text rather than the Septuagint Greek or the Vulgate Latin of Christendom. In 1535 Miles Coverdale produced the first complete English Bible, also from the Hebrew. The books that did not form part of the Hebrew Bible were not at first excluded by the English Reformers from the canon, but they were placed together at the end of the Old Testament as the so-called Apocrypha. Finally they were dropped altogether, as one can see by inspecting many modern English Bibles that emanate from various Protestant sources. This development was unfortunate: it gravely weakened the early Church’s attitude of Vetus Testamentum in Novo Receptum, and led to the present anomaly of modern biblical criticism conducted outside of the Church. Holy Scripture cannot be independent of the Church that canonizes it and says what it is, and Orthodox Christians should read and study Scripture according to the mind and understanding of the Church. But if there is not very clear correspondence between the text of the Old Testament and those New Testament quotations from it made by our Saviour Himself, St Paul, the Evangelists and Apostles, the vital salvific link between the Old Testament and the New is fundamentally obscured. The work has received positive endorsements from such prominent bishops as Metropolitan Maximos of Pittsburgh ( Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America), Metropolitan Phillip (Antiochian Orthodox Church) and Metropolitan Theodosius ( Orthodox Church in America). [1]

The earliest writer who gives an account of the Septuagint version is Aristobulus, a Jewish author who lived at the commencement of the second century B.C. In his Letter of Aristeas, he explains that the version of "the Law into Greek" was completed under the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, and that Demetrius Phalerus had been employed about it. Since it is documented that Demetrius Phalerus died at the beginning of the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, it has been reasonably inferred that Aristobulus was a witness that the work of translation had been commenced under Ptolemy Soter.

The fact that this has in fact happened should make clear to the Orthodox or those who are simply studying Orthodoxy why it is most unsatisfactory to use Old Testament translations made from the Hebrew. Orthodox should know and use the Septuagint version of the Old Testament in the original Greek or in translation. The Orthodox Church formularies and services are the most theologically complex and profound of all Christian church services, and they are a virtual mosaic of scripture quotation from the Septuagint or of the Church Fathers paraphrasing and commenting on Septuagint texts. For an example of this, consider the very first line of the first Book of the Bible, Genesis. In the Hebrew Bible and the English translations made from it we have ‘In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth’. In the Septuagint it is ‘In the beginning God made the heaven and the earth’. The first clause of the Nicene Creed, following the Septuagint, has Maker of heaven and earth, not Creator. On the other hand, the Apostles’ Creed of the Roman Catholic Church, following St Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew, has Creatorem, Creator. In the next sentence of Genesis the Septuagint describes the earth at the moment of creation as ‘invisible and unformed’. The Septuagint’s word ‘ invisible’ is taken intothe next clause of the Nicene Creed, where we have ‘…and of all things visible and invisible’. In the Hebrew the passage reads ‘unformed and empty’. It is a truism that learning the Orthodox Faith comes very largely through attending its services. It is not learned through books. Orthodox say to the curious, ‘Come and see’, not ‘Come and read’. If one cannot recognise these scriptural quotations when they are encountered in the services, then one’s apprehension of the Orthodox faith is handicapped.

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