The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today's World Author: St. Athanasius Academy of Orthodox Theology | Language: English | ISBN:
0718003594 | Format: PDF
The Orthodox Study Bible: Ancient Christianity Speaks to Today's World Description
- Hardcover: 1856 pages
- Publisher: Thomas Nelson (June 17, 2008)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0718003594
- ISBN-13: 978-0718003593
- Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.6 inches
- Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
For purposes of full disclosure allow me to say, first of all, that I'm a practicing Catholic Christian of the Latin Rite who hopes to grant a unique perspective regarding the offerings of this particular Bible. I've been in possession of the leather-bound edition since I received it two months after my original pre-order. It's taken me a couple years, but I've really come to love it. As I mentioned in the title of this review, the Orthodox Study Bible has recently dethroned my trusty, old-RSV, New Oxford Annotated Bible as my study Bible of choice. I had little notion this would happen. I do have an extensive collection of Bibles in various translations that I use for comparative study; but probably like yourself, I also have a preferred Bible to go to by default for prayerful reading. Over the last two years, I just found myself picking up the OSB more and more and the NOAB less and less. Allow me to articulate exactly why:
The case for the Septuagint Old Testament:
The unique and most compelling reason to acquire the OSB: it is the only complete Bible in English to be published with the Greek OT right next to the NT. If you have one of those reference Bibles, I'm sure you've noticed that many of the OT quotes used in the NT mismatch when you actually look them up, sometimes to a great degree--this is because Jesus and the disciples apparently quoted from the Septuagint Greek, as opposed to other Hebrew sources, a vast majority of the time. This is so, because Greek was the common language of antiquity in the region and the Septuagint translation (which includes the apocryphal/deuterocanonical "hidden books" of the "second canon") was completed more than a century before Christ's birth.
When Protestant Christians in the United States think about Bible versions and study Bibles, we tend to think within a fairly set spectrum. Translations are more or less literal, and use texts supported by more or less of the evidence. But nearly all Bible translations we encounter have the same 66 books in the same order. Most of us know the Roman Catholic church recognizes ten or so additional books as a canonical Apocrypha.
Most of us, however, are far less familiar with the Scriptures recognized by the third major branch of Christianity, the Orthodox Church. In that light, Thomas Nelson and the scholars at St. Athanasius Academy have done the church a great service by preparing The Orthodox Study Bible. The Orthodox New Testament canon is identical to the Roman Catholic and Protestant New Testament canon; however, the Orthodox Old Testament has the books found in the Roman Catholic Apocrypha and several additional works (151st Psalm, 3 Maccabees, Epistle of Jeremiah, and a 1 and 2 Esdras with a separate Nehemiah). In The Orthodox Study Bible, these books are intermingled with the books Protestants accept as part of the canonical Old Testament.
Given my background, the textual basis of the work was of particular interest. Though several Protestant denominations still use the Traditional Text of the New Testament, unfortunately most Protestants and the Roman Catholic church use the Modern (Critical) Text.The Orthodox church is the only branch of Christianity that still advocates the Traditional Text. Since the scholars of the St.
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