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Joined: Nov 2008
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I imagine this topic has been discussed before, but as a newer member I would like to know what english translation is recommended for Eastern Catholics. I like the Orthodox Study Bible, and the Ignatius Press RSV.

Any thoughts would be welcome.

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There is a Greek Orthodox new testament available as a PDF. I grabbed it for use on my ebook reader.

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I was able to make a bookmarked version of the EOB New Testament PDF. (The version you can download from their site does not have bookmarks, which makes it harder to look up specific passages.) If anyone is interested in the bookmarked version, drop me a PM.

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Christ is in our midst!! He is and always will be!!

Some of the Eastern Catholic Churches use the 1970 version of the NAB. It's hard to come by since its revision has been the standard in the Latin Church for the last 23 years.

BOB

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To answer those who requested the bookmarked PDF file of the Eastern Orthodox New Testament version. It can be downloaded here [filesend.net]. Once at this page, look towards the bottom for a yellow download button.
Click on that and a dialogue box will begin for the download. The file is about 11 MB.

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Msgr. Ronald A. Knox's translation of the noble Latin Vulgate into beautiful, literary English is a twentieth century masterpiece. I use it routinely in Lectio Divina when not using original language texts. Its liturgical use is, however, problematic: Knox's text is a translation of a translation (St. Jerome's) of the Hebrew Old Testament. The Churches of the Byzantine Tradition privelege the Septuagint not the Hebrew even as the Churches of Syriac Tradition use the Peshitta. The ancient Armenian and Ethiopic Churches each have their own priveleged base-texts that differ markedly from both the Greek and the Syriac not to mention, again, the Hebrew. Accordingly I wouldn't use Msgr. Knox's translation in the Liturgies of the Eastern Churches. There is a fresh translation of the Septuagint available but its (small) deficiencies may be off-putting to some. There is no real translation of the Peshitta into English nor of the Armenian or Ge'ez versions. The RSV Ecumenical Bible comes slightly closer to the ideal by including a fuller canon, but it also translates from the Hebrew. The Old Jerusalem Bible was criticized for adopting 'Septuagint readings' where these differed from the Hebrew. That's a point in their favor from our point of view, but the recurrence of 'Yahweh' is an obstacle, to be sure.
Now whenever the NT quotes the OT it invariably follows the LXX so even in the NT we face the problem, though here I find the earlier Jerusalem Bible fine.
I do hope these personal (not professional) observations will prove helpful.

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I prefer the New King James Version, because it has a very accurate rendering of the Greek. It is also the version that will be read in many Orthodox Churches in North America. The New Testament of the NKJV is the basis for the New Testament in the Orthodox Study Bible.

The Orthodox Study Bible is being used by more and more Eastern Catholics in their personal study. It is an accurate translation of the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. This is important because it is from the Septuagint that the first Christians read, used, and quoted from.

Catholics and Protestants use the Hebrew Scriptures as the basis for the Old Testament. It was in the fifth century that Jerome translated the Bible into Latin, called the Vulgate version. Jerome used the Hebrew text as the source text for the Old Testament, and Catholics and Protestants have used it since. So the New American Bible, (NEW) Jerusalem Bible, and Catholic (N)RSV all use the Hebrew as the source text for the Old Testament.

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If you're looking for a full-blown Elizabethan English Orthodox New Testament, the "Orthodox New Testament", produced by the Old Calendarist Holy Apostles convent, might very well come closest. It is essentially a "corrected" KJV, with some Orthodox translation preferences and oriented towards the 1905 Ecumenical Patriarch New Testament text. Some Greek theological terms (hypostasis) were left untranslated. Extensive patristic notes (less so in the Epistles) and black and white iconography. It's certainly unusual and different as Orthodox bibles go.

http://orthodoxbookstore.ecrater.com/category.php?cid=434172

You'll be hard pressed to find a full-blown modern translation of the Septuagint. The Orthodox Study Bible version is a revision of the NKJV in the direction of the LXX but is not without its critics (eg. Peter Papoutsis, R. Grant Jones). There is a scholarly non-Orthodox NETS translation and it may be another 2 years before the Eastern Orthodox Bible (EOB) will complete the Old Testament.


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