Sunday, October 12, 2008

THE ORTHODOX STUDY BIBLE is profiled in the Vicksburg Post
... But most Bibles published today include an Old Testament based on a translation made many years after the Crucifixion, not the version Jesus and the apostles used, said the Rev. Dr. John Morris, historian and pastor of Vicksburg’s St. George Antiochian Orthodox Christian Church.

“The early Christian church used the Greek version of the Scriptures,” Morris said in an interview in his study at St. George. “This Greek version was called the Septuagint, for the Greek word for ‘70,’ the number of scholars Ptolemy hired about 200 or 300 B.C. to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek.”

As members of St. George complete preparations for their annual Lebanese dinner, Morris reflected on his role in this year’s publication of the first-ever complete Orthodox Study Bible, which includes a Septuagint-based Old Testament with Deuterocanonical or Apocryphyal books, a New King James translation of the New Testament, and many study notes, articles, maps and reference material. Published in February after years in development, the study Bible is both a spiritual and historical reference work, Morris said, designed for the layman to read and use.
Like the NETS, this includes a translation of the Septuagint. But it seems more of a devotional project than the strictly scholarly NETS.

Background to both translations here.