There is a project underway called “The First Bible of the Church.” It’s not a “study,” Bible. It is rather, a completely fresh translation using the Septuagint for the OT. Many portions of it are already done and published through St Ignatius Orthodox Press. They even have a Lectionary Bible. A full Bible is still a couple years out from publication though.

Thanks for giving a shout out to R. Grant Jones. He is both a scholar and a man with a gentle spirit.

NewRome Press stated quite a while back that they were going to make a Bible using the EOB New Testament and a Fresh translation of the Brenton Septuagint. I have yet to see any work actually done on that great endeavor but boy oh boy would I acquire one pronto if/when it does come to fruition. God bless

The weird thing is that the Orthodox Study Bible will often make almost arbitrary changes to the NKJV's Old Testament in a supposed effort to make it align slightly closer to the LXX. For instance, Genesis 1.2 retains the traditional words "without form, and void" in the NKJV, but it is altered to "invisible and unfinished" in the OSB (cf. Brenton "unsightly and unfurnished"). Such a minute change feels hardly worth the effort. But then it will leave out well-established LXX readings in places, as you noted. It's such an odd product, and I wish they had simply chosen to follow the RSV's lead by using a translation of the Masoretic Hebrew as a base text and supplementing it with the well-supported Greek readings where needed.

Very interesting video. I never knew that about the Rsv. The only translations I used has been the Douy-Rhiems and the KJV. What’s your thoughts on orthodox using the douy-Rhiems for home reading? Is the Rsv and KJV better because they use the Byzantine texts?

Orthodox New Testament Vol 1 & 2 are the best English translations for the New Testament out right now. Give those a purchase.

Yeah, the OSB is a mess. Sometimes it seems they change half a verse and fail to correct the other half to the LXX. The notes seem like they're aimed at new Evangelical converts, and it seems to be more corporate than ecclesiastical. My priest cannot stand it. New Rome Press is putting together a volume with the LES and EOB, and I think Ignatius Orthodox Press is doing something similar with the LXX2012 (they've already got a lot of it out for their lectionary Bible). Another good option, similar to the RSV, would be the WEB. It's an internet translation that follows a Byzantine Text in the NT (though the ecclesiastical text is more like the TR), but it follows the MT in the OT. It has all the books, unless you're Syriac. Using the MT isn't that great an issue given that the NT quotes from contrasting texts and even uses the Targums as Scripture. The NT seems to prefer something more like the MT in the minor prophets but the LXX overall.

Here's a thought: I believe the OT volumes of the 29-volume Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture (ACCS) series, which uses the RSV, generally contain footnotes for the major LXX readings. So, theoretically, if one were to create an "LXX OT" using the RSV, that would probably be a good starting point. The verse-by-verse quotations from the Fathers in those volumes would also be a decent basis for the notes in such an Orthodox RSV Bible. Add to the fact that many volumes in the Fathers of the Church (FOTC) and Ancient Christian Writers (ACW) translation series, and others, have come out since the ACCS was finished, so there is a wealth of English-translated Patristics that a new Bible could make use of, including full Patristic biblical commentaries on whole books.

There only needs to be one article in a bible. It should be one sentence that reads, 'If you have any questions, ask your priest.'

I've been looking for a one volume orthodox commentary. Sadly I can't find one

So which would you suggest we buy for now?

I am a catechumen from the Roman church, as a former Roman Catholic I had very detailed bible studies series. When I left and was an inquire I was excited to hear about the Orthodox study Bible and ordered and and was excited for it to arrive. But sadly disappointed in the commentary so little commentary and not much info, I do use it to read and glance at the commentaries, I did finally ordered the bible and the Holy father's for orthodox and it definitely was alot better than the Orthodox study Bible but yet this isn't really a bi le although I do enjoy it and it does have more writing on different topics, but I am still looking for something about more deeper. Hope there will be another more completed bible study in the bear future

I would love it if we first established a Byzantine Majority Septuagint, much like the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Majority New Testament. The main form bulk would be established based on the majority witness of Byzantine Old Testament manuscripts. Then, where individual readings differ between the biblical manuscripts and the lectionaries (the Prophetologion and Menaion), priority can be given to the lectionary reading with the majority witness. (Again, this is priority of the variant readings themselves, not the overall form of the text, as lectionaries are by nature selected excerpts.) Thus, we would create a Byzantine Majority Septuagint with priority given to the text as it was received by the Church in her liturgy where the manuscript evidence differed. I find this far more preferable to settling for Rahlfs' Septuagint (as the Church of Greece has done) or waiting another hundred years for Göttingen _not_ to finish their eclectic Septuagint. We could then use this new Byzantine Majority Septuagint as the basis for a new Old Testament translation (or, far more economical, a revision of a public domain translation). I am in favor of revising the King James Version Old Testament w/Apocrphya, updating spelling and punctuation and adding paragraphing in the process. But I'm not opposed to a thorough revision and correction of the Revised Standard Version.

I was very pleased to hear your praise for the Ignatius Press Bible which is based on the RSV-CE version. Here in the UK the Catholic Bishops' Conference has, in its wisdom, chosen the ESV-CE for the new Lectionary commencing on first Sunday of Advent (1 December 2024). Unfortunately, that too is based on the NKJB. A very strange choice given the excellence of the RSV-2CE.

We need more apologetics in orthodoxy and theologians speaking on the air

Some of what you want out of a new OSB is the Ancient Faith study bible, which is based on the Ancient Christian commentary. To be honest, that's what I'd rather have. Although, I'd prefer a newer translation, such as the NRSV. I'd really like an interlinear using the Septuagent.

It seems to me that a decent New Testament would be Cleenwerck's Eastern Orthodox Bible. I like that it uses the Patriarchal Text with notes of variants from other manuscripts. As for the Old Testament, I think we should stick with the Septuagint. The Masoretic Text was put into its current form at the earliest in the 7th Century, and almost certainly is influenced by a need to minimize passages that prophesied Jesus. Perhaps if we had the Hebrew manuscripts that St. Jerome used for his translation of the Vulgate, that would be different, but since we do not, we should use the Septuagint because it was translated by Jewish scholars a century or two *before* Christ, and therefore cannot be accused of inserting prophecy post hoc. Note that even though the Russian Synodal Bible (N.B. "Synodal" because Tsar Peter had suppressed the Patriarchate in favor of "The Most Holy Synod" in imitation of the Lutherans) uses the Masoretic text, the official version of the Bible for the Russian Church is still, as I understand it, the "Elizabeth" Bible in Church Slavonic, the Old Testament of which *is* translated from the Septuagint. Inasmuch as the EOB does away with Jacobean 2nd person singular personal pronouns and the associated verb conjugations, perhaps the Lexham English Septuagint would be a good choice. NETS is a bit clunky and Brenton's might need some updating. Of course, someone could still make another translation, perhaps using the Rahlfs critical text as the base, but that is quite a bit of extra work if the Lexham version is already acceptable. I suppose some copyright stuff would need to be sorted out if one wants to combine the EOB and the Lexham translation into one unified codex. Regarding commentary, it seems to me that if we want notes from the Fathers of the Church, one question we need to answer is just how big, physically, do we want this study Bible to be? For commentary itself, a lot of work has already been done by Johanna Manley in The Bible and the Holy Fathers for Orthodox and Grace for Grace: The Psalter and the Holy Fathers. Both of these compilations are already quite voluminous, so perhaps it might just be better to leave commentary, other than notes of variant Greek texts, out. Manley's work is arranged using the lectionary and the Psalter, but perhaps one could re-arrange The Bible and the Holy Fathers to track the New Testament and expand the commentary with something like "The Prophets and the Holy Fathers," the "Torah and the Holy Fathers," &c.

Genesis 25:34 is completely missing from the Orthodox Study Bible.

Bro you get a A+ in penmanship.

Sad the ESV chose to update that passage back to the KJV version. I still like the ESV for being 92% the RSV but having more modern printings.

Hey, have you checked out the FBC project approved by the Rocor

5:37 why not tape or glue it??????

This is an interesting analysis, but where you failed to present an argument is why we should start over with the RSV instead of just fixing the already identified errors in the NKJV.

The EOB New Testament has excellent (i.e. scholarly) articles. The translation is nigh unreadable, but the _study notes_ - the study notes are great 👌 The OSB isn't much of a study bible. Maybe it's okay as a devotional bible 🤷‍♂

Shoutout to the “First Bible of the Church” Project.

Starting with the protestant nkjv is a bad product result.

I thought you guys had everything sorted out. After all you’ve had 2000 years.

Please a Septuagint in spanish for catholics to read it 😢

It's not even a Bible, it's just the New Testament. The Bible is comprised of the Old and New Testaments.

OSB gets the job done, but not particularly well.

You do woffle quite a lot

Nkjv😂

I don't like the Orthodox Bible..

Call upon the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be Saved! The King James Bible is Perfect! Get a King James Bible and believe. Read John.

I'm a Catholic and both you as an Orthodox and I as a Catholic believe that we are not receiving Christ along with bread and wine but that we are receiving Christ fully and substantially; ie, bread and wine no longer exist. The difference is that the Orthodox don't bother with exact formulas about how this comes about, it just is. And that is because, I believe, that during the Reformation, the Orthodox did not have to contend with the differing heretical views of the Holy Eucharist while all claiming the bible as their sole rule of faith (it wasn't the Bible actually but their own arrogant opinions but I digress). By the way, come back home.

Here's an idea. Maybe not defer your morality to a book that condones slavery, child brides, genocidal war, and forced abortion

I'm amazed you managed to talk about this garbage for half an hour. Considering the old testament was written in 500bce at best after the Babylonians destroyed the Jewish temple, and the new testament was written by Constantine in 325ce, then re-written multiple times after that, how can you possibly devote so much time and effort to an iron age mentality that has no place in today's society. All religions should be redundant by now , but the fear of leaving this type of control is nothing more than brainwashing!