My first complaint if over the format of the bible - the text runs from the spine to the margin making it hard to read what is hidden by the spine and difficult to make notes in the margins. I also find myself disappointed in the footnotes, which tend to follow a literal meaning of the text while ignoring the allegorical and typological meanings which the Church Fathers often saw in the Scriptures Given my prejudice for Textus Receptus, the textual basis of the work was of particular interest. Though some Protestant denominations still use the Traditional Text of the New Testament, most Protestants and the Roman Catholic Bibles now use Modern (Critical)Texts. The Orthodox churches are the only branch of Christianity that still advocates the Traditional Text. Since the scholars of the St. Athanasius Academy were working with Thomas Nelson, they had access to the New King James Version, the only major modern-day translation based on the Received Text, and they used its text in the New Testament, noting alternate Majority (Hodges-Farstad) and Nestle-Aland alternate readings in footnotes. Thomaso Nelson has produced a number of denominational study Bibles whiich cater to the particular theological veiwpoint of that group: the Orthodox Study Bible is the latest in a series. The Old Testament was based on the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek Old Testament, which is the standard Orthodox text. The New King James Version's Old Testament was based on the Masoretic Hebrew Text. Where the LXX's Greek reading was the same, the NKJV wording was used. A new translation was made where the LXX version was different. The assertion that this is a new translation of the Septuagint is therefor inaccurate: only those passages in which there was differences in translation was the LXX translated and used. Still, in the 200-year history of the Orthodox Church in North America, this is the first time it has issued an Old Testament based on the Septuagint. The Bible's primary audience is for the English-speaking Orthodox church. Its primary appeal outside of that audience is probably in its commentary. The notes draw from a rich heritage of church fathers; to an extent rarely found in Protestant circles, Orthodox view their church history as an unbroken series of links from the time of the early church fathers (who largely wrote in Greek) through today, and the views of the early church fathers are brought into the commentary where applicable. Even when no specific church father is cited, the notes draw from well over a thousand years of Orthodox tradition. These are frequently fascinating and sometimes provide insights missed by Protestants. Unfortunately, most of these notes are reiteration of the passage they are addressing, and it is rare for a typological or allegorical note to appear even though in the Orthodox Churches allegorical and typological interpretation is very common - much more common than in Protestantism. Due to the different canon used in the Old Testament, most Protestant readers obviously will not adopt this as their primary Bible. Nor is the commentary sufficient reason for pastors and serious Bible students to add this to their library. For Orthodox Christians, it really is the only choice out there unless one is willing to have some of their canonical scriptures listed as Apocrypha in a separate section of the Bible Furthermore, the text is hard to read running from the margins to the spine in a small font on extremely fine paperRead full review
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