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What bible should I be reading I want it in English
Answer to Question 556 There is no English Bible that is a 100% translation of the original Greek. For the New Testament I personally prefer to use the King James version, which I feel comes closest. As for the Old Testament, most Bibles in English are flawed.
After the 16th century Reformation of the Church in England, the new Anglican church wanted a translation of the Bible in English. The Orthodox Church uses the Old Testament text known as the Septuagint version written in Greek and the Roman Catholic Church uses the 4th century Latin version known as the Vulgate version, which is fairly similar. In an attempt to get back to what Protestants thought were the roots of the Old Testament text, they chose to use the Hebrew texts of the scribes and rejected the traditional use of the Septuagint and Vulgate.
The Septuagint is a translation made about 285BC from Hebrew to Greek because at that time Greek was the common language of the Roman Empire and was the most widely spoken and read language of the Empire at large. The translation was made by Jews for Jews and not by Greeks, who as yet had no interest in the religious books of the Jews. The mistake the Protestant reformers made was that the Hebrew text they used for the English translation was not the Original Hebrew, but a Hebrew translation, known as the “masoretic” text, made by the Scribes after the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70AD. At that time, the original Hebrew was lost and the only copy of the Old Testament was the Greek Septuagint. The rabbis and scribes used the Greek Septuagint for the translation back into Hebrew, but because the New Christian religion also used the Old Testament and used the Prophecies to validate the new faith, certain books were left out and passages from the Psalms and the Prophets were deliberately doctored.
Therefore the Bibles most commonly available in English are translations of this doctored Hebrew text of the scribes, not translations of the Septuagint which is centuries older. Although both the Masoretic text and the Septuagint, are quite similar in many ways, there are significant differences. These differences can primarily be summed up by saying that the messianic prophecies (the prophecies concerning the Messiah) found throughout the Psalms and the prophetic writings are far more explicit in the Septuagint text than in the Masoretic text. A careful study of the Psalms will reveal how crucially different the Septuagint text is in these messianic portions.
The canon of the bible consists of 49 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books making a total of 76 books. The majority of Protestants blindly accept a Regulation (Canon) that includes only the 66 Books of the Holy Bible, because someone told them that those are the only Books that comprise the entire Holy Bible. But even now, when Protestants scholars acknowledge the error that was made, no effort has been made to correct it to give their followers a complete Christian Bible.
In recent years a new publication of the Bible in English has been published for Orthodox people known as the Orthodox Study Bible, the New Testament is based on the New King James Bible and the Old Testament based on the Original Greek Septuagint. I don’t have a copy so can’t say how good it is, but many Orthodox claim it is an excellent publication.
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