I personally prefer the Sir Lancelot Brenton translation of the Old Testament, from the Septuagint, albeit with the Jordanville Psalter (A Psalter for Prayer, published by Holy Trinity Monastery in Jordanville, NY, the main monastery of the autonomous, fiercely anti-communist Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia), which is the Coverdale Psalter corrected against the Septuagint text, and then a mix of the King James Version and the Murdoch translation of the West Syriac Peshitto (of the Syriac Orthodox Church), which in my opinion flows better, but suffers slightly from Murdoch’s use of unconventional terms possonly more faithful to the Syriac, but irritating otherwise, for example, referring to the Apostles as Legates. And also Murdoch completely tripped over himself in translating one of the Petrine apostles. I might do some text substitutions and swap out the Petrine epistles for the KJV translations in order to get a better reading experience. I have three study bibles, the King James Study Bible, which was translated by a group pf premillenial Baptist and Calvinist dispensationists, along with a sole Methodist who either departed from usual Methodist doctrine, was ignorant of it, or was ignored, a Lutheran Study Bible, which I have not yet explored in detail, and an Orthodox Study Bible, which naturally I refer to authoritatively. Yet where all three agree, that happens to be rather compelling, and it happens more than one might think. I also really like the Challoner Douay Rheims Bible, mainly because it has a Septuagint Psalter. This is desirable for Orthodox liturgical purposes because of how we divide the Psalter into kathisma and stases. Hence my enthusiasm also for the Jordanville Psalter. Also I prefer the wording of some of the Psalms, except Psalm 1, in the Septuagint, specifically Psalm 95 vs. 5 (compare to Psalm 96 vs. 5 in the KJV or Coverdale Psalter: the Psalm numbering and versification is different in the Septuagint). I do love the Coverdale Psalter however, and the majestic Anglican Chant with which it is sung, especially Psalm 78.
I haven’t been able to find any available as ebooks that looked worth their salt, and of late I have found it uncomfortable perusing my physical library. But given the Collects in the Book of Common Prayer and the wealth of expository content contained therein, it scarcely seemed necessary. In the case of the KJV Study Bible my mother was looking to purchase for me, for my 15th birthday, the most beautiful Bible possible, and purchased it at a Christian bookstore, at that time unfamiliar with the dispensational millenarian theology taking over much of Protestantism, and she was more high church than I was at the time (she contributed massively to my enthusiasm for Orthodoxy and decision to become Orthodox because of her believe in the Russian Orthodox doctrine of the Eucharist). At any rate, if I want to find out what Anglicans believe, I look in the Book of Common Prayer, selecting the edition most closely reflecting the churchmanship of the Anglicans in question (the 1926 Irish book for low church, the 1928 American, Deposited and Scottish books and the 1962 Canadian book for high church, the 1662 book for a general perspective, and the 1979 book for a mix of Anglo Catholic, Broad Catholic and Liberal Catholic perspectives, and a BCP replacement like the Canadian Book of Alternative Services or a contemporary BCP like the 2004 Irish book if I desire to experience nausea). So this makes things very simple. Non denominational, Calvinist and Baptist types adhering to premillenial dispensationalism generally do not have liturgical books (“vain repetitions! Organs! Altars! Incense! That’s all like totally idolatrous, man. The only Biblical worship is headbanging to Christian Rock performed by our praise band and listening to the sermon of our pastor”). I purchased the Lutheran Study Bible as a quick reference into non-Calvinist magisterial thought, and because it was an inexpensive ebook. Of late I have found it uncomfortable reading printed books, and I wanted a more mainstream (in this case, traditional Lutheran rather than ELCA) Protestant reference text I could quickly refer to for checking against the Orthodox Study Bible, which I have in both physical and electronic format. The utility of the of the Orthodox Study Bible, instead of attempting to extract the correct doctrine from the liturgy, can be illustrated by pointing out that instead of a Book of Common Prayer, the Coptic Orthodox have an Agpega (Psalter), a Euchologion (with the texts for the Divine Liturgies), a Psalmody (with more of the Divine Office, for what loosely corresponds to vespers, vigils and matins), a Khiak Psalmody, with the same offices, but of exceptional beauty, used in the Coptic month of Khiak which encompasses Advent, a Synaxarion, Epistle Book and Gospel Book, a service book for Holy Week, and certain specialized books with the texts for weddings, funerals and so on. The Eastern Orthodox up the ante by taking the total count to over 20 books, probably 30 in total, with overlapping content (I do not have the Monthly Menaion as it costs $1,200, but I have the most important feasts in the Festal Menaion, translated by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware and Mother Mary, and several others in the “Nasser Five Pounder”, an extremely useful anthology of liturgical propers). In the Syriac Orthodox Church, not everything has been translated, in particular, the extremely important Fanqitho, which contains the Divine Office during feasts. The Assyrians have seven service books, the function of each of which makes sense after a while, but these have not been entirely translated either. The Armenians have an extremely logically laid out system of seven service books, which are only available in Classical Armenian. And in the case of the Ethiopian church, their service books are obscure and not fully documented; much exists in the form of Geez manuscripts in the monasteries and more important churches that has not been properly studied by scholars, although like the Armenian and Syriac Orthodox church, the text of the liturgy and the anaphoras (of which there are several, not as many as in the Syriac Orthodox church, but more than anywhere else outside of the endless proliferation of novel and innovative Eucharistic prayers in contemporary liberal Protestantism), is available in English. So needless to say, when it comes to the interpretation of a specific Bible verse, it is easiest just to look it up in the OSB. But at that, unlike the KJV study bible, which felt compelled to put in its oar regarding the meaning of nearly every verse, the OSB often does not comment on verses that one wishes it would. So sometimes I get asked questions about difficult passages and I have to meekly refer the person to their priest or encourage they read certain Patristic commentaries. So actually, my crumbling copy of the long out of print Nasser Five Pounder, as we call it, the massive five pound anthology of propers compiled by Fr. Seraphim Nasser, with an imprint of Metropolitan Anthony Bashir, memory eternal, who reposed and was suceeded in 1965 by Metropolitan Philip Saliba, memory eternal, who reposed in 2014, the actual title of which is The Orthodox Prayer Book, can be rather useful as a doctrinal guide after all. The entire enterprise of study Bibles is something I am not specifically sure about, because in Orthodoxy or Anglicanism, there can be multiple valid interpretations of a given pericope. I think topically specific study Bibles might be the way to go, which reflect a particular interpretation of the books in question in a specific context. One of the more interesting study bibles in my collection is the Jewish Annotated New Testament, which is actually decent, interesting, useful, and written in a respectful manner by Jews, which actually provides quite a lot of useful contextual information and which is not excessively driven by Rabinnical Judaism and its ideology in a manner that would result in it being a blasphemous distortion.
One of my Virginia colleagues, Fr. Tom, has been trying to get me to work on just such a project with him. He's always trying to talk me into some kind of massive project and none of them go anywhere. The Anglo-Catholics are happy to use the Orthodox Study Bible and the Evangelicals seem to be fond of the ESV study Bible or the Reformation Study Bible (edited by R.C. Sproul).
In other news, I visited the church in which William Shakespeare is buried today (in Stratford). It has a first edition Authorized version in it, chained to the lectern as ordered by the authorities. Would be nice if it was still used.
Surely there had to have been many already written in our history/tradition, I just can't seem to find any Gorgeous!!
Indeed, it seems to me an Anglican Study Bible would be rather superfluous and could interfere with the natural ecumenical sensibilities respective to churchmanship. And the “woke” overlords of most of the Episcopal Church, who are actively trying to take over Canada and the C of E, would just dismiss it and scream that it was bigotted and patriarchal and so on.
Indeed. Common Worship ought to be proscribed. But the blame for this really lies with the non-Anglican members of parliament who vetoed the Deposited Book; had that been approved, but the process for a new prayer book still required Parliamentary approval, you would have a richer and better liturgy and no Common Worship.
Wow! Some of you have such awesome Bible collections! Thanks to each of you who shared pics of your awesome Bibles.
Yes! And that is why the original King James bible removed the biased commentaries used by the Geneva and Douay bibles! Instead, we merely have cross-references when other books are quoted within the bible itself, or basic notes regarding translations of certain words.
The Bishop’s Bible was also free of commentaries IIRC. The KJV if memory serves owes some debt to the Bishop’s Bible. As for the Geneva and Douay Rheims, the commentary is interesting because it tells is what Calvinists and Roman Catholics, with their narrowly defined doctrine, believe. The Roman Catholic worship could not explain to the literate but not well educated the meaning of the text until English translations of the missal were approved, which happened recently (I think in the 19th century). And the Calvinists need a Study Bible to explain their doctrine, since their liturgy is not precise enough to do this, nor does Lectio Continua explain to the faithful the reference a preacher might make when preaching about Matthew to a sermon he preached on Isaiah some months previously. In contrast the BCP is sufficient to explain the KJV, and to the extent an Anglo Catholic or an Orthodox wants more info, we have the OSB, but it is interesting how many difficult passages the OSB is silent on. There is a parallel here between England and the East: Latitudinarianism which originated with the Elizabethan settlement, and Apophatic theology derived from a belief in the unknowability of God in His essence. The result is that Orthodoxy and Orthodox Anglicanism as conveyed in the Formularies of this site, which I am committed to assisting, is that doctrine is less of a series of positively defined dogmas, as in the Roman or Calvinist churches, but rather is explicitly in the case of the former or implicitly in the case of the latter, a series of restrictive dogmatic principles which to reject would put one beyond the pale and make one a heretic. For example, denial of the Trinity, denial of Original Sin, denial of the unconfused unity of the humanity and divinity in the one theandric Person of Jesus Christ, denial of the episcopate, denial of infant baptism, or a belief in communal ownership of goods as in the Shakers or other nonsense.