Subdeacon Michael said:
Please would someone with knowledge of the project share what happened to the plans to produce a complete version of the Eastern Orthodox Bible?
I have the Gospel Book in this translation and see that the New Testament is available on Lulu. However, the Septuagint Old Testament seems not to be in evidence and the website of the project is now defunct, available as an archive only.
Although the language leaves something to be desired in places, it is infinitely better than most of what is widely available in Orthodox liturgical books in that it avoids the faux Ye Olde Worlde Englyshe that so many publishers seem to favour, and would have been a good complement to the OSB.
Does anyone know whether this is still in the offing?
Therein however is the rub; you now have two alternate Orthodox NT study bibles, both in contemporary English. I daresay if someone had merely appended a commentary to the Septuagint translation of Sir Lancelot Brenton, that would have worked rather better and provided an Ecclesiastical Jacobean English competitor to the OSB, whereas the EOB project at present is basically just more of the same, albeit the priest who did the EOB had to presumably retranslate the NT, whereas the OSB saved much time by using the NKJV translation of the NT. And one would save even more time using Brenton, because Brenton is in the public domain, and Brenton is furthermore compatible with the traditional language liturgical books that at least half of all Orthodox parishes continue to use, for example, the Nasser Five Pounder, the Triodion and Festal Menaion of Metropolitan Kallistos and Mother Mary, the Horologia and Psalters of both Jordanville and Holy Transfiguration, the KJV-based Evangelions sold by Holvniak’s*, the Pentecostarion and Monthly Menaion sold by St. John of Kronstadt, et cetera. Also the contemporary language material took a huge blow with the death of Archimandrite Ephrem, although I’ve been backing his work up via the Internet Archive.
The other thing I have to confess I don’t quite get about the EOB project is what it offers that the OSB doesn’t, or wouldn’t in the case of the LXX. I have heard it suggested the EOB is more traditionalist, but there is nothing in the OSB that I have found that would raise the ire of an Old Calendarist, except perhaps the modern language of the translation, as in my limited experience with them Old Calendarist parishes strongly prefer traditional English translations. This may not universally be the case and there is enough diversity in the Old Calendarist movement so that its quite possible some of the Old Calendarist parishes wouldn’t care one way or the other. I suppose the main thing that might leave them incensed is the contribution of high profile “World Orthodox” figures to the work, such as Metropolitan Kallistos, and I can understand that.
There is however an even more traditional way of getting such a commentary and that is to read the Patristic commentaries on the different books of the Bible directly. The idea of inline commentary dates to the Geneva Bible (inline comments also appear in the Challoner Douay Rheims and were intentionally excluded by royal directive from the Authorized Version) and the idea of commentary in numbered footnotes and the annotated Study Bible is an even more recent concept. So that would be my opinion on this.
That said, a copy of the EOB NT is on my “to buy” list and if Fr. should finish the LXX that would be a great achievement and I will definitely buy that as well, and I will pray that he is able to complete it, I hope he has not bitten off more than he can chew, as another member suggested, but is able to complete the LXX commentary.
*Holvniak’s was a church supply house although as I noted elsewhere, their product range has expanded in entirely novel directions.
