Some people want a Bible to have majestic Thee's and Thou's and sound like a Bible - with the same English that ordinary people prefer in the Orthodox Divine Liturgy.
The Classic Orthodox Bible is a complete Bible that not only sounds majestic, but is based on the Orthodox Church's official versions of the Old and New Testament.
Readers who appreciate the beauty, grandeur, and meticulous accuracy of the King James Version will find it a thrill and a delight.
If you only buy ONE version of the Bible to help you understand Holy Orthodoxy, without a doubt, buy the Orthodox Study Bible...
But if you buy two, as there is good reason to do, you might consider the Classic Orthodox Bible to go with it.
The entire purpose of being Christian is to become by grace what Christ is by nature. This is called divinization.
Some of the fingerprints of divinization in the Bible have not survived English translation well: such as translating the Greek Χριστος with one word when it refers to the Lord, and a different, unrelated term when it refers to all the faithful.
Those passages, and several like them are translated a little more clearly in the Classic Orthodox Bible.
A Protestant like C.S. Lewis can write, "The Son of God became a man that men might become the Sons of God," and this text capitalizes "Son" and "Sons" when it refers to people who are called to become by grace what Christ is by nature.
It's not just that the same word is used in "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God," (Matt 16:16), and "...saying, 'Touch not My Christs, and do My prophets no harm,'" (Psalm 104:16).
The name "Joshua" is not translated "Joshua" in the Old Testament and "Jesus" in the new; it is translated as "Jesus" in both Testaments, possibly adding a bit more intelligibly by the Greek Fathers' unending wordplay about the Jesus in the book after Deuteronomy.
Furthermore, Pascha is "Pascha" in Old and New Testament alike.
COMMENTARY ON THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS IN ONE VOLUME CONTAINING A CAREFUL ANALYSIS OF ALL CULTURAL ISSUES NEEDFUL TO UNDERSTAND THE BIBLE AS DID ITS FIRST READERS
Read what cultural context helps and does not help for Orthodox understanding of Scripture.
Read the story of a man who has yearned for years to understand the Bible, and how he is filled with despair when he finally reads the commentary he has longed for.
(Included in the front matter.)
For without are dogs, and occult healers, and whoremongers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie," [emphasis added].
"Behold, what manner of Love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the Sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew Him not. Beloved, now are we the Sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is."
"Do you think you can add one single hour to your life by worrying? You might as well try to worry your way into being a foot and a half taller!"
The Orthodox Church's official Bible is the Septuagint or LXX, made by seventy of the best Jewish scholars centuries before Christ. It is the source of many, but not all, Greek quotations of the Old Testament in the New Testament. Orthodox believe that the Holy Spirit was active in some of that process of translation, and the text of the Septuagint has a special place.
This translation is based on Sir Lancelot Brenton's King James Version style translation of the Greek Old Testament.
Perhaps more importantly, the New Testament is based on the Byzantine New Testament. No other translations can boast both of these.
