Nitpick: while some Orthodox may accept the NRSV, most do not, and most bishops do not permit it to be read aloud in church in their dioceses, due to its use of gender-inclusive language where it shouldn’t be used.
Curious about this, as my wife and I have had some interesting discussions on the subject, which I’ve reported elsewhere. In our view, there are places where inclusivity is accurate, since “man” or “men” in English carries a connotation which anthropoi does not, and Scripture is careful to distinguish between man/men (=human being(s)) and man/men (=adult male(s), “he who pisseth against a wall”). In other places, it is a mistranslation, attempting to remove the actual patriarchalism and paternalism of Hebrew and Greek society which accuracy in translation would retain.
Huh. Well, you’re right, of course, yBeayf. It was the RSV (the precurser to the NRSV) that had the honor of being officially accepted by all three major branches of Christianity. Nevertheless, the NRSV includes the full cannon of the Orthodox church and had one Orthodox translator on its commitee (but only one). According to the official website, it “it received the blessing of a leader of the Greek Orthodox Church,” which isn’t quite the official endorsement I’d imagined. :dubious: They could have at least specified whether it was a bishop, the Patriarch, or just a lay person.
FTR, the NRSV did receive the imprimatur of the American and Canadian Conferences of Catholic bishops, and is used (along with the RSV) in the US edition of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, but isn’t, I believe, approved for liturgical use for the same reason–inappropriate gender-neutrality.
Out of curiosity, what version do Orthodox churches use for English? Glancing on the Web, it seems to be the KJV, which I find surprising.
There is an Orthodox translation of the Septuagint (plus New Testament) in process, with part (IIRC the New Testament) published already. I’ll see if I can chase down more information on it, and add that as a post to this thread later if I can come up with anything useful (if yBeayf doesn’t beat me to it).
Also FTR, the NRSV has very clear footnotes specifying any place the meaning if the original text was changed to make it gender neutral, or wherever else the translators felt there was a good case for an alternate reading. Even if you don’t like the gender-neutral language (I agree with Poly: accurate in some places, stretching things in others), you won’t be misled by it.
I have the Orthodox Study Bible-New Testament and Psalms, which I think just used the New KJV. I have heard they are working on the Old Testament, using the Septuagint as the primary text with the NKJV as sort of a template for the English translation.
Diogenes, when are ya just gonna translate the NT for us? The Doper Study Bible!
The standard base text for the Orthodox is still by-and-large the King James version - primarily because it uses traditional language, and because it works from the received text (none of this textual criticism nonsense for us, no sir). As FriarTed mentioned, there is the Orthodox Study Bible, which is based off the NKJV. It has received some criticism for what some see as a focus on reaching out to Protestants, rather than being an actual Orthodox bible. The same folks are working on producing a serious new version of the Septuagint; their webpage (which hasn’t been updated in ages) is located here.
There is a relatively new, quite heavy Orthodox translation of the New Testament, which was put out by Dormition Skete (a non-canonical fringe group in Colorado). The producers may be loonies, but the translation is quite excellent, and is a very literal rendering of the Greek.
The main problems the Orthodox have with the NRSV can be summed up here, which is a pastoral letter from Bishop Tikhon of the West prohibiting its use. The main objections to it are that it deletes passages that are found in Orthodox bibles but are considered inauthentic by modern textual criticism, and that it renders certain passages unacceptably from an Orthodox perspective. The classic example of the latter is Psalm 1:1, which should begin “Blessed is the man” but the NRSV begins “Happy are they.” The Orthodox read this psalm as a prophecy referring to Christ, and a male human is quite clearly referred to there. I don’t know the Greek off the top of my head, but the Slavonic says “Blazhen mouzh”, which to any Russian speaker is obviously not equivalent with the NRSV rendering.
Wow! Any group that thinks the Russian Orthodox Church is in apostacy must be really hard core! 
I tried to look up information on Dormition Skete and the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church, but I just don’t know enough to understand their claims. They seem to be saying that in rebuilding the Orthodox Church in Russia after Communist persecution, the expatriot bishops who escaped persecution turned away from the persecuted Christians in Russia in order to accomodate the colaborationist bishops who were essentially appointed by Stalin and his successors. Is there any truth to the charges? How far out there are their claims?
(This is getting really off-topic, but I hope no one minds that much.)
well, The OSB-NKJV is published by the Protty evangelical Thomas Nelson Press, and has the Antiochan evangelical crowd Fr. Peter Gillquist, Dr. Jack Sparks, and the St. Athanasius Orthodox Academy of Santa Barbara, CA directing it. So that criticism isn’t unfounded tho I don’t think that’s a bad thing anyway. Antiochan Orthodoxy has seemed more interested in US outreach than Greek, Russian or other Orthodox Churches.
Their head bishop is a guy named Gregory Abu-Asali, who is (in)famous for having been kicked out of almost every jurisdiction under the sun. The web site is probably a bit out of date; they are no longer associated with the Russian Orthodox Autonomous Church (ROAC), which was a group started about 15 years ago in Suzdal’ by a former hierarch who had been deposed and convicted of child molestation. He claims the charges were really trumped up, and that he left because ROCOR had fallen into apostasy, heresy, etc., etc., etc. Fr. Gregory, having been kicked out of ROAC, is now claiming that he is the only Orthodox bishop left in the world (and that everybody else is in apostasy, heresy, etc., etc., etc.).
As I said, they produce good books, but they really are a bunch of loonies.
I suspected as much, but I was curious. Thanks for the details.
WeRSauron, you haven’t responded since your OP. Were we any help to you?
I believe that the Bible is 100% true, without error. This does not make it my God, it makes it the preserved word of God. No other book is “just as good” as the Bible. If one thing in the Bible is incorrect, the whole book could be incorrect. You don’t get to decide what is true and what is false. God has already decided that.
The King James Bible is the best version to read, as God used the translaters to preserve His word. Other modern texts use inferior texts such as Westcott/Hort’s work, Vaticanus, etc.
The Old Testament does indeed point to the Messiah. In several places.
You cannot safely cherry-pick the Bible for what is convenient for you. It is all true, and it is all the word of God. Verbal, plenary inspiration: God breathed.
Loving your fellow man is the most important commandment. But loving your fellow man will not get you into Heaven. Only by accepting Jesus Christ’s substituionary death on the cross can you receive salvation. And it is easy, too. Simply:
- Admit you are a sinner, and that you deserve to go to hell.
- Believe that Jesus is the only begotten Son of God who came to Earth through a virgin birth and lived as a man without sin, and who died on the cross for your sins, and rose on the third day and ascended into heaven.
- Confess Jesus Christ as your Lord and ask Him to come into your heart.
That is all I have to say about this subject. Do not try to convince me otherwise. 
Hoo boy! This really is turning into a catchall thread, isn’t it!
OK, Psycho, I won’t try to convince you otherwise. But would you mind trying to convince me? I’ve never seen any reason at all for believing that that’s what the Bible is, as opposed to, say, the perfectly human words of godly people truely (but not verbally) inspired, or, perhaps, a faithful record of humans encountering and struggling to understand the divine. Why believe it is the perfectly preserved record of God’s verbal dictation?
Usually, the answer I’ve gotten is that it is an article of faith, but I understand faith to be something Christians are to have in God. Certainly the Bible doesn’t talk explicitly about faith in itself, but about faith in God through Christ. And it is clearly possible to have such faith without coming to believe in the verbal inspiration of Scripture. So why do you so believe? Why should I?
(I’m also curious how you handle apparent “contradictions” in Scripture, such as the differing orders of creation given in the first two chapters of Genesis. I am not posing this as an objection to your belief: there are several ways of dealing with it. Different people give different answers to the apparent conflict. I think the different answers (may) reflect slightly different understandings of the Bible, and so I’m curious how you see this.)
Probably a real hijack here, but could you be troubled to write a couple of short paragraphs explaining what the heck the story is with OCA, ROCOR, ROCA, ROAC, and whatever else Russian Orthodox are divided into, and why they’re divided that way?
This is a common error found among Protestants, and to a lesser extent western Catholics. Even if the Bible is 100% without error (which I am not conceding; there are clearly copyist errors, if nothing else), that does not make it the word of God. Christ is the Word of God, not the Bible. The Bible can point to an experience of Christ, and is a record and icon of the Word, but it is not the Word Himself. Similarly, the Bible is not revelation from God. Christ is God’s revelation to mankind. The Bible is a verbal image of that revelation.
Again, Christ is the Word of God. One certainly cannot cherry-pick from the Bible, but one must be guided by the Church, which is the Body of Christ. The Bible is a document produced by the Church, which helps point the way to Christ.
Sorry, I follow the ancient teaching of the Church, not the speculations of a 13th century scholastic. Christ’s took death on himself and then destroyed it so that human nature might be restored to what it once was, not to be a substitute victim for God’s wrath.
Briefly:
The MP is the Moscow Patriarchate, the mother church of Russians, recently freed from Communist domination.
The OCA (Orthodox Church in America, formerly known as the Metropolia and the Russian Orthodox Greek Catholic Church of North America) is the descendant of the original Russian missionaries to North America. During the Communist rule, it went variously in and out of communion with ROCOR and the Moscow Patriarchate, until it finally went fully into communion with the MP and received independence in 1971.
The ROCOR/ROCA (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia/Abroad, in Russian: Russkaia Pravoslavnaia Tserkov’ Zagranitsei) is the descendant of the Russian exiles who fled after the Communist revolution. Unlike the OCA, it is a worldwide jurisdiction, with large populations in North America and Europe, and formerly China. It has been out of communion with the MP since the revolution, due to the latter’s domination by the Communists, but reunification talks are underway and union should be achieved, God willing, within a year. The OCA/Metropolia were united with the ROCOR from the revolution until the relaxation of repression under Khrushchev.
The other group you mentioned, and a few others, are small and insignificant schisms from ROCOR. HOCNA are a splinter group of ROCOR that left in the 80s after their head was accused of sexually abusing novices at their monastery. ROAC left in the early 90s after their head was deposed and convicted of child molestation. ROCIE was founded a few years ago by people in ROCOR who did not want to reunify with Moscow; their theoretical head is Metr. Vitaly, former chief hierarch of ROCOR, who is very likely senile and does not realize that he is heading a schismatic church.
I’m reading the Bible from front to back, but I’ve only gotten as far as 1 Samuel, so I’m really not in the same league as some of you. On the other hand, perhaps I can shed some light on the OP.
I do most of my Bible reading when I’m staying at my folk’s house. On the bedside there I have three Bibles: a King James Version, a children’s illustrated Bible, and a contemporary “paraphrased” version. Here at my own house I have “The Good News Bible” which is a contemporary translation. Most of my reading is done in the paraphrased version because it’s the easiest to follow. Whenever I get to some passage that makes me go “Say whatttt?” I look it up in the KJV. I skim through the children’s illustrated Bible from time to time to help me remember the stories and to see which stories they emphasize and which they leave out.
I also have a pad of paper and a pen on the nightstand so I can write down things I want to examine further when I get back home. I have found two excellent resources on the Internet. One is bible.org It has its own translation, but it is loaded with footnotes so you can see how they arrived at the specific words and phrases they used.
The other resource is the good old SDMB. Certain issues strike my fancy and I’ll post them here in either GQ or GD and let the teeming masses have at 'em. Do a search on subjects starting with “Bible Question:” to see some of the stuff I’ve asked.
I love the responses. They are entertaining as well as informative. The issues discussed certainly do help in understanding the various philosophies of using the Bible in Christian spirituality.
Keep going!
WRS
I did some research a few years ago when I decided to buy a new Bible. I found plenty of information in a few hours of dedicated internet searching all about the agenda of certain translations and the innacuracy of interpretive bibles as well as strict translations. Some bibles were written by old Christian groups that encouraged certain practices that you probably wouldn’t want. Very important to not choose a Bible with a political agenda. Unfortunately I can’t find my information and don’t remember it much. I never figured out which Bible I would choose and have been using my old KJV. The point is that the info the OP is asking for is out there, in great quantity. I know there are books that discuss the versions. Try a christian bookstore. Some of them have free pamphlets to help you make an informed choice. Also, check out Amazon.com. You can find both books on choosing a bible as well as the different versions. Make sure you read the user comments. They are alllways helpful in giving information about books at Amazon.
About the copyist errors, remember that Bibles have only recently lost their intrinsic value. For thousands of years they were among the most treasured and respected of works. Copyists took very special care of making sure they made few mistakes. I heard that people that translated the dead sea scrolls were absolutely amazed at how accurate the King James Version is.
Oh, and check out http://www.kj21.com/ for an online source for several translations. I wouldn’t buy the bible they sell though.
Preach it, brother! Only, give us some cites, e.g., chapter and verse, to back this up.