A New English Translation of the Septuagint 1st Edition

While this Septuagint (LXX) is a little unfamiliar in its format, it isn't too hard to find corresponding scriptures. The texts that aren't included in the NKJV version are fascinating reads, especially when these are reported in Josephus as well.

Just anecdotally, I've found that often when the NETS diverges from the Masoretic text it aligns with the Douay translation of the Vulgate. For example, LXX Psalm 42,4 in the NETS renders it:"to God who makes glad my youth"Douay has:"to God who giveth joy to my youth"Whereas JPS Tanakh has:"unto God, my exceeding joy."The Douay has the Latin book names so none of the frankly weird faux Greek spellings. And the Douay is more poetic. Brenton is more poetic for that matter.The point is if you're looking at buying the NETS just know that Brenton and Douay did it hundreds of years ago only better (IMHO) and those books are public domain.Do buy this book if you 1. can't be bothered to learn Greek and 2. prefer a mutilated NRSV over a little legwork learning how the LXX differs from the Masoretic text.On the other hand, it's sewn bound, compact, sleek and convenient. It opens flat and has a pleasing font. It's nice to consult when Liddell & Scott fail.

The NETS is the single best translation of the Septuagint on the market (at least at the moment). The translation follows an ultra-literal method of translation they call "interlinear". The reason for this is that the LXX follows the same pattern and is very jarring. So, where the Hebrew and LXX agree, they translate the Hebrew text and translate it as literally as possible following the LXX at the same time. Where it disagrees, they follow the LXX.It has as a "boiler-plate" the NRSV, but it eschews many NRSV translation principles like gender-inclusive language. All gender-inclusive language except when the LXX's language is itself gender-inclusive (and this happens). The method of translation further removes it from its English parent. In the end, the only way you can know that it started as an NRSV would be to read the introduction.It really only has a few drawbacks. First, because the Bible is written for scholarly study, it is not useful for liturgical use or for private devotional use. Its language would also be too hard for the average reader because of its audience. This, however, is its stated goal. It may be a draw-back, but that's a side-effect of what it set out to do.I do not like the way they translated "pnevma theou" as "divine wind" in Genesis. It's justifiable to a point (it means "breath" and "wind" as much as it does "spirit), but everywhere else I checked they translated translated "pnevma" as "spirit". It should be consistent. The reason for this is plainly obvious: it was produced by an inter-religious committee of Christians and Jews. Since Jews are not Trinitarians, and that would be a valid understanding of the Hebrew and to a degree of the Greek, they would naturally not want anything like this. Christians, almost from the beginning, have made the connection between "Spirit of God" in Genesis and "Holy Spirit". The connection is further exasperated in English, because "spirit" for us does not have the same range of meaning as it does in Greek or Hebrew. So, the only fault I can give them is that it is an inconsistent translation, not that it's an invalid one.The prefaces also almost invariably favor the theory that the LXX is a translation with liberties over that it has a different parent text. Both are truly present, but we generally cannot tell when the LXX reading cannot be derived from repointing or re-dividing the Hebrew words (at that time, they had not yet pointed the text or put spaces in it, and so there were more ways to interpret the consonants than in its current form). Again, however, they do not say anything that is invalid regarding the relation of the LXX and its parent text. I simply divide the text differently than they do and so do not always like the introductions' emphasis.Going back to its strengths, its production standards were exceptional. The binding is excellent, the font is excellent, and it has generous margins. It even does this by being as cheap as the "cheap" Bibles. Short of going back to rag paper, this is about as good as I would normally expect.Overall, if you have good reading skills, I would reccomend this translation hands-down over any other English translation.

Translations into English of the full Old Testament (including, of course, its deuterocanonical writings) in Greek, long known as the Septuagint (LXX), have been rather few in number over the years. Thus, it is all the more suprising that two projects to translate the LXX have appeared in publication so rapidly one on the heels of the other. They are the New English Translation of the Septuagint (N.E.T.S.), on the one hand; on the other, there is the O.T. portion of the "Orthodox Study Bible" (O.S.B.), which its publisher, T. Nelson, for its part, issued only one year later (2008) and which encompasses both the Old Testament (O.T.) and the New Testament (N.T.). The O.T. of the O.S.B. denominates that translation's trademarked name as the "St. Athanasius Academy Septuagint" (S.A.A.S.). For most readers, these two new translations probably will have priority of interest over older translations of the LXX that have appeared in the 19th and 20th centuries, including that of Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton (still available in reprint), which still has its advocates to a respectable degree (and rightly so), more of them among Anglican and Protestant scholars, however, than among the Eastern Orthodox.The O.S.B. incorporates that own freshly completed new translation of its own of the Greek Septuagint O.T. (known, as already mentioned, as the "St. Athanasius Academy Septuagint" English Version, the S.A.A.S., for short), of which the translation project director is the estimable Jack Norman Sparks (who also is the principal editor of the O.S.B. as a whole), which can assure the Eastern Orthodox layman that the O.S.B. would opt for Eastern Orthodox preferences, regarding resort to preferred manuscript sources and concerning certain other matters as well. The full title of the N.E.T.S. version as the title page presents it may hint at some of these possibilities for divergence in exercise of scholarly judgment and preferences; in full, the publication's descriptive title is "A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under That Title" (N.E.T.S); however, the shorter form of the title constitutes the trademark's official wording. The scholarship embodied in the O.S.B. is entirely (or very largely) Eastern Orthodox, including that of many Orthodox converts from evangelical Protestantism; this is an asset, not a weakness, for the O.S.B.'s Orthodox men of learning circumspectly avoid what at times are some reckless turns of phrase that occasionally mar renderings of verses, sometimes disturbingly so, here and there in the N.E.T.S. By contrast with the O.S.B., two resolutely Protestant scholars, Allen Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright (but, compromising reliability, with the cooperation, along the way in their project, of some Jewish pedants among the other scholars who assisted them), edited the N.E.T.S. for Oxford University Press' 2007 publication (which bears the ISBN 978-0-19-528975-6). As the O.S.B. took the O.T. of the New King James Version (N.K.J.V.) as the literary point of departure, in editing and recasting the wording the N.K.J.V.'s O.T. text to comply with the LXX Greek O.T., the N.E.T.S. chose to rework the New Revised Standard Version (N.R.S.V.) of the O.T. to conform it to the Greek LXX O.T.The results of the editors' work for the N.E.T.S. English translation of the Greek LXX O.T. are remarkably fine. The N.E.T.S. translation is crisply clear (apart from occasional passages that are inhabitually awkward-sounding in an otherwise elegantly worded rendition) and it is freer of the slight ambiguities here and there that one finds in even the S.A.A.S. English rendition of the LXX O.T., except when the N.E.T.S. addles things a bit in its own way! (It is worth using these two English translations in conjunction with each other!) The traces of "feminist-speak" (or "inclusive language") and of other flaws in the N.R.S.V.'s at times too trendy original translation seem, from what this reader can tell in having used the N.E.T.S. fairly intensively along with the O.S.B.'s S.A.A.S., to have disappeared entirely, so meticulously thorough has been the work of Pietersma and Wright in reworking and conforming the N.R.S.V.'s O.T. to the Greek LXX.From this layman's point of view, the only real obstacle to ease in using the N.E.T.S. edition of the O.T. for daily reading is the N.E.T.S.' pedantic use of exactly transliterated forms of personal and place names, which differ (sometimes markedly) from the better-known forms of name in other English Bibles, which the O.S.B., for its part, wisely chose to retain as being more reader-friendly. Also, of course, having an O.T. in a volume, i.e. here the N.E.T.S., separate from the rest of the Bible (the N.T.) makes using the O.S.B. more convenient for daily use, in order for a reader to access, in a single volume, both the N.T. as well as the O.T.; this makes the O.S.B. (added to the O.S.B.'s avoidance of the sort of highly debatable renderings which occur at times in the N.E.T.S. that negatively and needlessly can affect doctrine) to be the principal choice for a practical edition of the Bible, in full (and, at that, according entirely to Greek texts), for constant use.All hail to the successful completion of both of these translations and publishing projects, the "Orthodox Study Bible" and the N.E.T.S. English translation of the Greek Septuagint Old Testament! The O.S.B., for its part, makes the complete Greek Bible translated into English available for today's Anglophone readers, especially for the Orthodox faithful among them, as well as for other Christians, and the N.E.T.S., for its share of glory, provides, most of the time and despite some serious flaws, what is perhaps the most delightfully clear yet graciously worded English translation of the LXX Greek O.T. that has appeared to date!