Biblical Historical Context

A pseudepigrapha is a book which falsely attributes an author to it. In other words, the work claims that an author wrote it, but they did not. These books are not a part of what we call our canon, either the OT canon or the NT canon. We shall deal with the canon in a few other podcasts, but to summarize our canon are those books which we believe to be those books which are inspired by God and written by the authors they claim.

The Vulgate was not only important back in the 4th century, but even now it is important. You say how? You can read the Vulgate and it becomes a commentary in and of itself on the original languages. The word choice of Jerome in the Latin colors how he saw what the original languages said. This is an invaluable tool as a window into what Jerome and to a certain degree the church believed in the 4th century.

If you wanted to buy a LXX which is accessible it has the Greek and the English on the margins. Sir Lancelot Brenton is the author, it's $40 on Amazon. You can also buy the scholarly edition Ralhfs (spelled) which is about $60 unless you want the large print edition which will run you $200. And then if you are a budding Greek scholar there's a new Reader's Edition put out by Hendrickson in two large volumes, it's awesome if you want to read large portions of the LXX without having to stop to look words up. And finally if you need that LXX concordance you've always wanted Hatch and Redpath, it will run you about $300 and it weighs about 3k pounds. You can take it on trips and use it as a raft if your ship ever goes down.

My recommendation for a good translation is the ESV or the NASB, the 1977, I prefer the thees and thous. The NIV is good, but it should be called what it is, a dynamic equivalent. That is, it tries to render the original language into our vernacular rather than translate literally. I appreciate the KJ, but since no one speaks Elizabethan English anymore, I don't recommend it for every day reading. I'll talk about the King Jimmy in a future podcast.

And if you're new to biblical studies you may be surprised to know that there's a few of us weirdos who actually read the bible in their original languages.

Hi I'm Dr Cube. I have a phd in greek and latin. I've studied a few other ancient languages on my own. I read theology in my free time for fun. I love to study the historical context when looking at the scriptures because I believe it gives us the foundation for understanding what is being said.