/lit/ - Literature

>>22869193
Some of those books are gnostic and others admit not to be Scripture (1 Maccabees 9:27, 1 Maccabees 14:41). You could pretty much just grab any random Greek writings like maybe fragments of Pythagoras or something and add them to get more apocryphal books for yourself, or maybe add some more early gnostic stuff that we haven't had as long.

>>22067733
>Has Apocrypha along with the Old/New Testaments
Do maps count? What exactly is apocrypha? Do you just want to signal that you have more books in your Bible, or do you care what these apocrypha actually say?

>KJV/NKJV or RSV/NRSV
KJV and NKJV are based on received text, while RSV and NRSV are based on critical text. That's about a 7% difference between the New Testament versions, as the critical (Alexandrian) text removes about 5% of the words from the original Greek base text and substantially changes another 2% of the words.

>the Ortho Study Bible translates the Old Testament from the Septuagint
Not entirely, since the OSB Old Testament follows the Hebrew over the Septuagint in some places, such as Genesis 5:25-26. The OSB has the numbers that the Hebrew Bible uses instead of the Septuagint here (compare with a Septuagint translation such as the Brenton 1844 English Septuagint in Genesis 5:25-26; I think the OSB editors were motivated to revert to Hebrew here because the LXX numbers have Methuselah outliving the flood of Noah by 14 years).

>>21563077
>Also I will clarify something: there is an ancient translation of the Old Testament into Greek, called the Septuagint
According to our sources, there was a translation of the books of Moses made by seventy elders in 3rd Century BC Ptolemaic Egypt, however this translation has not been preserved. What we have instead is a later work by Origen in the 3rd Century AD, contained within the Hexapla, which he gave the same title (LXX or Seventy) but as a translation of the entire Old Testament rather than the first part of it. It is widely acknowledged that Origen had a part in editing this version, and it is likely that he took other people's translations that had been done between his time and the original work and incorporated into his version. He probably also took quotes directly from the New Testament, which makes it look like it was quoting him, but it's actually the other way around.

As for the apocrypha, there have been various collections of apocrypha over the years. This seems to have been included at first as useful reference material by the editors, similar to other things that are sometimes included in Bibles today. They are certainly not standardized, as different parts of the apocrypha were included in different early documents. The earlier protestant translations in English for example included something called the "Prayer of Manasses" within their apocrypha (when they did include apocrypha) even though this isn't part of Catholicism's deuterocanon which was later declared to be scripture at Trent.

>>21377512
Well, first off all, there is no one single collection of "Apocrypha." There are widely varying definitions of what is considered to be part of "the apocrypha" to begin with. Different versions of Catholicism operate under different vague definitions, not to mention other groups. Would the gnostic writings be considered apocryphal? I would say if a writing isn't inspired scriptures then it should all be considered as such. What relationship these apocryphal books have to Scripture differs among the different sects. Many groups want to accord a lesser status to "apocrypha," while still elevating them as being something above normal writings. In particular though, the church draws a hard line between what is inspired, however, being the word of God, as compared to everything else – this is based on what is said of Scripture being "God-breathed" in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, and being incorruptible and spoken by the prophets and apostles according to 1 Peter 1:23-25 and 2 Peter 1:20-21, among other distinctions. Those who tend not to take these distinctions spoken of in Scripture seriously, or who de-emphasize them, and are more likely to attribute scripture as a whole as being manmade, and are therefore more likely to have a more multi-layered view, with apocrypha occupying a rung below the core of the Bible but above most other things in their view, since really the Bible as a whole is all just manmade to them and in their view, anyway.

So, having said all that, there are different apocrypha that were included with various early Bibles during the printing press era, because these were writings that were referenced by others, so it was thought practical to include them. However, it was not indispensable. This is why in the KJV these writings are set apart from the rest of the Bible and marked as "apocrypha." According to the dictionary definition, these are "things [...] whose authenticity, as inspired writings, is not admitted, and which are therefore not considered a part of the sacred canon of the scripture." Like the other apparatuses included with the Bibles, such as the genealogies and maps, these were not always included in every edition.

One apocryphal book included in some Bibles of this era was the "Prayer of Manasses," a translation for which was included in the Matthew Bible and the 1560 Geneva Bible, but it is not part of the apocryphal additions of Roman Catholicism in particular; while at the same time, other apocryphal books are. Overall, these books are not seen as inspired any more than the extra maps and calendars included by various Bible publishers. Some included them if they thought use for them.

In the history of English Bible translations for example, the apocrypha were relatively neglected as compared to the focus of the Bible, which was the translation of the main text of the 66 books of the Bible. Apocrypha translation quality tended to have less emphasis for the reason that they were seen as being an apparatus.

>>20837897
There are two kinds of differences, Old Testament differences and New Testament ones. The Old Testament generally has a Hebrew version, and a somewhat shortened Greek version that some people use, which includes apocrypha in some of its early printings (see attached). Each of these two versions has some minor variations within it, but nothing compared to the differences between them. For instance, the Greek Old Testament, as given by Origen in the 3rd century AD, has changed many of the ages of the patriarchs in the early chapters of Genesis. This is in such a way that Methuselah is said to outlive the flood of Noah by 14 years, thereby going against the idea that it was only Noah and his three sons and their wives that survived among the survivors of Adam's descendants.

In the New Testament, the picture is simultaneously simpler and also more complex in a different way. It's simpler because there are no apocrypha to speak of, just 27 books, but it's more complex because the total amount of differences between whether you use the received text (KJV, other Bibles before 1880) or an eclectic translation (such as the ASV of 1901 or most modern day translations) you see vast differences in the presentation of the New Testament text itself.

The Westcott and Hort text, to give a concrete example, as it was used for the first "Revised version" of 1880 (meant to replace the KJV), in the original Greek: it omits words 1952 times, adds words 467 times, and substitutes/modifies words 3185 times. And overall, 9970 individual Greek words have been either removed, modified, or added. This is about 7% of the words, and an average of 15.4 words on every page of the Greek New Testament.

So, in modern translations and versions, they are drawing substantially from a Greek version of the New Testament that has removed about 7% of the New Testament compared to what is represented in the Received Text that was used before 1880. Everyone used to use and read from the received text of the Bible until about 1880, and all English speakers in particular used the KJV before then. It is substantially different in the New Testament as compared to translations today, like the NIV or ESV, which remove a corresponding 7% of the New Testament. This is because they are a translation of the modified Alexandrian Greek text. When they market these translations, they tend to downplay this, but it is a very big difference.