Thank You Faithlife for Denominational upgrade bundles and Fundamentals gift opportunity!!

Speaking of Denominational Upgrade Bundles, I was curious which Starter Bundles do you think have the best additional resources I got the Silver Standard Package already.  I am just looking to see which starter packages I should keep an eye on to collect some valuable resources.  My goal is to try to get several different perspectives and understandings of the text.  

M.J. Smith:  This is really helpful.  I am copying this list for me.  I was raised in both a Baptist and Methodist church, so you nailed me there perfectly.  I am leaning towards Methodist/Wesleyan Starter, and your suggestion for a Jewish Package, finally I didn't think about the church fathers being the key focus of the orthodox packages, but if that is the case I am definitely interested in those.  

This is an awesome list MJ.

From the limited experience that I have:

Baptist: excellent Bible study, discipleship, outreach / missions, Community health evangelism, contextualization of the gospel, very good conceptual framework of what really happened in world history from God and mission's perspective.

Methodist / Wesleyan: excellent planning, absolute vs relative perfection, different outreach outlook, seems to me they understand that true truth so to speak comes from God and it can be found in any sphere (e.g. secular, etc).

Reformed: excellent Systematic theology, very good Biblical basis for most of their constructs, but at times they violate certain standards:

Pure scholasticism is seen as cold by some, and that is why pietism grew as counter to this.

Orthodox: haven't studied them yet. I loved MJ's reference to the Ukranian catechism. I like that most Orthodox are clear that deification / theosis does not mean that we will eventually have self-existence, as that is a non-communicable attribute of God that He will retain forever and that makes Him the only Being worthy of worship.

Lutherans: some have an unbelievable amount of insight:

Jewish: I like the Jewish encyclopedia. JPS resources are interesting. They base their religion on: Worship, study and good deeds.

Catholic: the Catholic topical index is unparalleled in my opinion, I wish there was similar in every other tradition. Moral theology, and Social teaching are great topics. Catechism has four pillars: the Faith we believe, the faith that we pray, the faith that we live, the faith that we celebrate, which is cool.

Anglicans, Restorationists: have resources but have not studied much yet.

Anabaptist: a lot into peace. What many persons are not clear is that supposedly in the Bible there is a difference between killing with malicious intent (forbidden by the Law), and collateral damage (may include manslaughter) in defending one, family, community, country, etc. Need to look more into this.

Pentecostal and Charismatic: even though I am not 100 % of either, this is always my first package in the upgrades. Spirit filled life to me is a non-negotiable of Christian living Romans 5:5.

SDA: very good structuring of Sabbath school, topics, etc. Supposedly, persons that follow their dietary advice, live longer and have less health issues.

Hope this is of help.

Did not mean to start an issue.  Anyway, I appreciated what you both said.  

M.J. Smith. I decided to pick up the Orthodox package first because it had more new resources for me, and I really wanted to have a beginner collection of early church father readings.  

Yes MJ, but what is the intention? proselytism? of course not.

You never talk theology, but the few times you hint at some key point, it illuminates persons, without knowing you edify the Body of Christ.

The problem is not theology per se or its discussion, the problem is the arrogant attitude of some persons, that think they have absolute truth down, when any true believer knows that only God is the absolute orthodox Being in the universe.

The fruit of the Spirit is clear, most persons that do not show that fruit in the exchange of theological information, are clearly not mature in that fruit. (so right there I would not follow them).

Any person that is not willing to seriously look at the actual worldview from which he/ she is operating when studying theology is just joking around and possibly  being just part of an indoctrination game by some particular group.

MJ wrote: "... people state positions that I believe to be logically impossible to be correct".

This is key MJ.

1 Human reason is a fit aid to the Holy Spirit guidance. Human reason and logic is not the ultimate measure for finding truth. Human reason guided by the Holy Spirit is a very valid means of arriving to truth. 

2 Your opinion is very respectable and very credible, but you must understand that you are not God, so not binding when talking about people's salvation.

3 there is a lot of controversy in theological studies, and that is because we all come from a particular contextual situation.

The context most traditions do not talk about is the context of the Holy Spirit, (the real author of the Bible), and it just happens that He transcends any ethnicity, language, era, contextual situation, etc. That is why Jesus said that the Holy Spirit will guide you to truth, He never mentioned synchronical original language with human reason alone as the way. This is key and has to be clarified.

In the end each person has the right to choose what they decide to believe. It is a God given right. But is unethical to try to rule out other views just because they are in the minority or because they are in the fringe of the orthodoxy envelope.

If God confronts me as to my inquiry travel with the rationality He gave me, I can say I explored most, checked to see if things were so, and came to conclusions on my own as expected, and not just because I inherited a particular tradition, or because a human authority affirms that is the correct one.

Careful analysis of things of Theology is an undelegable task each one of us has to perform.

I have never said I have ultimate truth. But I get very glad when I meet persons that take theology serious and want to get to the truth. There are key topics to explore in that regard and is up to them to choose what they think is God's message.

We come from very different backgrounds. I was born in a Catholic environment. That is why I can relate to much of the good it has to offer. But being where I live exposed me to other traditions, and then I understood I needed to get serious and analyze what I believe to check it is so with respect to God's revealed truth.

Logos is a wonderful tool for that. Honesty in key prolegomena topics is of utmost importance, and transparent, well intentioned believers without an occult agenda, have to make that patent.

Kind regards.

Steven New said:

I was curious which Starter Bundles do you think have the best additional resources I got the Silver Standard Package already

Well, it's a bit complicated to give a straight answer to this because the discounts vary depending on what you already have. This in turn influences how good a deal one may think this or that starter package to be. 

What I can say is that the higher the package you already own, the better deals the tradition-based starter packages (or even higher) packages can include. YOU need to look at each package, select "new to you" to view which resources you would gain and compare to cost. 

For instance, for me Bronze Reformed would be a sweet deal because for abou $50 I'd get two commentary sets (new covenant and mentor). That would be 27 commentary volumes otherwise costing around $450. I don't care about the other resources but someone else might. 

So, it's definitely worthwhile to take the time to examine those low costs packages and grab deals while the discounts still reflect the launch promotion. 

Jan Krohn said:

( incl. NETS)

Has to be the worst implementation of a resource I can remember by Faithlife. all introductory materials are missing and you don't even get a proper table of contents... I am not even 100% sure how to get to the Psalms of Solomon in the Logos edition.

ROUTH
To the Reader
EDITION OF THE GREEK TEXT
The present English translation of Routh (the Greek spelling of Ruth) follows the Greek edition by Alfred Rahlfs, which is generally regarded as the best available for this biblical book (Septuaginta. Id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interpretes, 2 vols. [Stuttgart: Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1935]). Departures from Rahlfs' text as the basis for the English translation are rare, except where punctuation is concerned. Rahlfs' Septuagint as a whole is based principally upon three early codices, not upon all available textual evidence, but for the book of Routh Rahlfs presumably was able to draw upon his earlier work involving c. 50 manuscripts. See A. Rahlfs, Das Buch Ruth griechisch als Probe einer kritischen Handausgabe der Septuaginta (Stuttgart: Privilegierte Württembergische Bibelanstalt, 1922), which was not available to me, and Studie über den griechischen Text des Buches Ruth (MSU 3, 2; Berlin: Wiedmannsche Buchhandlung, 1922), also published in Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen (Philologisch-historische Klasse, 1922) 47-164.
TRANSLATION PROFILE OF THE GREEK
The book of Routh is a fairly literal translation of the Hebrew, with the Greek text often matching the Hebrew in a word-for-word fashion. At times the translator reflects distinctions in the Hebrew that seem to be of no consequence semantically, as in the consistent representation of -אמרלand אמר אל (both meaning "said to") as εἶπεν plus dative (15x) and εἶπεν πρός (7x) respectively.
Not surprisingly, the Greek text displays a high tolerance for Hebraic modes of expression, retaining certain idioms like "uncover your ear" (4.4) and generally keeping the paratactic syntax of the Hebrew original. The latter is illustrated by the fact that ו meaning "and" (etc.) that begins most Hebrew sentences is reproduced in Greek by the word καί ("and") somewhat less than 90% of the time. Typically this is done even when the resulting Greek is awkward or unappealing stylistically.
Evidently the merits of this kind of close translation were seen to outweigh its disadvantages. By virtue of its Hebraisms, the translation had the power to evoke the original. Non-Jewish readers, no doubt, would have found it strangely worded or even obscure in places, but for the reader who shared the translator's social setting, the Hebraisms in Routh must have been valued as highly accurate renderings.
To speak of a tendency toward literal translation, however, is to tell only part of the story. In many ways the translator exhibits a degree of flexibility and freedom in the treatment of the text. Renderings as completely regular as the example of εἶπεν mentioned above are the exception rather than the rule, and the usual Greek equivalent was often rejected where clarity or other considerations came into play. An interesting example is the rendering of אנכי, "I," by ἐγώ εἰμι, "I am," a feature of Kaige texts (of which Routh is one) by which אנכי was distinguished from its synonym אני. This rendering, which is generally found in Routh (in 2.10; 3.9, 12; and twice in 4.4), is replaced by ἐγώ alone in 2.13 and 3.13, where ἐγώ εἰμι would have resulted in difficult or ungrammatical Greek.
Often, too, a single Hebrew word is represented by a variety of Greek ones. Three different Greek words, νεᾶνις,"young woman" (2.5), παῖς,"lass" (2.6), and παιδίσκη, "maidservant" (4.12), are all used to translate Hebrew נערה when it refers to Routh, and a fourth Greek word, κοράσιον, "girl, young woman" (2.8, etc.), is used when נערה refers to the female workers of Boos (Boaz). Throughout, the attentive reader will find that Routh, like any translation, is very much an interpretation.
Not infrequently we find that information drawn from the context is inserted into a verse in order to clarify its meaning. These insertions are mostly minor; in a typical if prosaic example from 1.15, in place of MT's "she said" the Greek specifies "Noemin said to Routh." A more substantive insertion occurs in 4.8, where the next-of-kin removes his sandal, as in the MT, "and gave it to him" (to Boos), an act that is implied by 4.7 but not stated in the Hebrew text. Minuses relative to the MT are less frequent. Often they seem to involve words that were seen as superfluous, as with "days of" in the Hebrew text of 1.1. Several may have been motivated by a sense of propriety, as in the omission of "tonight" in 1.12.
Of course many of the differences between the Hebrew text that we know today and the Greek translation might have been present in the Vorlage (the translator's Hebrew text) rather than originating in the translation. Such was evidently the case with the name of Noemin's husband, which is Elimelech in our present-day Hebrew text but is Abimelech in the Greek text (six times in the book). The difference between the two names is only one letter in the vowelless ancient Hebrew script.
THE NETS TRANSLATION OF ROUTH
NETS Routh attempts to capture something of the character of the Greek translation. Like the Greek translation, the present English one is relatively literal. In attempting to reflect the Greek closely, it is a more literal rendering of the Greek than the NRSV is of the Hebrew. (For the role of the NRSV as the base text for NETS, see "TO THE READER OF NETS.") In fact, since the Greek often renders the Hebrew literally, and NETS Routh attempts to render the Greek literally, NETS frequently represents the Hebrew phraseology more closely than the NRSV does.
It follows that divergences of NETS Routh from NRSV Ruth in many cases do not indicate divergences of the Greek text from the Hebrew Masoretic Text, but rather stem from the different translation philosophies of NETS and the NRSV. Wherever possible, however, the wording of the NRSV has been retained so that it can be compared profitably with NETS. A somewhat free translation within NETS, Routh may, therefore, be the result of a desire to preserve the NRSV where possible, or it may reflect the necessity for grammatical English.
In many cases the NRSV does not translate the conjunction "and" into English, especially when it begins a sentence, or the NRSV renders it "now," "then," "so," or the like. In this matter NETS Routh is more conservative, generally translating "and." But where both Hebrew and Greek have initial "and," and the NRSV does not translate it, NETS Routh also ignores it, so as not to imply that the Hebrew and Greek differ. When the Greek uses the alternative conjunction δέ, NETS tries to use a nuanced English equivalent instead of "and." In more significant matters NETS Routh tends to follow the Greek rather than retaining an NRSV translation that does not adequately represent it.
Generally the Greek words in the book of Routh are used in their ordinary meanings, but at times the linkage between a Hebrew word and its typical Greek equivalent apparently caused the Greek word (at least in "biblical Greek") to be used in a Hebraic sense. Examination of Hellenistic sources has often turned up Greek parallels to supposed Hebraisms, but a residue remains that cannot be explained as ordinary Greek. Examples in Routh include καί, "and," introducing an apodosis or conclusion, ὅτι, "that" as an asseverative (perhaps explicable as ellipsis); and ἐν, "in," marking the recipient of a thought or emotion.
That certain Hebraisms (but not others) were tolerated seems to point to the audience's familiarity with them, due either to their use in earlier parts of the Septuagint or to their penetration into Jewish liturgical or other settings. If indeed the audience understood certain words and expressions in their Hebrew senses, rather than as ordinary Greek, one might justify a freer, more idiomatic rendering of the Greek than the present one. But in the absence of evidence (as is often the case) that these Greek expressions were so understood, and in keeping with NETS policy, I have adopted a conservative approach, translating the expressions literally except where the sense was in peril or where English grammar would not permit a literal rendering.
Here and there the reader might perceive overtones of the King James Version or other exemplars of "biblical English" ("and it shall be," "look upon [favorably]," etc.). Similarly, it seems, the first audience of Routh experienced its Hebraistic constructions as the "biblical Greek" that they had come to know from oral translations. But NETS Routh avoids "biblical English" where it might obscure the meaning. Thus in 3.3 NRSV's ill-chosen "anoint"--a word restricted to ritual contexts in contemporary English--is rejected in favor of "apply oil."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Detailed comments on a draft of this translation by Peter J. Gentry have proven invaluable. The translation also owes much to the insightful comments of Albert Pietersma.
FREDERICK W. KNOBLOCH

And while the Faithlife version has the note markers actual translation notes themselves are missing.

Ruth 1:6 And she set out, she and her two daughters–in–law, and they came back from the countryside of Moab, for they had heard in the countryside of Moab that the Lord had ^alooked upon^a his people, giving^b them bread. 

 Albert Pietersma and Benjamin G. Wright EDITORS, N.E.T.S., n.d., Ru 1:6.

(translation notes below and book introductory material both pulled from my Olivetree copy)

1.6: a Or visited
1.6: b Or to give

-dan

Bruce Dunning said:

MJ. Smith said:

As it is still marked as under development, I would guess it was released today ... my copy appears to be indexing.

And my copy still has not arrived yet. I'm interested in checking this out for myself.

My NETS hasn't arrived either. How is it that some people have it already and some don't?