Confused by Church Fathers and Translations.

Barnabas
Barnabas Member Posts: 510 ✭✭
edited November 2024 in English Forum



Well I'm lost in a sea of translations. There's so many of them. There are many different publishers and there are individual authors who translate on their own, some outside of a university, others as their thesis work. I do not know where to find the "best" stuff. For example, I can find no critical edition, or even just regular edition of the Apostolic Constitutions (Constitutions are a later work than Tradition) in English other than the 19th century which I suspect is very outdated due to less information being available back then. One exists in French, which i sent a request to borrow, but the request might not be answered due to public places closing temporarily. I don't know where to look. Some translations are expensive, sometimes prohibitively so. Others are impossible to find, out of print, etc. I do not know where to look, who to ask. I'm totally blind when it comes to finding the "best" translations of works by Church fathers. Because it's important for me to understand what is being said correctly and not fall into too much exegetical confusion, are there any publishers I should prefer? 

John 3:17 (ESV)
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Comments

  • mab
    mab Member Posts: 3,078 ✭✭✭

    Even what is considered best is going to be someone's opinion of best. And that is going to change. And your understanding is going to change. 

    My strongest suggestion to you is to just read repeatedly in context. This is going to help you far more than going off on an endless quest for perfect and complete research materials that simply doesn't exist. Once you grasp a context, then you have something you have useful to better verify in comparison. Chances are very good that you can find something to back up your understanding or challenge it right in your Logos library.

    The truth isn't "out there". It's mostly under your nose if you read it carefully. 

    The mind of man is the mill of God, not to grind chaff, but wheat. Thomas Manton | Study hard, for the well is deep, and our brains are shallow. Richard Baxter

  • DMB
    DMB Member Posts: 14,633 ✭✭✭✭✭

    Personally, I like Hermeneia's Adaptations, and the text comparison of Constitutions, Hyppolytus Canons, Testamentum Domini, and the Syriac Epitome.

    Good translation is good, but your primary problem is that the mss's are often many centuries (copies) later.

    "If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.

  • MJ. Smith
    MJ. Smith MVP Posts: 55,539

    https://libguides.stthomas.edu/c.php?g=88750&p=571965 is a good source of information.

    Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."

  • Barnabas
    Barnabas Member Posts: 510 ✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1091728#Comment_1091728

    Thanks for the link MJ Smith. Also thank you guys for your comments.

    John 3:17 (ESV)
    For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

  • Ken McGuire
    Ken McGuire Member Posts: 2,075 ✭✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1091728#Comment_1091728

    Unfortunately for us, Father Harmless has graduated to the Church Triumphant, but the annotated Bibliography he left on the web has been quite useful for me over the years. It is currently hosted at http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/toc/bibliographies.html

    The Gospel is not ... a "new law," on the contrary, ... a "new life." - William Julius Mann

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