Jewish Study Bible?

What are your thoughts on the Jewish Study Bible? Does it cover both the Old and New Testament? Also, if anyone owns a copy of the Jewish NT Commentary, can you post a sample of Acts 2:36-47?

And one last thing - are both of these resources worth having?

Thanks!

DAL

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Mathew Voth

OT only. It is really good! See the reviews on Amazon!

mab

Here's a quick snap via Biblia. His commentary is excellent and I do recommend it.

John Kight

Ive had my eye on the Jewish Study Bible for some time, but havent pulled the trigger yet. I have other resources that are higher on my priority list currently.

MJ. Smith

What are your thoughts on the Jewish Study Bible?

It is absolutely essential (unless you own the JPS Commentary) to get a basic understanding of the Jewish understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures.

Does it cover both the Old and New Testament?

MT Hebrew Scriptures only i.e. the standard Jewish canon.

are both of these resources worth having?

The second is marginal. However, the Jewish Annotated New Testament bu Levine and Brettler should be in everyone's library. Unfortunately, it is not in Logos.

DMB

Just remember 'jewish' in this case tends toward the more eyebrow raising side of life (not immensely conservative).

Plus I've no use for Stern, but one lady's opinion.

I prefer the other NT one that has a considerable number of jewish scholars involved (I thought Logos had it, but maybe not.)

http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Annotated-New-Testament-ebook/dp/B006FITOMQ

Dan Francis

Just remember 'jewish' in this case tends toward the more eyebrow raising side of life (not immensely conservative).

Plus I've no use for Stern, but one lady's opinion.

I prefer the other NT one that has a considerable number of jewish scholars involved (I thought Logos had it, but maybe not.)

http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Annotated-New-Testament-ebook/dp/B006FITOMQ

I have it in Accordance but haven't seen it in Logos. It is a great resource.

-Dan

Dan Francis

One of those days...

36: Made . . . Lord and Messiah, the view that God “adopted” Jesus as messiah, as shown in the resurrection. This may be an indication of one early explanation of Jesus’ messiahship.

2.37–41: Teaching on repentance. Repentance often appears as a central teaching (3.19; 5.31; 8.22; 11.18; 17.30; 20.21; 26.20).

38: Repent, turn from what one has been and done; the reference is general, not to a specific act. Be baptized, some Jews associated baptism or ritual immersion with repentance (Isa 1.16; Ps 51.7 [Heb v. 9]; Lk 3.3; Sib. Or. 4.162–70; 1QS 3.6–9). Baptism in Jesus’ name, however, distinguishes the new community (2.41; 10.48; 19.5). Sins may be forgiven, unspecified; the sins most likely include killing Jesus (v. 23).

40: Save, a key concept in Acts, connoting rescue from sin and falsehood (as here) and entry into the reign of God (4.12; 11.14; 13.47; 15.1; 16.30–31). Corrupt generation, Deut 32.20; Ps 78.8.

41: Such summaries appear regularly (4.32–35; 5.12–16; 6.11; 9.31), and emphasize the astounding success in attracting believers. Three thousand, many in Jerusalem become believers (2.47; 4.4; 5.14; 6.1; 21.20).

2.42–47: Early community life. The ideal life is one of prayer and communal fellowship.

42: Teaching and fellowship, . . . breaking of bread . . . prayers, three characteristics (instruction, community, worship) followed by a fourth (care for others) in v. 44.

44: Had all things in common, communal ownership (4.36–5.11; 6.1–6), existed among the Jewish community at Qumran (1QS 1.11), and was highly valued in philosophical teachings (Aristotle, Eth. nic. 9.8, Cicero, Off. 1.16.51). The actual practice may have been different; see 5.1–2.

46: Temple, the apostles often congregate in the Temple for prayer and teaching (3.1–10; 5.21,42; 21.26–30; 22.17).

47: Summary statement depicting church growth (see 4.32–35; 5.12–16; 6.7; 9.31; 16.5; 19.20).

Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Annotated New Testament. Accordance electronic ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), n.p.

Is the passage in question....

-Dan

fgh

It is absolutely essential (unless you own the JPS Commentary)

The JPS commentaries only cover a few books of the OT.

DAL

Thanks guys for your help, I greatly appreciate it! One last question: Should I get the Complete Jewish Bible to go along with the Jewish Study Bible or should I purchase just the Tanakh separately?

Anyway, hopefully the Jewish Annotated NT will be available some day in Logos format.

DAL

DMB

Again, just expressing a personal o-pin-i-on.

Tanakh you should already have. It's a good stable OT translation, and often helpful on some of the more difficult passages. I initially got it in OliveTree and then got another copy in Logos. I especially like the notes that spend a little extra time on guessing meanings (most translations usually just give another guess). That'd be the 1985 version. You may also wish to purchase (later?) the 1917 version. Similar to the NIV-wars, the Tanakh has had it's critics concerning the 1985 version. And need I point out the 1917 was under the leadership of Jastrow. Yep.

JSB you'll enjoy for relaxed reading. As a study Bible it doesn't have a lot of depth, but quite often has some rather surprising comments. Again, 'jewish' has many flavors; this is just one.

Stern, if you like all his hoopla, have at it. My guess is, he's re-writing history OT/NT-wise, (since there's little to be had, until Jerusalem bit the dust).

I don't know if David Paul will pass this way, but I'd be curious as to his thoughts on Stern.

Keep Smiling 4 Jesus :)

One last question: Should I get the Complete Jewish Bible to go along with the Jewish Study Bible or should I purchase just the Tanakh separately?

Complete Jewish Bible includes a Tanakh version that is a hybrid paraphrase/translation

INTRODUCTION (from Complete Jewish Bible)

Why is this Bible different from all other Bibles? Because it is the only English version of the Bible fully Jewish in style and presentation that includes both the Tanakh (“Old Testament”) and the B’rit Hadashah (New Covenant, “New Testament”). Even its title, the Complete Jewish Bible, challenges both Jews and Christians to see that the whole Bible is Jewish, the B’rit Hadashah as well as the Tanakh. Jews are challenged by the implication that without it the Tanakh is an incomplete Bible. Christians are challenged with the fact that they are joined to the Jewish people through faith in the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua (Jesus)—so that because Christianity can be rightly understood only from a Jewish perspective, anti-Semitism is condemned absolutely and forever. In short, the Complete Jewish Bible restores the Jewish unity of the Bible. Also for the first time the information needed for the synagogue readings from the Torah and the Prophets is completely integrated with similar use of the B’rit Hadashah.

I. HOW THE COMPLETE JEWISH BIBLE CAME TO BE

A bit of personal history will give the reader some insight as to why the Complete Jewish Bible exists. Bible introductions are usually more formal, eschewing the use of the first-person singular pronoun, because the seriousness of the Bible seems to call for it—a formal introduction reinforces the authority of the Bible itself. After all, the Bible is God’s Word to humanity, the only completely reliable verbal communication God has given us. It is worthy of acceptance, belief, trust; it is his handbook for faith and practice.1 Since this is so, the writer of an introduction to the Bible necessarily shoulders a heavy responsibility, one in which informality and focus on oneself seem out of place.
Nevertheless, there is another side: precisely because the Bible deals with such serious topics as sin, judgment, God’s will, repentance and forgiveness, as well as the role in life and history of Yeshua the Messiah (whom Christians call Jesus Christ), readers of translations tend to forget that there is a very specific human input which does not date from Bible times and which both fosters and impedes their understanding of Scripture, namely, the translator. My choice of style for this Introduction, especially in Sections I and II, stems from my desire to have the translator’s role in this Bible version and others better understood. Farther on, I will deal with the content of the Bible itself (Sections III–VIII), the specific features of the Complete Jewish Bible (Sections IX–XIV) and how to make the best use of this version (Sections XV–XVII). But here, I am presenting the translator’s story.
I am Jewish, was raised in the Jewish religion by Jewish parents and did not come to faith in the Jewish Messiah, Yeshua, until I was thirty-seven years old. As a Messianic Jew (a Jew who honors Yeshua as the Messiah), I saw that the greatest schism in the world is the separation between the Church and the Jewish people; and I experienced it as God’s will for my life that I do what I could to resolve this—it would be my contribution to tikkun-ha‘olam (repairing the world). Although I had a doctorate in economics, I returned to school to learn more about both Christianity and Judaism—Fuller Theological Seminary for the Christian elements and the University of Judaism for the Jewish.
Thus equipped, I set out in 1977 to write a Messianic Jewish commentary on the New Testament; I wanted to produce a single book that would deal with all the “Jewish issues” I could think of in connection with the New Testament—questions Jews have about Yeshua, the New Testament, and Christianity; questions Christians have about Judaism and the Jewish roots of their own faith; and questions we Messianic Jews have about our own identity and role in the light of two thousand years of separation and conflict between the Church and the Jews. But I quickly discovered that much of what I was writing consisted of arguments with the translator of the English version I was using; they took the form, “Our English version says such-and-such, but what it really means is so-and-so.” The idea came to me to attempt my own translation of the New Testament from the ancient Greek original; then, obviously, I would have a version I agreed with, so I could focus exclusively on the subject matter. I did a sample and was pleased with it. Thus was born the Jewish New Testament (JNT), which was published in 1989.
I spent the next three years finishing up the Jewish New Testament Commentary. Meanwhile, the JNT had been well received by Messianic Jews and by Christians open to experiencing the Jewishness of their faith. Bible translation may not be known as a glamorous profession, but I have fans. My fans, who said that they appreciated my re-introduction of Jewishness into the New Testament and that they enjoyed my “informal yet respectful” style of writing, kept asking me, “When are you going to do the Old Testament?” They wanted to have a single book containing the entire Bible that they could bring to their congregational meetings, instead of having to carry the Jewish New Testament plus a second book containing the Tanakh.
I put them off for three more years but finally bowed to the inevitable and got to work. My delay was due to lack of incentive. In translating the Jewish New Testament I had had a strong and directed desire to show everyone, Jews and Christians alike, that the New Testament is a thoroughly Jewish book. But with the Old Testament I had no such motivation—everyone knows it’s Jewish, so what’s to prove? Moreover, at the age of sixty I didn’t care to spend years and years and more years doing a translation from the original Hebrew. Even though I had been living in Israel and speaking Hebrew since 1979, I knew from observing my children that my level of competence in the language was approximately that of a native Israeli fifth-grader. I certainly had no special expertise in biblical Hebrew that would justify my trying to translate the Tanakh.
So I set myself a simpler task. Initially my thought was to acquire the rights to some modern translation of the Tanakh which would be stylistically compatible with my own English style in the JNT. I couldn’t imagine that the owners of any copyrighted Jewish-sponsored translation would permit me to combine it with the New Testament in a single volume having my projected title, so I looked for suitable candidates among the Christian versions. My first choice was rejected by the copyright holders, but my second choice was accepted. However, just as I was ready to move ahead, I realized that if this was to be the Complete Jewish Bible, I couldn’t use any Christian Old Testament, because Christians modify the Masoretic text (the Hebrew text of the Tanakh accepted by Judaism) with information gleaned from the Septuagint and other early versions.2 Elation was replaced by gloom. Suddenly it occurred to me that the old Jewish Publication Society (JPS) version of the Tanakh, perhaps the best-known and most used Jewish translation in the English-speaking world, had just gone into the public domain—it had been published in 1917, and copyrights run 75 years. But although it had been published in 1917, for various sociological reasons it sounded as if it had been written in 1617! It was full of King James Bible English and was altogether incompatible with the modern English I had used in the JNT.
I tried having this old JPS edition scanned into a computer, with the object of modernizing its English by means of a few global-search-and-replace commands. I wanted to be able to press two buttons and have every “thou” turn into a “you” and “doeth” into “do”; “Abraham” into “Avraham” and “Isaac” into “Yitz’chak.” It proved to be not that simple. Not only the words but the sentence structures were archaic. The more I fiddled with the JPS text the less satisfied I was. It was like restoring an old car with lots of dents. You fix the first three, and the fourth, fifth and sixth stand out. Repair them, and numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10 beg for attention. Eventually you repair all the big dents, and you have a car with thousands of little dents, so it still doesn’t look right.
So I decided to paraphrase the entire JPS Tanakh into modern English, typing in the whole thing by hand, as I decided how to express each word, each phrase, each verse. Though a huge project, it would be much less demanding than a translation. And that is how much of this Tanakh came into existence.
However, there were many places where I questioned the JPS version’s renderings. In such cases I translated the Hebrew of the Masoretic text myself. I also made use of other English versions to assist me in expressing certain verses in modern English. All Bible translators do this—the people who put together the King James Version did it too, acknowledging their debt to those who had gone before them in their famous subtitle, “and with the former translations diligently compared and revised.” So the Tanakh you have in this book is something between a translation and a paraphrase; since it is partly one and partly the other, I refuse to define it as either and instead call it simply a “version.” On the other hand, the books of the New Covenant are my translation from the original Greek.

Stern, D. H. (1998). Complete Jewish Bible: an English version of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and B’rit Hadashah (New Testament) (1st ed.). Clarksville, MD: Jewish New Testament Publications.

Keep Smiling [:)]