If you’re looking for a Bible reading plan for 2013, here’s a simple one (pdf) that takes you through the New Testament six days a week, at the rate of about a chapter a day. Logos 5 generated the reading plan for me.
I am going to get as far as I can reading the New Testament in 2013 in Greek (see here), though it may be enough for me to stay with Greek Isaiah in a Year. (More than 150 people have already joined me in the latter.)
It is now Week 1 of Greek Isaiah in a Year. Here, for ease of reference, is the schedule for this week along with screenshots of the public domain R.R. Ottley text. (Download all of Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint as a pdf here.) Sunday, December 2 could perhaps be spent reading all of the week’s text one time, then each day could go more in depth.
Monday, December 3: Isaiah 1:1-5
Tuesday, December 4: Isaiah 1:6–10
Wednesday, December 5: Isaiah 1:11–15
Thursday, December 6: Isaiah 1:16–20
Friday, December 7: Isaiah 1:21–25
See here for more resources and links to texts for Greek Isaiah.
The beginning of Greek Isaiah in a Year is nigh upon us. There are more than 100 people participating via Facebook, and others besides. This post compiles the reading plan, some texts of Greek Isaiah, and other resources. I’ll be adding to this post as often as I can.
Here it is. 5 verses a day (give or take), 5 days a week (Monday through Friday). 12/20/13 update: Here is the reading plan for the 2014 Greek Isaiah in a Year, the Sequel.
Folks in the group will be reading whatever Greek texts they have available. My initial foray into Greek Isaiah has suggested that Codex Alexandrinus (A) is a better text than Codex Vaticanus (B) for this particular book. Moisés Silva writes, “While this important manuscript [Vaticanus=B] preserves an excellent text for most books of the LXX, it is less trustworthy in the case of Esaias [Isaiah].” R.R. Ottley and Ken M. Penner, both linked below, agree. Ottley bases his work on Alexandrinus, writing, “In the Book of Isaiah… it is thus quite allowable to suggest that B falls below its usual standard, relative or absolute.”
Without further ado, then, some texts to consider, and where to find them:
Isaiah in Rahlfs LXX (German Bible Society, eclectic/critical text). Find it free, legal, and online here. Note that due to copyright restrictions I cannot post the Rahlfs text myself publicly, but you can access the whole thing from the site above. The Rahlfs edition has been called “semi-critical,” so that the textual notes in his apparatus are not extensive. But he does not base his text only on one manuscript.
R.R. Ottley’s Book of Isaiah According to the Septuagint (based on Codex Alexandrinus). See the archive.org site with description here. Or download a compressed pdf (17 MB instead of 57 MB) here from my site. (Thanks to Jim Darlack for combining both volumes 1 and 2 into a single pdf!) Volume 2 has the full Greek text with Ottley’s notes in an apparatus. This commentary is a gold mine of information about the Greek text, the Hebrew it translated, and more.
Isaiah in Swete’s edition (based on Codex Vaticanus). That’s here.
Isaiah in the NETS (New English Translation of the Septuagint), with an introduction by Moisés Silva. This is the leading English translation of the Septuagint. Find the pdf of Isaiah with intro here.
The Göttingen edition of Isaiah. Whereas everything above is available for free online, Göttingen is not. It’s here on Amazon (affiliate link) and here at the publisher’s site. It’s not cheap, but you may be able to find a used edition somewhere. This edition, edited by Joseph Ziegler, is also available from Accordance Bible Software as a single volume here, and from Logos Bible Software as part of a larger collection here. (If it’s Göttingen you’re using, I’ve begun a short primer on how to read and understand the Göttingen editions, their apparatuses, etc.)
Ken M. Penner, who is writing the Isaiah volume for the Brill Septuagint Commentary series, graciously shared some of his notes with the Biblical Greek Forum last year. See here and here for detailed notes and discussion.
Do you like vocabulary? Like it or not, Septuagint vocabulary is more expansive than New Testament vocabulary. Here is a list (pdf) of all the words in Isaiah that occur 100 times or less in the Septuagint, sorted by frequency. Here is that same list sorted alphabetically. My friend, co-worker, and fellow churchgoer M. Ryan has put the vocabulary list into Quizlet.
The Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa) from the Dead Sea Scrolls is available online for viewing. When you hover over a part of the scroll, an English translation pops up. The scroll is in Hebrew, and is close to the Masoretic Text (MT) of Isaiah, which you can access here, if you want to look at the Hebrew of Isaiah at any point.
Did I miss anything? Please let me know in the comments, and I’ll keep this page updated. Happy reading! Before Monday I will post again with the coming week’s schedule and text.
Bob MacDonald hosts this month’s Biblical Studies Carnival here. What, you thought blogs were so 2008? Well, they were. But they’re pretty 2012, too. Bob compiles a long list of blog posts in the field of Biblical Studies from the month of November.
I’m hosting the carnival next month, so if you know of good links I should include (anything that will be posted in December), please feel free to let me know.
Daniel R. Streett has some good thoughts on reading Greek, summarizing some information presented at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting last week:
For proficient reading, automaticity is necessary. In SLA [second language acquisition], automaticity means automatic recognition and understanding of a word or phrase. It actually happens involuntarily, without intervening analysis. It is not subject to introspection.
He continues to note that “reading is hearing.” He says:
Of course, the only way you can “hear” the words in your mind is to have heard them before in real-life, communicative situations where they were used in a comprehensible context.
I don’t disagree with this post (read the rest here). I do find it interesting, though, that one of the tenets of speed reading is to silence that inner voice you would otherwise hear when you read. Streett is not talking about speed reading, but wouldn’t it be great to get to the point of speed reading even in another language? It’s hard enough for me in my first language!
In the meantime, I’m getting stoked to start reading through Greek Isaiah (slowly) in less than a week and perhaps the Greek New Testament (at a bit of a quicker rate) starting January 1.
Anybody out there proficient in speed reading in a second language?
One more week until more than 50 folks and I start a read-through of Greek Isaiah! There’s an already active Facebook group page for the endeavor.
One of the readers has been working on the Isaiah volume in the Brill Septuagint Commentary Series. He’s graciously shared links with the group to some of his notes on Greek Isaiah, which he posted in the “B-Greek” Biblical Greek group last year.
Look here and here to see what Ken Penner has compiled. I’m really looking forward to his input and guidance as we work through Isaiah.
When I had a chance to ask N.T. Wright one question in January, I asked him how to improve my Greek. His reply: “Read the text. Read the text. Read the text.”
I decided not long ago to read through the Greek version of Isaiah in a year, starting one week from today. Amazingly, more than 50 people have already joined the corresponding Facebook group; we will be reading together.
On a related note, there are just 260 chapters in the Greek New Testament. This means that, even cutting the longer chapters in half, one can read through the New Testament (in Greek or any other language) with just a chapter a day.
That seems doable. Already in the Greek Isaiah Facebook group and through this blog, I’ve been able to correspond with folks who have read the Greek New Testament in a year. All of them have described it as a rich and rewarding experience.
So I’m not sure I’ll commit to reading all of the Greek NT in 2013, but I’m at least going to give it a shot. For anyone interested in doing the same, Lee Irons has a helpful two-page briefing on how he goes about it. He’s posted reading plans in years past, too (see here for 2012). He recommends using the Reader’s Edition of the Greek New Testament in the image above, which is my favorite Greek Bible for reading.
If anyone reading this post wants to leave a comment as to your experience with reading through the New Testament (Greek or otherwise) in a year, I’d love to hear about it. I do know that if I take it on, it will be to improve my Greek, yes, but primarily it will be a devotional exercise in which I seek to more fully immerse myself in God’s Word.
I plan to read through the Greek version of Isaiah this coming year, starting December 2. (Here’s a vocab list I’ll use to help.)
If you want to join along, Greek Isaiah in a Year on Facebook is the central place for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc. Come join in!
I’ve already gotten some good response to my last post about reading through Greek Isaiah in a year. More on that again soon.
For now, to whet all our appetites, I’ve just been able to use Accordance Bible software to generate this list.
VOCABULARY IN LXX ISAIAH (Rahlfs) (PDF)
It lists all the words in Isaiah, with their glosses (brief “definitions”), that occur 100 times or less in the Septuagint (Rahlfs). It also shows how many times that word occurs in Isaiah itself.
I used a multi-step process to compile this from Accordance. I’m sure there’s a more elegant way to do what I did, but I am happy to have this list, and know I’ll use it for less than frequently occurring LXX vocabulary when reading through Isaiah, starting December 2.
UPDATE: If you want to join along, here’s the central place on Facebook for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc.
Here is a well put together reading plan for going through the Greek (“Septuagint”) of Isaiah in a year. I like that, as blog author John Meade writes, “The key is working a little each day for many days.”
So this (PDF) is the plan I want to start using, beginning with the new year. (UPDATE: This is the plan we’ll use (PDF download), with slightly different versification than Meade’s plan.) And by “new year,” of course I mean when Advent begins (the start of the church calendar year), December 2.
If anyone wants to join me… let me know in the comments or by emailing me through this form.
UPDATE: Go here for a vocabulary list to aid reading in the LXX of Isaiah.
UPDATE 2: If you want to join along, here’s the central place on Facebook for discussion, helpful files, questions, companions, etc.
