I would really like to see more open source / public domain bible translations, and more translations into English from the Western Text Type (the Vetus Latina, translated along with the liturgy from the Septuagint and the Western Text Type of the New Testament, which has minor differences from the Byzantine (Majority Text) and Alexandrian (Minority Text), during the episcopal reign of St. Victor as Patriarch of Rome in the Second Century (at the time, the Bishop of Rome was not styled Pope; this convention began first in Alexandria in the third century and spread to Rome in the Fifth century). This Bible was replaced under the reign of Patriarch St. Damasus of Rome in the fourth century by the Vulgate, with applicable Old Testament texts directly translated from the Hebrew and Aramaic* by St. Jerome, however, the Vetus Latina retains beautiful Classical Latin phrases which remain in use in the Western churches such as the Roman Catholic, Old Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, Moravian, Methodist, Reformed Catholic / Scoto-Catholic / Mercersburg Calvinist and Western Rite Orthodox churches even today, such as Gloria in Excelsis Deo (which even Protestants familiar with the traditional English language hymns we sang exclusively in my youth, before the devastation of praise and worship music visited itself upon the Methodist parish where I was baptized, estranging me from it, who have never heard it in the beautiful Gregorian chant** will recognize from the hymn Angels We Have Heard On High, which was one of my favorite Christmas hymns in my childhood because it was so much fun to sing, and is still one of my favorites to this day; if I were to organize some Orthodox Christmas Caroling, I would include that among traditional Western hymns and Eastern and Oriental Orthodox hymns.
Also using the Western Text Type is the Vetus Syra, in Syriac (indeed this is the only other text using it exclusively, but there are also traces in the Peshitta and other Syriac Bibles, so perhaps the Western Text Type should be renamed the “Syro-Latin Text Type”, but alas, when it comes to textual criticism I lack the influence to make that happen). The Vetus Syra consists only of the four Gospels, with a complete translation not happening until the Peshitta was finished in the fourth century (well, almost complete; it is missing 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation, as it was published either before or around the same time our modern 27 book New Testament canon was first promulgated by St. Athanasius of Alexandria in his 39th Paschal Encyclical, and shortly thereafter adopted by Rome, then Constantinople and Jerusalem and finally Antioch - the Syriac Orthodox version of the Peshitta, the Western Peshitto ( note the vowell shift; the West Syriac accent in the 6th century is where the pronunciation of the name of Christ as “Isho” originated), adding the books in question from a later translation of the Bible by St. Thomas of Harqel, which it would also be nice to have a translation of in English, as well as more and better translations of the Peshitta, particularly the Syriac Old Testament.
** In addition to Gregorian Chant, Gloria in Excelsis Deo is also heard in many beautiful settings of the Mass, such as Bach’s B Minor Mass, the exquisite setting of the traditional Latin Lutheran mass by JS Bach, which while not regularly used liturgically, unlike his other four Latin settings of the mass, and those of other Lutheran composers such as Franz Schubert (who also did a setting of the German Mass in addition to six settings of the Latin mass), represent the splendor of Lutheran Orthodox worship as it existed in the 17th and early 18th century and to a lesser extent the late 18th and early 19th century in Sweden, Norway, Saxony and certain other Northern European states, before the rise of Crypto-Calvinism, Rationalism and Pietism resulting from the expansion of the Reformed Prussian state, and of Liberalism, which destroyed Lutheran Orthodoxy in many places in Europe where it had survived the Calvinists and Pietists, such as parts of Germany such as Saxony, and Scandinavia (where the Pietists largely dominated in the more rural churches or moved to the Free Church), leaving the LCMS, LCC, AALC and a few other traditional Lutheran churches of the Evangelical Catholic form of my friends
@MarkRohfrietsch @ViaCrucis and
@Ain't Zwinglian (including the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia, the last surviving Lutheran majority country in Europe with a fully traditional church that is affiliated with the ILC, although the Latvian church also is a member of the Lutheran World Federation, but they are not solely a member of the LWF, like the liberal Church of Sweden, Church of Norway, Church of Denmark, etc (with the exception of Mission Provinces of the Church of Sweden, the Church of Finland and a few others, and also certain related movements.
