I ordered and received this edition of the New Testament by ordering right here, from the Catholic Answers bookshop.
I wanted to start off the new year with a commentary on the New Testament. This compact edition is a pared-down commentary on the NT with footnote comments from the theology faculty at the University of Navarre in Spain,
the book in my hands is first of all, a copy of the Revised Standard Edition of the New Testament. The RSV is a translation of the Bible that was developed by the Catholic Church and by the National Council of [Protestant] Churches.
Internally, the Bible introduction says that this is not a “technical” Bible – it’s not a study Bible, for example. And, it surely is not that. Each page of the Bible text has varying numbers of comments to help the reader understand the Bible text.
the comments include references to the documents of the Second Vatican Council and to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and to Catholic Scholars who have written commentaries on the Bible. But, all told, these comments are not overwhelming in this Bible.
I wanted this Bible to break into the whole Navarre Bible commentary series. But, I see now that this particular Bible does so only on a very limited basis. There is still a separate 12 volume Navarre Commentary on the NT. Only one volume of commentary on the OT has been published so far, with four more volumes on the OT in the works.
there is also a page or two introduction to mostly all of the books of the NT.
At this point, with the book in my hands for only a few hours, I only read the text and notes on the letter of James. They point out that this letter seems like a bunch of subjects strung together, to form sort of a New Testament wisdom book. That puts it in the company of the OT wisdom books.
They also include a pithy remark that James is a book that establishes a continuation of the OT and a connection to it.
Is this book worth the money? It’s probably worth the money, from what I’ve seen so far. But, I’d say it should be somewhat lower on your list of books to buy, maybe between 50 and 100 in location from the top.
This book is for somebody that is probably new to Bible studies and does not want to be overwhelmed with detail, technical detail, as it says. Yes, I peaked at other pages, and there seems to be very concise, pithy comments in those footnotes – definitely something to worthwhile to look at.
I would say the OT and NT Navarre commentaries would be higher on my list of books to buy (but I don’t have any of them yet, especially to compare to this volume).