Asterisks in RSV-CE

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Hi all,
I’m a Catholic-curious evangelical Protestant. I’ve never read the “deuterocanonical” Scriptures (having always been told they were apocryphal), so yesterday I went down to a Catholic bookstore and bought a “full” Bible (the compact edition of the RSV-CE from Scepter). I was a bit surprised (and disappointed) to find no red letters, no italics for added words, and pronouns referring to God uncapitalized… but as far as I can tell the translation itself is nice and literal.

What has me confused, though, is the asterisks. In certain places in both the OT and the NT, there are asterisks (*) in the text. Sometimes one is placed before a word at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph, sometimes after a word or name in the middle of a sentence. I can’t make heads or tails of them. They’re not Greek-present-tense markers, since they occur on nouns, and in both the Old and New Testaments; they’re not footnote markers, since footnotes are indicated with superscript letters. Nowhere in the the preface or appendices is there an explanation of what they indicate.

Can anybody help me out here? :confused: Thanks!
 
I think the asterisks refer to footnotes about that particular verse.

For example Gen 22:6 "And Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son;*

and the footnote says
  • 22:6 Isaac, carrying the wood up the mountain for the sacrifice, has often been seen as a figure of Christ carrying his cross to die on Golgotha.
 
davidv said:
I believe they are endnotes not footnotes, as they are printed at the end of the OT or NT.
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I’m using an Ignatius Press RSV-CE. I guess some publishers might change footnotes to endnotes.
 
After taking another look at the appendices I noticed that the notes there tend to refer to verses that have asterisks in them… so the asterisks indicate that there is an explanatory note in the Appendix about that verse or word; if the asterisk it at the beginning of a verse it seems to mean that the note is for the whole following verse(s), and if it’s after a word the note is just about that word.

The problem was that there are two types of notes in this edition: footnotes (a the bottom of each page, and marked with superscript letters) and endnotes (in the appendices, and marked rather cryptically with asterisks). I still feel like a moron for not figuring it out earlier. 😊 Thanks for the replies.
 
dacoobob said:
Hi all,
I’m a Catholic-curious evangelical Protestant. I’ve never read the “deuterocanonical” Scriptures (having always been told they were apocryphal), so yesterday I went down to a Catholic bookstore and bought a “full” Bible (the compact edition of the RSV-CE from Scepter). I was a bit surprised (and disappointed) to find no red letters, no italics for added words, and pronouns referring to God uncapitalized… but as far as I can tell the translation itself is nice and literal.

What has me confused, though, is the asterisks. In certain places in both the OT and the NT, there are asterisks (*) in the text. Sometimes one is placed before a word at the beginning of a sentence or paragraph, sometimes after a word or name in the middle of a sentence. I can’t make heads or tails of them. They’re not Greek-present-tense markers, since they occur on nouns, and in both the Old and New Testaments; they’re not footnote markers, since footnotes are indicated with superscript letters. Nowhere in the the preface or appendices is there an explanation of what they indicate.

Can anybody help me out here? :confused: Thanks!
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your asterisk question has been mostly answered, I think.

The RSV-CE is bare bones. Other Catholic Bibles (actually they are all Catholic - some are just incomplete) have many of the features you mention which are absent in the RSV-CE.

I agree, the RSV-CE is a reasonably good literal translation but not the easiest to use because it is so bare bones.

Does anybody know the extent of the changes between the RSV and the -CE? I think that most of the changes are things like substituting “brethern” for “brothers” and the like. Did they maintain capitalization conventions and the like?
 
quasimodo said:
your asterisk question has been mostly answered, I think.

The RSV-CE is bare bones. Other Catholic Bibles (actually they are all Catholic - some are just incomplete) have many of the features you mention which are absent in the RSV-CE.

I agree, the RSV-CE is a reasonably good literal translation but not the easiest to use because it is so bare bones.

Does anybody know the extent of the changes between the RSV and the -CE? I think that most of the changes are things like substituting “brethern” for “brothers” and the like. Did they maintain capitalization conventions and the like?
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Well, I wanted a compact (=“barebones”?) edition for travel purposes. Too many notes → doesn’t fit in my pocket. I understand that the RSV is the Church’s recommended English translation (used in the CCC, etc.), right? What version do you like? I’ve used the NKJV up till now, but it’s lacking a few books…
 
davidv said:
I believe they are endnotes not footnotes, as they are printed at the end of the OT or NT.
Click to expand...
That is correct. I have the Scepter RSV-CE. The asterisks refer to something in the endnotes.
 
ukfan said:
I’m using an Ignatius Press RSV-CE. I guess some publishers might change footnotes to endnotes.
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davidv said:
That must be a difference between then Sceptor and Ignatius versions.
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I prefer endnotes, rather than footnotes. I usually just like to read the Bible text. Footnotes get to be clunky, sometimes taking up half of a page in some Bibles. I prefer endnotes because they are not a distraction.
 
quasimodo said:
Does anybody know the extent of the changes between the RSV and the -CE? I think that most of the changes are things like substituting “brethern” for “brothers” and the like. Did they maintain capitalization conventions and the like?
Click to expand...
If you look in the back of the RSV-CE, there are several pages that describe every change that has been made from the RSV. Yes, most of them are brothers/brethren changes, etc.
 
lak611 said:
I prefer endnotes, rather than footnotes. I usually just like to read the Bible text. Footnotes get to be clunky, sometimes taking up half of a page in some Bibles. I prefer endnotes because they are not a distraction.
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The RSV/RSV-CE footnotes are so spare, this would not be much of an issue. The recently released RSV-CE 2nd Edition (in addition to the inclusion of headings to the main sections, as in the Navarre Bible Commentaries --Yay!) has the footnotes on each page and you hardly notice them.
 
hey dacoobob, welcome to forums!🙂

Yes, the RSV-CE is a beautiful translation and it is used in the CCC.

I myself have the RSV-SCE(2nd), and I like it alot.
 
victus said:
Yes, the RSV-CE is a beautiful translation and it is used in the CCC.

Slight correction: the CCC used the ecumenical RSV (not the specifically Catholic edition), as well as the NRSV. In fact, the original English translation of the CCC had used the NRSV exclusively, until Rome objected to the misleading interpretations resulting from the NRSV’s heavy use of gender-inclusive language. So recourse was made to the older RSV (1971 NT).

I believe we’ve kicked this around a few times, but the CCC didn’t use the RSV-CE because (1) it was out-of-print at the time, and (2) it was preferable to cite from a version of the bible that doesn’t have “Catholic” in its title.
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lak611 said:
What was the reasoning behind this?
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The ecumenical RSV was largely the work of Protestant scholars who, for the most part, were “biblically honest”, meaning their biases didn’t drive how they rendered the translation. It’s always preferable to be able to cite a proof text that hasn’t been “altered in the interests of doctrinal presuppositions”. (I know, that last quote is right from the Preface to the RSV-CE, but I couldn’t say it better myself, so… 🙂 )
 
Manfred said:
The ecumenical RSV was largely the work of Protestant scholars who, for the most part, were “biblically honest”, meaning their biases didn’t drive how they rendered the translation. It’s always preferable to be able to cite a proof text that hasn’t been “altered in the interests of doctrinal presuppositions”. (I know, that last quote is right from the Preface to the RSV-CE, but I couldn’t say it better myself, so… 🙂 )
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Thanks! That does make sense.
 
Translating 2 Corinthians 2:10 as anything but “In the Person of Christ”–In Personna Christi-- constitutes dishonesty and out and out lying!

That text was Altered from both the Douay Rheims and the KJV!
 
Manfred said:
victus;2228782:
Yes, the RSV-CE is a beautiful translation and it is used in the CCC.

Slight correction: the CCC used the ecumenical RSV (not the specifically Catholic edition), as well as the NRSV. In fact, the original English translation of the CCC had used the NRSV exclusively, until Rome objected to the misleading interpretations resulting from the NRSV’s heavy use of gender-inclusive language. So recourse was made to the older RSV (1971 NT).

I believe we’ve kicked this around a few times, but the CCC didn’t use the RSV-CE because (1) it was out-of-print at the time, and (2) it was preferable to cite from a version of the bible that doesn’t have “Catholic” in its title.
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But then, if you take a look at the 1971 NT, it did incorporate a lot of changes from the 1966 CE (but also included some others that bothered you Manfred, like “how shall…” and “behold the man”, both of which are absent from the CE.

I’ve compared a few passages from the CCC and they practically match the RSV-CE for the most part.

But yes, you’re right. The copyright of the CCC clearly acknowleges the Common Bible (based on the copyright year) and not the RSV-CE.

A very few passages from the CCC are from the NRSV.
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