CNA: New American Bible to be revised into single translation

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New American Bible to be revised into single translation

Atlanta, Ga., Jun 19, 2012 / 01:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops have announced a plan to revise the New Testament of the New American Bible so a single version can be used for individual prayer, catechesis and liturgy.

“The goal is to produce a single translation,” said Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D.C. on June 14.

As he addressed his brother bishops at the spring meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Cardinal Wuerl pointed to the central role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church.

(read more)

Let’s try to keep the griping about the current NAB to a minimum, please. 😉

This definitely makes sense. Now that the Roman Missal translation has been implemented, it makes sense to turn to the Lectionary (which they are doing via the NAB). I’ve long lamented the fact that we can nowhere find a copy of the current Lectionary readings for personal reading (unless you count printing each days readings off the USCCB website…which I don’t). It will be good to have some uniformity in this regard.

I know that NAB bashing is a popular sport here at CAF, but I for one remain optimistic about the end result. It will probably be 2020 before we see anything resembling a finished product, but I can wait. 🙂
 
Joe_5859 said:
I know that NAB bashing is a popular sport here at CAF
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It definitely seems to have become increasingly popular, especially after I’ve heard a few radio personalities on Catholic Radio bash the NAB. Monkey hear, monkey bash. 😛
 
Joe_5859 said:
New American Bible to be revised into single translation

Atlanta, Ga., Jun 19, 2012 / 01:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops have announced a plan to revise the New Testament of the New American Bible so a single version can be used for individual prayer, catechesis and liturgy.

“The goal is to produce a single translation,” said Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D.C. on June 14.

As he addressed his brother bishops at the spring meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Cardinal Wuerl pointed to the central role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church.

(read more)

Let’s try to keep the griping about the current NAB to a minimum, please. 😉

This definitely makes sense. Now that the Roman Missal translation has been implemented, it makes sense to turn to the Lectionary (which they are doing via the NAB). I’ve long lamented the fact that we can nowhere find a copy of the current Lectionary readings for personal reading (unless you count printing each days readings off the USCCB website…which I don’t). It will be good to have some uniformity in this regard.

I know that NAB bashing is a popular sport here at CAF, but I for one remain optimistic about the end result. It will probably be 2020 before we see anything resembling a finished product, but I can wait. 🙂
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So will this be the Revised New American Bible, Revised Edition (RNABRE)? 😉
 
cjmclark said:
So will this be the Revised New American Bible, Revised Edition (RNABRE)? 😉
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😛

I know, the whole thing has been so piecemeal. First, they revise the NT but not the OT. Then they revise the OT and not the NT. Now they’re back to the NT.

I wonder if they’ll stick with NAB, NABRE, or come up with something completely different as a name. I also wonder if any changes will need to be made to the recently revised OT in order to make it suitable for liturgy. Perhaps no one knows the answer to that one yet.
 
cjmclark said:
So will this be the Revised New American Bible, Revised Edition (RNABRE)? 😉
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Well, if they add some more inclusive language they’ll have to go with New Revised New American Bible (NRNAB). 😛
 
curlycool89 said:
Well, if they add some more inclusive language they’ll have to go with New Revised New American Bible (NRNAB). 😛
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I personally hope they go with New Revised New American Bible, New Revised Edition (NRNABNRE). 👍 We could pronounce it ner-nab-ner. 🙂
 
Happy to see this happening though I can’t help but wish that things had been done in a more direct and organized fashion to begin with. As noted above, the whole process *has *been piecemeal. Frankly, I would describe the process in a slightly different way, but it would probably get me in trouble on CAF.
 
The Newly Revised New Revised New American Bible, with Revisions? 👍

Or perhaps the Extremely Revised New American Bible? (That could draw in the kids… they love anything extreme these days!) 😃
 
Easy Fix! Return to the Douay Rheims for both the Official Bible and the Lectionary. There, problem solved.👍
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
I like Douay. 🙂

I have often wondered why they don’t use the RSV-CE. It is a much more beautiful translation, IMHO.
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I don’t dislike the Douay. I merely recognize that it wasn’t carried down from the mount by Moses chiseled into stone. 😃

Since the DR was a translation of the Vulgate, any errors it contained were perpetuated. It is telling that the Vatican no longer uses the Vulgate as the official translation, but rather the Nova Vulgata. If the Vulgate was perfectly accurate there would have been no reason to update it. Latin is a dead language after all so it isn’t like the language evolved as we see in modern languages. And, lest anyone suggest that the Nova Vulgata was a modernist thing, the process was actually started under Pope St. Pius X.

Simply put, the Douay Rheims does not meet the standards for translation of Sacred Scripture laid out in Liturgiam Authenticam, which would seem to make it unfit for the lectionary.

In recent years, there have been many manuscripts discovered which help scholars to translate sacred scripture more accurately. It would be a shame not to use them.

Regarding the RSV-CE, I do like it as well. I personally use the RSV-2CE for my personal Bible. Heck, if they could lose the inclusive language, particularly in places where it makes no sense (Brothers and sisters, if any of you have wives… 🤷), and develop a Catholic edition, the NRSV might be a worthy alternative to the NAB/NABRE/NRNABRE… 😉

However, I cannot help but wonder why it is such a challenge for the USCCB to get together with a few other countries who speak English similarly and develop a solid English Catholic Bible. While we keep fiddle-farting around with the NAB in all its various forms, another generation of Catholics will go by with a substandard translation as their primary source of sacred scripture.
 
If this NRABNCREDNSNRWSP Bible is subject to LA–and I have no reason to think otherwise–then perhaps it will eventually look and sound very different.
 
I just read about this yesterday or the day before. This is definitely exciting news. I hope and pray that this new Bible translation is a good one. Hopefully they translate Luke 1:28 correctly. Here is it how it reads in the current NAB:

And coming to her, he said, Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.
(Luke 1:28 NAB)

This is how it should look, or at least closer to how it should look:

And he came to her and said, “Hail full of Grace, the Lord is with you!”
(Luke 1:28 RSV-CE)

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
(Luke 1:28 DRB)
 
Holly3278 said:
I just read about this yesterday or the day before. This is definitely exciting news. I hope and pray that this new Bible translation is a good one. Hopefully they translate Luke 1:28 correctly. Here is it how it reads in the current NAB:

And coming to her, he said, Hail, favored one! The Lord is with you.
(Luke 1:28 NAB)

This is how it should look, or at least closer to how it should look:

And he came to her and said, “Hail full of Grace, the Lord is with you!”
(Luke 1:28 RSV-CE)

And the angel being come in, said unto her: Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
(Luke 1:28 DRB)
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Agreed.
 
Well, I took this from EWTN’s website. Under their Question and Answer section, they have a FAQ about approved Bible versions, and here’s what it says about the versions of the NAB:

4.1 New American Bible or NAB (1970). Translated from the original languages by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine according to the principles of Vatican II for use in the liturgy. It was the basis of the American Lectionary from the 1970s until 2002. A good translation, but it was criticized for its changing of some traditional and familiar expressions, such as “full of grace”.

4.2 NAB with Revised New Testament (1986). A restoration of some traditional familiar phraseology. Unfortunately, it also included some mild inclusive language. No longer widely available, owing to the publication of the revised Psalms (see next entry).

4.3 NAB with Revised Psalms and Revised New Testament (1991). It was due to the use of vertical inclusive language (re: God and Christ) and some uses of horizontal inclusive language (re: human beings), that the Holy See rejected this text as the basis of a revised Lectionary for the United States. This is the version of the NAB currently on sale in the United States.

4.4 Modified NAB with Revised Psalms and Revised New Testament (2000-2002). This title is of my own invention. It does not refer to any currently available Bible, but to the NAB with Revised Psalms and Revised NT, as modified by a committee of the Holy See and the Bishops for use in the liturgy. It is the text found in all current Lectionaries in the U.S… The Holy See accepted some use of inclusive language, where the speaker/author intended a mixed audience (e.g. “brothers and sisters”, instead of the older “brethren”), but rejected it in references to God or Christ, and man, where the word has anthropological and theological significance (e.g. Psalm 1:1, with reference to Adam and Christ). Whether a Bible will be made available having these modified NAB texts is not known at this time. Since they do not extend to the entire Bible, it is possible that none will be, as that would require further editing of the underlying NAB text.

Perhaps they’re simply going to finally issue the Lectionary version as an actual published Bible? (For example, I believe it has the restored Luke 1:28 with “full of grace”, if I’m not mistaken.)
 
Luigi_Daniele said:
I have often wondered why they don’t use the RSV-CE. It is a much more beautiful translation, IMHO.
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And theologically sound. RSV-2CE is my preferred translation, and the NT Study Edition is eeeeeeexcellent.

Still, the NAB isn’t bad. I’ve been warned not to accept some of the footnotes without doing some further reading, but the translation itself is useful. Better than the KJV. 😉
 
Rolltide said:
Perhaps they’re simply going to finally issue the Lectionary version as an actual published Bible? (For example, I believe it has the restored Luke 1:28 with “full of grace”, if I’m not mistaken.)
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According to the sources cited in the article linked by the OP, there is a complete retranslation of the NT taking place similar to what just came out for the OT in the form of the NABRE.

Peace,
 
bearer said:
Still, the NAB isn’t bad. I’ve been warned not to accept some of the footnotes without doing some further reading, but the translation itself is useful. Better than the KJV. 😉
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Good point. Much of the concern surrounding the NAB/NABRE stems from the footnotes more than the translation itself. Unfortunately, the NAB is not allowed to be published without the footnotes (though some have put them in the back rather than with the text), which might make things better if they were not included.
 
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