Help! Good Christian Bible Wanted!

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RPRPsych,

Actually, Oxford University Press has published an edition of the ESV with Apocrypha (which includes the Catholic and Orthodox Deuterocanonicals).
 
McCorm - are you the author of Catholic Bibles Blog? I posted about the ESV w/ Apocrypha yesterday, as part of the following post (in the context of my using it pretty heavily for the OT recently) but it appears my post never posted, or disappeared.

Repost:

I actually like “Yahweh” much better than “Lord”. It’s time we did away with the superstition about the ineffability of God’s name anyhow - since he once and for all revealed himself in human form and told people to call upon his name.

I don’t have so much of a problem with Early Modern English style as I do with “one paragraph per verse” formatting. The Early Modern English often times makes me re-read a passage several times, but, in the end, it can not be said that is a bad thing.

(1) However, the one paragraph
(2) per verse numbering. It breaks the flow
of the thought
dramatically.​
**(3) ** Lo, and behold it makes it much harder to
comprehend and retain.
(4) And understand.
(5) I think this is
something that could be proven in a study.
(6) Like reading all capital letters, but
worse.

So, I much prefer paragraph-formatted Bibles. I’m pretty good at languages, and I can read English all the way back to Chaucerian with decent proficiency. It sucks that the original Douay-Rheims isn’t published (I suppose due to the anti-Protestant notes that all the sources say were in it), and it was in paragraph form. The Challoner Bible isn’t paragraphed in any edition as far as I can tell. I know that Bp Challoner borrowed a lot of his changes from the KJV, and he also changed from paragraph formatting to verse-by-verse, probably also from the KJV.

If anyone knows if anyone publishes an original 1582/1609 D-R, let me know. I’d be most interested.

I’ll look into the RSV-2CE when I get money. It’s a relatively new Bible so the cheapest I can find is $25 for a readable (non-paperback) one. The Confraternity-Douay and the Challoner are old, so I was able to find used ones for under $5. I got a “Confirmation Present Douay-Rheims Challoner” and a “St Joseph Edition New Catholic Bible” in the Confraternity-Douay version published in 1961 (so it probably has most of the OT in the Confraternity version). I’ve not received them yet, so I’ve not been able to look at them.

I think the CCD version was translated from the Latin, and based on the New Testament (I have the reprint from Sinag-Tala), it’s also a very correct and conservative translation, but the problems with many of the modern Bibles lay as much in the Old Testament as in the New, especially for Catholic versions. For Protestant versions, it’s usually the New Testament that has major problems, and, at the end of the day, an accurate NT is more important than an accurate OT. Still, why can’t a Bible have both, and be Catholic?

The NT of the NAB is a perfectly good NT, but, as I mentioned in my original post, many of these modern Bibles read like a Torah with a NT appended to it, and feel like they should come with a rabbinical seal of approval. There’s something to be said for Masoretic textolatry over and above the better preserved Septuagint, especially when the MT is lacking Messianic or Christological implications. It seems like one of the main criteria of Old Testament text criticism in many modern liberal Protestant (NRSV, REB, lesser extent RSV) and Catholic (NAB, NJB) Bibles*** is “that reading which has no prophetic or Messianic implication is to always be preferred to any reading that is seemingly prophetic or Messianic, no matter how poor the textual witnesses are to the non-prophetic rendering, nor how good they are to the prophetic one”.*** Whether that’s due to an attempt at rapprochement and ecumenism with the Jews or an over-rationalist Biblical hermeneutic that a priori denies any possibility of the miraculous, including the prophetic, I know not.

The NETS is a decent corrective to MT-worship (although the psalms suck as everything is rendered in the past tense) occasionally; it’s better than LCL Brenton’s in most ways, given that it doesn’t try to melt the LXX and squeeze it in to the Protestant-canon paradigm (at least not nearly as much, but it does to a point with Daniel).

I looked at the Orthodox Study Bible, which supposedly was a LXX translation, but it’s OT was a travesty. It was half-MT, half-LXX, poorly proofread and checked, wooden in application, poorly formatted, and it used the NKJV translation as a template, ending up with the worst of both worlds - a wooden, inaccurate text that reads like some Koran translations in pseudo-Jacobean English.

I’m hoping the DRC or the CCD will be. If not I’ll look at the RSV-2CE (I’ll end up getting the rest of the RSV-CE within a year, as I still need to buy the Old Testament and can afford one volume of it about every six weeks).

The ESV does come in a text-only edition with the full deuterocanon and some extras, but it’s in its own section instead of distributed throughout the text (which I can live with, as I know the order of the books). I find the OT to be quite good (I’m interested in this right now as I’m going through a period of OT-study).

Again, if anyone knows of an original D-R being published, or a DRC in paragraph formatting, let me know.
 
Khalid,

I just checked and no I did not receive your comment. If you would like to submit it again, I wil make sure it is posted.
 
Oh, no, I didn’t post it on your blog - I posted it here. I’m Chrysostom on Blogger. The OT Pseudepigrapha guy.
 
mccorm45 said:
RPRPsych,

Actually, Oxford University Press has published an edition of the ESV with Apocrypha (which includes the Catholic and Orthodox Deuterocanonicals).
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Thanks a lot, I wasn’t aware of that! Must check out your blog, too 😉

Make that one more to add to my list… Oxford usually does a good job on packaging. Their leather-bound versions of the NABRE and RSV-CE have places of pride in my bookshelf, even if the juxtaposition of “New American Bible” and “Made In Korea” does make me chuckle at times. 😃

Khalid,
About “Yahweh” / “LORD”, I think Pope Benedict XVI said we couldn’t use the “Yahweh” form in liturgy. The introductory notes to the French Bible de Jerusalem say more or less the same thing: “in a liturgical setting, it is preferred to use ‘The LORD’” (my translation of the French… more of a paraphrase, really.) I have no problem with it in private reading, though I usually end up reading “Lord” / “Seigneur” to myself instead - a bit like the Jewish practice of leaving “YHWH” in the text, but reading “Adonai” (LORD) instead.

My gripe with the use of God’s personal Name is that it tends to be used by “scholarly” commentators, such as Karen Armstrong, to demonstrate that “Yahweh” was just a local god for the Israelites, as Milcom was for the Ammonites, El for the Caananites, Baal for the Tyrians, etc… Of course, we all know that it wasn’t true, but a personal name is likely to be misunderstood by those not rooted in the faith, which is why the Church is wary of using it in public (I guess).
 
RPRPsych said:
Thanks a lot, I wasn’t aware of that! Must check out your blog, too 😉

Make that one more to add to my list… Oxford usually does a good job on packaging. Their leather-bound versions of the NABRE and RSV-CE have places of pride in my bookshelf, even if the juxtaposition of “New American Bible” and “Made In Korea” does make me chuckle at times. 😃

Khalid,
About “Yahweh” / “LORD”, I think Pope Benedict XVI said we couldn’t use the “Yahweh” form in liturgy. The introductory notes to the French Bible de Jerusalem say more or less the same thing: “in a liturgical setting, it is preferred to use ‘The LORD’” (my translation of the French… more of a paraphrase, really.) I have no problem with it in private reading, though I usually end up reading “Lord” / “Seigneur” to myself instead - a bit like the Jewish practice of leaving “YHWH” in the text, but reading “Adonai” (LORD) instead.

My gripe with the use of God’s personal Name is that it tends to be used by “scholarly” commentators, such as Karen Armstrong, to demonstrate that “Yahweh” was just a local god for the Israelites, as Milcom was for the Ammonites, El for the Caananites, Baal for the Tyrians, etc… Of course, we all know that it wasn’t true, but a personal name is likely to be misunderstood by those not rooted in the faith, which is why the Church is wary of using it in public (I guess).
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Karen Armstrong is about as far from scholarly as it gets. She hasn’t converted to Islam yet? I can’t see why not, after publishing Muhammad: The Prophet For Our Time, wherein she depicts the man as an utterly monkish, almost hesychastic, mystic, as well as being a great social reformer, feminist, and champion of women’s rights (no, I’m not joking).

I always thought the discouragement of YHWH-use was due to ecumenical considerations with the Jews, as there is nothing more horrific to a religious Jew than to hear the name of God, or any approximation of it, pronounced aloud, especially by us Gentiles.

Your consideration never crossed my mind; when speaking or writing, I often use “Yahweh God” to distinguish the One True God from Allah for the sake of convenience, so I don’t get in to arguments, “The name of God is Allah… the Islamic Allah is the same as the God of 'Isa… You should use the name ‘Allah’ when referring to God” (I know what the Catechism states on this issue and am not sure if it is dogmatically binding, but, having been on both sides of the fence, Allah can not be the same as YHWH God, at least in attributes as conceived by their respective religious traditions and practices, even if they are necessarily the same philosophically [because they are both pure actuality, and no two beings of pure actuality can exist without becoming the same]; maybe the hedging in the Catechism is enough, words to the effect that "X god [Allah, Shiva, Vaishnu, Wahiguru, Ahura Mazda, etc.] are reflections with various degrees of fidelity and accuracy to the YHWH God, seen as in a mirror darkly and poorly understood [with some mirrors being much darker than others]).

When speaking to American atheists or Protestants, “God” can be used without qualification and is generally understood; I can see where the “New Atheist” type would take God’s name YHWH (which means ens qua ens, a summation of what he is and the essence of some of the best arguments for his existence) as “Oh, another tribal god”, in the same way they talk about, “We’ve not found Heaven with the Hubble Telescope, and we’ve not found Hell with our drilling platforms”.
 
Khalid said:
Karen Armstrong is about as far from scholarly as it gets. She hasn’t converted to Islam yet? I can’t see why not, after publishing Muhammad: The Prophet For Our Time, wherein she depicts the man as an utterly monkish, almost hesychastic, mystic, as well as being a great social reformer, feminist, and champion of women’s rights (no, I’m not joking).
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I agree with you absolutely about her scholarship, hence my quotation marks, which were a mild form of sarcasm. 😃

What annoys me about Armstrong is that she’s perfectly willing to give a free pass to Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Confucianism and especially Islam, but takes a strongly skeptical stance against ANYTHING Judeo-Christian - including accusing the priests of King Josiah’s time of literally faking the discovery of the “Book of the Law” :mad:
I always thought the discouragement of YHWH-use was due to ecumenical considerations with the Jews, as there is nothing more horrific to a religious Jew than to hear the name of God, or any approximation of it, pronounced aloud, especially by us Gentiles.
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Well, that never crossed my mind, to be honest! 😉 It’s true that this is still an important tenet of orthodox Judaism (many devout Jews still write “G-d” instead of “God”). But I think it has something to do with the ineffable and (ultimately) un-understandable meaning of God’s personal Name as well, and the need to treat it with reverence. Good point about using “Yahweh” as distinct from “Allah”, though!

catholicnewsagency.com/news/yahweh_not_to_be_used_in_liturgy_songs_and_prayers_cardinal_arinze_says/
When speaking to American atheists or Protestants, “God” can be used without qualification and is generally understood; I can see where the “New Atheist” type would take God’s name YHWH (which means ens qua ens, a summation of what he is and the essence of some of the best arguments for his existence) as “Oh, another tribal god”, in the same way they talk about, “We’ve not found Heaven with the Hubble Telescope, and we’ve not found Hell with our drilling platforms”.
Click to expand...
True. I’m perhaps a little more wary about personal names because Hinduism (the majority religion in my part of the world) has hundreds of ‘gods’, and I’ve had many Hindus seriously come up to me and say that they worship “Jesus” as just another one of them, along with Shiva, Vishnu, etc. In that context, using “Yahweh” might lead them further into error. But maybe I’m exaggerating. 😉

To get back on the topic: the French Jerusalem Bible, revised in 1999 (though historical-critical) is actually much better than the English equivalent, the New Jerusalem Bible. The footnotes are more in keeping with orthodox Catholic teaching, the unity of prophecies such as Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2-3 is emphasised in the footnotes, and verses like Ecclus 24:18 are restored. Also, though there is much dithering, the authors do state that the JEDP and Q hypotheses both have serious problems, acknowledge the authenticity of the Pauline letters (though they still differ on 2 Peter), and are willing to consider an early date for all four Gospels, including the early Church tradition of an Aramaic Gospel of Matthew. If someone could combine this work with something like the RSV-2CE or the Douay-Rheims, I for one would be quite content!
 
Go with NABRE for the fact that it is approved and promoted by the USCCB.
 
RPRPsych said:
I agree with you absolutely about her scholarship, hence my quotation marks, which were a mild form of sarcasm. 😃

What annoys me about Armstrong is that she’s perfectly willing to give a free pass to Zoroastrianism, Hinduism, Confucianism and especially Islam, but takes a strongly skeptical stance against ANYTHING Judeo-Christian - including accusing the priests of King Josiah’s time of literally faking the discovery of the “Book of the Law” :mad:

Well, that never crossed my mind, to be honest! 😉 It’s true that this is still an important tenet of orthodox Judaism (many devout Jews still write “G-d” instead of “God”). But I think it has something to do with the ineffable and (ultimately) un-understandable meaning of God’s personal Name as well, and the need to treat it with reverence. Good point about using “Yahweh” as distinct from “Allah”, though!

catholicnewsagency.com/news/yahweh_not_to_be_used_in_liturgy_songs_and_prayers_cardinal_arinze_says/

True. I’m perhaps a little more wary about personal names because Hinduism (the majority religion in my part of the world) has hundreds of ‘gods’, and I’ve had many Hindus seriously come up to me and say that they worship “Jesus” as just another one of them, along with Shiva, Vishnu, etc. In that context, using “Yahweh” might lead them further into error. But maybe I’m exaggerating. 😉

To get back on the topic: the French Jerusalem Bible, revised in 1999 (though historical-critical) is actually much better than the English equivalent, the New Jerusalem Bible. The footnotes are more in keeping with orthodox Catholic teaching, the unity of prophecies such as Isaiah 7:14 and Micah 5:2-3 is emphasised in the footnotes, and verses like Ecclus 24:18 are restored. Also, though there is much dithering, the authors do state that the JEDP and Q hypotheses both have serious problems, acknowledge the authenticity of the Pauline letters (though they still differ on 2 Peter), and are willing to consider an early date for all four Gospels, including the early Church tradition of an Aramaic Gospel of Matthew. If someone could combine this work with something like the RSV-2CE or the Douay-Rheims, I for one would be quite content!
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Get the RSV-2CE and a separate conservative commentary.👍
 
Any recommendations for conservative commentaries?

I have historical-critical commentaries aplenty (Farmer’s International Commentary, Brown’s Introduction to the NT and NJBC, etc.), but have had an impossible time trying to find Catholic commentaries that deal with the Scripture as it actually is, in a spiritual or pastoral sense, instead of hypothesizing about how the Scripture came to be and what it was influenced by, and why it can’t be what it says it is.

The Navarre Bible (as I said, it’ll take me a long time to afford the OT of this) is a shining example, and the ICSBNT is good too. There are many Protestant commentaries of this sort: Matthew Henry’s comes to mind, as do Calvin’s commentaries and the “Life Application Study” series of Bibles. Is there a Catholic equivalent - commentaries about the application and meaning and the four senses of Scripture as it’s written - and where can I find them?

Preferably commentaries on the whole Bible. I have the CCSS, but it’s only the NT, and far from finished. I would like to read all of the commentary that came with the original Douay-Rheims (not the Haydock commentary, the original), but I can’t find any place that it, or the original Douay-Rheims, is published. I’ll reiterate my call: if anyone knows of any place I can get a printed version of the original 1582/1609 D-R Bible with the commentary (I believe it came in three volumes), let me know.

I’ve studied a great deal of text criticism and higher criticism, but after a point, I’ve heard different arguments about “why Mark couldn’t have been written by Mark” and the Q-theory and Markan priority delivered too many ways too many times: I want something that deals with the Scripture I have on the page, and how it is understood and lived by the Church, not hypothesizing about it historico-critically.

The Haydock is decent, from what I’ve seen online, but it’s not exhaustive, nor does it go in to any great depth. The Catena Aurea is excellent, but only deals with the Gospels, and is very uneven, and isn’t any kind of systematic commentary of any sort, but a collection of the Fathers’ homilies that referenced certain passages. I’ve found reading the Fathers to be better commentary than much of what’s out there (such as “Faith of the Early Fathers” or any number of collections of St John Chrysostom’s homilies, etc.) but it’s hard to find the right writings of the right fathers (I can read them in Greek or Latin if necessary) due to the sheer size of the corpus of Patristic writings, and the expense. I also love Patristics and the great, and faithful, knowledge that the Fathers sought in its own right, but know very little about the study of Patristics, so if anyone can point me in the direction of good Patristic resources, it, again, would be appreciated. Most of my knowledge of the ancients comes from their philosophy (Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, etc.) some Chrysostom, and “The Faith of the Early Fathers” volumes, Eusebius, along with Augustine, and then skips to the Scholastics, without any knowledge of Justin Martyr, Origen, etc.

The Fathers approached Scripture and Christianity from the perspective of faith, instead of skepticism and an anti-supernaturalist worldview presupposed, the denial of prophecy and miracle as a foregone conclusion, etc. that seems to define many modern Catholic writings, especially commentaries. This approach to faith from the perspective of faith (not to confuse me with a fideist, faith, after arrived at through philosophical and metaphysical inquiry, after a rational warrant for belief is formed: not the blind faith/fideism of many modern theists, especially Protestants in the modern/post-modern context, where faith is about “how Jesus changed my life” instead of the facts, apologetics, and philosophy: I don’t care how Jesus changed your life, and such claims are not evidence nor argument, if my mind can’t believe along with my heart) is something sorely lacking and very much missed in the material I read today: not to say that the skeptical doesn’t have its place, but the faithful has its place as well.
 
If you are looking for catholic commentaries :

Try to get Origen’s commentaries, he wrote rich commentaries on the Old Testament, but i don’t know if there is an english edition of them.
You will also like St Gregory the Great excellent commentary on the book of Job : “Morals on Book of Job”.

(Henri de Lubac’s study on Origen and traditional catholic interpretation of the scriptures might interest you → “History and Spirit: The Understanding of Scripture According to Origen”
amazon.com/History-Spirit-Understanding-Scripture-According/dp/089870880X/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1319800997&sr=8-10)

St Augustin’s commentaries on psalms can be found here :

clerus.org/bibliaclerusonline/en/index.htm

ccel.org/index/author/A
 
might not be exactly want you are looking for, but if you want to deepen your knowledge on the church fathers, there is also :

Hans urs Von Balthasar’s work on St Gregory of Nyssa
“Presence and Thought: Essay on the Religious Philosophy of Gregory of Nyssa”

And for a patristic vision of the liturgy, sacraments etc (with many quotes of the church fathers) “Bible and liturgy” by Jean Danielou (S.J)
 
Khalid said:
Any recommendations for conservative commentaries?

I have historical-critical commentaries aplenty (Farmer’s International Commentary, Brown’s Introduction to the NT and NJBC, etc.), but have had an impossible time trying to find Catholic commentaries that deal with the Scripture as it actually is, in a spiritual or pastoral sense, instead of hypothesizing about how the Scripture came to be and what it was influenced by, and why it can’t be what it says it is.

The Navarre Bible (as I said, it’ll take me a long time to afford the OT of this) is a shining example, and the ICSBNT is good too. There are many Protestant commentaries of this sort: Matthew Henry’s comes to mind, as do Calvin’s commentaries and the “Life Application Study” series of Bibles. Is there a Catholic equivalent - commentaries about the application and meaning and the four senses of Scripture as it’s written - and where can I find them?

Preferably commentaries on the whole Bible. I have the CCSS, but it’s only the NT, and far from finished. I would like to read all of the commentary that came with the original Douay-Rheims (not the Haydock commentary, the original), but I can’t find any place that it, or the original Douay-Rheims, is published. I’ll reiterate my call: if anyone knows of any place I can get a printed version of the original 1582/1609 D-R Bible with the commentary (I believe it came in three volumes), let me know.

I’ve studied a great deal of text criticism and higher criticism, but after a point, I’ve heard different arguments about “why Mark couldn’t have been written by Mark” and the Q-theory and Markan priority delivered too many ways too many times: I want something that deals with the Scripture I have on the page, and how it is understood and lived by the Church, not hypothesizing about it historico-critically.

The Haydock is decent, from what I’ve seen online, but it’s not exhaustive, nor does it go in to any great depth. The Catena Aurea is excellent, but only deals with the Gospels, and is very uneven, and isn’t any kind of systematic commentary of any sort, but a collection of the Fathers’ homilies that referenced certain passages. I’ve found reading the Fathers to be better commentary than much of what’s out there (such as “Faith of the Early Fathers” or any number of collections of St John Chrysostom’s homilies, etc.) but it’s hard to find the right writings of the right fathers (I can read them in Greek or Latin if necessary) due to the sheer size of the corpus of Patristic writings, and the expense. I also love Patristics and the great, and faithful, knowledge that the Fathers sought in its own right, but know very little about the study of Patristics, so if anyone can point me in the direction of good Patristic resources, it, again, would be appreciated. Most of my knowledge of the ancients comes from their philosophy (Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, etc.) some Chrysostom, and “The Faith of the Early Fathers” volumes, Eusebius, along with Augustine, and then skips to the Scholastics, without any knowledge of Justin Martyr, Origen, etc.

The Fathers approached Scripture and Christianity from the perspective of faith, instead of skepticism and an anti-supernaturalist worldview presupposed, the denial of prophecy and miracle as a foregone conclusion, etc. that seems to define many modern Catholic writings, especially commentaries. This approach to faith from the perspective of faith (not to confuse me with a fideist, faith, after arrived at through philosophical and metaphysical inquiry, after a rational warrant for belief is formed: not the blind faith/fideism of many modern theists, especially Protestants in the modern/post-modern context, where faith is about “how Jesus changed my life” instead of the facts, apologetics, and philosophy: I don’t care how Jesus changed your life, and such claims are not evidence nor argument, if my mind can’t believe along with my heart) is something sorely lacking and very much missed in the material I read today: not to say that the skeptical doesn’t have its place, but the faithful has its place as well.
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I’m writing my own Biblical Commentary (probably rife with heretical ideas though, because I’m not as knowledgeable in the faith as I’d like to be)! 😃

You can find my thoughts on 2 Maccabees 3:22-40 here! (yes, shameless plug I know, but I want to know what others think and make sure I’m not a few rounds short of a full clip).

Also, it will be a few years before it’s done, so… yeah. To be quite honest I haven’t really read any Catholic Commentaries outside of the Navarre Bible. I know that there are a few online like the Haydock, but I haven’t really gone to much into it. I do have Matthew Henry’s 6 volume set, though at the moment only Volume 1 (Genesis to Deuteronomy) is available to me. As I focus more on the Pentateuch, I might reference some of his work, as I tend to borrow from both Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant sources.
 
Khalid:

I believe you will find the various Confraternity editions of the Old Testament of very little use in your quest as these are simply the NAB translations published as they became available, before the complete NAB was collected in one place in 1970. This is not the case for the Confraternity New Testament which is based on the Douay-Rheims, unlike the NAB NT.

AntalKalnoky:

Please look on the NAB with a more critical eye. Apart from the problematic translation, many of the notes are atrocious and read to my ear as if the scholars responsible sometimes forgot the Scripture’s divinely inspired aspect. For an interesting critique of the NAB, please see the link in my sig. The Douay-Rheims, on the other hand, is a translation of St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate. Of the Vulgate, the Council of Trent decreed:

Moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod,—considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic,—ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many ages, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.

When you appeal to the age of sources used to create the NAB, please consider that St. Jerome translated from the original languages also, and working in the 4th century is considered to have had access to sources no longer available to us. He was also much closer in time to the origin of these sources especially in the case of the Greek New Testament.
 
Damn it! I figured the Confraternity OT would be like the Confraternity NT.
 
I finally got my 1962 Confraternity Bible: the books in it that are CCD versions are quite different, more conservative, and attain to a much more dignified idiom than the New American Bible books: I have to believe the 1970 NAB Book of Genesis is completely different. Overall, it’s quite good (even if it is falling apart).

The RSV-2CE appears marred by modernism in some places, and is inconsistent.

The Douay-Rheims is spectacular, but a combination of archaic English and verse-by-verse formatting make some parts (i.e. the sapiential books) hard to comprehend.

The NASB (not the NAB) is more Catholic and conservative than most Catholic Bibles (with the exception of the three mentioned above; i.e. the NAB, the JB, the REB, the NJB, the RSV-CE, and neck-and-neck in “Catholicism” with the -2CE) in all of the parts that it translates (even in the New Testament): it’s sad it doesn’t come with the deuterocanon. The ESV is excellent in many parts, having an excellent Old Testament, but some of the New Testament shows some unacceptable doctrinal bias in several places, notable 1 Tim 3:15, which make it unusable as a day-to-day Bible, even though it has a decent translation of the deuterocanon (I think the RSV 1977 deuterocanonicals are better, and the Douay-Rheims or NETS the best, as many verses, or parts of verses, present in the Greek and Latin are missing in the RSV derivatives and other modern MT-derived translations, especially in Proverbs, Ecclesiasticus, and Wisdom).

I ordered a second-hand “Orthodox Study Bible” with the Septuagintal Old Testament, supposedly a new translation. The NT of it, which I have, is just an NKJV with wierd-cum-jejune notes. I remember from borrowing it, had absolutely dreadful annotation (the full OSB), but I’m thinking it may be my best bet for a paragraph-formatted text in understandable English (I think the DRC would be much more understandable if the text formatting was improved: as is, the narrative books are easy enough to read) with the full deuterocanon, with all of the ancient verses according to the Septuagint, that doesn’t shy away from Messianic, Prophetic, and Christological interpretations in the text.

I came to the conclusion that each Bible has strengths and weaknesses, but, as yet, there is no one-volume solution for conservative or traditional Catholics that meet all the necessary criteria, not even the Haydock Bible. But, one can be made.

So, I’m getting some desktop publishing/formatting software and undertaking a full revision, or even re-translation level revision, in the vein of the RSV’s relationship to the KJV, of the Bible, so that it:
  1. Is a Bible for devotional reading, not higher-critical scholarship, of which many excellent volumes are already produced.
  2. Contains the full canon with all verses from the Greek and Latin (not the Hebrew: I’m proficient in Attic and Koine Greek and Ecclesiastical, Mediaevel, and Ancient Latin, not in Hebrew, and think the Hebrew has many problems in any case: recourse will be made in comparison to literal-to-interlinear scholarly translations of the DSS, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and similar ancient Hebrew sources, even though they will not be used as a source for translation).
  3. Is traditional in outlook and phrasing, and doesn’t presuppose naturalism.
  4. Is open to prophecy.
  5. Is single-column.
  6. Is paragraphed.
  7. Has words that are not present in the original Greek/Latin in italics, in the way of the DRC/KJV/NASB.
  8. Is literal, but readable (NETS- or NASB-level literality).
  9. Restores prophecy and Christ to their proper places.
  10. Contains a limited amount of annotation drawn from the ancient authorities on difficult or oft-misinterpreted passages.
  11. Is written in a very dignified and reverential yet comprehensible Mid-Atlantic English idiom that retains some archaisms, when such archaisms convey a meaning that modern language can not (such as second-person plurals).
Do you think there’s a market for such a thing, through regular publishing routes, for more conservative or traditional Catholics? I know it’s not possible to get an imprimatur for such work now because it doesn’t use the Masoretic text, which is a pity. If not, I’ll still likely do it and have it printed on Lulu for my own personal use or for a limited market. If anyone thinks that there’s something I omitted from the above list that would help make the Bible better, or any emendations to specific targets of the 10 (11) points listed that you think would make it a better Bible, please let me know.
 
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  1. Contains the full canon with all verses from the Greek and Latin, from the Received Text, the Majority Text, the Patriarchal text, the Rahlfs and Gottingen Septuagints, and various Vulgates and Old Latin versions (not the Hebrew, nor the Nestle-Aland text: I’m proficient in Attic and Koine Greek and Ecclesiastical, Mediaevel, and Ancient Latin, not in Hebrew, and think the Hebrew has many problems in any case [and I’ll leave the critical Vaticanus-Sinaiticus-Alexandrinus Greek NT to the many capable editors and translators and critics who have released multitudes of volumes on it and translations of it]: recourse will be made in comparison to literal-to-interlinear scholarly translations of the DSS, the Samaritan Pentateuch, and similar ancient Hebrew sources, even though they will not be used as a source for translation). Verses called into question by historical-critical scholarship and text criticism may be set off in italics, bracketed, or similar, but will not be removed from the text or relegated to the annotations.
 
Khalid said:
I finally got my 1962 Confraternity Bible: the books in it that are CCD versions are quite different, more conservative, and attain to a much more dignified idiom than the New American Bible books: I have to believe the 1970 NAB Book of Genesis is completely different.
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You are correct regarding Genesis being different in the Confraternity and NAB versions. It was re-translated for the NAB. Because I believe this was a unique circumstance for an entire book in the CCD to NAB transition, I didn’t mention it in my short post earlier. I am surprised at your observation beyond that however, as the large majority of the CCD Old Testament is nearly identical to the NAB OT (there are some minor differences). As mentioned earlier, the CCD New Testament is a 1941 revision of the Douay-Rheims and as such is completely different from any version of the NAB NT.
 
Much of it is different.

However, I noticed a surprising similarity in Isaiah 9, that is “God-Hero, Father-Forever” - that notorious verbiage. But, unlike the NAB, the CCD OT does have “virgin”. The Psalms still have some bad renderings (end of Psalm 23, “for years to come”).

It definitely was used as a basis, but, on comparison, I feel the CCD OT was revised just as heavily to make the NAB as the NAB was to make the NABRE, if not a bit more. However, some of my issues with the NAB’s various incarnations (mainly, deafness to good prose and lack of linguistic euphony) are present to a greater or lesser degree in the CCD, as well.

When I posted the post you replied to, I had only read 20 or 30 chapters of Genesis - I can’t read the entire OT that quickly! - and found them surprisingly different: some of this was obvious even in the first two verses “In the beginning” instead of “In the beginning when” (which is just wrong, and blows the Scriptural comparison to the Kalam argument out of the water) and “The Spirit of God” instead of “a mighty wind” (which removes a Trinitarian reference, and, again, is plain wrong: “pneuma ho theos” and “ruach elohim” can not be translated as “mighty wind”, but literally as “Spirit of God”, or, using an alternate philology, “wind of God”, “wind that is from God”, “breath of God”, or even, when stretching BDAG to the limit [for the LXX], “divine wind”) etc.: “mighty wind” is the most incorrect rendering of that phrase I’ve ever seen, and is unjustifiable either on the Greek or the Hebrew *: even the NJPS Tanakh, from the Masoretic text, has “divine wind”, I believe).

Based on a hasty inference, if nearly the entire Book of Genesis was so different, so must be the rest of the Bible. And, in several important places, it is: it feels almost as if a few very liberal Christians and a couple of Rabbis went over the CCD OT to turn it in to the NAB.*
 
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