I own a copy of NJBC. I bought it at around $52 and the last time I looked in a store, it was up to $72.
In my view, it’s not worth it at any price.
It’s heavily influenced by the late Fr. Raymond A. Brown. In NJBC and elsewhere, he makes a lot of hay over the fact that the Catholic Church has not “officially” made many statements about scripture. In fact, he cites only a couple cases that he’s aware of.
He uses that as a license to drive a “truck” through, so to speak, and drops a lot of skepticism about otherwise historical events.
If this commentary had any value, it’s more at the level of academic research, rather than for use as an aid to devotion. There’s too much controversy in there, for me.
Well, for example, about the liberal Lutheran minister Rudolf Bultmann . Bultmann is credited by Eerdman’s History of Christianity as being the most influential biblical scholar of the early 20th century. But for what? He’s skeptical about the whole bible, including the resurrection. He’s the guy who said the bible should be “de-mythologized” and then rationalized for modern Christians. Well, it’s never been done, that I can tell. Seems to me tht bultmann is Brown’s “main man” if you know what I mean.
Thing about NJBC is that it’s such an impressive sized book, you think it has to be worth something.
Naw, if you can swing the Navarre Bible series financially, I’d say go for it (based on its reputation, not my experience). The one-volume Haydock Douay Rheims has the classic english translation with this priest’s copious traditional commentary. Or, for sure before you spend any money, check out Dr. Scott Hahn’s Center for Biblical Theology website, for recommended books and study guides.
Brown’s comment about the NEW JBC is that he threw out most of the stuff in the original JBC,and he predicted that if anyone was so bold as to revise his edition, that they’d probably throw out a lot of what was in there. So, if you buy it anyway, don’t say Fr. Ray didn’t tell you so – normally you don’t read this until after you buy it. So, there, you’re warned. Ha.
Early in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, there’s a section on scripture and divine revelation. It explains that there are four senses of scripture (St. Bonaventure said there were 7 or 8). These would be literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical. Now, there you go. For my money, I’d like a commentary that explicitly addressed all that.
The NJBC came out at about the same time as the Catechism, roughly, and I don’t see any influence of the CCC on the NJBC (as much as I’ve read in it). That’s such a challenge, that it’d be only about now that such a commentary would be coming out, if anybody was that ambitious to try and pull it off.
The Pope is convening a meeting of bishops (synod) in Rome in the Fall to discuss scripture. After they meet, it might be a year before the minutes and conclusions and recommendations, and the Pope’s summary all come out. Keep an eye on that for high level commentary on scripture.
The outline for the synod is at the Zenit website, but I can’t paste the link right now. It’s given in the thread on the Fall Synod (search on synod if you’re interested).
P.s. Brown’s view is that the nativity narratives are all phony, and he thinks that genesis is myth, so there’s no original sin. I mean, after all, if that’s where you want to “go,” then NJBC is your book.
Well, it was my Diocese’s bishop who oversaw the development of the NAB…
