As with Vatican II, it is the implementation of Dei Verbum that can be problematic. A perhaps distorted sense of true ecumenism lead to the NAB, I believe.
All Catholics are taught that Mary is “full of grace.” Yet, she is not in the NAB. Who is? Saint Stephen the Martyr in Acts 6:8!
“Now Stephen, filled with grace and power, was working great wonders and signs among the people.”
I actually read koine Greek. The NAB is not incorrect in its rendering of Luke 1:28 in that the NAB is a translation from the original language manuscripts. In Greek the words are:
Chaire kecharitomene, [h]o Kyrios meta sou.
Or literally, “Greetings graced [meaning “favored from above”] person, the Lord is with you.”
The expression, “full of grace” comes from the Aramaic (because Mary, a Jew, would have spoken Aramaic–a form of Hebrew that developed after the Babylonian diaspora).
The Greek doesn’t capture the Hebrew/Aramaic concept at all because the Greek language has rules that doesn’t allow for it.
The Church has carried over the Hebrew meaning through its Tradition and this influenced the Latin version, which reads:
Ave, gratia plena, Dominus tecum
Or literally: “Hello, grace full, [the] Lord with you [is].”
Latin can capture the Semitic logic that is against the rules in Greek (and in English too). The expression “full” in Latin and Hebrew/Aramaic means something like when we say a gas tank is “full” in American English. In this sense the tank has no room for anything else, be it gas or water or anything. It is full.
In Semitic language when a person is “full” of something it implies that the subject is without anything but what they are full with. “Full of grace” is equivalent to the Aramaic term,
maliath taibootho, which means “grace-filled.” In English the logic we use is to say what Mary is WITHOUT, namely “sinless,” but in Aramaic the logic is the other way around as you say with the person is filled with, “full of grace.” Koine Greek is like English in this way.
Now the Church has asked that Bibles be translations of the original texts from the original tongues. When you translate from Greek you get what you would read from the Greek–not the Latin or the Aramaic when it comes to Luke, as Luke’s gospel was originally written in koine Greek.
In koine Greek there is a phrase “full of grace,” and it is not the same phrase used in Luke.
You pointed out Acts 6:8, where it is used about Stephen:
Stephanos de pleres charitos.
It also appears at John 1:14 where Christ, the word is described as “full of grace”
[H]o logos…pleres charitos.
“Pleres charitos” and “kecharitomene” are different, are they not? That is why they are translated as they are in the NAB. If you have issue with these phrases it is not the NAB’s fault, it is the Greek text you have issue with.
And it is the Greek text that is inspired, not any translation thereof.
). The great thing about computers is the ability to have software with the search function and side by side comparison of Catholic and Protestant translations. I don’t think I’ll be discussing Catholic doctrine with family/friends any time soon, but it’s there just in case. I’ll still want to use my Bible, the NAB when I can.
The Bible app has it, and the Douay-Reims as well. 