New American Bible

[Cashue]

I have seen this version quoted here. Are we allowed to read this version of the bible?

 

[JeanneH]

I have seen this version quoted here. Are we allowed to read this version of the bible?

Yes. It is the one used at Mass.

 

[crazzeto]

Are you Catholic? Living in North America? Chances are you hear it read every Sunday, it’s the official bible of the American Church (at least, I’m not going to speak for Canada, obviously Mexico is excluded due to Language).

NABs are cheap, you can get them on amazon for $5, or you can read it free online usccb.org/nab/bible/index.shtml.

Personally I prefer the Douay-Rheims bible, you can test drive that here: drbo.org/

 

[Joe_5859]

Yes. It is the one used at Mass.

Technically, what we hear at Mass is a slightly modified version of the NAB (where liturgical translation guidleines necessitated some minor changes).

Sorry, I like to be thorough.

 

[mattwcu]

We are allowed to read the New American Bible, but the footnotes are problematic. By that I mean they don’t always communicate the faith very well.

Choose an RSV, Douay, of Confraternity Bible - they are much more faithful.

 

[Cashue]

We are allowed to read the New American Bible, but the footnotes are problematic. By that I mean they don’t always communicate the faith very well.

Choose an RSV, Douay, of Confraternity Bible - they are much more faithful.

thank you, I’ll be wary of the footnotes

 

[Topaz1128]

We are allowed to read the New American Bible, but the footnotes are problematic. By that I mean they don’t always communicate the faith very well.

I’ve heard this mentioned on Catholic Answers Live. Could you elaborate on that? How do the footnotes not communicate the faith very well? It is a Catholic Bible, so I don’t understand why the footnotes would be contrary to Catholicism.

 

[mattwcu]

Absolutely. Jimmy Akin gives an example here:

New American Bible

An excerpt:

In regard to the first question, there are three reasons I don’t like the NAB. First, there are the footnotes. In some editions these are likely worse than others, but even the better ones still have some bad notes (not all are bad, but some are). The notes, apparently, have been cleaned up somewhat since the 1970s, but there are still clunkers that will misinform, disturb, or even challenge the faith of readers. For example, consider this note on Matthew 16:21-23:

[21-23] This first prediction of the passion follows Mark 8:31-33 in the main and serves as a corrective to an understanding of Jesus’ messiahship as solely one of glory and triumph. By his addition of from that time on (Matthew 16:21) Matthew has emphasized that Jesus’ revelation of his coming suffering and death marks a new phase of the gospel. **Neither this nor the two later passion predictions (Matthew 17:22-23; 20:17-19) can be taken as sayings that, as they stand, go back to Jesus himself. However, it is probable that he foresaw that his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death, but was confident that he would ultimately be vindicated by God (see Matthew 26:29). **[SOURCE]

HUH???

Jesus couldn’t actually predict the future? He wasn’t a true prophet? He didn’t know about his death and resurrection? He could only foresee that “his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death?”

Sorry, but this is flatly inconsistent with the Christian faith.

 

[Topaz1128]

Absolutely. Jimmy Akin gives an example here:

New American Bible

An excerpt:

So why in the world does the NAB bear the Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur of the Catholic Church?

 

[mattwcu]

Imprimaturs aren’t infallible. As to why it was approved in the first place, who knows.

 

[Topaz1128]

Imprimaturs aren’t infallible. As to why it was approved in the first place, who knows.

Pope Paul VI wrote in the introduction of the NAB: “Its pages contain a new Catholic version of the Bible in English, along with illustrations and explanations [footnotes] that facilitate understanding of the text.”

This is good enough for me.

 

[Faith1960]

We are allowed to read the New American Bible, but the footnotes are problematic. By that I mean they don’t always communicate the faith very well.

Choose an RSV, Douay, of Confraternity Bible - they are much more faithful.

I have a New American Bible St. Joseph Edition and the footnotes usually aren’t very helpful, at all.

 

[crazzeto]

For those who don’t know,

An impramature is a statement that a particular work doesn’t contradict faith (as in doctrinal) or morals, it’s not a statement of quality. Take The Secrets, Chastisement, and Triumph of the Two Hearts of Jesus and Mary as an example… The book starts off good, but then goes off the deepend making the same mistake many dispensational-pretrib folks make. It spends a lot of time trying to claim the end of the world is in a year or two, it claims a literal (though spirital, this is how he dances around heresy) 1,000 year rein of christ on earth etc etc…

You could argue that this book teaches a very bad theology that probably Catholics should avoid in favor of a good bible study on Revelation (Hahn’s CSS study is great). But none the less, the author manages to dance around actually publishing heresy in his book, and doesn’t tell folks to disregard church teachings on morality thus it can (and did) receive an Impramatur.

 

[EphelDuath]

Pope Paul VI wrote in the introduction of the NAB: “Its pages contain a new Catholic version of the Bible in English, along with illustrations and explanations [footnotes] that facilitate understanding of the text.”

This is good enough for me.

English was a second language to Pope Paul VI; it’s likely he didn’t peruse the pages of the annotated New American Bible, and thus did not catch the problematic footnotes.

As a theology major at the Catholic University of America, I met one of the translators of the NAB as a guest lecturer (I believe his name was Father Gignac?). He made several astounding claims, such as that “the Church doesn’t teach the perpetual virginity of Mary anymore” and that “it’s rather evident from the Biblical text that the apostolic fathers were wrong about Jesus not having siblings.” … so apparently, the people who lived with Jesus, spoke his language intuitively and were immersed in their own culture knew less about Koine Greek than some translators living 2,000 years after-the-fact.

 

[bengland]

I have the NAB St Joseph’s Edition and there are conflicts due to the fact that it’s a St Joseph’s Edition. In the back is a St Joseph’s Edition doctrinal index that indicates that purgatory is supported by 1 Corinthians 3:15, but the official NAB notes take a sledgehammer to the traditional understanding of this with the following note

The text of 1 Cor 3:15 has sometimes been used to support the notion of purgatory, though it does not envisage this.

I really hope they clean up such notes before they publish the next NAB, or at least allow another set of notes to be published with the text, something more faithful to Tradition.

 

[Izdaari]

Not being Catholic, I can read any version I want to, and nobody can tell me otherwise.

I do happen to have some Catholic Bibles, including the NAB, and I consider it a decent dynamic-equivalent translation, pretty much on a par with the NIV that my church (AG) uses.

(My personal preferences are the ESV, the TNIV, and The Message paraphrase.)

 

[Topaz1128]

Thanks for the clarification, everyone.

If what everyone is saying is true, then it seems like the Catholic Church is going the way of the Protestants.

 

[Joe_5859]

Thanks for the clarification, everyone.

If what everyone is saying is true, then it seems like the Catholic Church is going the way of the Protestants.

Please do not walk away from this thread with that impression! It’s a much more complex situation than that.

The NAB footnotes basically employ an uncritical use of the historical-critical method [HCM]. That has been the dominant approach to Scripture scholarship for the past 100+ years (though, for Catholics, only the last 70 years or so). There are many good things about the HCM, but it can be taken to extremes that are problematic. If you want a good perspective on how this method should be used, read the intro to Pope Benedict’s book “Jesus of Nazareth.” Many Catholic scholars did take the HCM too far once Pius XII gave them the green light on using the method. But I think we are starting to see things heading in the right direction.

It’s important to realize that most of the footnotes in the NAB are not heresy per se. IMHO, the footnotes might lead one into heresy depending upon how one takes it. But the notes by themselves are not.

I would pay more attention to the text than the footnotes anyway. I may be mistaken on this point, but I believe that the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur have to do with the translation itself, not the footnotes. I believe a new revision of the NAB is due out later this year. I guess we’ll see what happens with that one.

 

[Topaz1128]

Please do not walk away from this thread with that impression! It’s a much more complex situation than that.

I’m not walking away.

Being a new Catholic, I guess I had the false expectation that all Catholic biblical scholarship agreed. I’m now seeing that there are liberal and conservative methods much like in Protestantism.

How naive I was…

 

[Joe_5859]

I’m not walking away.

Being a new Catholic, I guess I had the false expectation that all Catholic biblical scholarship agreed. I’m now seeing that there are liberal and conservative methods much like in Protestantism.

How naive I was…

Ah, okay.

Yes, the sooner you figure out that Catholic scholars disagree, the better. Hopefully you will never have to hear a homily at Mass where the priest claims that the real miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 was that everyone learned to share because, as we all know, multiplying loaves is physically impossible. Unfortunately, we individual Catholics (even priests and scholars) are not completely immune to the changing fashions and current trends. Fortunately, our Magisterium is.

Catholic biblical scholarship has followed much the same trend as that found among Protestant scholars, only the Catholics are often about 20 or 30 years behind the curve (because they got a later start as using the HCM had been greatly discouraged for Catholics in the beginning). I think the HCM has some great and wonderful things to offer the field of biblical scholarship, but unfortunatley we are currently experiencing much of the excesses. Once it gets put in its proper place in our arsenal of tools (instead of being used as the only tool), then I think we will be in better shape. Our wonderful pope has been working towards that for many years.