Hello. The answer to your query is that the revision is in progress and some parts of the English translation are completed. However, the publishers, Darton, Longman & Todd, are not at all confident that the English edition will ever be published because the Catholic Church in England has decided to adopt the English Standard Version (ESV) as the translation to replace the Jerusalem Bible in the liturgy. This decision may well be duplicated in other English-speaking countries (I can’t speak for the USA). It’s a question of commercial viability.
That’s my latest understanding of the situation but if I hear anything different I will post another message on this thread.
My own feeling about the current NJB is that it is, in some ways, more accurate than the JB, but when I use it for a while I always end up disappointed with some of the choices. For instance, ‘Upright/ness’ instead of ‘Righteous/ness’ was quite an unnecessary change. The avoidance of the male gender is not as serious as in the NRSV, but still ends up with some tortuous phraseology, such as in Proverbs and in many other places. The JB has its faults (‘happy’ in place of ‘blessed’ was a big mistake) and it’s a bit rough and clumsy in places but so is the NJB. For instance, 1 Cor 10.13 - ‘put up with it’ (!) instead of ‘endure’, and in the Magnificat, Mary is ‘humiliated’. The footnotes in the standard edition of the NJB are outrageously sceptical in places, which says more for the intellectual arrogance of the commentators than the integrity of God’s word. According to these sceptics, the Magnificat and the Benedictus were not actually uttered by Mary and Zechariah but conveniently inserted into the narrative by Luke as appropriate pronouncements. The fact that the Bible deems the Benedictus as a prophecy seems to have escaped the commentator’s attention. I think I will stick to the JB!
