NJB: Yea, or Nay?

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Jerry-Jet said:
The NJB is Catholic. The RSV-CE is Protestant with Catholic polishing.
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True, and the RSVs are infinitely better. What does that tell us. Some say the Protestant New Testaments are the “least worst”. Hardly, the NASB, ESV, HCSB and NET are truly outstanding.

I found the Wikipedia article on the Nestle-Aland Greek text informative. It lists the % paraphrase rate of various Bibles. The RSV comes in at 8%. The NJB at 12%. My main gripe with the latter is it simply doesn’t render the Bible into English in the way it’s always been translated. It reads very poorly. It’s too gender inclusive. It’s notes are modernist too.
 
It is just my opinon but I think the RSVs ar infinitely deficient when compared to the Latin Vulgate.

While I don’t agree with Protestant translations I think that the New American Standard Bible is literally more accurate than any of the rest of them. While it may have bias–in areas when there is nothing to be biased about–it does try to literally translate the text as accurately as possible.

Total literalism in translations is not a good thing–the NASB is more literal than most without being unintelligible.

That’s what I like about the Doauy Rehims–sometimes it is important to be as literal as possible in translation to convey nuance of the text.

While I don’t like paraphraistic Bibles–I do think that the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 is better than the NAB and is one of the best paraphraistic Bibles.

Maybe paraphraistic isn’t the best word–what I mean is thought for thought accurate versus more literal Bibles that try to be word for word accurate.
 
I don’t own the NJB. My favourites are: Douay-Rheims, KJV, RSV-CE, NASB. Others that I own are NAB (worst one of all due to footnotes:eek: ), NRSV-CE (not bad but has inclusive language), and NKJV (ok, but KJV sounds better).
 
Epistemes said:
Manfred:

I’m surprised to see you say this. I have actually compared the NJB to your suggestions from the “RSV-CE Needs Corrections thread” and have discovered that the NJB hardly measures up to any of these.

I personally find the inclusive language a lot less horrendous in the NJB than the NAB or NRSV.
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Epistemes:

One of the changes from the RSV to NRSV is the addition of inclusive language, among other changes. The RSV-CE is what is used in the Catechism in spite of the fact that both the NAB and NRSV were available.

I’ve read parts of the NJB. because of the inclusive language and other changes, it just isn’t as good as the original. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why they didn’t just issue a new edition of the JB.

I used to have a JB and lost it some 15 years ago. The notes and language were far supperior to the NAB. About 3 years ago, I made the mistake of buying a NRSV, and I really wish I had bought an RSV-CE from Ignatitius and a used JB instead. :crying:

Your Brother in Christ, Michael
 
Jerry-Jet said:
It is just my opinon but I think the RSVs ar infinitely deficient when compared to the Latin Vulgate.

While I don’t agree with Protestant translations I think that the New American Standard Bible is literally more accurate than any of the rest of them. While it may have bias–in areas when there is nothing to be biased about–it does try to literally translate the text as accurately as possible.

Total literalism in translations is not a good thing–the NASB is more literal than most without being unintelligible.

That’s what I like about the Doauy Rehims–sometimes it is important to be as literal as possible in translation to convey nuance of the text.

While I don’t like paraphraistic Bibles–I do think that the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 is better than the NAB and is one of the best paraphraistic Bibles.

Maybe paraphraistic isn’t the best word–what I mean is thought for thought accurate versus more literal Bibles that try to be word for word accurate.
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Jerry:

Bibles such as the JB, NIV and the GNB are called Dynamic Equivalence Translations, while Bibles such as the NAB, RSV & KJV are Called Literal or Formal Equivalence Translations.

These are different than Paraphrases such as The Living Bible Which aren’t translations at all.

I hope this clarifies things.

Your Brother in Christ, Michael
 
I guess it depends on who you ask as to what constitutes a literal or formal equivalence version of the bible.

In my opinion the Vulgate comes closer to that ideal than any other translation and the Catholic Church taught at Trent that the Latin Vulgate is free from error in questions of faith and morals–that doesn’t mean it is 100% accurate but the Catholic Church stated that since it was read and used in Catholic Churches for all those centuries that it could be used in disputations.

Now to be sure the Nova Vulgata as the revised and published edition of the Vulgate by the Catholic Church in 1979 has not been issued by anyone in English

AND

The Douay Rheims Challoner Bibles that are now for sale are not a perfect translation of the Vulgate

and to be sure the Vulgate isn’t perfect either and the Catholic Church advocates biblical scholarship as the Church always tries to perfect the biblical text

But the fact remains in my opinion that since

The Doauy Rheims Challoner Haydock version is closer to the Vulgate than any other translation or version of the bible that it is

Closer to accuate than any other translation out there!

That doesn’t mean it is perfect–that doesn’t mean that some of its language is archaic and should be revised–that doesn’t mean it it perfectly follows the Vulgate–and that doesn’t mean that the Vulgate of St. Jerome or the Clementine Vulgate or the Nova Vulgata is perfect either.

It does mean that the Vulgate is the best standard we have for accuracy of the Bible as the witness of the Catholic Church shows and that any improvements on it–based on the original languages as advocated by papal encyclical–should be made only if we are certain that they are BETTER than what the Vulgate contains.

That is not the case with any of the protestant translations of the Bible and is not the case with the Jerusalem Bible–the RSV-CE–the NRSV–or the NAB in all its editions.

There are so many times in the Protestant versions where changes of words reject Catholic doctrines and the polishing up of the RSV-CE doesn’t negate that.

Inclusive language makes matters worse.

The ideal and CLOSEST to accuracy would be a perfect translation of the Nova Vulgata into English with very minor revisions made if new ancient biblical texts indicated that such revisions would be warranted.

Since we don’t have that I recommend that people purchase the Douay Rheims Challoner Haydock version. Why? Because it is closer to the Vulgate than anything else–Challoner’s revisions to it make it intelligible over the original Douay Rheims–and the slight variations of Haydock which were taken from Dr. Troy’s revision of the Douay Rheims are closer to the Vulgate and farther away from the KJV than Challoner’s.

I’m not saying that the Douay Rheims Challoner Haydock is perfect–it isn’t.

I’m not saying that one shouldn’t own more translations of the Bible—they should.

I will say that it is CLOSER to the truth than any other bible you can currently buy in Enlish and the errors in it are far less than the errors in other English translations–especially protestant ones.

It is as Catholic as you can get. The only thing more Catholic is to know Latin and read the Nova Vulgata.

To be more accurate than that you have to be a biblical scholar–know many ancient languages–have access to many ancient biblical texts–and also be able to KNOW when variants other than the Nova Vulgata are more accurate.

Bottom line: to get closer than any other English bible to accuracy–buy the Douay Rheims Challoner Haydock!

P.S. and also pray that all revisions of the bible will be made that will get us closer to what the Holy Spirit inspired. We have far from perfect translations and versions. Pray that God will send us Catholic biblical scholars endorsed by the Catholic Church that will help us more perfectly know God’s Word.
 
Here in England we have the JB at Mass. Beyond this, to really get to the original I use the NET (www.bible.org).

“No other New Testament translation offers more complete explanation of how the English rendition corresponds to the Greek original–most helpful for serious students of the New Testament.”*Raymond E. Brown *
Auburn Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies
Union Theological Seminary, NYC

Like anything compares with their Diglot for serious study!!! bible.org/page.php?page_id=2056
Or the 60,000+ translators notes of the 2,500 page Net Bible First Edition.
 
Epistemes said:
I’ve used the NET Bible before, but didn’t know much about it until now:

bible-researcher.com/net.html
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I’m actually surprised that Dallas Theological Seminary would give us the NET Bible. It seems quite liberal, especially their interpretations of the Old Testament and inclusive language. DTS is usually known for strict dispensationalist evangelical viewpoints.
 
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