RSV-CE Needs Corrections

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rock8rob said:
2.) Does the Catholic church have an official position with respect to these three RSV editions? It seems to me that the only truly authentic set of imprimaturs were granted to what is now the 1st edition of the Ignatius bible. (Perhaps this is why its the recommended version by Catholic Answers.) The Oxford and 2nd Ignatius editions seem to have taken some creative license with their respective approval citations.
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rock8rob,

Welcome, all around, not only to the Catholic Church but to these beloved threads of ours!

At one time in the USA and most English-speaking nations (1969-1998, I believe), the RSV-CE as contained in the FIRST Ignatius edition (1965-66 copyright) was authorized for use in the Lectionary. In at least one country where English is spoken (viz, India), it still is. This sort of lends it some “authenticity” by the Vatican.

And, yes, I, too, am disappointed with the RSV-2CE and still suspicious of the Oxford editions.

Manfred
 
First, let me state that I am the same poster that was rock8rob. I misunderstood the sign-up process and thought that I’d be able to change my posting name after signing up. I apologize for the mistake.
porthos11 said:
You know, I noticed that Oxford lists its new Reader’s Bible as “Revised Standard Version Catholic Bible”, and not “Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition”.

It looks like a small difference but I wonder if Oxford really meant this to be a new Catholic version of the RSV distinct from the RSV-CE. Ignatius also markets its compact as the Ignatius Catholic Bible.
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Manfred said:
porthos,

You’ve come through again!

I. too, noticed the subtlety in the respective titles, which may explain how they get around copyright issues wrt the RSV-CE of 1966. If this is so, it’s a deliberate attempt to mislead buyers.
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As I mentioned, I have the compact version of the Oxford University Press RSV-CE. It is described in the same way as mentioned above on the OUP web-site. However, the first page of the bible reads “The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, Catholic Edition.” So, I’m not sure if OUP is really doing something intentional in this regard.
mmortal03 said:
As for the Ignatius 2nd Edition, they obtained proper permission from the holders of the copyright, which isn’t the Catholic Church. This is what Ignatius Press had to say about the Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat:

“Proposed changes were sent to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (which was then the National Conference of Catholic Bishops) and we were told that changes were of a sufficiently editorial nature to support retention of the previously granted Imprimatur…”
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The second edition of the Ignatius bible seems to have replaced its Imprimatur with the following statement: “With ecclesiastical approval of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops”

I think I saw another post about this which said that this statement is meant to generally replace Imprimaturs going forward for published material. I do not know enough about this process to know if this is an accurate assessment of the situation.

Interestingly enough, I started stumbling on this whole RSV-CE question accidentally several months ago. I found it somewhat innocently when I noticed what I thought was a footnote missing between my compact OUP and 2nd edition Ignatius bibles. I did not have the benefit of all the analysis that has taken place on this forum. At any rate, I contacted Ignatius press and this reply summed up what I learned:

“The Compact Bibles, and our forthcoming Readers’ Edition Bible, are the Oxford University Press edition of the RSV-CE. We do not know the history of this version or why it might differ from the Ignatius Bible, which was based on the version published by Thomas Nelson. Presumably, the people at OUP obtained permission to change a few words, just as we did.”

Remember…this response came from Ignatius Press. So, they must also have a Reader’s Edition planned. But why would Ignatius publish (or partner in) something that they did not know the history of? What a mess…I hope the new Reader’s Editions have some statement that might tie all the loose ends together.
 
dark horse said:
Interestingly enough, I started stumbling on this whole RSV-CE question accidentally several months ago. I found it somewhat innocently when I noticed what I thought was a footnote missing between my compact OUP and 2nd edition Ignatius bibles. I did not have the benefit of all the analysis that has taken place on this forum. At any rate, I contacted Ignatius press and this reply summed up what I learned:

“The Compact Bibles, and our forthcoming Readers’ Edition Bible, are the Oxford University Press edition of the RSV-CE. We do not know the history of this version or why it might differ from the Ignatius Bible, which was based on the version published by Thomas Nelson. Presumably, the people at OUP obtained permission to change a few words, just as we did.”

Remember…this response came from Ignatius Press. So, they must also have a Reader’s Edition planned. But why would Ignatius publish (or partner in) something that they did not know the history of? What a mess…I hope the new Reader’s Editions have some statement that might tie all the loose ends together.
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How many months ago did Ignatius tell you that?
 
mmortal,
Let me re-create my timeline of communication with Ignatius Press for you…

Last year, I was enrolled in a live version of The Great Adventure Bible Timeline study series by Jeff Cavins (great program, by the way). I purchased one of the early versions of the 2nd edition Ignatius Bible and noticed that in several passages of Luke (and Matthew), a footnote to the word “mammon” was ‘missing.’ The footnote appeared in my compact version of the RSV-CE by Oxford University Press. I wrote Ignatius Press about this and a couple of other errors on April 3, 2006, but had to write a second time on April 17. I received two responses to this first inquiry:

*From May 8 2006: “Errors happen and we will correct actual errors as they are found or brought to our attention. So far, only one other has been reported (at the beginning of Sirach). We will certainly correct the misnumbering in Acts. The footnote mentioned must be something that Oxford added to their editions. It is not in the original RSV notes so it was not “omitted”, but simply not added. I assume the NCCC thought that the meaning was common knowledge and no note was needed.”

*From June 1: "Our 2nd edition Bible was based on the 1st edition, not on the Oxford RSV. The footnote on “mammon” must have been something added by Oxford. It is not in the original RSV footnotes, which are what we used. Therefore, it is not an error that we do not have it, but rather an addition made by Oxford for their Bibles. There are probably others. They must have received special permission to insert some additional notes. "

As I started up a new year of Great Adventure Bible Study, I must have revisted this question regarding RSV-CE translations. I again contacted Ignatius Press on Sep. 21, 2006 with the following (rather naive) question:

-“Finally, I’m a bit confused why Oxford and Ignatius would have started from different RSV-CE versions. I would have assumed that a single RSV-CE translation existed. So, I’d appreciate any info or history you might have on that subject.”

And I received this answer on Sep. 28, 2006:

*“The Compact Bibles, and our forthcoming Readers’ Edition Bible, are the Oxford University Press edition of the RSV-CE. We do not know the history of this version or why it might differ from the Ignatius Bible, which was based on the version published by Thomas Nelson. Presumably, the people at OUP obtained permission to change a few words, just as we did.”

After this communication, I started researching the subject and wound up reading your forums here. I know at some point the forums were down for awhile, and my personal and work schedule have been very busy. So, it took me awhile to put all the pieces together and then join the forums and make a post.

Anyway, that’s my communication history with Ignatius Press. I never tried writing to Oxford University Press.
 
First off, thanks for all the details. They help out a lot!
*From May 8 2006: “Errors happen and we will correct actual errors as they are found or brought to our attention. So far, only one other has been reported (at the beginning of Sirach). We will certainly correct the misnumbering in Acts. The footnote mentioned must be something that Oxford added to their editions. It is not in the original RSV notes so it was not “omitted”, but simply not added. I assume the NCCC thought that the meaning was common knowledge and no note was needed.”
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I think the issue here is that the “mammon” footnotes were included in the 1971 RSV revision and were not in the 1959 RSV/1965 RSV:CE. I briefly checked the NOAB (RSV) at Amazon.com, and it was present there in the footnotes in multiple places.

FYI, we don’t have a reference that has been published listing all of the footnote changes that occurred between the two versions, instead, we only have the differences listed regarding the main text, some footnote swapping, and some footnote additions specific to the CE. I am sure there are other examples of differences between the footnotes.
*“The Compact Bibles, and our forthcoming Readers’ Edition Bible, are the Oxford University Press edition of the RSV-CE. We do not know the history of this version or why it might differ from the Ignatius Bible, which was based on the version published by Thomas Nelson. Presumably, the people at OUP obtained permission to change a few words, just as we did.”
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This reads as if they are going to be rebranding the Oxford Reader’s Versions as they did with the Oxford Compact Versions. It sounds like a silly thing for them to do, though, because it would directly compete with their own publication.
*From May 8 2006: "Errors happen and we will correct actual errors as they are found or brought to our attention. So far, only one other has been reported (at the beginning of Sirach). We will certainly correct the misnumbering in Acts.
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Can you explain what the error was?
 
mmortal,

In the first (or early) printing of the 2nd Ignatius edition, the numbering for Acts 17:32 was missing…instead, there were two verse 31’s in chapter 17 of Acts. I do not know specifically what the Sirach error was…I never looked it up. But, here are some other errors that were mentioned in my correspondences (perhaps one of them covers Sirach):

*“The misnumbering of Acts 17:32 is an actual error and it will be corrected in future printings. There is another typo in paragraph 2 on p. 538, line 3, “out” should be “our”, and that will be fixed in future printings. The only other error we know of is on page 581, col. 2, 4th line down in paragraph 2. It should read (chapters 40-55). We try our best to have no errors, but even the best proofreaders miss things now and then.”

*“We did not make any change to the word ‘mammon’, nor did we annotate that. People can look up the word in a dictionary, if needed. We did correct the verse numbering that was incorrect in Acts (two verse 31’s). Only one correction still remains to be made. After the second printing was done, we learned that there was a “thou” that should have been changed to ‘you’.”

Obviously the ‘mammon’ note and the Acts error are mentioned several times.

I believe you are right about the ‘mammon’ footnote…it must have been added in the 1971 RSV update. It is not in the original 1st edition of the Ignatius Bible either. I accepted the Ignatius Press explanation of that difference, but it was that observation that first alerted me to the fact that there were differences in the two “Catholic Editions” put out by Ignatius and Oxford University Press.

I didn’t realize that Oxford had started with the 1971 update until reading this forum, and then carefully reading the front pages of my bibles.

What surprises me is that, according to this forum, even Oxford didn’t seem to realize what the differences were (or at least one person didn’t). On the other hand, Ignatius seems to know the history of revisions on which their 2nd edition updates were based.

Oxford should have at least made it clear that they were applying the Catholic updates to the 1971 RSV New Testament. I guess the fact that they didn’t doesn’t necessarily mean their edition is faulty or suspect.

Nonetheless, it does seem that communiation between the two publishers could have been better…especially since they seem to be partnering on at least the compact editions, and perhaps on reader’s editions.
 
My copy of the Oxford RSV Readers Edition just arrived via Barnes & Noble. Here are just a few quick impressions:

-The leather is very nice and soft. Not stiff at all.
-I was surprised that the Bible has thumb indexes. I don’t remember seeing this in any of the descriptions.
-The print in the Bible itself looks just like the compact edition, only bigger. The top margin seems a little bigger than the bottom.
-There’s one gold bookmark.
-Luke 1:34 = shall.
 
Regarding your new OUP Reader’s edition…the thumb indices are a nice bonus. Can you tell me if any scriptural cross (ie, chain) references have been added? Or, is it just a straight text version like the compact edition?

I’m also curious to know if they updated/corrected or added any info to the Imprimatur citation.

Thanks,
rocketrob
 
rocketrob said:
Regarding your new OUP Reader’s edition…the thumb indices are a nice bonus. Can you tell me if any scriptural cross (ie, chain) references have been added? Or, is it just a straight text version like the compact edition?

I’m also curious to know if they updated/corrected or added any info to the Imprimatur citation.

Thanks,
rocketrob
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Nothing appears to have been added. As I said, it looks just like the compatct edition, except larger print.

The Imprimatur is still from 1966. No changes.
 
I just noticed that the inside page credits Ignatius Press - San Francisco. The compact edition credits Oxford only.

Also, the “Prayers and Devotions” section at the back include the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary (these are missing from the compact edition).
 
mmortal03 said:
Just for everyone’s knowledge, Gordon Joseph Gray was the former Bishop’s name, but Oxford accidentally left off his surname in all their Imprimaturs. I have contacted them about it, and they said that it will be fixed in the Reader’s Version.
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Thanks…I was wondering if the above error had been corrected.

Too bad that chain references weren’t included…at least from my perspective. That would have been a useful addition for me.

rocketrob
 
I used to teach Sunday school in an evangelical Protestant church that used the NIV as its primary translation of the Bible. I grew to love my NIV Utrathin Large Print Reference Bible, with full center-column cross references, an abridged (but very useful) concordance, maps of the Holy Land, and a glossary of Biblical terminology. Best of all, it was very thin and light, which enabled me to hold the Bible while teaching the entire hour without my arms getting tired.

I’d love to find something similar in the RSV-CE. I like the compact and reader’s editions by OUP, and have grown rather comfortable with my RSV-2CE from Ignatius, but none of these have any of the dfeatures that made the Bible I described above so appealing. Why is it that Catholic Bibles often have very few of these helpful features?
 
mike0219116 said:
I agree. Since this Bible was delayed so long, you’d think that errors like this one would have been corrected in the interim.
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Oh, so they didn’t correct it? After they assured me that it would be fixed, that is disappointing, if only because it would have been such an easy amendment.
 
mike0219116 said:
My copy of the Oxford RSV Readers Edition just arrived via Barnes & Noble. Here are just a few quick impressions:

-The leather is very nice and soft. Not stiff at all.
-I was surprised that the Bible has thumb indexes. I don’t remember seeing this in any of the descriptions.
-The print in the Bible itself looks just like the compact edition, only bigger. The top margin seems a little bigger than the bottom.
-There’s one gold bookmark.
-Luke 1:34 = shall.
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Hi Mike,

What type of leather did you get? The zipper Duradera, Pacific Duvelle, Genuine, or Bonded Basketweave?

What does the outside cover look like? What’s printed on it?
 
porthos11 said:
Hi Mike,

What type of leather did you get? The zipper Duradera, Pacific Duvelle, Genuine, or Bonded Basketweave?

What does the outside cover look like? What’s printed on it?
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The version I bought is described by Oxford as “Genuine Leather Black”. There are no markings except for those on the spine, and they are identical to the compact edition. The leather exhibits rather deep grains, and it appears to be of high quality.
 
Does the Oxford Readers Edition render John 19:5 as “Behold the man” or “Here is the man”?

Also, did the Oxford Readers Edition adopt the changes of the Ignatius Bible Second Version (e.g., changing “lo” to “behold,” “***” to “donkey,” “babe” to “baby,” “cup” to “chalice,” etc.).
 
SFH said:
Does the Oxford Readers Edition render John 19:5 as “Behold the man” or “Here is the man”?

Also, did the Oxford Readers Edition adopt the changes of the Ignatius Bible Second Version (e.g., changing “lo” to “behold,” “***” to “donkey,” “babe” to “baby,” “cup” to “chalice,” etc.).
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“lo” to “behold,”
“babe” to “baby,”

Where are those changes in the Second Edition?

And regarding the Reader’s Version, it isn’t going to have any changes that were unique to the Ignatius Second Edition (from when we previously compared them), and the probability of it matching the Oxford Compact Versions is around 99.99%.

mike0219116 stated that it has the same layout as the Compacts, only larger. I take that to mean page for page identical.

I’ll have mine in a little over a week, and I’ll be able to confirm all of this myself.
 
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