On the one hand, “copyrighting” Bibles certainly SEEMS distasteful at first, but really the idea is a good one. You don’t want people (which lack of a copyright could permit easily to happen) quoting enormous portions of your bible, adding misquotes to the quotes, and calling it “NAB” or NIV or whatever. That’s why nearly all modern translations allow only a limited amount of their bibles to be quoted in any one quotation, and in the front of your book, you must note something like,
“unless otherwise noted, quotations are from the NRSV Bible-Catholic Edition,
published by the National Council of the Churches of Christ etc etc etc”
This prevents a lot of mischief from unscrupulous MISquoters, and they ARE out there.
There is no truly BAAAAAD Bible translation, unless we count that horrific
“Cotton Patch Version” of the Bible, sold for years in Christian bookstores. I’m VERY FAR from being pure or saintly, but I bought some of those volumes, got them home, and was HORRIFIED. These weren’t just “country-fied” translations, but for example, statements like “Behold I am laying up in Zion a choice cornerstone…” were rendered as,
something like, I’m not kidding,
Look, y’all, I am layin up in AMERICA a choice cornerstone.
That goes way too far. God wasn’t laying up any cornerstone at all in AMERICA, and to render it thus is not a “country-fied” translation, no, it rather borders on blasphemous.
The NIV of course has an evangelical protestant flavor to it, that’s unavoidable given their doctrinal and philological worldview. But it’s still a pretty darn good translation (minus our catholic Deuterocanonicals). No modern translation is perfect. Nearly all of them render Hail, Full of Grace WRONGLY as “Greetings, favored one!” or “Greetings, highly favored daughter!” to avoid the connotation that already, at the annunciation itself, Gabriel declares that Mary is already filled to overflowing with God’s Divine Grace. Even Catholic translations like the NAB seem to render it this way to avoid hampering ecumenical dialogue. The rendering is flat-out wrong. But we know that, and overall, the NAB, the text itself, is really quite good (( I do have a problem, theologically, with some of it’s original footnotes and study notes. People have actually abandoned the Catholic Faith after reading those footnotes, and gave that, as the reason, to their horrified families-- those footnotes and study notes undermined and destroyed their trust in the Catholic Faith, and that’s a VERY SERIOUS matter indeed, and those responsible have much to answer for). But the TEXT of the NAB is quite nice. Another, with a rather nice text, though not without some flaws, is the New Revised Standard Version, which goes too far in the inclusive language direction ((though not nearly as far as a couple of newer versions which came AFTER it)). The NRSV is very elegant and an easy read. I have HEARD that the New American Bible REVISED VERSION (just came out recently) is a vast improvement, but have yet to check it out for myself.
As for noncatholic modern bibles, my favorite, I confess, is put out by THE LOCKMAN FOUNDATION and is called the New American Standard Bible, the NASB. I had a HARPER STUDY BIBLE (not to be confused with the “Harper-collins Study Bible” which is entirely different) version of the NASB bible from the 1980s, still have it, and it was an IMMENSE help to me in reading the word of God and in drawing me toward a Catholic understanding of many scripture passages. The NASB is an evangelical bible, but it is a fantastic translation, it really is.
The original RSV-Catholic Edition, available from Ignatius Press, is also a very nice
Catholic bible version, which I heartily encourage people to get a copy of.
PLEASE:
Stay away from things like THE JIMMY SWAGGART BIBLE. It’s name says it all.
It is a Bible, the popular King James Version, but it is filled from front to back with “Brother Swaggart’s” own unique personal interpretations of the scriptures. You will come away from study of such a bible with your head filled with Brother Swaggart’s personal theological conclusions, and sorry, but Christianity has been around for thousands of years longer than Brother Swaggart, no matter how good and sincere his intentions may be.
Peace,
Jaypeeto4
+JMJ+
) and I am currently reading Luke (as the first book I ever read was Acts for other reasons dealing with Charismatic stuff). I tried to read John but that is more difficult as it isn’t synoptic and is more theological whereas Luke is historical.
, especially if someone just wanted to use it in full.
