St. John's Bible

[Jabronie]

I was at a museum recently that had the “Saint John’s Bible” on display. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s going to be the first hand written Bible in hundreds of years. One guy is doing all of the penmanship, and various artists are painting pictures to go with the scripture. You can buy prints to the four Gospels & Acts, as well as Psalms, and some of the early OT books. There’s more info and photos at their website: saintjohnsbible.org/ It is a Catholic project and the a print was even presented to John Paul II a few years ago.

Everything looks great, but I have one concern with it. There was a video describing how they are making it and I could have sworn that they said it was a New Revised Standard Version bible. I figured I must have misheard, that they just said “Revised Standard Version,” but then I check out the FAQ on their site and sure enough…

Second, the NRSV is a modern English translation with a strong literal tradition. For instance, all references to God remain true to tradition. On the other hand, it employs gender-inclusive language. The Introduction to the New Revised Standard Version states that “…in references to men and women, masculine-oriented language (is) eliminated as far as this can be done without altering the passages that reflect the historical situation of ancient patriarchal culture.” This is usually done in a very non-obtrusive manner.

At least it’s In a “non-obtrusive manner,” right?