The New Jerome Biblical Commentary

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I finally got a copy of The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. 🙂 I’ve been reading and studying the Bible for years, but never with a specifically Catholic resource. In the past, I’ve mainly used The Harper’s Bible Dictionary and The Harper’s Bible Commentary, which are scholarly and have some Catholic contributors, but are not completely Catholic in outlook.

I’ve just barely dipped into the Jerome Commentary at this point. But I’ve been very pleased and enlightened by what I’ve read so far. The introductory comments to the chapter on Job, for example, contain the observation that Job’s three interlocutors “fall victim to the occupational hazard of theologians – they forget that they are dealing with mystery.” What a great insight!

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If you can get something good out of the New Jerome Commentary, then ok. But I just want to put up a necessary word of caution. The New Jerome Commentary uses primarly historical critical, faithless, and modernistic commentary. Things like this have helped rip peoples’ faith up and done damage to the Church.

The Historical-Critical method has its use, though it is is limited. Most of it is doubtful speculation. I’m not looking for a fight, but I felt I needed to give a word of warning to anyone who might be looking for a Catholic Bible Commentary.
 
@red sox fan

the navarre, Ignatius, and Haydock. Actually I use them in combo. They are all faithfull and very catholic. Navarre is pastoral, Ignatius is a modern faithful exegesis, and the haydock is church fathers and apologetical.
 
I agree with Mattwcu. The New Jerome Bible Commentary has a lot of heretical interpretations of Bible passages. It ought to be avoided.
 
Ok. I like the actually full sized commentaries though I like the ones you mentioned. I find the older catholic commentaries from say the 1950’s prior to be very useful. I also like the international bible commentary (blue book with a city in a circle on the cover) which seems to be faithful to the church. I just recently bought the 1969 edition of the jerome biblical commentary for $10 from amazon, used of course. The current new one i have used but tended to like the older ones a bit more.

Anyone got any thoughts on this line of thinking?
 
mattwcu said:
If you can get something good out of the New Jerome Commentary, then ok. But I just want to put up a necessary word of caution. The New Jerome Commentary uses primarly historical critical, faithless, and modernistic commentary. Things like this have helped rip peoples’ faith up and done damage to the Church.

The Historical-Critical method has its use, though it is is limited. Most of it is doubtful speculation. I’m not looking for a fight, but I felt I needed to give a word of warning to anyone who might be looking for a Catholic Bible Commentary.
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Thanks, that’s a fair point. For myself, since I was already familiar with historical critical analysis before I returned to the faith, that approach to scripture doesn’t hold unpleasant surprises for me. But yes, I can see how it could be a problem for a lot of readers.
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Might I suggest another resources which I’ve found extremely helpful, the “Faith Database.” It runs about $40 and includes commentary on just about every verse of every Book. It also contains the entire Catholic Encyclopedia, many Church Father writings (including the Summa), and a great apologetics section which covers every issue from a Biblical and a early Christian perspective. For samples, check out

faithdatabase.com/

I’ve found the Church Father commentaries to be such a wealth of information.
 
There are a couple very scholarly sections on ST. Paul, and I highly recommend them.

But, there are some very controversial, if not altogether misleading things in there, for the average Catholic studying the Bible.

Yes, it’s hit and miss, you have to be very careful reading it.

There’s so much to read there, of course. The (late) Fr. Raymond Brown has a number of essays in there, and in their midst he notes that this edition of JBC threw out a lot from the original version. He remarked that if someone would come along and try for a revised third edition, they’d probably throw out a lot of what is in there. So, take it for what it’s worth, straight from the horse’s mouth. There’s a lot of throw-away commentary in there.

In a related remark, he also said not to quote the NJBC in a fundmentalist way, there’s a lot of opinion in there.

The NJBC came out close to the time that the Catechism of the Catholic Church was being prepared, and there’s therefore no cross-referencing to the Cathechism, and there’s no influence from it, as you can understand.

I’ve had one run-in with a nun who was quoting the NJBC’s commentary on John’s gospel to “prove” that the “last supper” [not a term in the Bible] was NOT a Passover meal, and therefore did not use unleavened bread, as is mandated in the Roman Rite of the Church. So, this book can be misused, when it attacks tradition and policy in this way.

Brown himself wrote an essay some years before that, where he gave three scenarios about ordination of women, one “for”, one “against”, and one sort of in the middle. So, Brown played with scripture too much to make me comfortable. He was immensely popular with a lot of liberal priests for such reasons.
 
I also have Raymond Brown’s death of the messiah along with the original JBC. Does anyone have any thoughts on this work?

I also find it interesting that so much was taken out of these commentaries. Logically I shouldn’t be surprised. Perhaps Catholics need a totally catholic biblical commentary that is close to the Anchor Bible (and yes I know Catholics collaborate on the anchor bible too) but wholly Catholic. Something that is insanely in depth for each individual book in the bible. Any thoughts?

~RSF
 
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