Z
Zach
Guest
I’m talking about the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible.
- Status
J
JayCL
Guest
Ah, okay. Thanks for clarifying 
F
Fauken
Guest
It was supposed to come out this year, but now? Who knows. I think they’re still running a donations campaign to raise funds for it.
J
JayCL
Guest
I really like the Ignatius RSV-2CE, so I’ll undoubtedly get the study Bible once it comes out. Although I’ve perused the Jerusalem Bible that they use in the UK(?) and Ireland and I really like how it reads too. And if I’m honest, I prefer the British spelling conventions to the US-English ones.
Last edited:
F
Fauken
Guest
I’m worried for how it’ll be all in one volume. The NT study Bible is quite large and has ~700 pages. The OT should be much, much larger if they do the same treatment to it as they did the NT. I just hope they don’t skimp on the OT just because it’ll make the book too big. At that point I’d rather they publish a whole separate volume.
Last edited:
J
JayCL
Guest
That seems legit. I hope the same. Don’t skimp on content; that defeats the purpose of a study Bible.
F
Fauken
Guest
Exactly! I want all the details, especially since Scott Hahn is one of the theologians on it. His specialty is supposed to be (if I remember right) Covenantual theology, so I want to see extensive notes on the lead up to the New Covenant in place today. And lots of commentary on the precursors to the Eucharist (Passover, Shew Bread, etc.).
B
BartholomewB
Guest
Using the “Look inside” feature at Amazon, we can already see a large part of the Ignatius Study Bible OT. The introductions and footnotes aren’t, in fact, on anything like the same scale as in the NT.
Last edited:
P
Phillip_Rolfes
Guest
Just adding my two cents (not that my opinion is worth much more than that).
The advantage of the NAB-RE is that it’s the closest translation to what you’ll hear every day/Sunday at Mass (if you live in the U.S.). You’re already familiar with the translation. Footnotes aren’t part of the inspired Word and can easily be ignored (unless you’re looking for more of a study-bible type Bible). I also find that the NAB-RE sometimes works to clarify passages that (for me) are a little obscure in the RSV-2CE. That being said, I’m not the biggest fan of the NAB-RE. Sometimes the translation is so clunky that it reads more like the original text was plugged into Google-translate - one of the downsides to a translation that was done via a committee, I suppose.
The RSV-2CE is good, but for me the English doesn’t flow well and some passages remain rather obscure. I know many scholars (particularly Protestant converts to Catholicism) prefer this translation, but I suspect that more than a few of them prefer this because the RSV-2CE (based off of the RSV before it) is simply a Catholic revision of the KJB.
My personal favorite Bible is the Jerusalem Bible (followed closely by the New Jerusalem Bible). I’ve adopted this Bible for my own devotional reading because when I first read St. Paul’s letters translated in the JB it was like I was reading them for the first time. Paul’s letters actually made sense to me - which is more than I can say for any other translation of his letters that I’ve read. I also like the JB because any time I hear scholars like Hahn or Pitre correct the translation of a word or phrase from the NAB-RE or the RSV-2CE, they always end up using the exact wording I find in the JB.
All this being said, I think the best thing to do is to have a small collection of translations because no one translation is going to be perfect. And, of course, balance out those translations by reading the Catechism side-by-side with the Bible.
The advantage of the NAB-RE is that it’s the closest translation to what you’ll hear every day/Sunday at Mass (if you live in the U.S.). You’re already familiar with the translation. Footnotes aren’t part of the inspired Word and can easily be ignored (unless you’re looking for more of a study-bible type Bible). I also find that the NAB-RE sometimes works to clarify passages that (for me) are a little obscure in the RSV-2CE. That being said, I’m not the biggest fan of the NAB-RE. Sometimes the translation is so clunky that it reads more like the original text was plugged into Google-translate - one of the downsides to a translation that was done via a committee, I suppose.
The RSV-2CE is good, but for me the English doesn’t flow well and some passages remain rather obscure. I know many scholars (particularly Protestant converts to Catholicism) prefer this translation, but I suspect that more than a few of them prefer this because the RSV-2CE (based off of the RSV before it) is simply a Catholic revision of the KJB.
My personal favorite Bible is the Jerusalem Bible (followed closely by the New Jerusalem Bible). I’ve adopted this Bible for my own devotional reading because when I first read St. Paul’s letters translated in the JB it was like I was reading them for the first time. Paul’s letters actually made sense to me - which is more than I can say for any other translation of his letters that I’ve read. I also like the JB because any time I hear scholars like Hahn or Pitre correct the translation of a word or phrase from the NAB-RE or the RSV-2CE, they always end up using the exact wording I find in the JB.
All this being said, I think the best thing to do is to have a small collection of translations because no one translation is going to be perfect. And, of course, balance out those translations by reading the Catechism side-by-side with the Bible.
J
JayCL
Guest
I just ordered this one from Amazon today. “Supposedly” it’ll be here tomorrow, but knowing Amazon it might not make it til Thursday or Friday. 
On the Amazon listing there was an option to “Look Inside” and I like how it reads. I even like the font (which, silly as it sounds, can make a book easy or hard to read). Thanks for the recommendation!
On the Amazon listing there was an option to “Look Inside” and I like how it reads. I even like the font (which, silly as it sounds, can make a book easy or hard to read). Thanks for the recommendation!
B
BartholomewB
Guest
I agree, it can make a big difference, particularly in a book such as the Bible where – for obvious reasons – they try and cram as many words onto each page as they possibly can
Last edited:
The RNJB uses the same notes that Dom Henry Wansbrough wrote for the 2012 Edition of the Catholic Truth Society (CTS) New Catholic Bible (that is a combination of a slightly modified 1966 Jerusalem Bible with the 1963 Edition of the Grail Psalms).
Honestly, what I would to see published is an English language Catholic Bible where its translation of the Old Testament is based on the best surviving codices of the Septuagint that the Apostles would most likely have used and quoted scripture from.
I really don’t understand why for a Christian Bible that the Hebrew-based Old Testament is considered superior to the Greek-based Septuagint that it appears that most of the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament come from.
I really don’t understand why for a Christian Bible that the Hebrew-based Old Testament is considered superior to the Greek-based Septuagint that it appears that most of the New Testament quotes from the Old Testament come from.
B
BartholomewB
Guest
Thank you!
S
Swordsman
Guest
These have been available for a long time. And they are very good, with the same “tone” as the notes in the bound NT. In fact, you can also purchase the NT in small sections like these. They are great for classrooms or bible study groups, where folks can grab one of these for $12 and have the text of the bible as well as the commentary, in a slim package. I imagine, if they tried to bind all the OT editions into one volume, it would be quite unwieldy! They would probably need to trim it down. That’s one advantage of the individual editions. Peace.
S
Swordsman
Guest
Regarding a translation of the OT that relies on texts older than the Hebrew Masoretic texts… That’s a good point. And this is why there are folks who prefer to stick with Vulgate-based translations, because they believe the Vulgate was based on much older texts that we no longer have. The theory is, these would therefore reflect the state of the OT before any modifications or corruptions began following the Council of Jamnia in 90 AD. If you read the original preface of the Douay Rheims, the translators list ten reasons why they believed it was better to translate from the Vulgate rather than late, “corrupted” Hebrew and Greek texts. Peace.
B
BartholomewB
Guest
Nevertheless, from what I’ve read from time to time, the projected Ignatius Study Bible is evidently exactly that – the full text and page layout of the existing booklets to be retained unaltered. The only thing that is not clear to me is whether the OT and NT will be bound as separate volumes or both together in a single volume.
F
Fauken
Guest
From their donation page for the study Bible, it sounds like it’ll be a single volume.
https://www.ignatius.com/Donation-P3582.aspx
B
BartholomewB
Guest
Thank you, @Fauken!
B
Bithynian
Guest
(Note that the following is a simplification of a very complex topic.)
Mostly because that’s how it is with the Vulgate: Jerome translated the OT from Hebrew (with the exception of some deuterocanonical texts), and he insistently asserted Hebraica Veritas, that the Hebrew Scriptures were to be regarded as more authoritative than the Greek. That being said, the Church has never taught Jerome’s thesis as doctrine or dogma.
- Status