Which Bible Translation is your Favorite?

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Fidelis:
Personally, I would not recommend this commentary, especially for people just starting out in Bible Study. It is imbued with the Modernist influences of it’s main contributor and editor Fr. Raymond Brown (who also granted HIMSELF an imprimatur !). It’s a lot of money for something that may end up damaging someone’s faith, IMHO. Instead, I would recommend both the *Navarre Bible *series or The Ignatius Study Bibles, available at most Catholic bookstores or at amazon.com.
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Amen to this comment. Fr Brown is (was) a real source of problems. I wonder how may DRE’s and other catechists (other than the half dozen I know) credit him for “teaching” them that any religion will work if you believe in Jesus. That goes over real big at Univ of Michigan student parish and their “Director of Adult Formation” and other chapels who employ these people without checking them out. Then again, how many bishops care what goes on in their diocese? Ours thinks that adults can use their own conscience to determine if they can receive (Kerry and Granholm are welcome in our diocese) with no distinction for a “well formed conscience”.

Get a good bible, a catechism, and a reputable catechist to work with. Then the many weak versions will become more evident.

MrS
 
I have a bunch of Bibles left over from the Protestant(S. Baptist) days, a Chronological Bible, a Comparative Bible with 4 different translations side by side, and a few other study bibles.

I was always partial to the KJV because of the poetic nature of it, so nowadays I enjoy the Douay for reading and the NAB and RSV-CE for study(although the latter seems to be lacking).

Lastly, I use a Vulgate occasionally to see how much of the latin I can remember. You know what they say, use it or lose it. 😉
 
I need to reappraise from what I wrote in my last post on this thread. I acqiured a copy of the ESV(English Standard Version) and have been reading it daily. It is probably the best translation on the market. Like I stated earlier the RSV-CE is very problematic in it’s “liberal” bias, especially in the OT prophecies about Jesus, the newer New Revised Standard Version is even worse, it not only makes OT prophecy obscure but adds “inclusive” language where the original language does not call for it, it is totally unsuitable for a Christian. I agree with what another poster said on this thread, if Catholics (including the Bishops) were to ask the ESV publisher for a Catholic edition of this outstanding translation then maybe they would publish it. This version should be the new standard for Liturgy and private reading, I just can’t say enough about this version. In Christ, jurist12
 
Like I stated earlier the RSV-CE is very problematic in it’s “liberal” bias, especially in the OT prophecies about Jesus
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Could you give a couple of examples, please. I have never come across anything in RSVCE that seemed clearly erroneous.
 
RSV-CE and Prophecy: Isaiah 7:14, Psalms 45:6 compare with Hebrews 1:8, are two examples that come to mind but I have read others. In Christ, jurist12
 
I love the New Jerusalem Bible *with the footnotes. *I also like the Jerome Biblical Commentary and the Navarre Bible. Unlike some previous posters, I don’t mind the modernist trends in some commentaries because the gold nuggets are so worthwhile. I’m old enough that I’m not easily swayed by hot shot bible scholars and their fancy text criticism, form criticism, hermeneutics, etc. These scholars are presenting theories, not Church doctrine, and it’s my job to understand that.

In recent months, I’ve come to love the Navarre Bible; but the translations in some of the books look like the work of college students (which they might well be!). Having had four years of Latin, I usually go straight to the Vulgate text which is embedded in the Navarre. I find the Latin to reveal the scriptures as the endless treasure that they are. Recently I studied the Sermon on the Mount in the Latin, and I saw the teaching as if for the first time.

I would honestly recommend others to study Latin or Greek and read the scriptures in these languages. It’s like getting a whole layer of depth you never saw before. In many cases, your own translation can be more meaningful than the published translations because they reflect how the nuance and connotations of the text struck you personally.
 
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Origen:
I would honestly recommend others to study Latin or Greek and read the scriptures in these languages. It’s like getting a whole layer of depth you never saw before. In many cases, your own translation can be more meaningful than the published translations because they reflect how the nuance and connotations of the text struck you personally.
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I concur. Would that someday I am able to tackle the Greek (spending too much time recovering my lost high school Latin to do it at the moment)!

One of my recent chuckles came from reading Luke’s Gospel, 7:36*, which the NAB renders:

A Pharisee invited him to dine with him, and he entered the Pharisee’s house and reclined at table.
The vulgate has:

Rogabat autem illum quidam de Pharisaeis ut manducaret cum illo.
Which, because of the pronouns, looks more like:

Then a certain pharisee asked that he [the pharisee] might dine with him [Jesus]; so going into the pharisee’s house he sat at table.
As if the pharisee asked “Hey, can I go to lunch with you?” and Jesus answered “Sure, what are you serving?”

Foxes may have holes, and birds nests, and the Son of Man nowhere to lay his head, but he sure knows where to get a free meal**! :rotfl:

(* I don’t yet read Greek, but I’m told this verse is “ambiguous”)
(** cf. the story of Zaccheus, not to mention preparations for the Last Supper)
 
I like the Douay Rheims despite it’s archaic language (and the fact that Hebrew names are given Greek renderings) because it hasn’t suffered from liberal influence like modern some modern translations, plus the notes by Bishop Challoner (who revised the DRV in the 18th century) are unabashedly Catholic. An interesting thing about it’s translation of Matt 6:11: The Douay reads “Give us this day our supersubstantial bread.” I thought this was a weird translation, since not only is it the only English Bible to use this word (I’ve since discovered that it comes directly from the Vulgate ‘supersubstantialum’) but the Douay renders Luke 11:3 as ‘daily bread’ just like the other English Bibles. However, it made perfect sense when I read paragraph 2837 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

*“Daily” *(*epiousios) *occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense, this word is a pedagogical repetition of “this day”, to confirm in us trust “without reservation.” Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good thing necessary for subsistence. Taken literally (*epi-osios: *“super-essential”) it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the “medicine of immortality,” without which we have no life in us. Finally in this connection, it’s heavenly meaning is evident: “this day” is the Day of the Lord, the day of the feast of the kingdom, anticipated in the Eucharist that is already the foretaste of the kingdom to come. For this reason it is fitting for the Eucharistic liturgy to be celebrated each day.
Hmmm… :hmmm: I wonder if the translators of the Douay-Rheims (and for that matter, St Jerome, author of the Vulgate Bible that it was based on) were more on the money than we realized…:clapping:
 
My vote is the Navarre Bible series. I keep a few copies of others and sometimes do refer to the Catholic Youth Bibles. I am a youth director…
 
new living translation and the street bible are the best

btw what are the differences between a normal bible and a catholic bible?
 
The Catholic Bible is the original Bible. Protestant Bibles reflect whatever Protestant teaching or culture they came from. Both Catholic and Protestant Bibles have the same number of books (27) in the New Testament, but the Protestant Bibles mainly have fewer books in the Old Testament because they rejected the deuterocanonicals (literally, “second canon”) books as uninspired.
Many of the Bible translations today list the deuterocanonicals as apocrypha–such as the Revised Standard Version, which in the CE (Catholic Edition) is exactly the same as the Protestant Version save for having the deuterocanonicals listed afterward. The deuterocanonicals are also accepted by the Orthodox churches.

Isn’t it rather rude of you to assume that Protestant bibles are “normal” and Catholic bibles AREN’T?
 
well for me prostetant bibles are normal and catholic bibles arnt but not in a rude way!

im asking to find out

thank you so much for that as ive been wondering for ages!

you know the book that protestans leave out could i find an internet copy?

plus im not a protestant im a christ of no denomination as i dont need religionm i just need god:)
 
This is a link for the Douay Rheims Bible.

drbo.org/

It lists all the books of the Bible including the deuterocanonicals.
 
The Bible I use the most is the RSV-CE, second I use the Haydock Douay-Rheims Bible for serious scripture studies. I love the commentaries, they are much better then the footnotes in the NAB. Sometimes the Haydock Bible and the NAB commentaries have compleatly different views. I bet you can all tell which Bible is my least favorite, lol. I wonder sometimes, why hasn’t there been a modern translation of the Latin Vulgate? Some people find the D-R bible hard to understand becuase of the Middle English and archaic context of some words we still use today.
 
mr_bozo said:
Douey-Reims: Haven’t read it, but I still cant get how a second generation translation could possibly be ultra-accurate.

TAN books (the publishers of the 1899 Challoner version of the Douay-Rheims make the following claims for the Douai bible:
  1. The Latin Vulgate is was translated from was done by St. Jerome, a great Saint, a trilingual scholar, and he lived several centuries closer to the original writings than any recent translator.
  2. The Douai is a faithful word-for-word translation, unlike many modern translations.
Here’s my :twocents: on the subject, There’s a particular quirk in the translation of Matthew 6:11 in the DRV that makes me believe it’s accuracy: in the Douai this verse reads “give us this day our SUPERSUBSTANTIAL bread.” I though this odd this this is the only english bible that uses this word, and considering since the Douai doesn’t use this word for Luke 11:2 (daily bread is used). (I later found out that this comes directly from supersubstantialum in the latin Vulgate). However, I read in paragraph 2837 of the Cathecism of the catholic church (I don’t have it in front of me at the moment, so i can’t quote it word for word, I did post the whole passage on another post somewhere in this forum). that the word in Matt 6:11 is epiousis (I *think *that’s how it’s spelled) that is used nowhere else in the bible. The passage also said that the Greek word can mean ‘daily’ or it can also mean super-essential, and that it foreshadows the Eucharist. Anyone interested in this can look up paragraph 2837 in the CCC for a fuller explanation.

Hmmm…:hmmm: , perhaps St Jerome understood the scriptures better than we realized.
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Does anyone know when the “new” study version of the RSV-CE is coming out? I have the Leatherette version from Ignatious but I hear they are producing a Study bible and doing it book by book…how much longer until the whole thing is done?

God Bless,
 
I use the NAB the most and for study the Navarre series, which is very indepth and easy to understand.:bible1:

Annie
 
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