I’ve had the Ignatius Study Bible of the New Testament, which is based on the Revised Standard Edition-2nd Catholic Edition.
You want this Bible in your house. For less than $20, there’s nothing to think about.
No, this doesn’t have a bunch of nice pictures in it – wouldn’t call this a family bible.
No, for $20 this is not a deluxe leather Bible, it’s paper.
But, just on the few chapters of First Corinthians that I’ve been studying. I think it’s a very, very good study bible, with scriptural cross references, study AND brief commentary notes.
I have the leather bound RSV-2CE and I read 1 Co in a short time. But, most of it went over my head. The Ignatius Study Bible, on the other hand, teases out what St Paul is talking about and who he is, etc.
It also has some cross references to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Even these features exhaust me. I’m basically just getting started, and I think I just talked myself into going back and picking up CCC references which I skipped over.
Opinion: if you want a Bible, you want a study Bible. For the price, get this one. If you’ve got $100 or more, get the DR – later.
Someone who has experience with the Navarre Bible should tell us about it. There’s a compact one-volume New Testament, and that is supposed to be better than the whole set of individual books on the New Testament. I find that hard to believe. I don’t understand the reasoning behind this. I hear that the Navarre is “good” but I’m not convinced. I can’t imagine that there’d be very many people who have compared these versions of the Navarre.
At my local (12 miles away) Catholic books store, I saw two whole other sets of Catholic Bible commentaries – if you like sets of books. The thing I can say about them is that I’ve been looking at these books for years, and they’ve never sold them off, which may be telling us something about them. I don’t think they’re even complete sets anymore.
I think a serious lay Catholic who is interested in private Bible study ought to mentally and actually set a budget of about $3000 for lifetime expenses on books, and build or buy a nice bookcase for all these purchases. 10 to 15 versions of the Bible. The DR, Haydock, Ignatius, Navarre, Baker Catholic Series, etc. I’ve also found a place for some high quality Jewish commentaries from the Jewish Publication Society – these are written at a depth that the Catholic commentaries aren’t written, but you need to keep their point of view in mind.
Sure, and get a copy of the (now aging) New Jerome Biblical Commentary. It’s very tough to follow. It’s a scholarly book, not for casual reading. You feel very small reading this book. There’s some of its commentary that is very liberal and not very mainstream. This is the stuff they usually don’t want us to hear in church on Sunday. It seems to me to go across the line of what Catholics should believe. It’s a deep book and not cross-referenced to the Catechism of the Catholic Church. It was published at about the same time, and the CCC is very strictly doctrinal, while the NJBC makes you wonder, sometimes.
. I know I do!
God bless you!
I have both. I love the “Old English” of the Douay-Rheims, with all the thee’s and thou’s! 
However, I tend to read my RSV-CE edition more simply because it is a “large print edition”, which makes it easier to read (poor eyesight 
What the heck, flip a coin! You can’t go wrong with either a Douay-Rheims or a RSV-CE!