I think the RSV — in whatever edition, including Ignatius’ 2nd Catholic Edition — is better than MBD gives it credit for. It stands in the grand tradition of English Bibles, beginning with Tyndale, it’s accurate and readable and dignified. The ESV is based on the RSV, but it has some idiosyncrasies driven by the translators’ evangelical concerns. (That of course afflicts most every translation.) The other problem with the ESV for study, ecumenical or Catholic use is that lacks the so-called Deuterocanonicals. But I do like it; when I was at Wheaton I favored it and recommended it to my students, especially over the awful NIV new and old.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012, 11:54 AM
November 20th, 2012 | 12:22 pm
http://www.amazon.com/English-Standard-Version-Bible-Apocrypha/dp/0195289102/
November 20th, 2012 | 1:57 pm
I hadn’t seen that! Thanks! I should have checked, and should even have assumed it existed, because publishers issue Bible after Bible after Bible in all sorts of editions and translations for all the obvious reasons. Of course there’d be an ESV with “apocrypha”.
November 20th, 2012 | 2:34 pm
The “dynamic equivelancy” of the NIV in most cases prove helpful it seems to me. I use the NIV because that is what my church favors for now and since I teach the scriptures I like to be on the same page so to speak. I also own an ESV but need a wheel barrow to carry it around..the study bible has a significant number of notations which is a good thing.
Even so I prefer the NIV study bible because it does not seem to have a particular presupposition for the most part. As far as the text is concerned I really have not found a great deal of difference at least not enough to warrant yet another whole new translation.
Also Concordia has just come out with a translation of the Apocrapha, it is too bad that these books are not included in protestant texts even though they would not be considered canonical at least they would be edifying to the reader.
November 21st, 2012 | 1:28 pm
And see the Lutheran Study Bible edition of the ESV Apocrypha for some excellent study helps:
http://www.cph.org/p-19305-the-apocrypha-the-lutheran-edition-with-notes.aspx
November 21st, 2012 | 11:19 pm
After the year the Church has had in which the leadership refuses again and again to see that what the American landscape has become, I’m in no mood for Catholics to tell me which Bible to read. Not when the most outrageously pro-choice and pro-same-sex marriage politicians remain welcome at the Communion Rail. Three and half years after entering the Church, I continue to read the Authorized Version, aka the King James Bible or 1611 Bible. Not exclusively but certainly primarily in my private devotions. The Bible shared by my Southern Baptist mother and Anglican father. Let me know when a majority of those in Holy Orders become serious about where the Catholic Church now finds herself in the West and the English-speaking world. Which Bible Catholics read is the least of our concerns and certainly the least of mine. I simply don’t care how inaccurate or “incomprehensible” it is. The incoherence is in how the Church preaches and teaches the Gospel, the Sacraments, and the moral imperatives of the Magisterium.
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