Yesterday I received, from the UK, the recently released NRSV-CE with Grail Psalms. My order was placed through Amazon UK and took about a week to arrive. This edition is published by Collins and contains the NRSV-CE text and the original Grail Psalms. When I opened this Bible, I immediately had a feeling of familiarity as I flipped through the pages. Why? Well, the page format, type, and font is identical to the one used in the HarperCollins Catholic Gift Bible, which was released a few years back. The one major difference, however, is that there is a solid inch of space at the bottom of each page, presumably to allow for personal note taking. This edition also uses the same type of Bible paper as in the Catholic Gift Bible version, and appears to be of the same binding. The cover material is made of a very flexible leather-like material. The material is not as smooth as the one used for the Catholic Gift Bible. To be honest, I am not sure what the cover material actually is. One of the listings for this Bible said it was genuine leather, which it might very well be. If that is the case, then, I would say it is similar to the Saint Benedict Press genuine leather Bibles. The cover color is dark green.
The NRSV-CE with Grail Psalms has the standard NRSV text at the beginning, with the Grail Psalms placed at the back. Included with the Sacred Text is a concise concordance, information on the Lectionary, including the weekday and Sunday Mass readings, 6 black and white maps, and the always important Bible ribbon. But alas, the one thing that is missing, which as you all know continues to plague almost every edition of the NRSV, is, say it with me: “scriptural cross-references!” It was mentioned on a previous post that Collins plans to release a revised edition of this in the future, which would include the NRSV adaptions for the liturgy in the UK and the Revised Grail Psalms. It would be a great addition if in the future they included cross-references or at least a table of OT references in the NT, as found in the HarperCollins Study Bible.
Overall, this is a fine reading Bible. The size, while not being compact, does allow it to be fairly portable. If you love the original Psalms and the NRSV, there is no better Bible out there for you. The current price at Amazon UK is 22.50 pounds, which, with shipping, ended up costing me somewhere around 46 dollars US.
The NRSV-CE with Grail Psalms has the standard NRSV text at the beginning, with the Grail Psalms placed at the back. Included with the Sacred Text is a concise concordance, information on the Lectionary, including the weekday and Sunday Mass readings, 6 black and white maps, and the always important Bible ribbon. But alas, the one thing that is missing, which as you all know continues to plague almost every edition of the NRSV, is, say it with me: “scriptural cross-references!” It was mentioned on a previous post that Collins plans to release a revised edition of this in the future, which would include the NRSV adaptions for the liturgy in the UK and the Revised Grail Psalms. It would be a great addition if in the future they included cross-references or at least a table of OT references in the NT, as found in the HarperCollins Study Bible.
Overall, this is a fine reading Bible. The size, while not being compact, does allow it to be fairly portable. If you love the original Psalms and the NRSV, there is no better Bible out there for you. The current price at Amazon UK is 22.50 pounds, which, with shipping, ended up costing me somewhere around 46 dollars US.
5 comments:
The bleeding of the text appears to be horrendous. I can almost read Psalm 8 just in your snapshot!
Colleague,
Yes, unfortunately. That seems to be an issue with most of the NRSV offerings from HarperCollins.
What a pity that they did not make this available with the revised Grail psalter. That would make it much more useful to American and Canadian readers.
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Has any publisher other than GIA released the revised Grail psalter?
In case you don't already know, they are available online here.
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I am glad that the Grail psalter is an appendix to the volume rather than replacing the NRSV psalms. Stylistically, they do not match, and the NRSV psalter is still better for serious textual study.
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Collins does publish an cross-reference edition of the ecumenical NRSV -- see here. To transform this into a NRSV-CE cross reference edition, they'd need to strip out all those cross-references to books not in the Catholic Bible (which should not be so difficult, but apparently, they don't see a market demand for it.) I continue to love my Oxford NRSV Cross-Reference -- sadly out of print.
Theophrastus:
I think the Paulist Press publishes the Revised Grail Psalms as part of the Liturgy of the Hours for African countries. I'm not aware of any other publisher, however.
Tim:
Amazon UK have just slashed the price of this Bible to £12.90. Thought you might want to let all of your readers know. An excellent price, I'm sure you'll agree - I've bought two already, and may go back for more before they put the price back up again.
All the best.
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