Thursday, January 27, 2011

NABRE Psalm 23

If you are a subscriber to the newsweekly Our Sunday Visitor, you will have already noticed that there is an article in this week's edition about the NABRE. The fine article by Sarah Hayes gives some interesting information about the upcoming revision, which will be released on Ash Wednesday. Included in this article is a short interview with Mary Sperry from the USCCB, a sidebar on the long process of the NABRE revision, and the complete version of the NABRE's Psalm 23.

Psalm 23 in the current NAB was one of those areas that was heavily criticized by some for its use of vertical inclusive language, as well as some occasional odd renderings. Most notably verse two which says "In green pastures you let me graze" and verse 6 which concludes "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for years to come." According to the OSV article, the new NABRE version of Psalm 23 is a definite upgrade to the older version:

NABRE Psalm 23 (snippet)
Verse 2: "In green pastures he makes me lie down"
Verse 4: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death"
Verse 6: "I will dwell in the house of the Lord for endless days"

I should also point out that the use of "you" to make the passage conform to vertical inclusive language standards has been removed as well. Again, if you are an OSV subscriber and would like to see the entire Psalm and article, you can go here.

3 comments:

Bernadette Edens said...

I noticed on the St. Benedict Press Facebook page that "Pentecost" by Titian won the votes to be the new cover for their edition. (I voted for the one by Raphael. :)

Timothy said...

Bernadette,

Yeah, I was a bit disappointed, but oh well! :)

I tended to like the "Baptism" or the one by Raphael over Titian's.

rolf said...

I read the whole Psalm and it sounds very good, very much like the RSV-2CE. I am looking forward to see the rest of the translation after March 9th. I hope they release it fairly quickly on Kindle.