Monday, June 19, 2017

The Slow Trickle Continues........

Thanks to Emilia for spotting this!  Due to be published October 10th.

Description:
Ignatius Catholic Study Bible: 1&2 Kings
This volume in the popular Ignatius Catholic Study Bible series leads readers through a penetrating study of the First and Second Books of Kings using the biblical text itself and the Church's own guidelines for understanding the Bible.

Ample notes accompany each page, providing fresh insights by renowned Bible teachers Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch as well as time-tested interpretations from the Fathers of the Church. These helpful study notes provide rich historical, cultural, geographical, and theological information pertinent to the Old Testament book information that bridges the distance between the biblical world and our own.

The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible also includes Topical Essays, Word Studies, and Charts. The Topical Essays explore the major themes of 1 & 2 Kings, often relating them to the teachings of the Church. The Word Studies explain the background of important biblical terms, while the Charts summarize crucial biblical information "at a glance".

25 comments:

  1. It's taking so long. . .

    Dr. David Twellman finished the Minor Prophets around 2007 or 2008. A decade later? STILL NOT PUBLISHED.

    INSANE.


    vladimir998

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  2. I bring this up all the time, but since that's what we do on this blog, why oh why can't all the books that have been published be added to the app?? Please!!!!!

    On another note, I like how "at a glance" is in quotations marks, but not capitalized like it's the title of the features or anything.

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  3. I just finished watching on Youtube an episode of EWTN's "Bookmark" featuring Scott Hahn discussing the Ignatius Study Bible (The episode aired on January 8, 2012). In it, he stated at that time the Old Testament was about 80% done, and that the whole study Bible would be out by 2014, or 2015 at the latest.

    Of course, I know there are always unexpected delays, but still, I do hope that it will be released sometime soon (hopefully before I'm dead. :-) )

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  4. Someone on this blog commented a few years back wondering which would be published first: A) Complete ICSB or B) Revised New Testament of the NABRE. At the time, since the NABRE NT revision is due in 2025, I surely thought the ICSB would easily be first. Now, not so much....

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  5. Fr Gregory Martin and his team created the first ever Catholic Bible from scratch, commentary and all in less than 7 years.

    I find the fact modern publishing houses are taking decades to complete study bibles totally unacceptable.

    They're doing it for profits is what I suspect. They make more money doing it like this than releasing it all at oncr - especially a very niche bible like the ICSB.

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  6. "Fr Gregory Martin and his team created the first ever Catholic Bible from scratch, commentary and all in less than 7 years."

    Yes, and have you actually READ it? I mean the original Douay-Rheims, not the Challoner revision? It's awful, barely even readable, in many places, it is completely ungrammatical and almost entirely incoherent. There are entire 'sentences' in the original Douay-Rheims which don't even have a verb, others that don't even have a subject. It's practically an interlinear!


    Moreover, I don't think that what people did in the 16th century us a fair standard anyway. In the 19th century, scholars Westcott and Hort spent 28 years painstakingly constructing their critical text of the New Testament based on what they believed to be the best Greek manuscripts. Erasmus did the same job in the 16th century in a mere 6 weeks. Which one is of better quality?

    Frankly, the academic standards in the 16th-century were often severely lacking.


    Martin Luther published more than 54 volumes of writings, compromising more than 200,000 pages, and over 10 million words. There is not a single author on the planet today, not even someone like Stephen King who publishes 4-5 books every year, who even comes close to that kind of output.

    And frankly, the standards of scholarship in the 16th-century were significantly lower than they are today.

    A modern theologian couldn't even complete his research on a 40-page essay for a peer-reviewed journal in the time it took Luther to write 200 essays on the same topic, but I have no doubt that 40-page essay would be of significantly higher quality than anything Luther ever wrote, and frankly, anything Luther wrote would be rejected by even a middling modern Journal of Theology after only a cursory glance.

    And it isn't just in theology either. Look at a field like American history. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote a 5 volume biography of George Washington in three years, and he did this while serving as Chief Justice.

    On the other hand, modern Washington biographer Ron Chernow took longer than that just to do the research for his one-volume biography of Washington published in 2010. But even though it is shorter, Chernow's biography is much better than Marshall's.





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  7. Biblical Catholic,

    Although he just died (died in 2016, so he's not "on the planet today") Jacob Neusner made Martin Luther look like a slacker. He wrote or edited over 900 scholarly books. That is NOT an exaggeration. This doesn't include his numerous articles. He was also a much better scholar than Luther.

    I HAVE read the original Douay-Rheims. It's a product of its time and slavishly follows the Vulgate. It's also a great work and worth any intelligent Catholic's reading time for a taste of what the disputes of the Reformation were.

    vladimir998

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  8. Erap,

    I know this because that's what he told us in 2009 or 2010. He said the problem was finding Catholic editors (to check all the commentators work) who were available, had the right training and were orthodox.

    vladimir998

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  9. I don't know if they are releasing it like this in order to make the most profit honestly. I do admit that I like the idea of having each book separately published into booklets because it forces one to stick to reading one book at a time and reading it completely.

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  10. So, I guess that means that there are either very little conservative Catholic Biblical scholars or they are all busy or both.

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  11. Question: what is the average amount of OT books from this series that gets published per year?

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  12. Erap10 wrote:

    I don't know if they are releasing it like this in order to make the most profit honestly.

    For the record, Ignatius Press is non-profit organization. It is a 501(c)(3) religious organization with the formal name Guadalupe Associates. See for example, https://www.guidestar.org/profile/51-0183466.

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  13. What Ignatius should do is set up a subscriber service for the ISB. I might be crazy but I would gladly give them $150 to have a one-volume version of the ISB in a good genuine leather cover. Even $200! Would that money up front (i.e. NOW) help them get these things published faster?

    vladimir998

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  14. 'Although he just died (died in 2016, so he's not "on the planet today") Jacob Neusner made Martin Luther look like a slacker. He wrote or edited over 900 scholarly books. That is NOT an exaggeration. This doesn't include his numerous articles. He was also a much better scholar than Luther."

    But I will note that Neusner has been strongly criticized in some circles for producing a lot of very poor quality scholarship. Some of what he wrote was excellent and has proved to be very influential, but a lot of it seems to have been put together with little effort.

    Scholar Saul Lieberman said about Neusner's translation of the Jerusalem Talmud that 'it belongs in the trash can' and said that when reading the translation, he was struck by Neusner's apparent ignorance of Biblical Hebrew and Aramaic grammar, and he ultimately concluded that Neusner understood virtually nothing about the subject matter addressed by the Talmud.

    If that sounds particularly harsh, consider, Lieberman was one of Neusner's teachers from when he was in the seminary.

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  15. 'So, I guess that means that there are either very little conservative Catholic Biblical scholars or they are all busy or both."

    My understanding is that the problem isn't the writing, which is mostly, if not completely done, but the editing.


    There is a similar problem with the Anchor Bible Commentary series, which was producing a couple volumes every year for nearly 50 years until General Editor David Noel Freeman died in 2008. Since then, the series appears to be in limbo, several volumes are known to have been written and to be ready for publication, but they have sat unpublished for years with no one to edit them. Other volumes have been assigned to writers, with no update on their progress for years. I don't even know whether a new editor has been assigned to the project yet, and has been nearly 10 years.

    I think the problem is a lack of leadership, there needs to be one person in charge of the project who can make sure that all the editing is done in a timely manner and push the series through to completion.

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    Replies
    1. Except that the Anchor Bible is a more massive and comprehensive project than the ICSB will ever be.

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    2. BC,

      Conservative editors was what I was referring to when I talked about the number of conservative scholars : - )

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  16. Biblical Catholic, you wrote:

    "But I will note that Neusner has been strongly criticized in some circles for producing a lot of very poor quality scholarship."

    And Luther wasn't criticized? Are you kidding?

    vladimir998

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  17. "Except that the Anchor Bible is a more massive and comprehensive project than the ICSB will ever be."

    Did you actually read the comparison I was making? Because it was an apt one.

    I said that the reason why the ICSB is delayed is because they don't have a General Editor and that the reason why progress on the Anchor Bible has been stalled for more than a decade is because, since the death of David Noel Freeman, the series no longer has a General Editor.

    Both of these series are almost, if not completely finished, but nothing has been published in more than a decade because of a problem with editing.

    The comparison is apt.

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  18. "And Luther wasn't criticized? Are you kidding? "

    I don't follow you here. The reason why I made the comparison of modern authors to Luther is PRECISELY BECAUSE to me he is the quintessential example of an author who was insanely prolific in his own era but whose work, if judged by the standards that modern works of scholarship are subjected to, would be considered to be of poor quality and would probably never get published.

    The reason I brought up Luther is to make the point that the modern standards of scholarship that authors aspire to meet tends to result in books that that take much longer to write than was common in the past.


    It takes a modern scholar more time to do the research on a book than it would take a scholar 200 or 300 years ago to complete 5 books, but the result of the much more rigorous and time consuming modern process is that the books produced are of significantly better quality. That's the point I am making.

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  19. Biblical Catholic wrote:

    I said that the reason why the ICSB is delayed is because they don't have a General Editor and that the reason why progress on the Anchor Bible has been stalled for more than a decade is because, since the death of David Noel Freeman, the series no longer has a General Editor. Both of these series are almost, if not completely finished, but nothing has been published in more than a decade because of a problem with editing.

    There have been numerous Anchor Bible volumes published in the last decade. From the Anchor Bible Wikipedia page:

    * Dozeman, Thomas B. (2015). Joshua 1-12.
    * Sasson, Jack M. (2014). Judges 1-12.
    * Schipper, Jeremy (2016). Ruth 7.
    * Marcus, Joel (2009). Mark 8-16.
    * Fitzmyer, Joseph (2008). 1 Corinthians.
    * Reumann, J. (2008). Philippians.
    * Koester, Craig G. (2014). Revelation.

    The Anchor Bible series has always had a general editor. The first general editors were William Albright and David Noel Freedman. After Albright's death, David Noel Freedman served as sole general editor. After Freedman's death, John J. Collins served as sole general editor, and he continues in that role.

    I do not understand that any point the Anchor Bible series will be "complete" because older volumes are regularly replaced by newer versions.

    For a more dramatic example, consider the International Critical Commentary series. The first volume (Exodus) appeared in 1863, and the most recent volume (Isaiah 56–66) appeared in 2014.

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  20. In other Scott Hahn related news, I trust you saw that Hahn's commentary on Romans in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture series is due in November 2017. (Amazon link)

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