Guest Blog-Toon from Leighton

Thank you to Leighton for this awesome contribution! 

Knox on Translation

“Much more serious was the problem, what to do about ‘thou’ and ‘you’. I confess I would have liked to go the whole hog and dispense with the use of ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ even where the Almighty is being addressed. They do these things in France, but I felt sure you could not get it past the British public.” -On Englishing the Bible

Review: Scepter's Pocket RSV-CE NT

This, my friends, is truly a pocket bible!  You can easily put it into your back or side pocket without barely noticing.  I realized fairly quickly, when testing this out, that my cell phone is actually bigger than this pocket bible.  The Scepter Pocket RSV-CE NT, along with the USCCB's Pocket Gospel and Acts, represent the best answer to the call of Pope Francis to read the Gospels daily.  Yet, unlike that aforementioned pocket bible by the USCCB, this one is actually a tad smaller and comes in various cover options.  The price is $14.95, which also makes it highly affordable for not being a paperback edition.


As someone who prefers the original RSV-CE over the second edition done by Ignatius, I was really happy to see that this was going to be published.  The RSV-CE certainly deserves to remain in print, even as we are fifty years after its initial publication.  Upon receiving both a bonded leather and red synthetic leather edition, I can commend Scepter for creating a pocket bible that is portable and nice to hold and feel, while also being easy to read from.  The bonded leather has the nicer feel compared to the synthetic, but to be honest there isn't a huge difference.  The size is 3" X 5", making it slightly smaller than the USCCB pocket NAB.  Each edition comes with a nicely made and attached ribbon marker, which certainly should be mandatory for a bible like this which is meant to be read on the run or away from home.  There are also head and tail bands, along with four page endpapers.  I should mention that the black bonded leather edition has pages that are gold-gilded.  Overall, a well-constructed pocket bible that will last daily use wherever you take it.


One of the highlights for me is how readable the text is.  The biblical text is spaced well and printed dark enough so that one does not have to strain their eyes to read.  If you were to compare the page layout of this to any of the more recent Oxford compact NRSV's or NABRE's, the differences would be dramatic.  Perhaps this may serve as a reminder that it is better to have a pocket New Testament, or Gospel/Acts, that is can actually be read with ease instead of a complete Bible that gives you a headache when you are finished.  In this pocket RSV NT, the verses are places on the margins, which I think is an aid to reading this pocket bible.  There are paragraph headings which are bolded and help to break up the text, again, making it much easier to read.  If you have poor vision, I would guess that most pocket bibles would not be your cup of tea, but this one should appeal to most bible readers.


In conclusion, if you are looking for a truly pocket Catholic New Testament, this is the one for you.  If your favorite translation is the RSV-CE, again, this is the one for you.  At under $15, this is truly worth every penny.  As I had been trying to mention more and more before the summer sabbatical, when Catholic publishers produce quality Catholic bibles like this, it is important that we show them support by purchasing their products.  I know that many of you have wished to see more premium Catholic bible editions available.  This can become a reality only if we make it clear that there is a market for them.  Publishers like Scepter, as well as others like Baronius Press, have been producing quality Bibles for a number of years now.  Let's make sure to support them by not only purchasing their products, but also by promoting them when we can, particularly on social media.



I would like to thank Scepter for providing two copies of this edition for an honest review.

NABRE Facebook Live Session w/ Mary Sperry

Our friend Mary Sperry from the USCCB will be holding a live Facebook chat Tuesday, October 25th at 9:00 p.m. EDT on the Fans of the NABRE Group Page.  She will be able to answer questions you may have about the upcoming NABRE NT revision.  Make sure to join the group if you are interested in participating.  

Knox on Translation

“For centuries people have laughed at the old Douay version, because in Galatians v.4 it gave the rendering, ‘You are evacuated from Christ’. In 1940, what metaphor could be more familiar, or more significant?”
 -On Englishing the Bible (28)

Guest Post: Creation, Science, and Wisdom in The Saint John’s Bible

A hearty thank you to this guest post from Jonathan.  As you know, I am a huge supporter of the Saint John's Bible, so this post was especially interesting for me to read.

Over the past two years, I have shown the Heritage Edition of The Saint John’sBible to over 500 people in my student job in Archives & Special Collections at Santa Clara University. Whether my audience is church groups, undergraduates, or (more recently) the Catholic Biblical Association, people are invariably amazed by the beauty of this work.

The more I show The Saint John’s Bible, the more I notice two features of this landmark manuscript. First, I notice the way it creates conversations between different parts of Scripture. It creates these conversations by repeating symbols in different illuminations. Second, I notice how these conversations between images and text reflect contemporary themes in Catholic biblical interpretation.

Take, for example, the theme of creation. Ever since John Paul II kicked off the creation care movement, environmental stewardship has become a part of Catholic social teaching. Pope Francis especially emphasizes the presence of God in creation in Laudato Si’, in which he writes: “Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God” (84). How might we read Scripture in the light of this call to creation care?

One of the most famous illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible is the Creation frontispiece to Genesis. This illumination follows Genesis 1’s account of the seven days of creation. Each vertical column is one of the seven days.

God’s repeated refrain that His creation is good makes Genesis 1 a crucial text for contemporary Catholic creation care (e.g. in Laudato Si’ 65–67). Unlike Genesis 2, Genesis 1 situates the creation of humankind in the creation of the cosmos and all other living things. Although humans are special, we are a part of creation, and we are dependent on this planet Earth for our survival. Modern evolutionary theory similarly shows the continuity between humanity and all other living things.

Donald Jackson alludes to scientific research on humankind’s origins by including scientific imagery in this illumination. The chaos and formlessness, the tohu wabohu in Hebrew, are illuminated as disjointed fractal patterns. The fish in the sea are images of fossils. Most importantly, the creation of humankind is depicted using prehistoric cave art from Australia and Africa. This cave art reminds us of the scientific account of humanity’s origins as primates. Rather than any kind of “war” between science and religion, this illumination reflects the Catholic idea that scientific truth leads to God, and that the Book of Nature is just a crucial as the Book of Scripture (e.g. Laudato Si’ 6). The Saint John’s Bible brings the scientific account of creation into the theological account, not just as a theory that can be reconciled with Scripture but as another window into the glory of God’s creation.

When I show this illumination, one aspect that often puzzles viewers is the raven in the center. After all, would it not make more sense to include the dove from the flood? However, Noah did send a raven to find land before he sent the dove. Also, one legend about St. Benedict recalls him feeding ravens in the wilderness. (This Bible was sponsored by the Benedictines!) Other viewers have pointed out to me that the raven represents wisdom in many cultures, such as in indigenous American myths.

The raven appears in Wisdom quite literally in the frontispiece to Ecclesiastes in the Wisdom Books volume. Ecclesiastes chronicles the search of one man for order in the chaos of life. The raven at the center immediately connects this illumination to Creation. But rather than the order of the cosmos in Genesis 1, this image depicts a tension between order and chaos, just as the sage of Ecclesiastes seeks order in the chaos of life.

The most obvious chaos in this image is in the way the text relates to the art: the illumination is not neatly confined to a page, but is spread over two pages in an asymmetrical, borderless chaos. The word for “vanity” in Ecclesiastes’ famous line “all is vanity!” can also be translated as “breath” or “wind,” and here the wind has become a whirlwind reaching beyond the borders of the physical page. The butterfly wings, another motif in The Saint John’s Bible, are blown about seemingly unattached to any butterflies. And if we see the raven as an allusion to the flood, then perhaps we can see this illumination as reflecting the chaos of the flood, the heavy winds that Noah would have sheltered from in his ship.

Yet even here there are indications of order. We see small columns of rainbow patterns, another frequent motif in The Saint John’s Bible, a reference to God’s promise to Noah after the flood. In the upper right, Jackson included an astronomical diagram. This is reminiscent of the cycle of the moon in the Genesis 1 illumination, the structure of the cosmos as created by God.

Scholars who study the way the Bible depicts creation note that in the prophets, when humankind turns wicked, the earth groans under their sin. In this illumination of Ecclesiastes, the reverse happens: the torment and chaos faced by the sage are writ large in the cosmos. As Old Testament scholar Choon-Leong Seow writes of the sage: “the real world is full of inconsistencies and even flagrant contradictions that cannot be explained away. The world is not an orderly place, and meaning is not always discernable, despite the best human efforts” (Ecclesiastes, Anchor Bible Commentary, p. 41).

Although the sage does not always see the divine wisdom behind the chaos of life, he still upholds its value (7:11). The Saint John’s Bible responds to Ecclesiastes’ lament with an illumination depicting the House of Wisdom in Proverbs 8:22-9:6.

This illumination replicates the whirlwind background of the Ecclesiastes illumination. But beneath the whirlwind we see a place where the winds have calmed into flat horizontal lines: an order, a structure, rather than chaos. In the House of Wisdom, we see the plan God has placed in creation. The seven pillars of this house become here seven candles, with one burning brightly with the interconnected circles motif found throughout the Wisdom Books volume. In the text, Wisdom invites the reader to “eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed” (9:5), depicted here in clearly Eucharistic terms. The House of Wisdom is the Temple with its lampstands, but also the Church with its Eucharist.

If Ecclesiastes struggles to see the order in creation, Proverbs 8:22-9:6 and Genesis 1 help us see that order. By repeating symbols such as the whirlwind, the raven, and the rainbow, The Saint John’s Bible brings together these different passages into a conversation on creation. This conversation asks: how do we relate scientific and theological accounts of creation? How do we see order in creation when all seems to have fallen into chaos? How does the beauty of God in nature call us to care for creation?

Too often, when we look at The Saint John’s Bible we look only at individual illuminations. I have only started to see these conversations between art and text, between texts, and between this Bible and contemporary Catholic biblical interpretation because I have worked with this Bible closely for two years. Now, Michael Patella’s Word and Image and Susan Sink’s The Art of The Saint John’s Bible are superb works. But neither of them systematically survey this Bible’s symbolism and how it creates conversations between different texts. In understanding this Bible and its unique message, we have a long way to go.

Author Biography:

Jonathan Homrighausen is a graduate student in Biblical Studies at the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, and a Student Assistant in Archives & Special Collections at Santa Clara University. Previously, he spent two years in the Catholic Biblical School in the Diocese of Stockton. His article on The Saint John’s Bible and Donald Jackson’s earlier work appeared in the Summer 2016 issue of The Scribe, the newsletter of the Heritage Edition. He is currently writing a book on The Saint John’s Bible, and blogs at Jdhomie.com.

Guest Review: Jerusalem Bible (Salvador Dali Illustrated Edition)

A special thank you to long time reader of this blog Rolf for this review of the Dali Jerusalem Bible.

The Jerusalem Bible (Salvador Dali illustrated) edition is a Bible that I had been 'watching' on ebay for a very long time. It was published in 1970, but it makes frequent appearances on ebay usually for $150.+ I was able to obtain this copy at auction in new like condition  for about $65. shipped.

This is a huge Bible:  12 x 8 1/2 x 2 3/4 inches and it weighs a little less than a smart car! The Bible is bound in red (bonded, genuine or faux?) padded leather over boards. I am not sure, I have read that it is leather and faux leather but the slightly padded hardcover looks nice and works well with this big Bible!

The Salvador Dali illustrations are all full page and there are 32 of them. Dali's illustrations can be strange, but they always make you think when you see them.

The real reason I wanted this Bible was for a chance to read a large print Jerusalem Bible! I have three other Jerusalem Bibles, two with size 9 print and a compact with size 7 print. When I found out that this Bible had size 11 (well spaced) single column print, I had to get one!  The paper is thick and bleed through is very well controlled! The illustrations are on much heavier paper and are quality prints. It comes with two very nice and wide red ribbon markers.

This is a table top/ lap type Bible, but it is a great reading/ devotional Bible (with minimal notes/reference numbers at bottom of the page)! Is it worth $150.? In excellent condition I think it is! With high end Bibles now selling for $250-$300.+ and bonded leather study bibles nearing the $100. mark, I would say yes! But maybe with a little looking around it could be found cheaper!