National Bible Week: Sunday's Question

For National Bible Week, I will be proposing a question each day for you to consider.  Let's take this week to consider the great gift that is the Holy Scriptures.

Today's Question:
Who is your favorite Bible character?  Why?

USCCB National Bible Week Quiz

Take the quiz Here for a chance to win one of their new NABRE Bibles

Weekly Knox: Humour

"For humour, frown upon it as you will, is nothing less than a fresh window of the soul.  Through that window we see, not indeed a different world, but the familiar world of our experience distorted as if by the magic of some tricksy sprite.  It is a plate-glass window, which turns all our earnest, toiling fellow-mortals into figures of fun." -Essays in Satire

Recognizing a Fine Bible

Thanks to my friend Paul for pointing me to this great article, on the Cambridge University Press site, about how to recognize a fine Bible.   Follow this link and make sure to bookmark it for future use.

Guest Review: USCCB NABRE

Take a look at the new USCCB NABRE Personal Edition. Also available in gift and paperback editions, this is finally a Catholic Bible that doesn't need to be rebound.  The bonded leather cover flexes nicely to lay flat, the typeface is clean and a decent size, and the two-color inks make for easy navigation, especially with the book introductions and chapter guides at the top of each page.  One of my favorite features of this Personal Edition is the way it (accidentally?) blends gilded pages with printed navigation tabs without cutting thumb tabs into the pages. Lay it flat, and its a beautiful gold-edged volume. Flex it sightly, and you see all the red tabs.

The only thing that keeps this Bible from taking the prize is the unwieldy way it manages the textual notes. Personally, I am not one who objects to the NABRE notes, though I understand those who do. The 2010 NABRE OT is actually my favorite modern Edition in English, and having gone to an academic Protestant seminary, the content of the notes don't strike me as at all problematic. That's just what Biblical studies is, for me, and what led me to Catholicism as an adult. What bothers me isn't the content but the format. For some reason, instead of a single common asterisk, the publisher opted to give each subsequent textual note it's own distinctive footnote marker at the bottom of the page. I suppose the internet is to remove confusion about which text reference tracks to which footnote, but the result is a rather confusing connection of scribbles. I'm never sure if the notation is a call out to a footnote, or just a reference to a parallel text. I would have preferred a plain asterisk throughout, with clear verse references at the bottom of the page. The font size in the footnotes is a little too small to be comfortable.  

The text, of course, is the NABRE, consisting of the 2010 OT and Psalms, with the 1986 NT (currently under revision by the Catholic Biblical Association of America). Devotional fluff are minimal: just a presentation page, and maps at the back. For my use, I'll still default to the Didache NABRE because of the addition of the catechetical notes there, but I sure wish it was bound like this!

In this volume, the USCCB seems intent on providing the very thing we do often mourn the lack of on this blog: a basic Bible text, decently and sturdily bound, with uncluttered design for everyday Catholic use. Basically, a Protestant lap Bible for Catholics. Making its own translation available under its own imprint and in this format, the USCCB is finally doing just that. This is, quite literally, a full Catholic Bible translated and published by the Church for the Church.

Christopher Buckley holds an M.A. in Religion from the Claremont School of Theology. He began as a United Methodist and passed through the Episcopal Church before being confirmed into the Catholic Church as an adult. He lives and works in Seattle with his wife and two children, and blogs occasionally at StoryWiseGuy.com. Connect with him on Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, Flickr, and LinkedIn, and Bible.com.

USCCB Publishing NABRE: Personal Edition

For a long time, the USCCB left the NAB(RE) to be published by other Catholic publishing houses. This changed last year when the USCCB published a pocket Gospels and Acts in the NABRE translation.  Now recently, the USCCB has produced a regular sized NABRE in various covers, including hardcover, paperback, and bonded leather.  I was able to obtain the "personal edition" which comes in the bonded leather cover, and I must say that it is quite a nice edition for the modest price of $19.95.


To begin, here are the basic specifications of this Bible:

Exterior features:

● Soft, brown leather cover with gold embossing on the cover and spine

● Beautiful gold-gilded edges and rounded corners

● Convenient ribbon to bookmark your place

Inside features:

● Seven newly designed, full-color maps of biblical places and journeys    

● Two-color print (black and burgundy) for easy reading                

● Side tabs to distinguish the different books of the Bible

● Lightweight, smooth 24-lb paper

Starting with the exterior features, the leather is neither premium nor genuine.  However, as I mentioned above, it is quite soft for being bonded along with being fairly flexible.  It is not as stiff as most bonded leather bible covers that I have felt in the past, most notably the NJB readers edition.  The binding is sewn, which means that it could be a candidate for a rebind.  The gold-gilded edges and rounded corners give a classic look to it.  (One of my regrets on the Knox Bible from Baronius is that the corners are not rounded.)  One burgundy ribbon comes with this Bible.  The burgundy color of the ribbon matches quite well with the burgundy print that is found in the text.  It would have, however, been nice if they had offered this with two ribbons, but that is only a minor issue.



When you open the Bible. you will find that the print is quite readable.  It utilizes a two-color, black and burgundy, print, with the scriptural text and notes in black and the paragraph headings and chapter numbers in burgundy.  It works really well.  It might remind some of you of the HarperOne NABRE that came out a few years back.  I very much enjoyed what Harper did with their NABRE.  What makes the USCCB edition better is that the print is larger and bolder.  You will not have any problem reading from this Bible in pretty much any setting.  The standard NABRE notes and cross-references are found at the bottom of each page.  One final comment about the layout that stands out for me is the generous size of the margins.  They are large enough for personal annotations, even with the side tabs that are present on each page.  While this is not a "wide-margin" bible, it certainly has one of the largest margins of any NABRE or other Catholic bible recently published.

Overall, I find that this NABRE from the USCCB is quite a good deal.  For under $20 you get an NABRE with a beautiful page layout, sewn binding, flexible bonded leather, and a decent selection of maps.  If you know someone who is looking to get a new NABRE for Christmas, this might be an affordable option.  It even has a presentation page for such an occasion!    Now that they have produced a pocket edition and this personal edition, I would really like to see one done in premium leather.  If they were to do one with a similar page layout, it could easily become the nicest NABRE on the market, by far.

I would like to thank USCCB Publishing for sending me a review copy.

Dei Verbum at 50 (Paragraph 23)

In celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Vatican II's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, I will be posting twice a month, on Mondays, a paragraph from this important document.  There are a total of 26 paragraphs, so this will take us through to the Fall when we reach the anniversary of its promulgation by Pope Paul VI on November 18, 1965.  I look forward to our discussion.  May I suggest a helpful book by Fr. Ronald D. Witherup called The Word of God at Vatican II: Exploring Dei Verbum published by Liturgical Press.

23. The bride of the incarnate Word, the Church taught by the Holy Spirit, is concerned to move ahead toward a deeper understanding of the Sacred Scriptures so that she may increasingly feed her sons with the divine words. Therefore, she also encourages the study of the holy Fathers of both East and West and of sacred liturgies. Catholic exegetes then and other students of sacred theology, working diligently together and using appropriate means, should devote their energies, under the watchful care of the sacred teaching office of the Church, to an exploration and exposition of the divine writings. This should be so done that as many ministers of the divine word as possible will be able effectively to provide the nourishment of the Scriptures for the people of God, to enlighten their minds, strengthen their wills, and set men's hearts on fire with the love of God.  The sacred synod encourages the sons of the Church and Biblical scholars to continue energetically, following the mind of the Church, with the work they have so well begun, with a constant renewal of vigor.