The Emoji Bible!!!!!! :)

Thanks to Eric for passing the link to this article.  Enjoy!  :)

An adaptation of the King James Version Bible featuring emojis is scheduled to be made available on iTunes Sunday.

The book is called Bible Emoji: scripture 4 millennials. Its book cover features several emojis, two of which have halos. 

The book's online description online says: 'A great and fun way to share the gospel. Explore all 66 books chronicling the the stories of Abraham, Noah and Jesus like never before!'

Read more here.

Douay-Westminster Bible (1958)

A Catholic Bible that I have certainly heard about, but have never actually seen with my own eyes is the Westminster Version.  The New Testament was completed in 1936, while portions of the OT were either worked on or completed in the years that followed.  As many of you know, I have concerned myself most often with the other Bible that was worked on during that period, the Knox Bible.  Yet, that changed a day ago.

Yesterday, a good friend of mine gifted me this amazing 1958 edition, which contains the Westminster New Testament and Psalms and the Douay (Challoner) Old Testament.   The Old Testament (minus Isaias, Ezechiel, and the Minor Prophets) and the Psalms were newly annotated by a Fr. Robert Dyson SJ, while those books mentioned above and the New Testament were annotated by Fr. Richard Foster.  This was completed in England.  The maps are new to this volume and produced by Fr. H.J. Richards.  There are 58 colour plates of biblical images scattered on thin glossy paper throughout this Bible.  There is even a commentary on each plate in the appendix, which also includes liturgical Mass readings and an essay on the bible in literature.  There is an actual picture of Pope Pius XII at the begining with a personal note from him.

It is a beautiful edition, published by Hawthorn Books of New York in 1958.  The volume, itself, was printed in Holland.  This is a lush, high-end Bible.  I dare say that this may be one of my finest, and I have only looked at it for less than a day.  The binding is sewn in a burgundy leather hardcover, finished off with a very nicely done gold gilded pages.  In regards to the size of the bible, it is refered to as a "family bible" but it may be one of the smaller ones I have ever seen. It is 8" wide x 10 3/4" tall x 2 1/2" thick.

I will post some pictures here.  Let me know if you have any questions.  I'm blown away!  This edition is currently on Ebay if you desire to get one of your own.

Presenting Josiah Francis

An Opening: NLT-CE from Tyndale/Asian Trading Corporation

This blog is going to go quiet for a week or so starting today with the birth of our third child, which is scheduled for tomorrow.  However, I wanted to post some pictures of the NLT-CE that was kindly sent to me by the fine people at the Asian Trading Corporation, based out of India.  They sent me three versions of their brand new NLT-CE's for review, including the compact, bonded leather, and faux leather versions.  Let me just say, I received these editions of the NLT-CE less than a week after contacting ATC.  Their customer service was excellent and very gracious.  They will ship internationally, including the US and Canada.  So, they are highly recommended if you can't wait until April for the Tyndale edition to come out.  (Make sure to get the Tyndale edition too when it is published!)

In the coming weeks, when I get a little more time, I will provide a more thorough review.  Until then, here are some photos for you to consider.  If you have any specific translational questions, I'll do my best to answer them.  Until then......

Cool Article of the Little Office

I have mentioned on this blog the wonderful Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary that our friends at Baronius Press have produced.  Well, with this being the month of Mary, it was nice to see an article concerning the Little Office on the Aleteia site yesterday by Joanne McPortland:

Do you pray some form of the Divine Office, the Liturgy of the Hours? This liturgical tradition is as old as the Church, built on the earliest Christian practice of praying the psalms and reading the Scriptures daily.

When I was a child, I would peer out the classroom window as the priests of our parish, their cassocks flapping in the Santa Ana winds, paced the schoolground with little black book in hand, their lips moving as they read the Office prescribed for all secular clergy. On rare visits from Father Peter, my dad’s cousin who was the Superior of the Columban Fathers, my sister and I would be cautioned to give him quiet time “to read his breviary” before he got back to astonishing us with coin tricks. In later life, I was privileged to join religious orders of women or men who chanted the canonical hours—Matins and Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline—in community, as all religious were required to do. The beloved Gregorian chant albums of monks like the Benedictines of Norcia, newly popular with listeners of all faiths, are the monastic Divine Office shared with the world.

The Prayer of Christians
Over the centuries, the Divine Office, with its sequence of psalms, antiphons, versicles, lessons, and prayers, has often been revised. (The word breviary, describing the book but also the practice of reciting the Liturgy of the Hours, actual means “a briefer version,” condensed a bit from the longer and far more ornate office once celebrated in Rome.) The revision with which most of us are familiar came about in the 1970s, as the Divine Office was simplified and universalized to encourage its use not only by priests and religious, but by the whole Church in communion.

I remember receiving my first copy of The Prayer of Christians, an early English edition of the revised Divine Office, from my husband as a Christmas gift. I was pregnant with our son. To begin the days as we did then, praying Morning Prayer in the car on the way to work, gave a richness of meaning to the words from the Canticle of Zechariah—“You, my child, shall be called the prophet of the Most High, and shall go before the Lord to prepare his way”—and united us with the whole praying Church.

Today, I try to find time to pray the daily office, but am more likely to settle for one of the “briefer breviaries”—the streamlined Morning, Evening, and Night Prayers provided by publishers of monthly missals like Magnificat or Give Us This Day. You may do this, too, perhaps without knowing what a long and glorious tradition we are weaving into our hours.

Mary and the Hours of the Laity

What does this have to do with Mary, and her “Little Office"? Read the rest to find out.  

NLT-CE in the USA

Many of you were wondering if the NLTCE would be available in the US at some point.  I had attempted to purchase a copy of it from Amazon India but without success.  However, I am happy to report the following news from my sources at Tyndale House:

Tyndale was granted the Imprimatur thru the Catholic Church in India, which gives them the ability to take this worldwide.  (Unlike their first attempt a decade or so ago.)  The first edition to be available in the States will be a hardcover edition (ISBN 978-1-4964-1401-4) that is scheduled to release in April of 2017.  Price has not been set, but will likely be in the $20-25 range.  It is set to be a straight text Bible.  

I would imagine that future editions will be dependent on how well the intial hardcover version sells.  This is great news, and I look forward to getting a copy next year.  

NLT-CE Update: Photos!

I would like to thank reader John Francis who was able to attain the bonded leather edition and report back on it.

*I was able to get a review copy of the NLT CE from India this morning from a Catholic bookstore with branches in the center of Manila.

*For starters, in the intro, the NLT edition utilized is that of the 2004 revision, including minor revisions afterwards up to the 2010 edition.

*There's a note at the imprimatur page that says it's not meant for liturgical use. The intro specifically says that it's more meant for Lectio divina and evangelization.

*It's available in leatherbound and hardbound editions. Not quite sure if they have it in paperback. But they have a pocket sized edition.

*Regarding the book intros, as you can see below in the imprimatur and copyright page, the intros in this edition are based on Fr. K. Luke, OFMCap's book.

*Here's Psalms 51 (Miserere) to 55. Notice the line drawings, very similar to the GNT Anne Valloton drawings: