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Recommendations

Recommendations

New Jerusalem Bible (NJB)

New Jerusalem Bible (NJB)

Scholarly Study Bibles

Scholarly Study Bibles

These edi­tions of the NJB are essentially identical in content and include the fol­low­ing stand­ard fea­tures:

  • Com­plete Roman Cath­o­lic bib­li­cal canon in Roman Cath­o­lic order.
  • Mod­er­ate amount of crit­i­cal study notes of the highest caliber.
  • Mod­er­ate amount of alter­nate read­ings.
  • Excel­lent out­er-mar­gin cross ref­er­enc­ing sys­tem with mod­er­ate num­ber of ref­er­ences.
  • Very infre­quent Roman Cath­o­lic bias in the notes.
  • Both Roman Catholic and Protestant verse numbering.
Listed in order of rec­om­men­da­tion.  Notes on the upcoming version.
Edition CAR Pros Cons
Edition CAR Pros Cons
DLT Stand­ard Edi­tion 4.52
  • Avail­able in sev­eral edi­tions.
  • Leather edi­tions expen­sive.
  • Some editions not readily available in the U.S.  However, they may be available shipped from the U.K.  U.K. Store  Publisher
Regular Edition 4.50
  • I have found only 2 print­ing errors, one in the cross ref­er­ences, one in the foot­notes.
  • 10 point font size
  • Only avail­a­ble in one hard­cover edi­tion.
  • Bind­ing prone to fail with reg­u­lar use.  (I’m weigh­ing the advan­tages of rebind­ing vs. expen­sive leather edi­tion above.)

Note that a new ver­sion is “in the works”.  This new edition is being produced under a project entitled The Bible in its Traditions (abbreviated BEST).  A multi-lingual (French, Spanish, English) “Dem­on­stra­tion Vol­ume” dis­play­ing the fea­tures of the new ver­sion is available now.  However, I have been unable to locate a copy, planned to be released through this pub­lisher.  Unfor­tu­nately, because of the 2008 Vat­i­can direc­tive pro­hi­bit­ing the use of “Yah­weh” dur­ing Roman Cath­o­lic reli­gious ser­vices, the new ver­sion almost cer­tainly will not include that extremely use­ful fea­ture.  The French portion of the dem­on­stra­tion vol­ume, available online, uses the French equiv­a­lent of “The Lord” rather than the much super­ior ren­der­ing “Yahweh”.  It is prob­a­bly solely due to the pop­u­lar­ity of this par­tic­u­lar Bible (and revi­sions) in sev­eral lan­guages that the use of “Yah­weh” had become com­mon­place in some Roman Cath­o­lic churches (par­tic­u­larly in France and Eng­land)!  Indeed, the cur­rent French ver­sion has become the stand­ard bible of that lan­guage.

I have to say, after look­ing over the sam­ple Eng­lish pas­sage, this new Bible looks extremely impres­sive — despite the very unfor­tu­nate deci­sion to no longer trans­lit­er­ate the tet­ra­gram­ma­ton.  I am look­ing for­ward to lay­ing my eyes on an actual dem­on­stra­tion vol­ume.

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