Bible study and church unity

As a lifelong student of the Bible and lover of the church in all its parts, I’m thrilled to see the Bible bind Christians together again! For one thing, developments in biblical scholarship and archeological digs have helped many Protestant publishers see that the apostles and other early church leaders knew the apocryphal books – those extra “Old Testament” books included in the original King James Version (KJV) of the Bible but taken out during the Reformation.

Meanwhile, Catholic scholars have greatly encouraged private and group study by making more study editions available with informative footnotes and articles provided by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. In addition, Christian scholars from Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical churches put their halos together to bring us the Common English Bible, previously reviewed on this site. Before that the Revised English Bible (REB), reviewed in A study Bible with an ecumenical view, gave us a one-Bible-fits-all-study groups.

Besides the REB, Oxford University Press has given us ecumenical editions (aka with Apocrypha) of the Revised Standard Version and New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which I’ve used for years and highly recommend. Therefore, I’m doubly pleased to announce the new-to-me revised edition of the New American Bible (NAB) approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and published by Oxford.

Since I prefer genuine leather covers for the Bibles I use most often, I’m happy to see this edition can be found with a nice leather binding. Except for the NAB I bought years ago, Catholic editions rarely have high quality leather. My old NAB does but has "Catholic Study Bible" printed with such big gold letters on the spine that some Christians might not want to take it to another church study group.

The new (2010) NAB Revised Edition from Oxford has bold lettering on the spine, too, but its golden letters say “Holy Bible,” which should please everyone! I got the large print, which I like, but the treatment of footnotes took some getting used to at first. i.e., Instead of having footnotes and study notes at the bottom of each page, this edition places them at the end of each book. So you can look up notes as you go, or read (as I did) the study notes in one sitting. Interestingly, this placement kept me from being distracted (as I often am) from reading straight-through, and I felt as though I comprehended the text more fully since I didn’t have the typical footnotes to interrupt the reading.

Regarding the type of information found in those study notes, the footnote for Matthew 27:16-17 tells us, “The Aramaic name Barabbas means ‘son of the father’,” then points out “the irony of the choice offered between him and Jesus, the true son of the Father.”

For another example of a footnote concerning the Passion of Christ, a note on the time of death told in John 19:14 says: “Noon, the time when, according to John, Jesus was sentenced to death, was the hour at which the priest began to slaughter Passover lambs in the temple.” That’s the kind of information I wouldn’t know without the truly informative information in these study notes. Glad I ordered mine, but it’s a little hard to find, so I hope this link on Christian Books works for a while.

© 2013, Mary Harwell Sayler