New American Bible to be Revised into Single Translation
June 20, 2012 3 Comments
CNA:
The U.S. bishops have announced a plan to revise the New Testament of the New American Bible so a single version can be used for individual prayer, catechesis and liturgy.
“The goal is to produce a single translation,” said Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D.C. on June 14.
As he addressed his brother bishops at the spring meeting of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Cardinal Wuerl pointed to the central role of Sacred Scripture in the life of the Church.
He explained that the bishops’ committees on Divine Worship and Doctrine have both expressed a desire for a single translation, suitable for all pastoral applications, including individual prayer, study and devotional use, along with liturgical proclamation.
The new translation would “provide us one source of language when we speak the Word of God,” he said.
The process of creating the new translation will take “a long time” and will consist of numerous lengthy steps, Cardinal Wuerl acknowledged.
The New Testament translation was last revised in 1986. By way of comparison, the translation portion of revising the New American Bible’s Old Testament began in 1994 and was finished in 2001.
The Confraternity of Christian Doctrine will work with the Subcommittee on the Translation of Scripture Texts, to undertake the revision, he said. The group will “look at those texts to see that they are going to be able to be used for proclamation as well as for ordinary use.”
This work will utilize the same principles that guided the recent revision of the Old Testament in the New American Bible, as well as translation norms for Sacred Scripture, he added. “The Biblical scholars responsible for the revision will be sensitive then to the pastoral, the doctrinal, the liturgical considerations” as they work to produce a draft, which will then be presented “for review and preliminary approval” by the the Scripture translation subcommittee, the cardinal said.
The committees on worship and doctrine will then have an opportunity to review the texts.
Ultimately, the body of bishops “will be asked to approve the completed Biblical text for liturgical use,” so that it can then be submitted to Rome for the Vatican’s “recognitio,” after which the president of the U.S. bishops’ conference can grant it the “imprimatur.”
At that point, Cardinal Wuerl said, the revised translation of the New American Bible “will be able to be used in the lectionary at Mass.”
“So the end product will be one translation that we will all be using,” he explained, and all of the faithful will be “hearing the same words when we refer to specific texts.”
“That translation will be used in the liturgy, it will be used in study, it will be used in personal devotion, it will be used when we’re simply reading the text,” the cardinal said.
He emphasized that although the process will take a long time, it is currently an ideal time to begin, now that “we have all the pieces in place.”
I still think the RSV-CE is a far better version. But I believe it’s only approved for official use liturgically in the Ordinariates. As Timothy (HT) puts it:
Of course, this is the death nail to any possibility of the RSV-2CE being used in the American Liturgy.
About Fr Stephen Smuts
The American Bible !!! The Word of God is not American nor is it German or Italian or any other Country in this world, the Bible is the Word of God. American revised is that to say to candy coat the Word of God. How many times do we have to revise our Bible !?
I wonder what is wrong with the Bible the Greek Orthodox and other Orthodox Churches use? After all, the New Testament was written in Greek… Maybe their own, orthodox, approved translations can be consulted, or used in cross-reference with older, more stable versions like the Vulgate?
I also think that having just a single, multi-purpose Bible for all applications can be convenient, but there has to be a trade-off in a form which is unknown to anyone yet…
I like the idea of have “specialized Bibles” for example, some can have all sorts of annotation, cross-reference in the Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and other languages in one edition. Yet the Bible is too large to have its many purposes incorporated into just one edition of the book; I suppose, you -can- have everything you need, including all scriptural commentaries within the 2,000-year-old history of the Church into one version of the Bible, but I imagine that’s going to be one, heavy book you have there.
I don’t know. I may have misunderstood their intent. But whatever happens, God will take care of us. His Will, not mine.
Come on you guys. It’s about time we did this sine Jesus spoke English. Just kidding. But for real, thanks for the post. I hope this takes a bit though, I just finally got all my notes and passages switched over to my newest Bible. I don’t know if am up for another round