A handsome note-taking Bible with your {bits & pieces}
This post will be an entry in the “read this, not that” category for sure! So, please bear with me as I embark on a long introduction to the journaling/note-taking Bible I’m hoping will help you with your holiday shopping…
what not to get
I find it beyond frustrating that finding an appropriate Bible is so difficult for the English speaker. Besides the normal difficulties attending the task of translation (heightened by the responsibility of rendering Sacred Scripture into the vernacular with all the criteria of accuracy and appropriate diction), we are continually harassed by the political motives of those behind the effort.
Not too long ago I received promotional material from The Catholic Bible Press for their new series of devotional Bibles. Despite their appealingly luxe presentation, the Bibles offered there are not what I would endorse. Nor would I endorse the journaling Bible offered by Blessed is She, which is in the even worse New American Bible (NAB) translation.
You see, the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) has the fatal flaw of using so-called inclusive language. The attempt to remove “gender-specific” pronouns (or even references to sex such as the word man or brother) changes the meaning of what is said — and not unrelatedly, also flattens the language, rendering it clunky, unmemorable, and uninspiring.
Let me give you a few examples in which the NRSV is compared with the Revised Standard Version (RSV):
1 Corinthians 13:1 —
NRSV: If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.
RSV: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.
Psalm 8:4 —
NRSV: What are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?
RSV: What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that thou dost care for him?
Matthew 4:19 —
NRSV: Follow me, and I will make you fish for people. (This one is particularly silly!)
RSV: Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
You can see that under the guise of making the language more modern (chiefly removing the thees and thous), the translation sneaks in a political agenda (feminism) and in the process, removes the very elements that recall the passage to our minds and make it meaningful. In the case of the Old Testament, this effort has another effect, which is to eliminate the typology and Christology of the passage — that is, that which offers witness to the believer that the coming of Jesus Christ was prepared from time immemorial and fulfills even implicit prophecy.
I remember Fr. Joseph Fessio, who was responsible for bringing back the RSV and widely distributing it at Ignatius Press, telling me that all you had to do was open up to the very first Psalm to know if you were the victim of this deception.
Instead of “Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly” (referencing a man, Jesus Christ, as well as being a passage that everyone can identify with, since everyone knows that generically, man means man and woman), the NRSV has “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked,” which changes everything, waving vaguely at others in the distance, probably not us, who should not go astray. And is awkward to boot.
In not offending modern sensibilities, the NRSV (and let’s not even talk about the NAB) ends up making everything sound as if it all occurred in the context of 20th-century first-world affluence, but with an ignorance that requires everything being explained in a vaguely technical way. Thus we have “members of the Church” instead of “brother” — however, who’s to say? — and “minor” instead of “child.” And you see that it’s already somewhat out of date, as it’s now the 21st century as we speak…
Whether this is just shortsightedness or some sort of job-protection effort (since of course “updating” has to be revisited by the experts, to itself be updated), I don’t know. But it’s not ultimately good for our sense of the universality of God’s Word:
Matthew 25:1
NRSV: Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.
RSV: …ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom.
“Maidens” might seem archaic if we think about it too hard, but “bridesmaids” is technical and particular. A maiden describes a woman; a bridesmaid describes a woman fulfilling a temporary role. There is a case to be made that deliberate archaism paradoxically creates timelessness. (affiliate link)
get this instead!
Anyway, the good news is that Ignatius Press always has beautiful versions of the RSV for sale. Fr. Fessio, its founder, has seen to that.
And if you are looking for a gift this coming Christmas for your favorite avid note-taking or journaling friend (or even for yourself!), Ignatius has a new offering, a Catholic RSV Bible that can fill that role.
And we at LMLD are offering you a discount on this Bible in time for your gift-giving! If you buy from Ignatius, you get 30% off your volume with this discount code: LEILA30
The code is good from today to 11/21.
If you are looking for a journaling Bible, this one is the one I would recommend. It’s austere in a good way, free of limiting embellishment, so it will be suitable for everyone, male and female (heh).
Note that the red cover is a sleeve that comes off the actual book and the book itself is black, not blue as it appears in this photo.
The feel is substantial, with its stiffer cover and sturdy elastic. Inside the pages are of course thin, to fit a whole Bible into a volume that you can slip into your bag to take to Adoration and so on, but sturdy — a pen will not rip them. The print is small, again, to keep the size down to what can easily be carried, I think. I like the marginal note taking area, and the footnotes are minimal but apt. (The lines are pretty faint in this photo that I grabbed from their site, but in real life they are darker.)
One little touch that Fr. Fessio instituted early on is to keep ISBN numbers off the covers of his books where possible. So this Bible is really timeless in more ways than one!
And it has maps!
bits & pieces
Pigeon Creates Beautiful Nest After Secretly Stockpiling Poppies from War Memorial
A law degree is one of the worst investments — this is not a polemical piece, but simply makes an observation based on outcomes.
A reader left this recipe in the comments of another post — I made these soul cakes and they are very nice! (I used dried cranberries as I was currant-less.) The children love being told to say a prayer for the dearly departed when they take one. (As always, I don’t necessarily endorse other things on the sites I link to!)
I have shared my friend Peter Kwasniewski’s work here before, and of course we have had a lot of discussions about liturgy — and beauty — on LMLD. You might appreciate this article in which he identifies The Four Qualities of Liturgy: Validity, Licitness, Fittingness, and Authenticity
David Clayton: Why Sacred Art is Necessary to the Faith — I always love hearing David talk about this subject!
A must-read on the topic I have amateurishly attempted above is the late Fr. Paul Mankowski SJ’s The Necessary Failure of Inclusive Language Translations: A Linguistic Elucidation . Fr. Mankowski was a world expert in Biblical languages. When he left the Biblicum in Rome they had to replace him with three professors. We have been led to believe that it’s only fair to replace certain pronouns and even words with non-male ones, but this is a snare and a delusion that affects the way we look at faith itself — even how we look at God and of course, ourselves.
from the archives
Thanksgiving, it is less than two weeks away! Time to revisit my tour de force Thanksgiving prep post!
One year I did a sort of “live IG Thanksgiving prep” series– you can follow it here.
liturgical living
Remember to buy your Advent candles and Advent calendars! (affiliate links)
Because of the cray-cray year, calls will be heard across the land to just go ahead and start Christmas now! But hear my call: Advent must be lived. We can’t get to the joy of Christmas, a reality, not a feeling, without the journey of preparation and yes, purgation that is Advent. Live your Advent. It will be upon us in so short a time. As the woman of the house, your task is to undertake the preparation (yes, for the preparation).
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