"Pope John Paul II's Favorite Bible"

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Good evening! What Holy Bible (title, publisher, copyright year of most recent revision/printing) does Pope John Paul II read and ponder on a daily basis? As a conscientious Bible scholar, I want to study God's Word by reading the exact same Sacred Scripture text that our Holy Father reads every day. Most Revised Bibles published since 1962 are distorting the truth and destroying Catholic culture. My mission is to preserve the authentic Word of God! Thank you for your assistance in this urgent matter. Peace be with you! -- Mary Ann

-- Mary Ann DeGraw (Marydoveofpeace@aol.com), October 09, 2002

Answers

I'm not sure what translation of Sacred Scriptures the Holy Father uses for his daily prayers. I do know that he wakes up quite early and spends more than an hour in prayer in his private chapel in the Vatican before he celebrates the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the day.

I had the good fortune to be present while he was praying and then together with him at Mass. It is certain he is a man of great prayer and love for God and his Church.

If I remember correctly, the readings for the Mass at his private chapel were in Italian (the vernaculars for the Vatican, which is geographically located in (or surrounded by) Rome). But I would guess that he has a personal Bible in his native language - Polish - that he may use to meditate upon occasionally. He may also use the New Vulgate, since it is the official translation for the Church. The Vulgate was the result of the great work of St. Jerome to translate the Sacred Scriptures into Latin in the 15th century. Recently, the New Vulgate was published which corrected the relatively (miraculously) few mistakes of St. Jerome.

But if you can't read Latin, you'll have a hard time with the New Vulgate. The Duey-Rhiems (sp?) Bible (don't know if it is still in print, but you can try TAN publications) was an almost transliteration of the Vulgate into English. Many English-speaking Catholics that are looking for "orthodox" versions of the Bible like and use this translation. My opinion though is that you still need to have a knowledge of Latin to properly understand this version, since the words are English, but at times the Latin phrase in English won't always come across effectively to the modern English mind with no training in Latin. But that's just my humble opinion. You certainly will be spared the modern ideological translations found in so many of the English translations today.

My recommendation would be the Revised Standard Version - Catholic Edition. It seems to be the most faithful translation (from ancient texts). Ignatius Press has the St. Ignatius Bible, which uses this translation with Catholic comments. It also compares quite well with the New Vulgate but in more modern English. I’m sure this isn’t the version the Pope uses on a daily basis, since English is not his native language, but if you can’t read Polish, Italian or Latin, it’s probably your best bet.

Hope this helps! God bless!

-- Hollis (catholic@martinsen.com), October 09, 2002.

FYI - the Ignatius Bible can be found at ignatius.com.

Click here for more info.

-- Hollis (catholic@martinsen.com), October 09, 2002.

Another FYI - I also use the online version of the RSV translation at: www.hti.umich.edu/r/r sv/index.html.

It's great for Bible searches!

-- Hollis (catholic@martinsen.com), October 10, 2002.

Thanks for that link, Hollis.
I read (and search) the RSV at a different Internet site, but I'm happy to have an alternate to rely upon, if/when my primary goes down or (heaven forbid) is shut down. The site I use is http://etext.virginia.edu/rsv.browse.html
God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), October 10, 2002.
I like this site: http://www.biblegateway.com/cgi-bin/bible because you can compare verses in various translations (unfortunately, all Protestant versions so they are missing some books).

To read and search the New American Bible, I use http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/index.htm

-- Glenn (glenn@nospam.com), October 10, 2002.

This is my favorite link to follow because it has RSV, NRSV, NIV, KJV, and Douay-Rheims.

God Bless

-- (seminarian@ziplip.com), October 10, 2002.

Glenn, I use to use the Bible Gateway when it had the RSV translation, but now all they have are translations that Mary Ann is trying to avoid - i.e. ideological translations. I'm not sure why they got rid of the RSV translation, but my guess is because it does not support their ideology (i.e. it's a more pure translation). I do NOT recommend the Bible Gateway, but the other links provided here are great. The search tool for the site I list above is not very good. Hopefully searches will be easier in the other sites recommended.
God Bless!

-- Hollis (catholic@martinsen.com), October 10, 2002.
Great site Seminarian!

For the little I've seen in their history section they seem respectful and don't show that fanaticism we'd expect from non-catholics. Thanks for the link, I added to my favorites.

-- Cristian (gabaonscy@hotmail.com), October 10, 2002.
I sympathize with your desire to preserve the Scriptures, but be careful not to fall into the trap that so many Protestants have, that of thinking that one particular version of the Bible is the only "right" one.

Have you ever run into those folks who actually believe the King James Bible is THE one and only AUTHENTIC translation of the Bible, and all the rest are done by "apostates"? Sounds funny, but I've come across a minority of Catholics who feel the same about the Douay- Rheims (which, btw, is still in print via TAN).

I think the best way to deal with the inaccuracies in modern translations is: don't limit yourself to just ONE translation! Get several, as many as you can afford, and try to learn as much as you can (within your own limited amount of time of course :-) ) about how the Catholic Church looks at the Scriptures. Then, if you come across a verse that doesn't seem to be translated right, you can compare it to another translation, and another, etc., to get the fullest possible meaning.

I do agree with the previous writer about the RSV-CE - it is very well done. Another good version (which is sadly out of print, so you'll have to try to find it on eBay) is Monsignor Ronald Knox's version -- he translated directly from the Vulgate in a very British voice, so it's really a pleasure to read it you can get it!

Hope this helps --

:-)

-- Christine L. (christinelehman@hotmail.com), October 10, 2002.

I can agree with Christine on the condition that the various translations are not ideologically bent. Having Douay-Rheims, RSV- CE, the New Vulgate (if you can read Latin - or even better yet a Greek/Hebrew version based upon ancient manuscripts), and/or Fr. Knox's translation. But some of these others (like the New Jersualem and many others) have some serious flaws that would cause more harm than good - in my humble opinion.

God bless!

-- Hollis (catholic@martinsen.com), October 10, 2002.

Hollis, you have a good point, which is why it's good to learn as much about *how* the Bible translations are made, and *who* is making them, as possible -- forewarned is forearmed! :-)

-- Christine L. (chris_tine_lehman@hotmail.com), October 10, 2002.
Hollis,

You mentioned the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) as a translation with serious flaws. John G. has mentioned the same thing in the past. I don't know if anyone else has any opinions; but could you point me to a web site which gives an explanation of the problems with the NJB?

Some possibilities:

a) Is the translation a problem? Is it not literal enough? Too much paraphrasing?

b) Is the "inclusive language" the problem?

c) Are the footnotes pushing an agenda?

d) All of the above?

I read the NJB, so I'm interested in what info you have or can point me to.

If anyone else has any info on the NJB, I'd appreciate it.

God Bless,

Mateo

PS--Hollis, I haven't been reading/posting on the forum much, but I've read some of your posts and I have enjoyed reading your contributions.

-- (MattElFeo@netscape.net), October 11, 2002.

Mateo,

Is the New Bible of Jerusalem the same as the spanish translation "Bible of Jerusalem"?. If it is then I'd like to know about those "serious flaws" because that's the one I use, but I've always seen this translation referred as the best translation we have in spanish. God bless you.

-- Cristian (gabaonscy@hotmail.com), October 11, 2002.
There is a difference between the Jerusalem Bible and the New Jerusalem. It's been a while since I used or read reviews, so if someone has more details on this, please chime in. I do remember though the footnotes in the NJB (and JB too if I recall) very much tend to the tendency of many modern Scripture scholars to "demythologize" the Bible - i.e. not much (if any) of the events in Sacred Scriptures are really true are really written by the authors that Church has attributed the writings to for centuries. I don't want to get off on a tangent discussing this issue here (maybe someone could start a new thread), but the NJB goes too far in my opinion. Let me just state that I have studied theology in the best universities in Rome and have investigated this matter of literal versus modern demythologizing extensively, and let me state that one is on good theological and scientific ground to take the more literal approach (of course, some of Sacred Scripture is clearly not intended to be factual and/or historically accurate).

If I recall, the NJB was a cave-in to the feminists' agenda and ideology also. I remember that Mother Angelica used to love the Jerusalem Bible, but was outraged with the NJB.

Hope someone else has some more insights.

Mateo - thanks for the kind words!

God bless!

-- Hollis (catholic@martinsen.com), October 11, 2002.

Jmj

Hello, Mateo.
Glad to see you visiting again, even if not as much as before.

You have a good memory, if you can recall my saying something negative about the New Jerusalem Bible. Actually, I have not looked at one myself, but only repeated what I had heard about it from an orthodox Catholic source -- namely, that the editors employed so-called inclusive language within it. [I use the phrase "radical feminist language" instead, because I think that standard English is "inclusive" (with the word "man" being inclusive of both males and females, for example).]

I have to defer to Hollis on the questionabless of some of the notes in the NJB. I found two NJB-related pages on the Internet that state that the presence of "gender-neutral language" (another euphemism) in the NJB is slight by comparison to 1990s versions. [The English NJB is from 1985, a translation of the French NJB of 1973. The original English JB was from 1966, a translation of the French JB of 1961.] I think you would read one of the pages with some interest. It is from a site called "Bible Researcher" -- put together by Michael Marlowe, a self-described "conservative" Protestant of the "Reformed" school. Here it is. I noticed that the sample NJB footnotes borrowed heavily from the JB footnotes, but the editors may have added a lot of bad ones too (as Hollis mentioned).

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), October 17, 2002.

I want to thank everyone who responded to my question regarding our Holy Father's favorite Bible. Your helpful suggestions are deeply appreciated and I am very grateful.

As faithful Roman Catholics living in this twenty-first century, we must work to preserve the Word of God, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is our duty to read, ponder, pray, share, and act upon the words of our Saviour, Jesus Christ that are found only in an authentic New Testament authorized and approved by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II (since Pope John Paul II is our only mediator between Jesus and us, God's children on earth.) Let's work together to spread the good news and PRESERVE GOD'S WORD!!!

Peace be with you,

Mary Ann

-- Mary Ann DeGraw (Marydoveofpeace@aol.com), February 19, 2003.

May I make a few reccomendations?I am not Catholic but here goes.

Of course, the origional Creek and Hebrew are the best, however, assumign you do not possess these, and do not speak Latin ( No more prasises for the New Vulgate, its had enough.) Below is a list of a few good texts.

I loved the King James, both for mastery of Prose and for accuracy in translation.(even the majority of "Errors" cited to-day are the result of 400 years of lingual changes rather than legitimate errors ont he part fo the translatiors.)

However, if you are uncomfortable with the archane speach,you can use the King James 21st century edition.(New King James changes too much.)

This, in addition, cna be accompanied bu the Revised Standard, but unfortunately the rivision commity always translated the ame greek or Hebrew word as the same english word immaterial fo the context.This leads ot errors as well.

As I am not familiar with Catholic additions that arn't antiquated, I shall leave this at this, withte side not that if you own a New International, cast it aside, it is only margionally superior tot he New World Translation fot he Jehova Witness.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), September 10, 2003.

Thanks for your comments, Zarove.
However, we must always keep in mind that no matter which "variety" of the King James Version you may choose, it is an incomplete Bible. It is missing seven books of the Old Testament.

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), September 11, 2003.

What seven books?

I realise the apocrypha was removed, but int he origional James it was there, and there are still many King James Bible's that have it, they are merely hard to find.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), September 11, 2003.

Jmj

No, Zarove.
The apocryphal books were not removed. The following books were removed, which are not "apocryphal," but inspired by God (as has been agreed by the original Christians since before the year 400):

Judith
Tobit
Wisdom
Sirach
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
Baruch
[In addition, some small portions of Daniel and Esther were removed.]

Hardly any copies of the KJV being used by people today contain the seven books. Consider the millions of "Gedeon Bibles" in motels/hotels today. Not even one of them is a complete bible, which is a pity and a disgrace.

The actual "apocrypha" consist of such works as the following [with thanks to www.catholic-forum.com] ...

Apocrypha of Jewish Origin

Jewish Apocalypses

Legendary Apocrypha of Jewish Origin Apocryphal Psalms and Prayers Jewish Philosophy Apocrypha of Jewish Origin with Christian Accretions Apocrypha Of Christian Origin

Apocryphal Gospels of Catholic Origin Judaistic and Heretical Gospels Pilate Literature and Other Apocrypha concerning Christ Gnostic Acts of the Apostles Catholic Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles Apocryphal Doctrinal Works Apocryphal Epistles Christian Apocryphal Apocalypses

God bless you.
John

-- J. F. Gecik (jfgecik@hotmail.com), September 12, 2003.

Actually, those seven bookms where in the King James, they where removed int he 19th century, but one need nto look too hard to find a contemporary printing that still possesses them.

-- ZAROVE (ZAROFF3@JUNO.COM), October 01, 2003.
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