As Timothy mentioned briefly in his recent post Confessions of an Ugly-Bible Reader, RL Allan has recently published a new premium NRSV with Apocrypha. The bible is bound in Allan’s famous highland goatskin leather, and it’s available in four colors: black, brown, navy blue, and red. This is the second premium NRSV with Apocrypha that has been published in the past 2 years. In early 2018, Cambridge published the NRSV Reference Bible in burgundy goatskin, which received high praise from Timothy and other readers at the Catholic Bibles Blog. I purchased a copy last year and agreed with the other reviewers. The quality is top-notch.
The new Allan NRSV is very similar to the Cambridge edition. It features a double-column layout with cross references in the center between the two columns. The Allan edition’s text block was printed by SPCK in the UK, and the biblical text is the anglicized edition of the NRSV (as opposed to the Cambridge reference edition, which uses the US text). Allan’s text block is about a half inch narrower than the Cambridge edition, and as a result the text columns are also narrower.
I have not purchased the Allan edition, but two reviewers on YouTube have given detailed overviews of it, with comparisons to the Cambridge reference edition. Here are two YouTube reviews I found useful:
Jason Engel’s Unboxing of the 2019 RL Allan NRSV
Reid Stairs’ NRSV Cambridge/Allan Comparison
Currently, the bible is available in all four colors on the RL Allan website for £160 with free worldwide shipping. At current exchange rates, that equates to approximately $200.
Please tell me if the Allen bibles even with the ones that have the apochrypha have the protestant slant version of the bible? What do you mean by Anglican?
Hi Janet,
RL Allan publishes mostly protestant versions of the bible, but the NRSV was produced by a multi-denominational team of scholars, and it is approved for Catholic use. The Allan NRSV with Apocrypha is a nice option for Catholics who long for a premium leather bible.
The anglicized text is a version of the NRSV which uses British spellings and figures of speech in place of the American spellings that were used in the original NRSV text. It is usable for Catholics. The word “anglicized” refers to standard British grammar and usage. It is not related to the Anglican Church.