I just noticed that the genuine leather over board hardcover edition of the NRSV-CE Illustrated Catholic Bible is currently listed at the lowest price ever recorded on Amazon — $74.39. For the past year and a half, this edition has generally been listed between $110 and $140.
I don’t own a copy of this bible, but it has received glowing accolades from a couple of well-known protestant bible reviewers on YouTube: Tim Wildsmith (who reviewed the leathersoft version of the same text block) and A Nickel’s Worth Bible Reviews. It is a very large edition—generally in the same size class as large family bibles, but it has some beautiful features:
- 513 black-and-white illustrations that originally came from a 16th century Venetian bible.
- Single column page format
- 9.5 point font
- Smyth-sewn binding
- Incredibly ornate gilded page edges
Ouch! That stings a bit, considering what I paid for it on Amazon a few years ago.
It’s a beautiful bible, with high quality craftsmanship. The font and illustrations are lovely. It’s a great Bible for lectio divina, because the text is single column and easy on the eyes, with generous margins. You can pray with the illustrations, too.
It’s not massive (the way a “family bible” is). It’s pretty standard size, very easy to take places, though I don’t typically. I prefer it for home just because it’s so ornate, and I don’t want the beautiful embossed cover to get marred or nicked. It’s less imposing than, say, the New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV editions. It’s smaller than my NOAB2 NRSV, the final Metzger and Fr. Murphy edition.
Oh, interesting! Thanks for the context on its size. It looks really large to me in the video reviews and photos, but I have a copy of the NOAB 2 NRSV. That’s smaller than I would have expected it to be.
To clarify: The NRSV-CE Illustrated Edition is the same thickness and length from top to bottom as the NOAB2 NRSV (I have the burgundy genuine leather edition published in the 1990s), but not as wide from side to side. It’s not larger than the NOAB 2,3,4, & 5, and is comparable, in size, to the NABRE Catholic Study Bible from Oxford.
Just wanna say…. I never really gave the NRSV a fair shake due to its online reputation (among certain sectors) of being this horribly liberal, gender-neutered, unreliable translation. Well, while there are certainly passages that I think could have been translated with a bit more care, I’ve found the NRSV to be an absolutely outstanding modern bible. It’s firmly in the Tyndale-KJV tradition, it’s excellent in terms of scholarship (the translation footnotes are outstanding), and it reads really really well (especially in the OT). So, if you’re on the edge, consider buying this! I love my genuine leather NRSV thinline from Catholic Bible Press.
For all my disappointment in this edition (below), I agree with you completely about the NRSV itself.
The single column format is starting to grown me. Took a bit with the rnjb and Knox but I actually find it easier and smoother to read that way.
It’s lovely. I used it for a while for my daily office readings.
But then I gave it up after about nine months and sold my copy.
It was just a bit too big.
It lacked any cross-references or textual notes (even removing the textual notes from the editor that normally come with any NRSV text).
I found the “Catholic Comfort” font clunky and hard to read.
The engravings aren’t always very well reproduced.
And I hated the cover.
In the end, after the initial mystery of the illustrations grew thin, I realized it was another overwrought “Catholic Bible” that invested too much in its baroque layout and too little in the working text of Scripture itself.
The more I read it in prayer, the more I actively missed cross-references.
I switched to the 1965 Oxford Annotated, which contains the original (non-CE) RSV with an imprimatur from Cardinal Cushing. It’s the RSV and the precursor to the familiar New Oxford Annotated I read in college and seminary. It gives me the cross references I want, and I’ve gained a new appreciation for just how often the RSV leaned on the Septuagint in its rendering when the Masoretic text was unclear.
I thought the NRSV had to be published with at least the translation notes. That’s a bummer. That’s like my favorite thing about the NRSV! Glad you found a new go-to. I’m still on the hunt…
I’m enough of a fan of the NRSV I’d happily go back to the New Oxford Annotated I used as a Methodist and Anglican… if only any had an imprimatur.
For a Catholic option of an Oxford Annotated edition in the Tyndale-KJV lineage, I can’t go any later than the original Oxford Annotated in the RSV.
But after that edition, Oxford went down a parallel track for Catholic Study Bible’s built around the NAB with its own study notes and reading guides. It’s like there’s a fork in the river with Oxford Annotated on one stream and Catholic Study Bible on the other.
I’m choosing the one edition from upstream, before the river splits.
Even on sale I don’t have the money, such as it is. The first Bible Catholic Bible I owned was an NRSV-CE, while I don’t think it’s the greatest Bible, ever, it was a perfectly cromulent version of the Bible. I don’t see it as being any worse or better than the NAB.
Anyway, it’s a nice Bible.
I have this Bible in softcover and I absolutely love it. One of my favorite Bibles for home reading. A little clunky to carry around, but it could be done.
Wish we could get a REB-CE