Here are the answers to our little quiz entitled NABRE vs. NOAB in which you, the player, had to make an educated guess about which footnotes were from the New American Bible, Revised Edition and which were from the 1991 New Oxford Annotated Bible.
1. Genesis 16:7
“Here the angel of the Lord is not a heavenly being subordinate to God but the Lord (Yahweh) in earthly manifestation, as is clear from v. 13 (compare 21:17, 19; Exodus 14:19).”
This is the NOAB. The NABRE note for this verse is as follows:
“The Lord’s angel: a manifestation of God in human form; in v. 13 the messenger is identified with God. See note on Exodus 3:2.”
2. 1 Samuel 7:6
“Drew water and poured it out: this ritual act does not appear elsewhere in the Old Testament. Linked with fasting and admission of sin, it seems to function as a purification ritual that washes away the guilt incurred by worshiping the Canaanite Baal and his consort Astarte. Its effectiveness is immediately evident when the Lord thunders a response to Samuel’s offering.”
This is the NABRE. Already it looks like it would be a fair bet to guess that the format of any note where the Biblical text appears is followed by a colon and then the commentary is from that translation.
NOAB note: “Libations of water were unusual (wine was used generally), but to people with a desert background water would be sufficiently precious.”
3. Jeremiah 1:11
“There is wordplay between the Hebrew noun shaqed, “almond tree”, and the Hebrew verb shoqed, “watcher/watching”. Because the almond tree begins to bloom in late winter in Palestine, it is called “the watcher” for the coming of spring. God is also “watcher”, observing the fulfillment of the prophetic word.”
This is the NABRE. This is where I really feel the NABRE is at its best when I read material from the Old Testament. This background it hands on is the kind of thing that for me at least is good to know, but hard to remember. It seems I need the reminder every time I return to these books of the Bible, so I like to have such a note at my fingertips.
NOAB note: “Play on words (see notes a [Hebrew shaqed] and b [Hebrew shoqed]) to encourage the hesitant young prophet in the face of certain opposition.”
The NOAB here calls our eyes to the NRSV translation notes. I find these notes very helpful when I am using the NRSV to study a book of the Bible, especially in the Old Testament where they point out where the translation departs from the Masoretic text. I wish the NAB and NABRE went that route, but since 1970 they have decided to keep that material in a separate textual notes document that you can find online. (Note that while the NAB follows the published critical text of the Greek New Testament, there is no comparable Hebrew critical text. Self consciously Protestant translations like the ESV for reason of Luther’s appeal to the Hebrew against the Deuterocanon and their lionization of the pioneering 16th century translators simply translate from published volumes of the Masoretic Text of the Hebrew Bible. (That being said, it is still my theory that the ESV Old Testament was likely not translated from anything, but rather just swapped footnoted readings from the Hebrew in from the RSV in preference to verses which followed the ancient versions.)
4. Luke 4:33
“See Mark 1:23 note. Demons were thought of in Jesus’ day as non-material existences of a personal sort, hostile to human welfare and rebellious against God. The gospels reflect widespread dread of demons and a general sense of helplessness before demonic activity. Jesus is portrayed here and elsewhere (compare 11:20-22) as one who can deliver from demonic oppression and from Satan himself, evil’s supreme embodiment (see Matthew 4:24 note; 12:22 note; Luke 7:33 note; 13:16 note).”
This is the NOAB.
As far as I know, Christians still think of demons as non-material existences of a personal sort, hostile to human welfare and rebellious against God. I know I do. To alter what Chesterton said about Original Sin in Orthodoxy, to me the existence of demons is one of the few Christian doctrines one can prove by turning on the news. The NABRE note for verse 34 is as follows:
“What have you to do with us?: see note on John 2:4. Have you come to destroy us?: the question reflects the current belief that before the day of the Lord control over humanity would be wrested from the evil spirits, evil destroyed, and God’s authority over humanity reestablished. The synoptic gospel tradition presents Jesus carrying out this task.”
This seems to me how one would say this if one presumed demons were real but was writing a note about then current views on the subject. If my interpretation is correct, this shows one place where the NABRE presupposes a Christian view of the cosmos that is not presumed in the NOAB.
5. Revelation 9:1
“A star: late Judaism represented fallen powers as stars (Isaiah 14:12-15; Luke 10:18; Jude 13), but a comparison with Revelation 1:20 and Revelation 20:1 suggests that here it means an angel. The passage to the abyss: referring to Sheol, the netherworld, where Satan and the fallen angels are kept for a thousand years, to be cast afterwards into the pool of fire; cf. Revelation 20:7-10. The abyss was conceived of as a vast subterranean cavern full of fire. Its only link with the earth was a kind of passage or mine shaft, which was kept locked.”
This is the NABRE. Did the word “netherworld” tip you off? I wonder if the new CAB will prefer “Hades” or “the grave” or other renderings instead of “netherworld”.
NOAB Note: “A star…fallen from heaven, one of the fallen angels, perhaps Satan himself (v. 11; Luke 10:18.)”
Except for its characteristic terseness to the point of being a subject without a predicate, I might have guessed the NOAB note was the NABRE note. Maybe this makes up for the note from Luke 4.
BONUS
Matthew 16:21-23
This is the justly hated footnote that has opened the NAB to all sorts of calumnies. If you have never seen it, let me warn you—it is more worthy of the Jesus Seminar than of Christ’s Church. You may want to sit down for this.
NABRE
“16:21–23 This first prediction of the passion follows Mk 8:31–33 in the main and serves as a corrective to an understanding of Jesus’ messiahship as solely one of glory and triumph. By his addition of from that time on (Mt 16:21) Matthew has emphasized that Jesus’ revelation of his coming suffering and death marks a new phase of the gospel. Neither this nor the two later passion predictions (Mt 17:22–23; 20:17–19) can be taken as sayings that, as they stand, go back to Jesus himself. However, it is probable that he foresaw that his mission would entail suffering and perhaps death, but was confident that he would ultimately be vindicated by God (see Mt 26:29).”
Are we all ok? This argument has been made many times, but it bears repeating that even if Jesus was not God, but merely an intelligent and perceptive man, he certainly would have seen his death at the hands of the religious or state authorities as a strong possibility, especially after the death of the Baptist. The thinking behind this note would not only deny in Christ an ability to know what was in man, but also the perception of the average fallen human in those tense times in Roman Judea. The infamous note was not present in the original 1970 NAB, but was one of the notes to the revised New Testament that was published in 1986. I have not read every note in the NABRE, but I cannot think of any others that are this bad. (Other notes seem to assume prophecy is only possible in a retroactive sense, but I think any of us who have used academic study materials have learned to politely ignore such notes.
I think that this note from Matthew 16 has for many people been all they need to know about the NABRE and has been a major cause of its mixed reputation. In a talk I quoted at length in the first NABRE Farewell Tour post, Mary Healy reports that such footnotes have been dispensed with as the 1986 New Testament has been edited for its release as part of the Catholic American Bible in 2027. Let us be thankful for that.
Let’s see what the NOAB has to say about the verse that caused the kerfuffle:
Nothing.
Just kidding—it sends us to the parallel in Mark 8:32
“The idea that the Son of Man (the Messiah) was to suffer was in complete contrast to Jewish expectation (see 2:10 note; 9:10 note; Matthew 16:22).”
If I knew nothing about the New American Bible, I would definitely pick that as the note from the Catholic Bible and the other note as that of a study Bible used in the secular academy. Were that the case, I seriously believe the Bible in a Year podcast would have been using the NABRE and not the RSV.