What is also sad is that of the kind of scholarship which the official RC Bible for America has been putting out for years, which is grievous to most RCs on FR as well, if not always for the same reason.
The NAB impugns upon the integrity of the Word of God by its adherence to the discredited JEDP theory, and Catholics themselves have complained that it relegates numerous historical accounts in the Bible to being fables or folk tales, among other denials, along with other problems and gender inclusive language.
The USCCB owns the copyright for the NAB and the RNAB, and a Catholic podcast Lectionary even got a quick "cease and desist" letter for violating copyright However, their Bible text had to be amended for the lectionary because the Vatican rejected it for Mass no one in authority seems inclined to incorporate these same emendations back into the RNAB.
Also, the NAB footnotes assert alleged contradictions in Scripture, and Catholics are divided on whether the Vatican Two statement in Dei Verbum, which was the result of a behind-the-scenes debate at Vatican II about inerrancy, and states that the Bible “teaches without error that truth which God wanted put into the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation" supports the position that the Bible is only immune from error within a certain limited domain, which at least one frequent Roman Catholic poster here seems to think, if that, versus what Pope Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus states. Of course, there is also disagreement as to whether all encyclicals are infallible, or how much therein is. Also debated is whether the Bible teaches geocentrism.
It goes on to “explain”, under “Literary Genres” . (p. 19) that such stories as Gn. cps. 2, (creation) 3, (the Fall) 4:1-16 (Cain and Able); 6-8, (Noah and the flood) 11 (Tower of Babel) were allegorical, and that Balaam and the donkey and the angel, were fables, while Gn. 37-50 (Joseph), 12-36 (Abraham, Issaac, Jacob), Exodus, Judges 13-16 (Samson) 1Sam. 17 (David and Goliath) are stories which are "historical at their core," while overall the author simply used "traditions" to teach a religious lesson
All of which impugns the literal historicity of the O.T. overall, even though Jesus referred to many of these and other such stories as actual historical events (Adam and Eve: Mt. 19:4; Abraham, Issac Exodus and Moses: Acts 7; Rm. 4; Heb. 11; Jonah and the fish: Mt. 12:39-41; Balaam and the donkey: 2Pt. 2:15; Jude. 1:1; Rev. 2:14)
In explaining away the Bible's attribution of Divine sanction to wars of conquest, it states,
"Think of the ‘holy wars’ of total destruction, fought by the Hebrews when they invaded Palestine. The search for meaning in those wars centuries later was inspired, but the conclusions which attributed all those atrocities to the command of God were imperfect and provisional." ("Inspiration and Revelation," p. 18)
Whilet is true that this NAB went through a revision, some of the following is taken from a Roman Catholic apologist (archived) who quotes form the 1992 version and is likewise is critical at the liberal scholarship behind the official RC Bible for America (though he elsewhere apparently denigrated Israel as illegal occupying Palestine) .
The footnotes regarding the parting of the Red Sea informs its readers that it didn’t actually happen. Rather, the Israelite crossed over the Sea of Reeds which was “ probably a body of shallow water somewhat to the north of the present deep Red Sea.” It thus renders the miracle would being Pharaoh’s army drowning in shallow waters.
It likewise explains as regards to “the sons of heaven [God] having intercourse with the daughters of men” (Gen. 6:4), “This is apparently a fragment of an old legend that had borrowed much from ancient mythology.” The NAB footnotes go on to explain the “sons of heaven” are “the celestial beings of mythology.”
Regarding the Gospels, it only allows that the slaughter of the innocents by King Herod, was “extremely probable,” and that people leaving Bethlehem to escape the massacre, is equally probable, but outside the historical background to this tradition, the rest is interpretation.
Its “Conditioned thought patterns” (p. 20) hermeneutic also paves the way for the specious argumentation of feminists who seek to negate the headship of the man as being due to condescension to culture, a very dangerous hermeneutic, and unwarranted when dealing with such texts as 1Cor. 11:3.
It additionally conveys such things as that Matthew placed Jesus in Egypt to convince his readers that Jesus was the real Israel, and may have only represented Jesus giving the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, to show that Jesus was like Moses who received the law on Mount Sinai. For in "Reading the Gospels, one should distinguish historical facts from theological elaboration." ("The Gospels," e. p. 22)
Where does it stop?
The Church was so firmly convinced that the risen Lord who is the Jesus of history lived in her, and taught through her, that she expressed her teaching in the form of Jesus’ sayings.” The words are not Jesus but from the Church.
“Can we discover at least some words of Jesus that have escaped such elaboration? Bible scholars point to the very short sayings of Jesus, as for example those put together by Matthew in chapter 5, 1-12”
It also explain,
“You may hear interpreters of the Bible who are literalists or fundamentalists. They explain the Bible according to the letter: Eve really ate from the apple and Jonah was miraculously kept alive in the belly of the whale. Then there are ultra-liberal scholars who qualify the whole Bible as another book of fairly tales. Catholic Bible scholars follow the sound middle of the road... The signature of a bishop in your Bible assures you that opinions, expressed in footnotes and introductions, reflect what is generally accepted as sound doctrine in the Catholic tradition.”
Also at issue is the NAB as an inclusive language translation.
The current edition will not use render “porneia” as “sexual immorality” anything sexual in places such as 1Cor. 5:1; 6:13; 7:2; 10:8; 2Cor. 12:21; Eph. 5:3; Gal. 5:19; Col. 3:5; 1Thes. 4:3; but simply has “immorality,” even though in most cases it is in a sexual context.
It is a slippery slope when historical statements are made out to be literary devices, and Muslims have taken advantage of the NAB's liberal hermeneutic to impugn the veracity of the Bible, http://www.answering-islam.org/Responses/Shabir-Ally/nab.htm.
One of the changes i have noted between the 1970 NAB and the online version of today, is that the former has “justice” (which perhaps the social gospel Catholics preferred) over righteousness in such places as Rom 4:5,6, and that David “celebrates” the man..., while the online NAB has “But when one does not work, yet believes in the one who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness. So also David declares the blessedness of the person to whom God credits righteousness apart from works:”
On the other hand there are Catholics who only sanction the Douay-Rheims Bible, yet a Roman Catholic apologist criticizes them.
*"The signature of a bishop in your Bible assures you that opinions, expressed in footnotes and introductions, reflect what is generally accepted as sound doctrine in the Catholic tradition." NAB published by the Catholic Book Publishing Co., New York, 1986. Nihil Obstat, with the Imprimatur from the Archbishop of Washington.
And so it goes. More attack on the veracity of Scripture by the organization which claims to be the sole repository of spiritual truth on the planet.
It’s appalling how they claim they wrote it, appeal to it to support their favorite doctrines, and rip the rest of it to shreds when it suits them.
Hideous.
Thx.