The Catholic Message Board

A nice group of people were handing out mini bibles after mass one morning and I received one.

Details: it is about the size of a pack of cards. It’s the New Testament and also includes Psalms and Proverbs. It has a few general prayer verses in the back two pages. You cannot get more simple and compact. The only downside is the words of Jesus are in black, not red, which I believe is important.

I must say, this mini version is great, I carry it with me everywhere in my coat pocket and reference it more often than my expensive Bible at home!

Highly recommended.

It's the Protestant version, so seven books are missing. You get what you pay for.

Riverboat wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 11:36 am It's the Protestant version, so seven books are missing. You get what you pay for.

Since it's just the NT and Pss. it would not be a problem. They used to use the KJV, but now use ESV.

Wondering why what I understood to be a non-Catholic version of the Bible was being passed out after Mass, I learned this. Well, from Wiki:

In 2018, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India published the ESV Catholic Edition (ESV-CE), which includes the deuterocanonical books in Catholic canonical order.[76] With permission from Crossway, a team of Catholic scholars reviewed the text of the ESV in light of the Vatican's translation principles as set forth in Liturgiam authenticam, making approved modifications where needed to adhere to Catholic teaching.[77][78][n]

In 2019, the Augustine Institute published the ESV-CE in North America as The Augustine Bible.[79][80] In October 2021, following these developments, the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge published its own version of the ESV-CE, newly typeset and with anglicized spelling, in multiple formats.[81]

In April 2020, the Catholic Church in India adopted a new English lectionary that uses the ESV-CE as its Bible text (excluding the book of Psalms, where the Grail Psalms translation is used instead).[82] In July 2020, the Bishops' Conference of Scotland approved the development of a new lectionary using the ESV-CE text. This was followed by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales receiving the first volume of a new lectionary using the ESV-CE text in November 2020 (which had earlier been approved for development in November 2018). The new lectionary will be fully introduced during Advent 2024,[83] although a revised version of the Grail Psalms, the Abbey Psalms and Canticles, will continue to be used.[84]

I'm still curious about the mechanism that considered and allowed the Gideon to be handed out in a Catholic parish.

It was handed to me outside of a busy Catholic Church with a lot of other foot traffic. They had a box with a few hundred of them. I think it was very very nice gesture and as I said, it’s been put to good use.

However the books were probably not blessed by my Catholic priest so you are right about that. Furthermore the book we use is the New American Bible, I believe that is the version my Catholic diocese uses, not Gideon’s.

I believe the Gideon Bible in the United Staes is the NJKV, it is only the ESV outside the US.

I much prefer the ESV to the NAB, which too often is idiosyncratic and wooden.

Highlander wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 4:42 pm

I'm still curious about the mechanism that considered and allowed the Gideon to be handed out in a Catholic parish.

It is just a New Testament and Psalms, nothing about it could offend Catholics, I assume it had authorization from the bishop.

Doom wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:18 pm I believe the Gideon Bible in the United Staes is the NJKV, it is only the ESV outside the US.

The ESV Bible text is the primary English text used by The Gideons International for their printed Bibles and New Testaments.

https://www.esv.org/gideons/

Doom wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 7:22 pm It is just a New Testament and Psalms, nothing about it could offend Catholics, I assume it had authorization from the bishop.

It might, but not necessarily. A pastor could decide this on his own and not have to check with his bishop.

Okay, but it surely was not intended as an attack on the Church, there are very few New Testament translations that are so biased against the Church that Catholics shouldn't read them

Other than the New World Translation, nothing really sticks out. The NIV does have some issues with slanting passages away from Catholic meanings.

I gather, then, that there is no reason to be concerned about the ESV -- so it doesn't really matter having it handed out.

Unless the Gideons add some material of their own, I don't see a problem.

So, if there appears a Book of Gideon, we should be skeptical?

Yes.

Doom wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:19 pm Okay, but it surely was not intended as an attack on the Church

Maybe. I can't help shake the idea that this was intended as a poke in the ribs. We all "know" that Catholics aren't allowed to read the Bible, so here come the Gideons to the rescue.

I SERIOUSLY doubt it was done without prior authorization

I agree with ... with ...

Anyhow, the Gideons tend not to be confrontational, so I rather doubt it was a provocation.

By amazing coincidence there were Gideon New Testaments at Mass this Sunday, no Gideons but there were copies of the New Testament for anyone who wanted one. Fairly innocuous , it doesn’t say what translation it is but it is definitely not the NKJV anymore