The New Jerusalem Bible, Reader's Edition Preface (1990)
Nihil obstat Anton Cowan
Imprimatur Rt Rev John Crowley
Bishop in Central London
Westminster 4th September 1989
The Nihil obstat and Imprimatur are a declaration that a book or pamphlet is considered to be free from doctrinal or moral error. It is not implied that those who have granted the Nihil obstat and Imprimatur agree with the contents, opinions or statements expressed.
EDITOR’S FOREWORD
The Bible is not a book but a library, joining together dozens of writings, history, stories, poetry and letters. Almost the only common factor is that they all speak to us of God, revealing his nature, his awesome sovereignty and his tender love.
The Old Testament is normally divided into three sections. The histories (including the Pentateuch, the basic first five books, the great Law of Israel) show God’s loving guidance and correction of Israel from nomad beginnings through all the trials and infidelities of the settled civilisation in Palestine. The Wisdom books (including the Psalms, the prayerbook of Israel) express the wisdom of Israel drawn from God for the practical art of living. The prophetic writings gather the warnings and promises of God expressed through those special messengers who strove to keep Israel faithful for the centuries before Christ. By all these means God was forming his people, preparing them for the fulfilment of his purposes in Christ.
The New Testament is best divided into two sections. First come the four gospels, the record of the message of Good News brought by Jesus. Then the letters written by Paul and other apostolic figures to the nascent churches of Mediterranean Christianity, to give them instruction and help to solve their problems, but also to be a source of understanding and guidance for every generation of Christians. The last book of the Bible, the Revelation to John, sums all up in the vision of deliverance from persecution and a glorious establishment of the reign of God in the New Jerusalem.
This Reader’s Edition of The New Jerusalem Bible is based on the much larger Regular Edition first published in 1985. While the biblical text remains unchanged, the notes and introductory material have been pared to make the volume more accessible and manageable. There will be questions left unanswered here for which the answer can be found in the Regular Edition. The index of Personal Names and the Chronological Table at the end have been simplified. A new help has, however, been added, in the form of a Theological Glossary; this gives succinct notes on nearly 200 key words and concepts of the Bible; each note ends with half a dozen references to the key passages in the Bible for the concept, thus providing also a sort of mini-concordance.
The translation follows the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. For the Old Testament (OT) the ‘Massoretic Text’ (MT), established in the 8–9th centuries AD by Jewish scholars, is used. Only when this presents insuperable difficulties have emendations or other versions, such as the ancient Greek translation begun in 200 BC at Alexandria, the ‘Septuagint’ (abbreviated ‘LXX’), been used. In certain OT books passages exist only in the LXX version; these passages have been printed in italics. Italics are used also, and in the New Testament (NT) exclusively, to indicate quotations from other books of the Bible. Occasionally the verse-numbering shows a disturbed order; the verse-numbers always follow the MT, but versions or logic may show that another order of printing the verses is preferable. On occasion also a gap may be left (. . .); this indicates an unintelligible word or an incomplete sentence in the original, which scholars have not been able to fill out satisfactorily. Brackets in the OT text indicate that the passage is considered a gloss, an addition or explanation later than the original text. = This sign indicates a parallel passage within the same book. It also can signify simply ‘equals’. ‖ indicates a parallel passage within another book.
The work of many devoted scholars has contributed to this Bible: those who produced the parent Bible de Jérusalem in 1956, the collaborators on the first English Jerusalem Bible (1966), the revisers of the Bible de Jérusalem (1973), and those who combined to produce the Regular Edition of The New Jerusalem Bible in 1985. The grateful reader might spare a prayer of thanks and blessing on them.
‘So now let us begin our narrative, without adding any more to what has been said above; there would be no sense in expanding the preface to the history and curtailing the history itself (2 Mc 2:32).
Feast of the Assumption, 1989 Ampleforth Abbey
HENRY WANSBROUGH