The Jerusalem Bible is Unique
I was glad to seen an app that featured The Jerusalem Bible of 1966. It is a unique translation done during a unique time. It was done by Catholics during the Vatican II era, which was a very ecumenical (unity among various branches of Christian groups) time. It came with a lot of notes (not included in app) with were very helpful and are moderately conservative theologically, and therefore enjoyable to Protestants and Catholics alike. The translation is idiomatic enough to bring out the flavor of what was said, yet without straying too much from the original language. The subsequent revisions of it in 1985 (New Jerusalem Bible) and just recently (Revised New Jerusalem Bible) brought about notes that are somewhat more liberal or progressive in nature. And the translation in these revisions revert back to some terms that are somewhat obscure to many Protestants, such as “saving justice” instead of “justification” in Paul’s writings. There are a lot of different translations of the Bible available out there, and none of them are perfect. But the Jerusalem Bible (1966) is a gem, because of the clarity of the translation, and the unique ecumenical time in which it was made, as well as the mostly helpful notes that came with that edition (if you can find a hard copy that has the notes). Later editions claim the 1966 edition didn’t rely on the Hebrew and Greek as much as they should have, but that claim is overstated, and most people use more than one translation for study or devotions anyway.
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