Preface the Revised Edition of the New Testament
The New Testament of The New American Bible, a fresh translation from the Greek
text, was first published in complete form in 1970, together with the Old
Testament translation that had been completed the previous year. Portions of the
New Testament had appeared earlier, in somewhat different form, in the
provisional Mass lectionary of 1964 and in the Lectionary for Mass of 1970.
Since 1970 many different printings of the New Testament have been issued by a
number of publishers, both separately and in complete bibles, and the text has
become widely known both in the United States and in other English-speaking
countries. Most American Catholics have been influenced by it because of its
widespread use in the liturgy, and it has received a generally favorable
reception from many other Christians as well. It has taken its place among the
standard contemporary translations of the New Testament, respected for its
fidelity to the original and its attempt to render this into current American
English.
Although the scriptures themselves are timeless, translations and explanations
of them quickly become dated in an era marked by rapid cultural change to a
degree never previously experienced. The explosion of biblical studies that has
taken place in our century and the changing nature of our language itself
require periodic adjustment both in translations and in the accompanying
explanatory materials. The experience of actual use of the New Testament of The
New American Bible, especially in oral proclamation, has provided a basis for
further improvement. Accordingly, it was decided in 1978 to proceed with a
thorough revision of the New Testament to reflect advances in scholarship and to
satisfy needs identified through pastoral experience.
For this purpose a steering committee was formed to plan, organize, and direct
the work of revision, to engage collaborators, and to serve as an editoral board
to coordinate the work of the various revisers and to determine the final form
of the text and the explanatory materials. Guidelines were drawn up and
collaborators selected in 1978 and early 1979, and November of 1980 was
established as the deadline for manuscripts. From December 1980 through
September 1986 the editoral board met a total of fifty times and carefully
reviewed and revised all the material in order to ensure accuracy and
consistency of approach. The editors also worked together with the bishops' ad
hoc committee that was appointed by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops
in 1982 to oversee the revision.
The threefold purpose of the translation that was expressed in the preface to
the first edition has been maintained in the revision: to provide a version
suitable for liturgical proclamation, for private reading, and for purposes of
study. Special attention has been given to the first of these purposes, since
oral proclamation demands special qualities in a translation, and experience had
provided insights and suggestions that could lead to improvement in this area.
Efforts have also been made, however, to facilitate devotional reading by
providing suitable notes and introductory materials, and to assist the student
by achieving greater accuracy and consistency in the translation and supplying
more abundant information in the introductions and notes.
The primary aim of the revision is to produce a version as accurate and faithful
to the meaning of the Greek original as is possible for a translation. The
editors have consequently moved in the direction of a formal-equivalence
approach to translation, matching the vocabulary, structure, and even word order
of the original as closely as possible in the receptor language. Some other
contemporary biblical versions have adopted, in varying degrees, a
dynamic-equivalence approach, which attempts to respect the individuality of
each language by expressing the meaning of the original in a linguistic
structure suited to English, even though this may be very different from the
corresponding Greek structure. While this approach often results in fresh and
brilliant renderings, it has the disadvantages of more or less radically
abandoning traditional biblical and liturgical terminology and phraseology, of
expanding the text to include what more properly belongs in notes, commentaries,
or preaching, and of tending toward paraphrase. A more formal approach seems
better suited to the specific purposes intended for this translation.
At the same time, the editors have wished to produce a version in English that
reflects contemporary American usage and is readily understandable to ordinary
educated people, but one that will be recognized as dignified speech, on the
level of formal rather than colloquial usage. These aims are not in fact
contradictory, for there are different levels of language in current use: the
language of formal situations as not that of colloquial conversation, though
people understand both and may pass from one to the other without adverting to
the transition. The liturgy is a formal situation that requires a level of
discourse more dignified, formal, and hieratic than the world of business,
sport, or informal communication. People readily understand this more formal
level even though they may not often use it; our passive vocabulary is much
larger than our active vocabulary. Hence this revision, while avoiding
archaisms, does not shrink from traditional biblical terms that are easily
understood even though not in common use in everyday speech. The level of
language consciously aimed at is one appropriate for liturgical proclamation;
this may also permit the translation to serve the purposes of devotional reading
and serious study.
A particular effort has been made to insure consistency of vocabulary. Always to
translate a given Greek word by the same English equivalent would lead to
ludicrous results and to infidelity to the meaning of the text. But in passages
where a particular Greek term retains the same meaning, it has been rendered in
the same way insofar as this has been feasible; this is particularly significant
in the case of terms that have a specific theological meaning. The synoptic
gospels have been carefully translated so as to reveal both the similarities and
the differences of the Greek.
An especially sensitive problem today is the question of discrimination in
language. In recent years there has been much discussion about allegations of
anti-Jewish expressions in the New Testament and of language that discriminates
against various minorities. Above all, however, the question of discrimination
against women affects the largest number of people and arouses the greatest
degree of interest and concern. At present there is little agreement about these
problems or about the best way to deal with them. In all these areas the present
translation attempts to display a sensitivity appropriate to the present state
of the questions under discussion, which are not yet resolved and in regard to
which it is impossible to please everyone, since intelligent and sincere
participants in the debate hold mutually contradictory views.
The primary concern in this revision is fidelity to what the text says. When the
meaning of the Greek is inclusive of both sexes, the translation seeks to
reproduce such inclusivity insofar as this is possible in normal English usage,
without resort to inelegant circumlocutions or neologisms that would offend
against the dignity of the language. Although the generic sense of man is
traditional in English, many today reject it; its use has therefore generally
been avoided, though it is retained in cases where no fully satisfactory
equivalent could be found. English does not possess a gender-inclusive third
personal pronoun in the singular, and this translation continues to use the
masculine resumptive pronoun after everyone or anyone, in the traditional way,
where this cannot be avoided without infidelity to the meaning.
The translation of the Greek word adelphos, particularly in the plural form
adelphoi, poses an especially delicate problem. While the term literally means
brothers or other male blood relatives, even in profane Greek the plural can
designate two persons, one of either sex, who were born of the same parents. It
was adopted by the early Christians to designate, in a figurative sense, the
members of the Christian community, who were conscious of a new familial
relationship to one another by reason of their adoption as children of God. They
are consequently addressed as adelphoi. This has traditionally been rendered
into English by brothers or, more archaically, brethren. There has never been
any doubt that this designation includes all the members of the Christian
community, both male and female. Given the absence in English of a corresponding
term that explicitly includes both sexes, this translation retains the usage of
brothers, with the inclusive meaning that has been traditionally attached to it
in this biblical context. Since the New Testament is the product of a particular
time and culture, the views expressed in it and the language in which they are
expressed reflect a particular cultural conditioning, which sometimes makes them
quite different from contemporary ideas and concerns. Discriminatory language
should be eliminated insofar as possible whenever it is unfaithful to the
meaning of the New Testament, but the text should not be altered in order to
adjust it to contemporary concerns. This translation does not introduce any
changes, expansions, additions to, or subtractions from the text of scripture.
It further retains the traditional biblical ways of speaking about God and about
Christ, including the use of masculine nouns and pronouns.
The Greek text followed in this translation is that of the third edition of The
Greek New Testament, edited by Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, Carlo Martini, Bruce
Metzger, and Allen Wikgren, and published by the United Bible Societies in 1975.
The same text, with a different critical apparatus and variations in punctuation
and typography, was published as the twenty-sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland
Novum Testamentum Graece in 1979 by the Deutsche Bibelstiftung, Stuttgart. This
edition has also been consulted. When variant readings occur, the translation,
with few exceptions, follows the reading that was placed in the text of these
Greek editions, though the occurrence of the principal variants is pointed out
in the notes.
The editors of the Greek text placed square brackets around words or portions of
words of which the authenticity is questionable because the evidence of textual
witnesses is inconclusive. The same has been done in the translation insofar as
it is possible to reproduce this convention in English. It should be possible to
read the text either with or without the disputed words, but in English it is
not always feasible to provide this alternative, and in some passages the
bracketed words must be included to make sense. As in the first edition,
parentheses do not indicate textual uncertainty, but are simply a punctuation
device to indicate a passage that in the editors' judgment appears parenthetical
to the thought of the author.
Citations from the Old Testament are placed within quotation marks; longer
citations are set off as block quotations in a separate indented paragraph. The
sources of such citations, as well as those of many more or less subtle
allusions to the Old Testament, are identified in the biblical cross-reference
section at the bottom of each page. Insofar as possible, the translation of such
Old Testament citations agrees with that of The New American Bible Old Testament
whenever the underlying Greek agrees with the Hebrew (or, in some cases, the
Aramaic or Greek) text from which the Old Testament translation was made. But
citations in the New Testament frequently follow the Septuagint or some other
version, or were made from memory, hence, in many cases the translation in the
New Testament passage will not agree with what appears in the Old Testament.
Some of these cases are explained in the notes.
It is a further aim of the revised edition to supply explanatory materials more
abundantly than in the first edition. In most cases the introductions and notes
have been entirely rewritten and expanded, and the cross-references checked and
revised. It is intended that these materials should reflect the present state of
sound biblical scholarship and should be presented in such a form that they can
be assimilated by the ordinary intelligent reader without specialized biblical
training. While they have been written with the ordinary educated Christian in
mind, not all technical vocabulary can be entirely dispensed with in approaching
the Bible, any more than in any other field. It is the hope of the editors that
these materials, even if they sometimes demand an effort, will help the reader
to a fuller and more intelligent understanding of the New Testament and a
fruitful appropriation of its meaning for personal spiritual growth.
The New American Bible is a Roman Catholic translation. This revision, however,
like the first edition, has been accomplished with the collaboration of scholars
from other Christian churches, both among the revisers and on the editorial
board, in response to the encouragement of Vatican Council II (Dei Verbum, 22).
The editorial board expresses gratitude to all who have collaborated in the
revision: to all the revisers, consultants, and bishops who contributed to it,
to reviewers of the first edition, and to those who voluntarily submitted
suggestions. May this translation fulfill its threefold purpose, "so that the
word of the Lord may speed forward and be glorified" (2Th 3:1). - The Feast of
St. Jerome - September 30, 1986
Copyright © 1986, Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Inc., Washington, DC. All rights reserved. Neither this work nor any part of it may be reproduced, distributed, performed or displayed in any medium, including electronic or digital, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.