On Ash Wednesday (March 9th, 2011), a new translation of the English-language New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE) was published by St. Benedict Press in the USA, and it replaced the earlier edition that had been updated in 1970. The latest Bible involved a team of 50 theologians and translators, linguistics experts, and five bishops, and took 17 years to complete. Commissioned in 1994 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the new translation is said to be more accessible and more poetic. ‘We needed a new translation because English is a living language’ (USA Today), says retired auxiliary bishop of Milwaukee Richard Sklba, who was part of the review and editing team. Conor Gallagher, vice president of publishing for St. Benedict Press, added that, ‘We wanted this Bible to be Catholic all the way through. We really wanted it to be different from a Protestant Bible’. ‘St. Benedict Press publishes more than 40 different editions of the Bible, printed in a variety of formats and customized for any occasion. The NABRE is the latest in its collection, which also includes the New American Bible, the Revised Standard Version and the Douai-Rheims. St. Benedict Press is the only U.S. publisher to print all four Catholic versions of the Bible, Gallagher said’ (Catholic News Service, Patricia L. Guilfoyle, 10th March, 2011) Gallagher said they wanted the new Bible printing to include information that is clearly Catholic, and that doesn’t mean that it is truthful.
The New Edition includes an updated version of the Book of Psalms, which was revised between 1991 and 2010 and has been included in versions of the New American Bible published since 1991. Noticeably, one change in the NABRE was the alteration of the original word, ‘holocaust’, now associated with World War II genocide, to that of ‘burnt offering’, and another was the narrative of ‘the ideal wife’ being replaced with ‘a woman of worth’ (Proverbs 31:10).
A change of major significance, if honestly presented by the Church, would have a major impact on Christian preaching. The 1970 version of Isaiah 7:14 narrates that ‘a virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel’. The new 2011 edition has removed the word ‘virgin’ and reinstated the English translation of the original Hebrew word, ‘almah’ which means ‘young woman’. Christians believe that this Old Testament passage in Isaiah (7:14) foreshadows the coming of Christ and his birth to a virgin that appears in a narrative in the Gospel of Matthew (1:23). However, this Gospel passage was originally plagiarized from Isaiah (7:14) and replaced verbatim into the Gospel of Matthew to create the ‘virgin birth’ story.
The Vatican freely admits that the Old Testament ‘virgin birth’ narrative in the Gospel of Matthew is literary theft and not a prediction of a future special birth. In relation to the Isaiah passage, the exact quotation certified by hundreds of Christian experts at Catholic Universities and sanctioned by Archbishop Farley to be published in the 15th Volume of its Encyclopedia (page 451) reads:
Modern theology does not grant that Isaiah 7:14 contains a real prophecy fulfilled in the virgin birth of Christ; It must maintain therefore that St. Matthew misunderstood the passage.
Confirming that all virgin birth narratives in the Gospels are not based on the conclusion of fact, the Church added: ‘There seems to be no doubt that the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke were later additions to the original body of the apostolic catechesis’ (New Catholic Encyclopedia, xiv, 693). Those ‘later additions’ reveal a doctrinal forgery perpetrated in the development of the New Testament, and provide additional and ongoing evidence that the Gospels are wholly fallacious. Despite its inclusion in the Gospel of Matthew, Isaiah’s Emmanuel was simply a reference to a son born to Isaiah some centuries before New Testament times, and not a prediction of a future ‘divine’ birth for Jesus that the Church made it become. Thus, the word ‘virgin’ in the Gospel of Matthew should also be changed to ‘young woman’ now that the source passage in the Old Testament has been amended. That nullifies the Christian preaching of a ‘virgin’ birth of Jesus Christ (For more detailed information about the ‘virgin’ birth narratives, see page 69 of the ‘The Christ Scandal’).
Sklba, however, said that he expects no change in Catholic teaching, and Mary Elizabeth Sperry of the Bishops Conference added, ‘Some people will be gravely distressed and others will be absolutely ecstatic, and some will just say, ‘I liked it the old way’ (USA Today). The Church is constantly rewriting the Bible in an attempt to make it say what it never originally said, and if one compares the text of the world’s oldest Bible, the Sinaiticus, with any modern-day version, a staggering 14,800 later editorial alterations can be identified in newer versions.
Since the first publication of the Bible in the English language in 1563, the Church confessed that it has undergone so many revisions that ‘scarcely any verse remains as it was originally published’ (Catholic Encyclopedia, Pecci Ed., Vol. ii, p. 202). A similar comment was made about the first English-language version of the King James Bible: ‘Even after its publication in 1611 deliberate changes were introduced silently and without authority by men whose very names are unknown’ (Catholic Encyclopedia, 1913, ‘Bibles’). Dr. Tischendorf (d. 1874) noted that during that time, the Gospels ‘underwent such serious modification of meaning as to leave us in painful uncertainty as to what had been originally written’ (Codex Sinaiticus, 8th Ed., The Letterworth Press). Interestingly, surveys reveal that amidst centuries of ongoing restructuring, it is little-known that most Catholics don’t read or even know what is in the Bible.
With the constant alterations being made to the Bible, can one imagine what it will read in 2080?
