The modern science of textual criticism may, in the second place, have developed within the last 150 years, but the practice of comparing manuscript variants to determine the best reading of a text is quite old. Origen engaged in this practice in the middle of the third century A.D. using his Hexapla; and St. Jerome did so again in the late fourth and early fifth centuries A.D. when translating for the Vulgate.

Catholics have a great advantage over other Christians in respect to the accuracy of their Bible because the official Catholic version of the Bible, the Nova Vulgata, is ultimately based upon St. Jerome’s translation, as revised several times over the centuries. Jerome was able to compare a number of manuscript versions of books of the Bible, including Greek manuscripts, in the late fourth century to compose the Vulgate that are no longer extant, even in later copies. That is, he had versions much closer to the originals than the ones modern scholars possess, given the general rule that older manuscripts contain less errors and extrapolations than newer ones. Indeed, some of his manuscripts were already unavailable in the Renaissance and early modern periods. English churchmen, as Dr. Mounce notes, could find no manuscript to use when translating the New Testament from the Greek dating earlier than the twelfth century (i.e., seven centuries after Jerome’s time). Modern archeologists have, it is true, found a number of old manuscripts containing portions of the Bible; but the collection of manuscripts at modern scholars’ disposal is still quite inferior to the one St. Jerome used.

Have you seen the CTS New Catholic Bible? It is the Bible I use and it includes:

- Jerusalem Bible translation (my favorite for reading)
- Grail Psalter for the Psalms (my favorite Psalm translation and the one used in the Liturgy of the Hours)

It also replaces “Yahweh” with “the LORD” in the OT translation, which was my main complaint about the Jerusalem Bible translation (and which is MUCH more readable)

I got it a few years ago and I really like using it for personal devotional reading. Unfortunately, the notes in it are little better than the NAB notes. But I’ve never found a Bible other than the Navarre Bible (which isn’t a complete Bible, of course) that had good notes.

I do use the RSV-Catholic edition for more serious studies, since it is a more literal translation.

I’ve never been able to get into the Douey-Rheims, as I find “thees” and “thous” very distracting while reading.

NAB? That seems to me to be a translation done by graduates of an English as a Second Language online course.

The NAB, not so much. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone at all.