comments:
I like the idea of using the NRSVue as a primary reader and the NJB (with full study notes) as your study Bible. I think it makes good sense if I'm understanding your goal correctly. I'm thinking primarily about what you said earlier: "what I really want to know is how this information does not conflict with the beliefs ofthee followers, especially the religious scholars who are writing these notes." If that's one of your primary goals for a study Bible, the NOAB will not put the pieces together for you. It will give you good, scholarly historical background for the original meaning of the biblical texts, but it won't give you much info on how to read the texts theologically, or how a person of faith would interact with or interpret those texts. The NJB with full study notes includes both historical and theological information in its footnotes. Before I go on, though, I should point out that just like the REB, the full notes edition of the NJB is out of print. It is readily available used online. I just pulled mine off the shelf to get the ISBN number. My copy's ISBN is 0-385-14264-1. The NJB with full notes will give you a better flavor than the NOAB of how a Catholic scholar might approach the text from within the Catholic tradition while simultaneously taking historical scholarship seriously. The reason I suggest the NJB over the RNJB is primarily the quantity of study notes. The RNJB study edition contains far fewer notes than the NJB. If you'd like to limit your search to currently-in-print resources, and if you want to stay close to a rigorous scholarly approach, another alternative is the Oxford Catholic Study Bible. It's basically a Catholic-specific version of the NOAB. It uses the NABRE translation and footnotes, combined with a reading guide which contains further commentary on each book of the Bible. The reading guide offers some theological reflection on the biblical text, but it remains highly scholarly in its approach. I hope I'm not adding too much complication or throwing a monkey wrench in the works for you. Let me know if I'm barking up the wrong tree here.