Hey everyone, welcome to the Catholic Link Show! We’re your hosts, Drew and Katy Taylor, and we pray this time will be your link to living the faith like never before. Today, we have our first-ever unboxing of the best Catholic Bible, period. Alright, here we go!
The Best Catholic Bible
Let’s open this up. We were sent a pre-release of this, which we’ve been anticipating for 14 years. Actually, it turns out it’s been in the works for 30 years, so there you go! Alright, looking at this thing, I’ve personally been waiting for it, and I know Katy has too. Oh my goodness, look at this! Very nicely wrapped, and there’s a nice Ignatius Press catalog in there for more great resources. Let’s see what we have here.
This is the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible—The Old and New Testament. That’s a big deal!
So, here’s some history behind this: Dr. Scott Hahn and Curtis Mitch have literally been working on this for 30 years, and we first got introduced when they published the New Testament. I don’t know if you can see that on the cover. We’ve loved that version, and it has helped us immensely in our faith journey. It’s been incredible. And, you know, as we read through it, one of the things I kept thinking was, “I wish they had this for the Old Testament,” because of how many references it talked about. It really unlocks the Bible.
Imagine just having Scott Hahn sitting right here next to you as you read the Bible, explaining what this word means, the Latin behind it, or the Greek, how it connects to the Old Testament, how it connects to other books in the Bible, how many times this word is used and the different meanings behind it—it’s so cool. Well, now they’ve finally finished both the Old and New Testaments and put it all together.
My first question was, “How big is this going to be?” because the New Testament was already large, and I thought the Old Testament might be huge. But it turns out it’s not as big as I expected, and I’m very intrigued by that. Also, the cover is blue, while the previous version was black. So, the pictures online made it look like a really bright blue, but this is actually a nice dark navy, which I like. And it’s big, but not gigantic like I thought it would be.
For those of you who haven’t seen this type of Bible before, it’s the Revised Standard Version, Second Catholic Edition. The way it’s laid out is almost like half the page is the Bible text itself, and the other half contains all the references that help unlock the text. I’m really excited about this because it looks like they’ve included how the Old Testament relates to the New Testament.
The paper is thinner than I expected—it’s amazing! Not thin in a bad way, just thin enough to fit all of this information. And the print size is not tiny, so I’m not squinting to read this, which I was worried about. It still has margins, and they’ve included introductions to each book, explaining who the author is and providing context, which I really love.
Our Experience With This Catholic Bible
A small story: We just found out that the New Testament was published in its entirety in 2010, which was surprising because this has been my college Bible! When I was learning to pray with Scripture, this version gave me a lot of confidence. It helped me understand that there’s a proper way to interpret things, and that really helped me overcome my fear of reading Scripture on my own. I didn’t want to make up my own interpretation. It kept me from entering prayer and Scripture out of fear of getting it wrong.
So, when I started learning about prayer, it really helped to have a solid resource like this to study as well. Prayer and study are two very different things, but this Bible helped me build confidence as I read and learned.
For me, the New Testament version helped me lead a Bible study in college because I didn’t have to have all the answers. Scott Hahn has a lot of them! Even now, 15 years later, I’ll grab this Bible when someone asks a question, like, “But what does this mean?” I’ll say, “Oh, I have the perfect answer for you!” Let me just double-check that this is actually Church teaching.
This is the hardcover version, though they also have a leather-bound one. I can’t recommend it enough. This would be an amazing gift for Christmas, for anyone interested in the faith, or for someone who wants to dive deeper into it. It’s great for RCIA or just for your own personal prayer and study time. It helps you really understand the voice of the Father and what He’s saying in Scripture.
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