[/QUOTE] <— put this after the text you are replying to
Before I reply, I would like to suggest you paste the /QUOTE text I posted above in your post between the end of the text your are quoting and your own text, because right now your own text is hidden in your quote.
Now, regarding your post: thank you for the comparison between the NRSV, which is a great translation, and the disastrous NRSVue which makes the change clear and I feel illustrates what, for many readers like myself, who, perhaps to my discredit, had no idea that “men engaging in illicit sex” was supposed to refer with specificity to homosexuality, seems a politically motivated change.
Thus far it looks like the NRSVue will be worse than the NIV v. 3. At least with any luck the publishers won’t force the new edition on everyone by withdrawing the NRSV (correct me if I am wrong, but I think the old RSV is still sold). Of course the RSV caused a massive controversy itself by substituting “young woman” for “virgin.” However insofar as it preserves the second personal pronouns, includes the Deuterocanon and has editions for Roman Catholics and Anglicans, and is easier to read than the KJV or the Challoner Douai-Rheims, it was an easy mistake to make. And the NiV v. 3 despite its excess of political correctness sounds great when read by David Suchet, the devout Anglican actor (a convert from Judaism) who played Hercules Poirot for the long running ITV series, and insisted on inserting content relating to Poirot’s Catholic faith in the later seasons which was emotionally moving and absent from the original novels, making the most reason episodes of Poirot moral dramas evocative of CS Lewis or Evelyn Waugh.
But the NRSVue is something no one asked for; it seems just another in a sea of undistinguished modern translations. A good contrast would be the New English Translation of the Septuagint, or Dr. David Bentley Hart’s new translation of the Greek New Testament, in which he seeks to translate the personal stylistic idiosyncracies of each NT author.
I really wish someone would do a translation based on the Western text type, used by the Vetus Latina and the manuscripts known as the Vetus Syrus (the Curetonian Gospels and the Codex Sinaiticus Syriacus, a palimpsest containing the four Gospels in Old Syriac in the Western text type, not to be confused with the Codex Sinaiticus, a complete Bible in the Alexandrian text type which was stolen by a Belgian adventurer from the library of the same monastery where the Old Syriac palimpsest was found, St. Catharine’s of Sinai.*
Also, a translation of the Ethiopian and Old Georgian Bibles would be nice, as well as the Syriac translation of Philoxenus of Mabbug, parts of which are in the Western Peshitto (namely, the five New Testament books not universally recognized as canonical when the fourth century Peshitta New Testament was translated). And while we are at it, a new translation of the Peshitta, including the Old Testament, including Syriac apocrypha like Psalms 152-155, would be very beneficial.
There are also scores of untranslated liturgical texts from both the old Western Rites, like the Ambrosian, Mozarabic, Hereford, Durham, Lyonaise, Cologne, Bragan, Gallican, Celtic and Beneventan liturgical traditions, and from the Oriental and Assyrian churches. Only the liturgies of the Maroite Catholic Church and the Coptic Orthodox Church currently in use, not including disused anaphoras from the White Monastery in Upper Egypt, like the Liturgy of St. Matthew, has been completely translated. The pre-Vatican II Maronite liturgy, the ancient anaphoras of Armenia, of which there were 13, and a presanctified liturgy, of which only one remains in use due to a period of contact with the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox church which resulted in the Armenian Rite, which was originally close to the West Syriac Rite, being both Latinized and Byzantinized, the old Syriac liturgy used by the Antiochian Orthodox Church until the 1200s, after which time they have only worshipped in Greek and Arabic, despite having a town of Aramaic speakers in Syria, are some examples. Also an English translation of the oldest manuscripts of the Byzantine and Roman Rite, for example, the Gelasian Sacramentary and Codex Barberini 336, and also of the traditional Byzantine Typikons in their entirety (the books of rules for ordering the service; right now only the Antiochian Typikon, which is of the newer Violakis Typikon, exists.
What we need are translations of the Sabaite Typikon still used by the Ukrainians, Serbians, Russians, Georgians, some of the Polish and the OCA parishes in Alaska (with annotations explaining the differences in practice between the different churches that use it, because, for example, the Moscow Patriarchate, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church have differences in how they do things, for instance, in the Moscow Patriarchate red and silver vestments have become popular at Easter, but ROCOR retains the traditional white, and the Ukrainian Catholics used to celebrate Easter not at Midnight like most Eastern churches, but at 10 AM or so in the morning, as per the Western and current Armenian custom, and some traditionalists associated with the SSPX still do) and the Greek Orthodox Churches of Jerusalem and Sinai, and the Russian Old Rite / Old Orthodox / Old Believer typikon, which is believed to be an older recension of the Sabaite typikon, from the Studion monastery in Constantinople. Also, speaking of Constantinople, a complete English translation of the Cathedral Typikon once used for the majestic services at the Hagia Sophia, and a few other major cathedrals, for example, those in Thessalonika and Athens, until the 13th century and the Venetian conquest in the Fourth Crusade. Portions of this have been translated by Dr. Alexander Lingas, the brilliant liturgiologist and musicologist who leads Capella Romana, one of my four favorite choirs (along with those of York Minster, the Kyiv Chamber Choir, and the Roman Catholic Cantores in Ecclesia Dei in Portland.**
Even more useful and important, however, would be a complete translation of the Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic liturgies, as presently in use, a translation of the Armenian Divine Office and liturgical propers, and the Directory, or Ordo, a complete translation of the Ethiopian liturgy, where we lack pretty much everything except the text of the anaphoras, and a complete translation of the Assyrian Rite (of which we have more than with the other two, but we are still lacking translations of the Psalter and several hymnals.
*This monastery, which I find myself mentioning frequently in threads about the Bible, was built around the Burning Bush (which is no longer ablaze, or rather was never ablaze; the flames were the Holy Spirit, and left the innocent plant undamaged, and the bush has grown to be a beautiful and luxuriant plant, one of the largest I have seen, and it is adjacent to the oasis at the center of the monastery, which is also an autonomous Orthodox Church associated with the Greek Orthodox Church of Jerusalem, the smallest autonomous Orthodox Church in the world, with no parishes, only the Monastery and a few chapels in the hills surrounding it (occasionally, a monastic priest will visit the handful of Greek Orthodox Christians living elsewhere in Sinai, but mainly the Coptic Orthodox Church takes care of them under the ecumenical agreement between the Coptic Church and the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria); the abbot of the monastery is the Archbishop of Sinai, and there are no regular parishioners, just monks, pilgrims, and Bedouin tribes who the Monks minister to, by providing health care, and some of the Bedouins may be Christian (there are many Christian Bedouins in Jordan and Syria), and these tribes in turn protect the monastery from terrorists, who have threatened to blow it up.
** I also like the choirs of Westminster Abbey, St. Thomas 5th Ave, Gloucester Cathedral (although recent services have been disappointing), King’s Chapel in Cambridge under Stephen Cleobury, the Choir of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, and that of the Duomo in Milan, and the Moscow New Choir and the Moscow Patriarchal Choir, and the Cantus Sacred Music Ensemble, as well as certain Syriac Orthodox, Coptic and Assyrian parish and monastic choirs, which are in a bit of a state of flux, and a Georgian and Armenian choir I can’t recall the names of.
