My church is going to pick new pewbibles and we have pictures of the candidates!

We are hoping that we can adopt the new translation that comes out in oktober. We'll spend about 50 days studying it and make the decision late december.
http://www.stapel.org/nl/b/9061268613.htm

If that one doesn't pan out we'll either use this one.
http://www.willibrordbijbel.nl/kbs/

Or make do with the old pew Bibles for a while (they are starting to fall apart) and adopt a revision of the Statenbijbel that will come out in a couple of years.

 

Thanks to the vagaries of the internet, in my first post I showed 2 different covers of basically the same bible. It should have been the 4th bible from the top.
http://www.willibrordbijbel.nl/kbs/index.php?p=winkel&sub=1

 

To finally get some things right.
My first post contains links to pictures of 2 different versions of the same translation.
The first is of the cheapest (we are on a budget here) 'Protestant' edition. That's the one we hope to adopt.
The second one is of the basic Roman Catholic edition, one of those will bought for the churchlibrary, but we certainly won't be using these as pewbibles.
That's the one brother Craig commented on (didn't know you could read Dutch by the way ).

The first alternative is the 4th Bible shown in the link in my 2nd post. It is simply the official Dutch RC translation stripped of it's Catholic introductions, footnotes and introduction by 2 cardinals who think it's the bomb. The Apocrypha are seperated from the OT and are put between the 2 testaments.


Craigbythesea
"What do you think of the quality of the translation itself ? "
"
We aren't completely certain yet. It isn't out yet in it's final completed form. As a Bible as literature translation it seems to have turned out brilliant, as a serious studybible it seems to have turned out not so brilliant. Our current pewbibles have the reverse problem. We are withholding judgement as of yet.

 

Could you please do me a favour Craig, don't share your insights with the: "I love Jack Chick crowd", they are paranoid enough as it is.

 

Picking what Bible to use is different overhere.
After all unlike the US there aren't 10+ commonly available translations to choose from.
Not counting obscure translations long out of print, there were 6 translations (using the word very loosely here) available in Dutch in the first half of the year 2004.

1. Het Boek, translated from the English paraphrase, the Book.
2. The Nieuwe Wereld Vertaling, translated from the English New World Translation.
3. De Groot Nieuws Bijbel, the Dutch version of Good News for Modern Man. But at least it was translated from original language documents instead of English.
4. The Statenbijbel of 1637, a brilliant archievement in it's day if a bit slanted towards Calvinism. Those people complaining about the unreadability of the KJV have it easy, the Book of Job in the Statenbijbel is basically unreadable without a course in 17th century Dutch amended with a course in the grammatical conventions of Biblical Hebrew.
5. The Nieuwe Vertaling of 1951, first rate translation if a bit dry a lot of the time. It's the one we have been using since 1951. It is going out of print, so that's the real longterm reason we are looking for a different translation at the moment. It also reads like it was translated in the 1930's so it started to need an update anyhow.
6. The Willibrord Vertaling, the Dutch RC Bible, translated by scholars more interested doing a good job instead of defending the fine print of RC doctrine.

Now the Nieuwe Vertaling is going to be replaced by the NBV (the first bible mentioned in my first post). So it is our first option. If it doesn't pan out, we will need to look elsewhere. The Willibrord Vertaling will remain in print although the Catholic Church will to a large extend adopt the NBV. There are plans to make an update of the Statenvertaling in the near future so that is our other option.