Accordingly, I went out and bought a new Bible.

It was harder than I thought, but I just had to. The one I got now is one I stold from my father, must've been his childhood Bible, 'cause when he was 14 the RSV restored John 7:53-8:11 from footnote to actual text. Hope he doesn't miss it. So I went to the Seminary Co-op when my classes were out and sat in front of their Bible shelf for an hour. Nothing stuck. I need the Deuterocanon [mistakenly called "the Apocrypha" even in the Catholic Bibles!], preferably in with the rest of the text, but in a pinch, the "Common Bible" arrangement of the N/RSV will do, the Appendix arrangement is almost acceptable. In fact, this pretty much limits me to Catholic Bibles and the N/RSV with Apocrypha. The KJV was originally printed with the Deuterocanonical books in their appropriate places, but they were stricken later in the century, nobody knows why. I also look at Psalm 1:1 to see if they say, "Blessed is the man..." or "Happy are those...". The Psalms are read Christologically in the Church and the Hebrew choice of "man" in that instance is significant, it deserves at least a footnote if you're going to depart from it. And "Happy are those..." is weak.

The Tanakh intrigued me, the Tanakh Study Edition with Commentary even more so, but I have a limited budget. Some other day. The New Jerusalem Bible had to be rejected outright because it says "Yahweh" for the Tetragrammaton. The New American Bible had to be rejected because it said, "Happy are those...", though it did have a footnote, and because it's not the text approved by Rome. Also, all the editions they had were cheesy paperbacks or uglified hardcovers. That left only the RSV with Apocrypha and the NRSV with Apocrypha. The NRSV has the same gender-inclusivity problems as the unapproved portions of the NAB, perhaps worse. They aren't insurmountable, but I have preferences. The RSV's and NRSV's were both available in the Oxford Annotate Editions, the RSV was also available in the 50th Anniversary Edition, but the prices just weren't right and they all didn't seem Bible-ish. Further, the "Apocrypha" was not kept as an integral part of the text in any of them. Bah, I say! There was also a very fine Douay-Rheims Bible, very fine indeed. It even had the section between the Testaments for recording family baptisms, first communions, weddings, holy orders... The price wasn't right and I knew that I wouldn't be able to stand the archaic English in my voluminous everyday reading. Someday, perhaps...

I went home, disappointed. However, after scouring Amazon diligently, I was able to find a leather-bound RSV-CE [Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition] for only $20. Their Super Saver Free Shipping lured me into buying Metropolitan Anthony Bloom's Beginning to Pray. I would've bought the cheap version of the NAB, but it was one cent short of qualifying me for free shipping.

SIDENOTE: The Catholic Edition of the RSV is different from the RSV with Apocrypha not only in that the Deuterocanonical books are in their proper place, also in that several words and clauses are translated differently.

EDIT: D'oh! I just found a version of the NAB for 77 cents more than what I needed to get free shipping. Foiled again! Now I'm tempted to buy it even though I don't like it and don't need it just because I happen to like having Bibles and I can use it as a portable junker Bible [it's a compact version, 6.3x4.5], but maybe if it's tempting me I should just get the 78 cents cheaper Student Text Edition - but what's the difference? It'd be convenient if there were pocket versions of any of these. The "pocket Douay-Rheims" is too big for real pockets, it's 6", by the way.