The New American Bible: Catholic Companion Edition Librosario (Leather Bound)
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I checked out most all of the other NAB Catholic bibles at the store and found this one to be the best. The leather bound cover is great to hold and looks great! I have the burgundy colored one. It has page edge indexing which makes it really easy to find the book you are looking for if you know the general location and just ruffle the pages with your thumb.
I love the quality and feel of this Bible. To me, these sacred texts belong in a nice leather binding like this Bible since they are the word of God (and not just a regular book). The paperback bindings are a little cheaper, but if you are going to be using the Bible regularly, I’d highly recommend the leather binding.
When considering translations, the NAB is the closest to what is read from the lectionary at mass. The NAB is a modern easy to read translation that tries to maintain the artistic style of the words in addition to the thoughts. Being a Catholic Bible it does contain all the books from the canon including the deuterocanonical books which are not found in most protestant bibles these days.
Some people use other Catholic translations like RSV-CE, Duoay-Rheims, New Jerusalem, for various reasons, but if you are wanting to be able to read along in mass and use the most common translation American Catholics use today, you’ll probably be best served by the NAB.
One of the main selling points is the dictionary at the back which explains many words and concepts and has references (similar to a concordance) into the scripture of where it is discussed. It goes beyond a normal concordance with its definitions and available words.
The text is easy to read and nicely printed. There are cross reference notes to find similar passages and some study footnotes at the bottom of each page as well. I liked how this Bible had the cross references in one section the page rather than inline with the text since the other way makes it hard to read the scripture.
It has a rosary engraved on the rear cover that would be useful for saying the rosary if you did not have one on you. There are slight depressions in the rear cover that you could follow with your fingers just like using a normal rosary.
Fireside also makes some other wonderful Bibles including a similar version that has Catholic answers and a youth version of this Bible. The Catholic answer one was really nice too, but did not have the large concordance/dictionary so I felt this was more important to have in my Bible for looking up things. The youth version of the Bible has great youth related topics throughout the Bible and illustrations. I got one of these for my daughter.
This will be the Bible that I carry with me to daily mass, bible studies, and my prayer group. I would highly recommend it for your own use or as a gift to anyone!