New Pew Bibles

This Advent, our sanctuary has been “re-fitted” with New Revised Standard Version (NSRV) Bibles! This is the translation from which scripture is read in all our worship services.

Giving a Bible as an Honorarium or Memorial

If you would like to give a Bible to the church, as a memorial or honorarium to a loved one, you may submit a check for $10 per Bible, and be sure to give us the names of the donor and the honoree, exactly as you would like them to appear on the nameplate (names only, please). Please make checks payable to CBPC with the word “Bible” on the memo line.

Please be aware that, through your tithes, you have already paid for the new pew Bibles: they were an item in the 2004 budget. (Your gift will pay for a Bible that is already in the sanctuary, not a new order.) Any gift you choose to make with an honorarium Bible will be applied to the General Fund, as reimbursement for the money already spent by the church.

Please also be aware that the budget allowed for only a limited number of Bibles. After having filled the sanctuary with them, and placed a couple in crucial places, there really are no “leftovers” or replacements for the new NRSVs. So please do not take pew Bibles home. If you need a new Bible for personal use, have a word with the pastor; we can give you one from storage, or even order a new one for you.

The pew Bibles that were replaced were two editions of the Revised Standard Version (the precursor to the NRSV). One edition was acquired in 1973. Most if not all of these were given by Mr. and Mrs. Charles T. Allen in memory of Charles Joe Allen.

Another edition was acquired in 1985, coinciding with the dedication of the new sanctuary. Many were given by James A. and Ruby B. Knox, and many were again given by the Allens.

A handful of the 1973 edition Bibles have been set aside for historic purposes, and over 50 of the 1985 edition were saved for the library, classrooms, and to give out when requested.

Re-Introducing the New Revised Standard Version

The NRSV is the latest in a line of Bible translations that trace their ancestry back to the King James Version and beyond. Both the RSV in the 1950s, and the NRSV in the 1990s, have sought to maintain the appropriately majestic and beautiful syntax of the King James Version. At the same time, four centuries of scholarship and discovery have clarified many meanings of the original Hebrew and Greek texts which King James’s subjects could not possibly have known. And the English language changes, as well: for example, in 2005, to speak in public to “my brothers” is no longer assumed to include men and women. The NRSV clarifies this.

The new pew Bibles were dedicated in worship on Sunday, January 16^th. “The grass withers, the flower fades; but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8).