Updated and Enhanced Versions of Bible Hit Bookstores This Month : Texts: The ecumenical edition drops most sexist language and the one for Catholics adds context and commentary.

Two long-awaited Bibles are arriving at bookstores this month--an updated edition of the Revised Standard Version favored by denominations in the National Council of Churches and a commentary-enriched version of the Scriptures used by an estimated 90% of U.S. Catholic parishes.

Scholars say both Bibles adhere to precise translations important for students, but the two publications also incorporate advances for the average user.

The New Revised Standard Version, replacing a 1952 edition, clarifies obscure wording and is especially noteworthy for dropping exclusively male references when translators felt that females were not being intentionally excluded. The deity still is described in traditional male terms, however.

The Catholic Study Bible includes 650 pages of explanatory material and cross-references--a version of the Bible that, if used widely in Catholic education, will help counter an old Protestant charge that Catholics are biblically illiterate, scholars say.

“The Catholics finally got a book that will benefit them, to help them to bridge that gap,” said Andy Wong, manager of Logos Bookstore of Westwood. “The notes are so extensive I couldn’t believe it.”

Wong said his store recently received the Catholic Study Bible, published by Oxford University Press, and two editions of the New Revised Standard Version, which is being produced by six U.S. publishers under contract with the authorizing National Council of Churches. Other religious bookstores indicated they have received copies or expect to soon.

In Roman Catholic tradition, the teaching authority of the church hierarchy, from the Vatican to the local priests, has provided the interpretation of Scriptures in light of doctrine. But during this century, Catholicism has permitted greater academic freedom for its biblical scholars and, in the last 25 years, has encouraged the laity’s study of Scriptures.

“The American Catholic scene is ready for something like this,” said Passionist Father Donald Senior, general editor of the Catholic Study Bible.

“A lot of fine one-volume commentaries exist, but this is a Bible with a lot of apparatus to help the student understand another culture and time, to put the materials in context,” he said in a telephone interview from Chicago where he is president of the Catholic Theological Union, a consortium of seminaries.

Unlike the assumptions by theologically conservative biblical scholars that Scripture is always factually reliable, the Catholic Study Bible articles tend to emphasize the predominant Catholic biblical view that religious convictions and early church needs shaped what was said in biblical books.

An article by Pheme Perkins on the Gospel of Luke, for instance, said most of the historical references in Luke are “are not accurate even by ancient standards.” Luke designs his narrative account “to set forth the way in which God’s plan of salvation is fulfilled in the Christian movement.” Likewise, Perkins wrote, “the Passion narrative is not a report of what happened but a narrative shaped by the conviction that Jesus is the suffering Messiah.” The Book of Acts, she wrote, reports “a legend” of how Judas Iscariot met his death.

The Catholic Study Bible uses the translation found in the New American Bible, the most popular version in Catholic parishes. The New American Bible’s New Testament was revised in recent years to incorporate inclusive gender language, but the Old Testament has yet to undergo those changes.

In fact, the New Testament committee for the New American Bible anticipated some of the same revisions just published in the New Revised Standard Version, the most commonly used Bible in mainline Protestant, Episcopal and Eastern Orthodox churches.

In the Gospel of Matthew, for instance, both new Bibles have Jesus say in his Sermon on the Mount, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God” (instead of “sons of God”). And instead of having Jesus refer to “O men of little faith,” both translations now say “you of little faith.”

Both new translations also conclude the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew with the plea to deliver us “from the evil one” and put into the footnotes the more common expression “from evil.”

New Testament scholar William Beardslee, now living in retirement in Claremont, said either translation is possible but that the New Testament tendency was to speak more of personified evil--the devil--than of evil in general.

Beardslee and other scholars on the 33-member translation team for the New Revised Standard Version began working on the project in 1974. A service of thanksgiving for its completion is planned on Wednesday in Pittsburgh during a meeting of the Governing Board of the National Council of Churches, which embraces 32 Protestant and Eastern Orthodox denominations.

Despite the availability of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other manuscripts discovered in the last 40 years, no major changes in content appear in the new translations. Most of the changes reflect efforts at better understanding, officials said.

Greater clarity was the goal in cases such as Zechariah 3:3 in which the new version makes it clear that Joshua was “dressed with filthy clothes as he stood before the angel” rather than the misleading verse in the old edition: “Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed in filthy garments.”

Obscure terms are translated, such as “mammon” in Matthew 7:24, which becomes “wealth.”

The earlier translation of Psalm 50:9 read, “I will accept no bull from your house,” which was a reference to sacrifices and burnt offerings. To avoid a contemporary understanding of “bull,” translators changed the line to read, “I will not accept a bull from your house.”

With tongue in cheek, translator James Sanders, who teaches at the School of Theology at Claremont, said he was against the change in Psalm 50:9 because he has regularly used the “no bull” verse as biblical authority for setting down classroom guidelines.