Having had time to look over the NABRE and with help from various persons, specifically a Catholic instructor of Scripture and an individual associated with the translation and publication of the NABRE, I have composed a comparison with the NWT as some have requested. It is by no means exhaustive, and I will present it in four parts over the period of a week to keep it from being overwhelming.
Let me stress one more time, these points can be used with almost any modern formal equivalent translation on the market. The NABRE is just the one chosen for this example at the time I orginated this post.
Accurate Even Without Using YHWH in the Text
Before attempting anything else for a comparison, the first thing that loyalists to the NWT will want to point out is that not placing God's Holy Name in the text but substituting it with "LORD" or "GOD" makes the NABRE inaccurate. But this is not so. How one uses something shows how they venerate it. The difference in rendition on this point has to do with what Jehovah's Witnesses think making God's name as holy means and how this compares with that of Catholics and thus shapes their work of Bible transmission.
Roman Catholics have a different approach to dealing with that which is holy. They treat the sacred as far more rare than that which we come into everyday contact with. To Catholics, something holy is special, separated from the mundane.
In imitation of Jesus of whom the Bible faithfully reports never addressed YHWH in prayer by his Sacred Name (and thus left us the example of what he taught at Matthew 6:9), Catholics do not make us of the Holy Name of God as if it were something common. As written in The Wisdom of Ben Sira (a.k.a. Ecclesiasticus)--a book used by the Apostles and the first Christians and thus found in Catholic Bibles--at 23:9-10:
Do not accustom your mouth to oaths,
or habitually utter the Holy Name.
Just as a servant constantly under scrutiny
will not be without bruises,
So one who swears continually by the Holy Name
will never remain free from sin.
Names and words we hear and/or use on an everyday basis can easily find their way into thoughtless expressions, even curses. To claim that imperfect people won't accidentally cause themselves or others to use God's name, YHWH, in vain by using it as commonly as any other name is not realistic. In fact it has been noticed that Jehovah's Witnesses, especially in public prayers offered at their meetings, assemblies, and conventions, will use God's name so frequently that people have mentioned that it seems as if there is a fear of not using it enough (as if God will refuse to hear a prayer that doesn't have his name in it or repeated frequently enough), and so the name gets "peppered" throughout as almost a token to ensure that God hears them.
"In praying," Jesus taught as recorded at Matthew 6:7, "do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words." How did the pagans babble on and on? The footnote to this verse in the NABRE explains that "their babbling probably means their reciting a long list of divine names, hoping that one of them will force a response from the deity."
Jesus taught that what was sacred and holy was not to be handled and used as commonly as other things around them. "Do not give what is holy to dogs, or throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them underfoot, and turn and tear you to pieces." (Matthew 7:6) Often those who mishandle God's name are proud of their practice and will use this as a basis, even a weapon, to critically discredit dependable translations of the Bible that have far more evidence of their accuracy and scholarship than the New World Translation does.
But even if the Jehovah's Witnesses are right, and the Divine Name of God should be used in the manner of their example and teaching, then they belie their own claim by the way they render various texts in the New Testament.
The Christian Greek Scriptures of the NWT proudly claims to restore the Divine Name to its proper place in the New Testament text (even though there are neither manuscripts nor outside sources that prove anything but the contrary). If one were to follow their rules, Hebrews 1:10 would be one example where ancient Scripture recovery proves they are either in the dark about the evidence or, as their footnotes in the NWT reference edition at this text suggests, they just purposefully refuse to follow what they see.
Hebrews 1:10 quotes from Psalm 102:26 as rendered in the LXX version then common to the first-century Church: "At the beginning, O Lord, you established the earth..." But in the Masoretic Hebrew text of Psalm 102:26 we find: "Of old you laid the earth's foundations..." Where did the expression, "O Lord," found in Hebrews come from?
The Masoretic text is not as old as the LXX version used by the first Christians. And their version of the LXX was based on a proto-Masoretic rendition of the Hebrew text which at that time of the writing of Hebrews read: "Long ago you, YHWH, founded the earth..." Thus when Hebrews 1:10 was originally composed, the word "Lord" in that verse was actually "Jehovah" in the mind of the writer and his audience.
Since the NABRE is consistent in rendering texts as they appear in the original language, and it has been the practice of the Church since antiquity to substitute "Lord" or "God" for YHWH out of deep reverence and respect for its holiness and all that it represents, this consistency is also present in Hebrews 1:10 and throughout the NABRE.
As for allowing the NWT to keep the "names of the translators secret" (as if publishing the name of a Bible translator would lead to undue, pride-inducing fame in the first place), and letting the translation stand on its own merits, the Jehovah's Witnesses' translation not only oversteps boundaries in its overuse of the name of God, it cannot remain consistent to its own claims as clear from its rendering of Hebrews 1:10, to name only one glaring example of this failure.
