03-21-2021, 01:59 PM
WHICH BIBLE SHOULD YOU READ?
The Importance of the Latin Vulgate Bible
To begin, the Douay-Rheims Bible is an absolutely faithful translation into English of the Latin Vulgate Bible, which St. Jerome (342-420) translated into Latin from the original languages. The Vulgate quickly became the only Bible universally used in the Western Church, or the Latin Rite (by far the largest rite of the Catholic Church, spread virtually worldwide). St. Jerome, who was one of the four Great Western Fathers of the Catholic Church, was a man raised up by God to translate the Holy Bible into the common Latin of his day.
He was Greek-speaking from birth, and being an educated man, he also knew Latin perfectly, speaking it as we do English; he also knew Hebrew and Aramaic nearly as well (he studied Hebrew, e.g., 1 from approximately age 26 as a penance). He even learned Chaldaic just so he could check the translation of the Book of Daniel (the only biblical book written in that language), which he had commissioned someone else to translate for him. He lived at Bethlehem and was near enough to the Rabbinical school at Caesarea-Philipi that he could consult with one of the learned Rabbis, who agreed to help him with his Hebrew—though rendering such help was actually forbidden in Jewish custom. He became so good at translating Hebrew that at the age of 70 or so he translated the book of Tobias in one night. Besides being a towering linguistic genius, he was also a great Saint, and he had access to ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which have since perished and are no longer available to scholars today.
St. Jerome’s translation, moreover, was (wherever possible) a careful, word-forword rendering of the original texts into Latin. To quote one writer, “His sources being both numerous and ancient, his knowledge of the languages a living knowledge, his scholarship consummate, he was a far better judge of the true shade of meaning of a particular word than any 2 Which Bible Should You Read? modern scholar . . .” (Ronald D. Lambert, Experiment in Heresy, Triumph Mag., March, 1968). Or, one might add, than any modern scholar could ever hope to be!
Truly, God raised up for the Church this great, great man, that He might, through him, give us a faithful rendering of His Divine Word into Latin—which was, until only 200 years ago, the universal language of all Western Christendom and which is still today the official language of the Catholic Church. Latin, moreover, as with Greek, is still taught in most major colleges and universities in the Western World, which makes the Vulgate easily accessible to scholars throughout the world yet today.
St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible has been read and honored by the Western Church for almost 1600 years! It was declared by the Council of Trent (1545- 1564) to be the official (literally “authentic”) version of the canonical Scriptures, that is, the Bible of the Catholic Church. Hear what that Sacred Council decreed:
“Moreover, the same Holy Council . . . ordains and declares that the old Latin Vulgate Edition, which, in use for so many hundred years, has been approved by the Church, be in public lectures, disputations, Importance of the Latin Vulgate 3 sermons and expositions held as authentic, and that no one [may] dare or presume under any pretext whatsoever to reject it.” (Fourth Session, April 8, 1546).
As Pope Pius XII has stated in his 1943 encyclical letter On The Promotion of Biblical Studies, this means that the Vulgate, “interpreted in the sense in which the Church has always understood it,” is “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching . . .” (Par. 21). No other Bible—not even the New Vulgate, promulgated in 1979, and not yet available in English—has been endorsed by the Church in this manner!
The Stature of the Vulgate and Douay-Rheims Bibles
The reason that the Douay-Rheims Bible is so important is that it is the only English Bible that is a faithful, word-for-word translation of the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. This absolute fidelity to the Vulgate has always been its claim, and no one denies that it is so! The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these basic facts is that the Douay-Rheims Bible is therefore the best and safest translation of the Holy Bible into English!
Personally speaking, this writer has been reading the Douay-Rheims Bible for over 30 years and can attest that it literally bristles with meaning, that it is replete, verse after verse, with wonderful shades and nuances of meaning, such that no human being could possibly have written without being aided by Almighty God—and which subtleties the modern translators have often translated out of their versions. A single phrase—sometimes only a word— can deliver a key insight to the person reading the Douay-Rheims. This writer has never experienced anything similar while reading any other version. In comparison, all other versions seem prosaic and flat.
This characteristic makes an extremely strong argument by itself that the Douay- Rheims is an accurate translation of the Bible as it existed in its original languages— even though the Douay-Rheims is in large part a translation of a translation (i.e., English from Latin). But the wonderful subtleties of the Douay-Rheims are almost all lost in the other versions.
“Which Bible should you read?” It really devolves to this: If God does not guide the translation of the Bible, much of its meaning can easily be lost in translation— which this writer believes has in fact happened to the English versions other than the Douay-Rheims. It is the firm opinion of this writer that God has safely guided St. Jerome and the translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible, for which reason the latter is such a pithy translation, and so pregnant and charged with meaning at every turn. Comparable to the exclamations directed at the chief priests and Pharisees by the ministers sent to apprehend Jesus, who had heard Our Lord Himself: “Never did man speak like this man” (John 7:46); this writer is convinced, from repeated, careful, studied reading of the Douay-Rheims Bible, that we can say, “no human being, unaided by divine inspiration, could have written such a book as the Douay-Rheims Bible,” something he could never say of any other version he has read. The Douay-Rheims Bible spontaneously elicits from the human heart the exclamation: “This is Sacred Scripture!”
St. Jerome and the other ancient translators rendered their translations of Scripture as much as possible in a word-for-word or expression-for-expression manner from the original manuscripts. They did not try to interpret their own understanding into the Bible and thereby translate for us what they understood the meaning to be, as the modern biblical translators often seem to have done. (This practice is fatal to an accurate translation of the Bible and in this writer’s opinion is the primary reason why there are so many versions of the Bible.) Rather, the ancient translators translated the texts exactly as they found them and “let the chips fall as they may.”
The Douay-Rheims Bible, in its own right, is just such a translation into English— a word-for-word, you might say slavishly faithful translation of the Vulgate, the “authentic” Bible of the Catholic Church (It is the Council of Trent that used the word “authentic.”) But its translation was made by comparing it also to the transcripts of the original languages (wherever this was possible) and to the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament.
Moreover, thousands of Catholic Saints were raised on the Latin Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims Bible. Our Catholic literary heritage overflows with quotations from Stature of the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims translation. But in the new bibles, the familiar wording of the Douay-Rheims is often gone, in some verses totally—and many times also the meaning!
Furthermore, the notes in the Douay- Rheims Bible are in total accord with the pronouncements of the Church on the true meaning of the Scriptures. This cannot be said of all the modern bibles. (The Preface to the New American Bible (NAB, ’70), e.g., states that some of its collaborators were not even Catholics!)
Without the Douay-Rheims Bible’s being universally available and used, our Catholic Scriptural traditions in English will be lost to our children and grandchildren, as well as to future generations in the Church!
Therefore, it is the considered opinion of this writer that, if one wants the true Word of God in the English language—officially guaranteed by the Catholic Church—he or she must go to the Douay-Rheims Bible.
The Method of Translating
Employed in the New Bibles
At this point, it is of paramount importance to explain the method of translating the Sacred Scriptures which the modern Catholic translators—from the evidence of their translations—would seem to have employed, a method which has resulted in renderings of Scripture into such unfamiliar language as to make a person sometimes wonder whether or not he is actually reading the Bible.
For the purposes of this booklet, discussion of the modern Catholic versions of the Bible will be confined to and refer specifically to the three most widely used translations, viz., the New American Bible of 1970 (which is used in the Catholic liturgy in America), and also occasionally of 1986 (here referenced as NAB, ’70 or NAB, ’86) ; the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version (CRSV, ’66), and the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 (JB, ’66). But, because many Catholics are now using the New King James Version (NKJV, ’85), the New International Version (NIV, ’78), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, ’89), the New American Standard Version (NASV, ’77) or the New English Bible (NEB, ’76), these five will also be considered.
Three Fundamental Mistakes
In researching this subject, the present writer soon concluded that the translators of the three modern Catholic bibles currently most in use—and indeed of all the modern translations reviewed—have made three fundamental mistakes:
First, they have bypassed St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate version of Scripture in favor of translating transcriptions of texts in the original languages which are not considered as trustworthy by the translators of the original Douay-Rheims Bible as is the Vulgate.
Second, they have often employed word meanings for their translations which, though correct in some sense of the words, are often incorrect for the particular use in which they occur in the Bible.
Third, and probably worst of all, the modern translators seem to have read the original language versions of the Bible, decided in their own minds what the meaning is, and translated that meaning into English, rather than what the Bible actually says.
The Importance of the Latin Vulgate Bible
To begin, the Douay-Rheims Bible is an absolutely faithful translation into English of the Latin Vulgate Bible, which St. Jerome (342-420) translated into Latin from the original languages. The Vulgate quickly became the only Bible universally used in the Western Church, or the Latin Rite (by far the largest rite of the Catholic Church, spread virtually worldwide). St. Jerome, who was one of the four Great Western Fathers of the Catholic Church, was a man raised up by God to translate the Holy Bible into the common Latin of his day.
He was Greek-speaking from birth, and being an educated man, he also knew Latin perfectly, speaking it as we do English; he also knew Hebrew and Aramaic nearly as well (he studied Hebrew, e.g., 1 from approximately age 26 as a penance). He even learned Chaldaic just so he could check the translation of the Book of Daniel (the only biblical book written in that language), which he had commissioned someone else to translate for him. He lived at Bethlehem and was near enough to the Rabbinical school at Caesarea-Philipi that he could consult with one of the learned Rabbis, who agreed to help him with his Hebrew—though rendering such help was actually forbidden in Jewish custom. He became so good at translating Hebrew that at the age of 70 or so he translated the book of Tobias in one night. Besides being a towering linguistic genius, he was also a great Saint, and he had access to ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which have since perished and are no longer available to scholars today.
St. Jerome’s translation, moreover, was (wherever possible) a careful, word-forword rendering of the original texts into Latin. To quote one writer, “His sources being both numerous and ancient, his knowledge of the languages a living knowledge, his scholarship consummate, he was a far better judge of the true shade of meaning of a particular word than any 2 Which Bible Should You Read? modern scholar . . .” (Ronald D. Lambert, Experiment in Heresy, Triumph Mag., March, 1968). Or, one might add, than any modern scholar could ever hope to be!
Truly, God raised up for the Church this great, great man, that He might, through him, give us a faithful rendering of His Divine Word into Latin—which was, until only 200 years ago, the universal language of all Western Christendom and which is still today the official language of the Catholic Church. Latin, moreover, as with Greek, is still taught in most major colleges and universities in the Western World, which makes the Vulgate easily accessible to scholars throughout the world yet today.
St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate Bible has been read and honored by the Western Church for almost 1600 years! It was declared by the Council of Trent (1545- 1564) to be the official (literally “authentic”) version of the canonical Scriptures, that is, the Bible of the Catholic Church. Hear what that Sacred Council decreed:
“Moreover, the same Holy Council . . . ordains and declares that the old Latin Vulgate Edition, which, in use for so many hundred years, has been approved by the Church, be in public lectures, disputations, Importance of the Latin Vulgate 3 sermons and expositions held as authentic, and that no one [may] dare or presume under any pretext whatsoever to reject it.” (Fourth Session, April 8, 1546).
As Pope Pius XII has stated in his 1943 encyclical letter On The Promotion of Biblical Studies, this means that the Vulgate, “interpreted in the sense in which the Church has always understood it,” is “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations, in lectures and in preaching . . .” (Par. 21). No other Bible—not even the New Vulgate, promulgated in 1979, and not yet available in English—has been endorsed by the Church in this manner!
The Stature of the Vulgate and Douay-Rheims Bibles
The reason that the Douay-Rheims Bible is so important is that it is the only English Bible that is a faithful, word-for-word translation of the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome. This absolute fidelity to the Vulgate has always been its claim, and no one denies that it is so! The obvious conclusion to be drawn from these basic facts is that the Douay-Rheims Bible is therefore the best and safest translation of the Holy Bible into English!
Personally speaking, this writer has been reading the Douay-Rheims Bible for over 30 years and can attest that it literally bristles with meaning, that it is replete, verse after verse, with wonderful shades and nuances of meaning, such that no human being could possibly have written without being aided by Almighty God—and which subtleties the modern translators have often translated out of their versions. A single phrase—sometimes only a word— can deliver a key insight to the person reading the Douay-Rheims. This writer has never experienced anything similar while reading any other version. In comparison, all other versions seem prosaic and flat.
This characteristic makes an extremely strong argument by itself that the Douay- Rheims is an accurate translation of the Bible as it existed in its original languages— even though the Douay-Rheims is in large part a translation of a translation (i.e., English from Latin). But the wonderful subtleties of the Douay-Rheims are almost all lost in the other versions.
“Which Bible should you read?” It really devolves to this: If God does not guide the translation of the Bible, much of its meaning can easily be lost in translation— which this writer believes has in fact happened to the English versions other than the Douay-Rheims. It is the firm opinion of this writer that God has safely guided St. Jerome and the translators of the Douay-Rheims Bible, for which reason the latter is such a pithy translation, and so pregnant and charged with meaning at every turn. Comparable to the exclamations directed at the chief priests and Pharisees by the ministers sent to apprehend Jesus, who had heard Our Lord Himself: “Never did man speak like this man” (John 7:46); this writer is convinced, from repeated, careful, studied reading of the Douay-Rheims Bible, that we can say, “no human being, unaided by divine inspiration, could have written such a book as the Douay-Rheims Bible,” something he could never say of any other version he has read. The Douay-Rheims Bible spontaneously elicits from the human heart the exclamation: “This is Sacred Scripture!”
St. Jerome and the other ancient translators rendered their translations of Scripture as much as possible in a word-for-word or expression-for-expression manner from the original manuscripts. They did not try to interpret their own understanding into the Bible and thereby translate for us what they understood the meaning to be, as the modern biblical translators often seem to have done. (This practice is fatal to an accurate translation of the Bible and in this writer’s opinion is the primary reason why there are so many versions of the Bible.) Rather, the ancient translators translated the texts exactly as they found them and “let the chips fall as they may.”
The Douay-Rheims Bible, in its own right, is just such a translation into English— a word-for-word, you might say slavishly faithful translation of the Vulgate, the “authentic” Bible of the Catholic Church (It is the Council of Trent that used the word “authentic.”) But its translation was made by comparing it also to the transcripts of the original languages (wherever this was possible) and to the Greek Septuagint of the Old Testament.
Moreover, thousands of Catholic Saints were raised on the Latin Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims Bible. Our Catholic literary heritage overflows with quotations from Stature of the Vulgate and the Douay-Rheims translation. But in the new bibles, the familiar wording of the Douay-Rheims is often gone, in some verses totally—and many times also the meaning!
Furthermore, the notes in the Douay- Rheims Bible are in total accord with the pronouncements of the Church on the true meaning of the Scriptures. This cannot be said of all the modern bibles. (The Preface to the New American Bible (NAB, ’70), e.g., states that some of its collaborators were not even Catholics!)
Without the Douay-Rheims Bible’s being universally available and used, our Catholic Scriptural traditions in English will be lost to our children and grandchildren, as well as to future generations in the Church!
Therefore, it is the considered opinion of this writer that, if one wants the true Word of God in the English language—officially guaranteed by the Catholic Church—he or she must go to the Douay-Rheims Bible.
The Method of Translating
Employed in the New Bibles
At this point, it is of paramount importance to explain the method of translating the Sacred Scriptures which the modern Catholic translators—from the evidence of their translations—would seem to have employed, a method which has resulted in renderings of Scripture into such unfamiliar language as to make a person sometimes wonder whether or not he is actually reading the Bible.
For the purposes of this booklet, discussion of the modern Catholic versions of the Bible will be confined to and refer specifically to the three most widely used translations, viz., the New American Bible of 1970 (which is used in the Catholic liturgy in America), and also occasionally of 1986 (here referenced as NAB, ’70 or NAB, ’86) ; the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version (CRSV, ’66), and the Jerusalem Bible of 1966 (JB, ’66). But, because many Catholics are now using the New King James Version (NKJV, ’85), the New International Version (NIV, ’78), the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV, ’89), the New American Standard Version (NASV, ’77) or the New English Bible (NEB, ’76), these five will also be considered.
Three Fundamental Mistakes
In researching this subject, the present writer soon concluded that the translators of the three modern Catholic bibles currently most in use—and indeed of all the modern translations reviewed—have made three fundamental mistakes:
First, they have bypassed St. Jerome’s Latin Vulgate version of Scripture in favor of translating transcriptions of texts in the original languages which are not considered as trustworthy by the translators of the original Douay-Rheims Bible as is the Vulgate.
Second, they have often employed word meanings for their translations which, though correct in some sense of the words, are often incorrect for the particular use in which they occur in the Bible.
Third, and probably worst of all, the modern translators seem to have read the original language versions of the Bible, decided in their own minds what the meaning is, and translated that meaning into English, rather than what the Bible actually says.