03-22-2021, 11:43 AM
1. Which Authoritative “Original” To Use?
First, we do not possess any original manuscripts of any of the books of the Holy Bible. The passage of time and the deterioration of materials have caused these to be lost to us. Moreover, the texts we do have of the Hebrew and the Greek original languages do not completely agree among themselves as well as do the texts we have of the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome.
Sometimes the question is raised: Why translate from a translation (i.e., from the Latin Vulgate), rather than from the original Greek and Hebrew? This question was also raised in the 16th century when the Douay-Rheims translators (Fr. Gregory Martin and his assistants) first published the Rheims New Testament. They gave ten reasons, ending up by stating that the Latin Vulgate “is not only better then all other Latin translations, but then the Greek text itself, in those places where they disagree.” (Preface to the Rheims New Testament, 1582). They state that “both the Hebrew and Greek Editions are fully corrupted . . . since the Latin was truly translated out of them, whilst they were more pure; and that the same Latin hath been far better conserved from corruptions.” (Preface to the Douay Old Testament, 1609 facsimile edition published by Gordon Winrod, Our Savior’s Church and Latin School, Gainesville, Mo., 1987).
What is the reason? There were always far more copies of the Vulgate made, and it has therefore been much easier to detect copyists’ errors. It must be remembered here that printing from moveable type was not invented until approximately the 1430’s and not really employed very much until the 1440’s, when Johann Gutenberg printed a calendar in 1448 and the first Bible at Mainz, Germany in the 1450’s. Prior to that, the Bible, as with all books, had to be reproduced by handwriting.
Also, it was commonly believed by the Fathers of the Church “that the Jews did corrupt the text of the Bible in order to destroy the arguments of the Christians,” (cf. Hugh Pope, O.P., Eng. Versions of the Bible, 1952, p. 655, n. 15). They would have done this in order to disclaim Our Lord as the Messiah. For example, in the Old Testament prophet Aggeus, 2:8 (Haggai 2:7 in 12 Which Bible Should You Read? the new bibles), we find a prophecy about Our Lord as the Messiah which reads, “And I will move all nations: AND THE DESIRED OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME: and I will fill this house with glory: saith the Lord of hosts.” (DRB, emphasis in original).
Let us now hear what the New American Bible has: “I will shake all the nations, and the treasures of all the nations will come in, And I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts.” (NAB, ’70 & ’86). The two other Catholic versions have basically the same translation, as also do the NEB, the NASV and the NRSV; only the NIV agrees with the Douay-Rheims; the NKJV almost does.
“The Desired of all nations” refers to Christ. “I will move all the nations” (DRB) would seem to refer to God’s grace moving them to be disposed to accept Christ when He comes to them through the Catholic Church. On the other hand, “and the treasures of all the nations shall come in” (NAB, ’70 & ’86) appears to indicate there will be a worldwide empire that “shakes down” the nations to extort from them their wealth. Thus, a far different meaning is rendered from what the Douay-Rheims Bible has.
In any case, for modern scholars to go back to the transcriptions of the Hebrew and Greek, in which various books of the Bible were originally written, and make translations from these (not always reliable) transcriptions that are fundamentally different in hundreds of different cases from the translation rendered by St. Jerome nearly 1600 years ago (and faithfully translated by the Douay-Rheims) is to demand of any sensible Catholic today to reject their work completely and out of hand—and for this reason only. For if a Catholic does not reject these new translations of the Bible, then he really has rejected the nearly 1600 years of Catholic biblical interpretation, based on the Latin Vulgate Bible, and has accepted in their stead one or all of the many truncated, ersatz biblical renderings of the modern Bible translators.
Rather, and far more sensibly, Catholics should reject these questionable new “bibles” (bibles that are seemingly always being updated and corrected in ever newer editions) and return to the traditional translation of Scripture based on St. Jerome, which in English is the Douay-Rheims Bible.
One should remember the status of St. Jerome’s translation of the Bible for the Catholic Church: His translation is, for working purposes, in effect, THE BIBLE as far as the Church is concerned, for it was the only Bible in universal use by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church for some 1600 years. And it is still the only “authentic” Bible of the Catholic Church for use in sermons, lectures and theological discussions, as declared by the Council of Trent! (The Church has not clarified yet what is the status of New Vulgate, completed in 1979, which has not yet been translated into English.)
If the new bibles are correct in the countless ways they differ from St. Jerome’s translation, then his translation is terribly flawed; therefore, the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church simply has not had the Bible properly translated for more than 1600 years! But such a situation is simply preposterous in the True Church of God, which is guided by the Holy Ghost. For Scripture, with Tradition, forms one of the two sources of the Catholic Faith. Therefore, on the basis of concluding that the Catholic Church must have always had the correct translation of Scripture— Which Authoritative “Original”? 15 its being God’s Church, and Sacred Scripture being, with Tradition, one of the two sources of the supernatural True Faith— then we are forced to concede that St. Jerome’s translation is accurate (especially as far as doctrine goes—cf. the quote from Pius XII on page 4), and that the new translations that differ from it so profoundly are not—at least to the extent that they do differ from it! One simply cannot escape this conclusion.
What is of paramount importance concerning the translation of the original Hebrew and Greek is that St. Jerome had far more texts of the original language versions to work with than scholars have today. It is commonly acknowledged that he had many texts that simply no longer exist.
Of particular importance was the Hexapla, assembled by Origen (c.185–c.254), a six-column Bible dating from about 240 A.D., giving the existing two Hebrew and four Greek versions of Scripture; it was a work kept at Caesarea in Palestine, near where St. Jerome worked on the Bible.
Moreover, St. Jerome was a fairly wealthy man, and he collected texts and paid copyists to copy them for him as often 16 Which Bible Should You Read? as he came across anything worthwhile. He simply had far more to work with than scholars have today, as far as texts go. Further, he was 1600 years closer to the original languages than modern scholars. And he was bilingual, speaking Greek from birth and Latin from his youth.
First, we do not possess any original manuscripts of any of the books of the Holy Bible. The passage of time and the deterioration of materials have caused these to be lost to us. Moreover, the texts we do have of the Hebrew and the Greek original languages do not completely agree among themselves as well as do the texts we have of the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome.
Sometimes the question is raised: Why translate from a translation (i.e., from the Latin Vulgate), rather than from the original Greek and Hebrew? This question was also raised in the 16th century when the Douay-Rheims translators (Fr. Gregory Martin and his assistants) first published the Rheims New Testament. They gave ten reasons, ending up by stating that the Latin Vulgate “is not only better then all other Latin translations, but then the Greek text itself, in those places where they disagree.” (Preface to the Rheims New Testament, 1582). They state that “both the Hebrew and Greek Editions are fully corrupted . . . since the Latin was truly translated out of them, whilst they were more pure; and that the same Latin hath been far better conserved from corruptions.” (Preface to the Douay Old Testament, 1609 facsimile edition published by Gordon Winrod, Our Savior’s Church and Latin School, Gainesville, Mo., 1987).
What is the reason? There were always far more copies of the Vulgate made, and it has therefore been much easier to detect copyists’ errors. It must be remembered here that printing from moveable type was not invented until approximately the 1430’s and not really employed very much until the 1440’s, when Johann Gutenberg printed a calendar in 1448 and the first Bible at Mainz, Germany in the 1450’s. Prior to that, the Bible, as with all books, had to be reproduced by handwriting.
Also, it was commonly believed by the Fathers of the Church “that the Jews did corrupt the text of the Bible in order to destroy the arguments of the Christians,” (cf. Hugh Pope, O.P., Eng. Versions of the Bible, 1952, p. 655, n. 15). They would have done this in order to disclaim Our Lord as the Messiah. For example, in the Old Testament prophet Aggeus, 2:8 (Haggai 2:7 in 12 Which Bible Should You Read? the new bibles), we find a prophecy about Our Lord as the Messiah which reads, “And I will move all nations: AND THE DESIRED OF ALL NATIONS SHALL COME: and I will fill this house with glory: saith the Lord of hosts.” (DRB, emphasis in original).
Let us now hear what the New American Bible has: “I will shake all the nations, and the treasures of all the nations will come in, And I will fill this house with glory, says the LORD of hosts.” (NAB, ’70 & ’86). The two other Catholic versions have basically the same translation, as also do the NEB, the NASV and the NRSV; only the NIV agrees with the Douay-Rheims; the NKJV almost does.
“The Desired of all nations” refers to Christ. “I will move all the nations” (DRB) would seem to refer to God’s grace moving them to be disposed to accept Christ when He comes to them through the Catholic Church. On the other hand, “and the treasures of all the nations shall come in” (NAB, ’70 & ’86) appears to indicate there will be a worldwide empire that “shakes down” the nations to extort from them their wealth. Thus, a far different meaning is rendered from what the Douay-Rheims Bible has.
In any case, for modern scholars to go back to the transcriptions of the Hebrew and Greek, in which various books of the Bible were originally written, and make translations from these (not always reliable) transcriptions that are fundamentally different in hundreds of different cases from the translation rendered by St. Jerome nearly 1600 years ago (and faithfully translated by the Douay-Rheims) is to demand of any sensible Catholic today to reject their work completely and out of hand—and for this reason only. For if a Catholic does not reject these new translations of the Bible, then he really has rejected the nearly 1600 years of Catholic biblical interpretation, based on the Latin Vulgate Bible, and has accepted in their stead one or all of the many truncated, ersatz biblical renderings of the modern Bible translators.
Rather, and far more sensibly, Catholics should reject these questionable new “bibles” (bibles that are seemingly always being updated and corrected in ever newer editions) and return to the traditional translation of Scripture based on St. Jerome, which in English is the Douay-Rheims Bible.
One should remember the status of St. Jerome’s translation of the Bible for the Catholic Church: His translation is, for working purposes, in effect, THE BIBLE as far as the Church is concerned, for it was the only Bible in universal use by the Latin Rite of the Catholic Church for some 1600 years. And it is still the only “authentic” Bible of the Catholic Church for use in sermons, lectures and theological discussions, as declared by the Council of Trent! (The Church has not clarified yet what is the status of New Vulgate, completed in 1979, which has not yet been translated into English.)
If the new bibles are correct in the countless ways they differ from St. Jerome’s translation, then his translation is terribly flawed; therefore, the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church simply has not had the Bible properly translated for more than 1600 years! But such a situation is simply preposterous in the True Church of God, which is guided by the Holy Ghost. For Scripture, with Tradition, forms one of the two sources of the Catholic Faith. Therefore, on the basis of concluding that the Catholic Church must have always had the correct translation of Scripture— Which Authoritative “Original”? 15 its being God’s Church, and Sacred Scripture being, with Tradition, one of the two sources of the supernatural True Faith— then we are forced to concede that St. Jerome’s translation is accurate (especially as far as doctrine goes—cf. the quote from Pius XII on page 4), and that the new translations that differ from it so profoundly are not—at least to the extent that they do differ from it! One simply cannot escape this conclusion.
What is of paramount importance concerning the translation of the original Hebrew and Greek is that St. Jerome had far more texts of the original language versions to work with than scholars have today. It is commonly acknowledged that he had many texts that simply no longer exist.
Of particular importance was the Hexapla, assembled by Origen (c.185–c.254), a six-column Bible dating from about 240 A.D., giving the existing two Hebrew and four Greek versions of Scripture; it was a work kept at Caesarea in Palestine, near where St. Jerome worked on the Bible.
Moreover, St. Jerome was a fairly wealthy man, and he collected texts and paid copyists to copy them for him as often 16 Which Bible Should You Read? as he came across anything worthwhile. He simply had far more to work with than scholars have today, as far as texts go. Further, he was 1600 years closer to the original languages than modern scholars. And he was bilingual, speaking Greek from birth and Latin from his youth.