Baronius Press Launches Knox Bible today

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Zenkai said:
What’s wrong with “vault”?
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Nothing necessarily. It just strikes me as an odd choice of words for some reason. The DR and the RSV-CE use firmament, the NABRE uses dome, the CCB uses firm ceiling, and the ESV uses expanse.

The word vault, to me, implies something which you lock another thing inside, not something which separate one area from another.

Having said that, the New Jerusalem Bible also uses vault.
 
I’ve never understood the desire to dumb-down the language of the Bible. I have a Douay Rheims and that is all I’ll ever use.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
I’ve never understood the desire to dumb-down the language of the Bible. I have a Douay Rheims and that is all I’ll ever use.
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I agree to some extent. It doesn’t have to be dumbed-down at all. The Latin Vulgate is pretty simple Latin, at least compared to Cicero. A side-by-side Latin-English is good too. Makes the translation that much more authentic.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
I’ve never understood the desire to dumb-down the language of the Bible. I have a Douay Rheims and that is all I’ll ever use.
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The D-R is a fine Bible. However, it was written in the language of its time. Using a Bible in a more current form English is not dumbing it down at all. In addition, Liturgiam Authenticam states that translations in the vernacular are to be from the original texts, not from the Vulgate as the D-R is, or even the Nova Vulgata. However, if questions arise and comparisons need to be made, the Nova Vulgata “is normally to be consulted as an auxiliary tool, in a manner described elsewhere in this Instruction, in order to maintain the tradition of interpretation that is proper to the Latin Liturgy.” Regardless, scripture scholars are not supposed to be simply translating straight from the Latin, nor should they be writing in style which is not appropriate for the time they live in.

vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/ccdds/documents/rc_con_ccdds_doc_20010507_liturgiam-authenticam_en.html
 
jwinch2 said:
The D-R is a fine Bible. However, it was written in the language of its time. Using a Bible in a more current form English is not dumbing it down at all. In addition, Liturgiam Authenticam states that translations in the vernacular are to be from the original texts, not from the Vulgate as the D-R is, or even the Nova Vulgata. However, if questions arise and comparisons need to be made, the Nova Vulgata “is normally to be consulted as an auxiliary tool, in a manner described elsewhere in this Instruction, in order to maintain the tradition of interpretation that is proper to the Latin Liturgy.” Regardless, scripture scholars are not supposed to be simply translating straight from the Latin, nor should they be writing in style which is not appropriate for the time they live in.
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Whats next? Bibles and homilies in ebonics?
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
Whats next? Bibles and homilies in ebonics?
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Hardly, and you know it. If we follow your line of reasoning, the Bible never would have been translated into English in the first place, or perhaps even into Latin.

Language can still be intelligently used, even if it is in a different time. The 3rd Edition of the Roman Missal in English is hardly dumbed down language, yet it is in a modern form. People all over the world write beautifully in the language, research papers get published, stories are told, poetry is recited, music is composed, etc. all in a modern form of English which does not necessitate it being dumbed down at all. Can it be dumbed down? Of course and so could English in the 1600’s . Yet, they still managed to put together a beautiful edition of the Bible. There is no reason that this cannot be done now.

Regardless, this thread is about the Knox Bible, which is hardly in ebonics. There are dozens of threads arguing Bible translations that this discussion can be taken to.
 
EmperorNapoleon said:
Whats next? Bibles and homilies in ebonics?
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I took Shakespear in high school my senior year. I had to read Cliff Notes on Richard the III.
So I guess I must be a dummy. I’m sorry, but not all of us are Rhodes scholars and understand a language written 1500 years earlier. When I was a protestant, I read the NIV
as a study bible instead of a KJV as my church wanted.
BTW, I am really excited by this translation, I hope to buy one soon! :extrahappy:
 
october_baby said:
I took Shakespear in high school my senior year. I had to read Cliff Notes on Richard the III.
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I’m sorry you had that experience with Shakespeare. A lot is lost in translation when his works are butchered into modern English.
october_baby said:
So I guess I must be a dummy. I’m sorry, but not all of us are Rhodes scholars and understand a language written 1500 years earlier. When I was a protestant, I read the NIV as a study bible instead of a KJV as my church wanted…
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I just find it sad that the Catholic Church of all institutions would rather allow lesser translations than lift people up to understand the better translation. Why maintain the status quo? To me its no different then telling a student who initially doesn’t understand Evolution that its ok for him/her to erroneously believe it means that humans evolved from monkeys and not to worry about all that complicated stuff that Evolution actually posits. I think these things do a disservice to both the work itself and the reader.
 
october_baby said:
BTW, I am really excited by this translation, I hope to buy one soon! :extrahappy:
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Just so that you are aware, this Bible will still have some, not all, of that archaic feel to it. Thees and thous, are used throughout. Have you ever watched or listen to Venerable Fulton Sheen’s talks? If you have heard him quote scripture, you have probably heard the Knox Bible as it is what he was fond of quoting, according to sources. Consider the following quotes from the Knox translation.
Psalm 21 (22):
My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? Loudly I call, but my prayer cannot reach thee. 3 Thou dost not answer, my God, when I cry out to thee day and night, thou dost not heed.[a] 4 Thou art there none the less, dwelling in the holy place; Israel’s ancient boast. 5 It was in thee that our fathers trusted, and thou didst reward their trust by delivering them; 6 they cried to thee, and rescue came; no need to be ashamed of such trust as theirs. 7 But I, poor worm, have no manhood left; I am a by-word to all, the laughing-stock of the rabble. 8 All those who catch sight of me fall to mocking; mouthing out insults, while they toss their heads in scorn, 9 He committed himself to the Lord, why does not the Lord come to his rescue, and set his favourite free?
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GENESIS 3:15:
And the Lord God said to the serpent, For this work of thine, thou, alone among all the cattle and all the wild beasts, shalt bear a curse; thou shalt crawl on thy belly and eat dust all thy life long. 15 And I will establish a feud between thee and the woman, between thy offspring and hers; she is to crush thy head, while thou dost lie in ambush at her heels.** 16 To the woman he said, Many are the pangs, many are the throes I will give thee to endure; with pangs thou shalt give birth to children, and thou shalt be subject to thy husband; he shall be thy lord. 17 And to Adam he said, Thou hast listened to thy wife’s counsel, and hast eaten the fruit I forbade thee to eat; and now, through thy act, the ground is under a curse. All the days of thy life thou shalt win food from it with toil; 18 thorns and thistles it shall yield thee, this ground from which thou dost win thy food. 19 Still thou shalt earn thy bread with the sweat of thy brow, until thou goest back into the ground from which thou wast taken; dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.**

Hardly ebonics or a banal modernist translation.
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october_baby said:
I took Shakespear in high school my senior year. I had to read Cliff Notes on Richard the III.
So I guess I must be a dummy. I’m sorry, but not all of us are Rhodes scholars and understand a language written 1500 years earlier. When I was a protestant, I read the NIV
as a study bible instead of a KJV as my church wanted.
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You did not have to read Cliff Notes. There are other books with notes that will explain the plot. There are other languages which have Shakespeare translations into that language. But there is only one Shakespeare, who chose his words carefully for the poetry and nuance. One just has to learn Shakespearean English to read Shakespeare. He doesn’t have to be fluent in it.
 
ProVobis said:
You did not have to read Cliff Notes. There are other books with notes that will explain the plot. There are other languages which have Shakespeare translations into that language. But there is only one Shakespeare, who chose his words carefully for the poetry and nuance. One just has to learn Shakespearean English to read Shakespeare. He doesn’t have to be fluent in it.
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he does if he wants to understand completely.
 
october_baby said:
he does if he wants to understand completely.
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Someone has to convince me that my understanding will be more complete when I read, for example, in the Knox Bible, from Psalm 42

“4 There I will go up to the altar of God, the giver of triumphant happiness;”

when the Latin is “Introibo ad altare Deo, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,” more commonly translated as “I will go to the altar of God, who gives joy to my youth” or “… who invigorates me” as I would translate it as the opening prayer in the Mass. It seems to me like an entirely different thought than what Knox gives.
 
ProVobis said:
Someone has to convince me that my understanding will be more complete when I read, for example, in the Knox Bible, from Psalm 42

“4 There I will go up to the altar of God, the giver of triumphant happiness;”

when the Latin is “Introibo ad altare Deo, ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam,” more commonly translated as “I will go to the altar of God, who gives joy to my youth” or “… who invigorates me” as I would translate it as the opening prayer in the Mass. It seems to me like an entirely different thought than what Knox gives.
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There are several difficulties/problems with the Knox Translation here.
  1. There is no “up” in the Hebrew text, no “triumphant” and no “giver”.
  2. There is some confusion in the Hebrew text in that the root for “age” and “rejoice” are the same: “g-y-l”. The Masoretic Text read as pointed is: “I will go to the altar of God, to the God of the joy of my age.” This is a bit awkward at best because it’s tough to say what “the joy of my age” means. The Latin takes a reasonable stab at that, and the Latin text in its favor also matches the Septuagint, more or less.
One could also get to something like “…the God of my joy, my rejoicing…” which would lead one in the direction of the RSV, which is: “…the God of my exceeding joy…” I would judge this a reasonable alternative translation.

Because of the awkwardness of “the joy of my age” some scholars have apparently assumed that there is an scribal error in the Masoretic Text which originally would have read something like “to the God of my joy I will rejoice”–making the “g-y-l” word into a verb and assuming that some letters have been lost along the way. As far as I know this alternate reading isn’t attested anywhere–but someone can correct me if I’m wrong.

I wouldn’t want to judge a whole translation on one verse, but in this particular case the Knox Translation seems overly “loose” for my taste.
 
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