Douay-Rheims Bible vs N.A.B.

[Thursday1]

Oooh, I donno too much about that.

Genesis 1:1-1
RSV: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.

NAB: In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss, while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

The NAB is a much closer translation to the Hebrew in that verse. The Hebrew is closer to “In Beginning, when God created all, everything was ‘a big mess’ . . a mighty wind was on the waters.” (I’m not making that up, the Hebrew word, as far as we know, was a rhyming folk expression for a huge mess.).

There is no definite article “the,” that every one always includes, and the Hebrew literally says “a mighty wind.”

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

The NAB is a much closer translation to the Hebrew in that verse. The Hebrew is closer to “In Beginning, when God created all, everything was ‘a big mess’ . . a mighty wind was on the waters.” (I’m not making that up, the Hebrew word, as far as we know, was a rhyming folk expression for a huge mess.).

There is no definite article “the,” that every one always includes, and the Hebrew literally says “a mighty wind.”

Yours in Christ,
Thursday

Dear Thursday,
In my struggles I have found that Latin can be the very devil to interpret, as paucity of substantives leads to multiple meanings of such as there are, and the language is full of obscure idioms.
Yet Latin is the root of English. Hebrew though, and ancient Hebrew in particular is a language devoid of similarity to any English forms, and also, what can be said of Latin obscurity can be said of Hebrew. Make no mistakes, Ancient Hebrew is as DEAD as Classical Latin!
Can you be certain that what some professor translates as ‘a mighty wind’ was really intended as ‘the wind of the mighty’? or,
‘a big mess’ was not ‘a great confusion’? or
‘on the waters’ was not ‘on the face of the deep’?
Remember, all these word have multiple shades of meaning, and the words are attempting to describe an occurrance that we still do not understand today, so figurative language is being used.
Literal translations will lead to confusion.

 

[Manfred]

Dear Thursday,
In my struggles I have found that Latin can be the very devil to interpret, as paucity of substantives leads to multiple meanings of such as there are, and the language is full of obscure idioms.
Yet Latin is the root of English. Hebrew though, and ancient Hebrew in particular is a language devoid of similarity to any English forms, and also, what can be said of Latin obscurity can be said of Hebrew. Make no mistakes, Ancient Hebrew is as DEAD as Classical Latin!
Can you be certain that what some professor translates as ‘a mighty wind’ was really intended as ‘the wind of the mighty’? or,
‘a big mess’ was not ‘a great confusion’? or
‘on the waters’ was not ‘on the face of the deep’?
Remember, all these word have multiple shades of meaning, and the words are attempting to describe an occurrance that we still do not understand today, so figurative language is being used.
Literal translations will lead to confusion.

Given that the OT was written (mostly) in ancient Hebrew, and a Latin translation (i.e., Vulgate) thereof is “the very devil to interpret”, then just HOW would we get at the OT?

 

[puzzleannie]

Hi, I hope I’m in the right forum. Here’s the deal. My brother-in-law, is convinced that the Douay-Rheims BIble is the only true translation, and that all others are not the true Word of God. He has really limited his participation in the Church based on these beliefs. .

then he has rejected the teaching authority of the Catholic Church and its enjoyment of the guidance and protection of the Holy Spirit in interpreting and translating and handing on Sacred Scripture. That places him in schism, objectively, so he is not competent to advise others on this topic.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Given that the OT was written (mostly) in ancient Hebrew, and a Latin translation (i.e., Vulgate) thereof is “the very devil to interpret”, then just HOW would we get at the OT?

NO Friend, The OT which the Vulgate, Douay-Rheims, and KJV use is derived from the SEPTUAGINT, which was translated into Greek while Ancient Hebrew was yet living. For all its shortcomings, the Septuagint is a better witness to the meaning of the Ancient Hebrew than are modern attempts to translate that dead, and lost language.
Yes, there are problems with the Greek, but for centuaries, both Greek and Latin were used alongside eachother in the Empire; thus the Latin of the Greek is reliable.
That just leaves the English of the Latin, which is not error free, but is generally very good.
The only way then for the purist is to read the Latin.

 

[puzzleannie]

You sure can, but I would like to suggest to you that blindly recommending a translation just because the USCCB recommends it is a big problem that we have today, with Catholics thinking that the NAB is all great and mighty.

my personal preferences aside, the US bishops have the authority to choose a translation for liturgy. I do not, and neither to participants in this forum, and neither does the person described in OP. Recommending a translation for personal study and devotional use is a far cry from laying down the law to other people when you have not been given authority to do so.

 

[mmortal03]

NO Friend, The OT which the Vulgate, Douay-Rheims, and KJV use is derived from the SEPTUAGINT, which was translated into Greek while Ancient Hebrew was yet living. For all its shortcomings, the Septuagint is a better witness to the meaning of the Ancient Hebrew than are modern attempts to translate that dead, and lost language.
Yes, there are problems with the Greek, but for centuaries, both Greek and Latin were used alongside eachother in the Empire; thus the Latin of the Greek is reliable.
That just leaves the English of the Latin, which is not error free, but is generally very good.
The only way then for the purist is to read the Latin.

I don’t know where you are getting your information, but those are most definitely NOT derived primarily from the Septuagint. Jerome’s Vulgate was the first, and for many centuries the only, Christian Bible with an Old Testament translated directly from the Hebrew rather than from the Greek Septuagint. The Vetus Latina, or Old Latin Bible, which came before the Vulgate, was what had came from the Septuagint. The Psalms and the deuterocanonicals of Jerome’s Vulgate did come from the Old Latin Bible or Greek, but the rest of the Old Testament came directly from the Hebrew or Aramaic.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

I don’t know where you are getting your information, but those are most definitely NOT derived primarily from the Septuagint. Jerome’s Vulgate was the first, and for many centuries the only, Christian Bible with an Old Testament translated directly from the Hebrew rather than from the Greek Septuagint. The Vetus Latina, or Old Latin Bible, which came before the Vulgate, was what had came from the Septuagint. The Psalms and the deuterocanonicals of Jerome’s Vulgate did come from the Old Latin Bible or Greek, but the rest of the Old Testament came directly from the Hebrew or Aramaic.

I have to confess that I have oversimplified the situation, but then, so have you.
There are primarily two things to be taken into account:
1/ St Jerome DID NOT create his masterpiece de novo, but took the beloved existing texts and using the best Greek and Hebrew texts, added corrections he deemed necessary.
2/ Shortly after St Jerome completed his work, such translations which were unacceptable to ‘traditionalists’, were discarded, and the VL texts were substituted.

Thus the Clementine Vulgate is a MIXED text, containing:
1/ Vetus Latina which St Jerome did not update,
2/ Vetus Latina which was substituted for St Jeromes work by ‘traditionalist’, and,
3/ Edited Vetus Latina, or translation de novo.

In my work on the Gospels, particularly Matthew and John, it is clear that St Jerome altered less than 15% of the Vetus Latina.

It has been suggested that his touch on the OT was even more gentle.

Thus, though the Masoretic text has been consulted in the OT, yet it is still primarily Septuagint, at least in style.

 

[Manfred]

my personal preferences aside, the US bishops have the authority to choose a translation for liturgy. I do not, and neither to participants in this forum, and neither does the person described in OP. Recommending a translation for personal study and devotional use is a far cry from laying down the law to other people when you have not been given authority to do so.

While the beloved US bishops certainly DO have the authority to select a bible translation for the English liturgy in the US, I wonder just how many of them would have done so had they done a fair comparison with other available translations, e.g., the RSV-CE or the 1966 Jerusalem Bible, instead of simply putting forth what their own in-house committee had prepared.

The NAB is on a par with the current English translation of the Mass: certainly not very poetic or uplifting.

 

[Manfred]

I have to confess that I have oversimplified the situation, but then, so have you.
There are primarily two things to be taken into account:
1/ St Jerome DID NOT create his masterpiece de novo, but took the beloved existing texts and using the best Greek and Hebrew texts, added corrections he deemed necessary.
2/ Shortly after St Jerome completed his work, such translations which were unacceptable to ‘traditionalists’, were discarded, and the VL texts were substituted.

Thus the Clementine Vulgate is a MIXED text, containing:
1/ Vetus Latina which St Jerome did not update,
2/ Vetus Latina which was substituted for St Jeromes work by ‘traditionalist’, and,
3/ Edited Vetus Latina, or translation de novo.

In my work on the Gospels, particularly Matthew and John, it is clear that St Jerome altered less than 15% of the Vetus Latina.

It has been suggested that his touch on the OT was even more gentle.

Thus, though the Masoretic text has been consulted in the OT, yet it is still primarily Septuagint, at least in style.

These “traditionalists” of which you speak were part of a heretical sect known variously as the Waldenses or the Vaudois; they did prefer and clung to the Vetus Latina. However, the Council of Trent ruled against all other Latin versions in favor of the Vulgate, which, as mmortal has pointed out, was translated from the Hebrew for the OT; various Chaldaic, Greek and Latin texts for the deutero-canonicals; the LXX for the Psalms; and the Greek for the NT.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

Dear Manfred,
And yet, my work on unpicking the Latin text from the Codex Fuldensis Gospel indicates that St Jerome was using the same source as the compiler of that Gospel, a source which was available as early as AD 220, for his ‘new’ translation. That the text is in word - for - word, if not letter - for - letter agreement for 85% of the text, indicates that St Jerome’s work cannot have been de novo translation, but can only have been an editorial correction. The major part of that correction being to resequence the VL text into the order found in the Greek.
You can find the VL sequence of Matthew and John on the index page of my web-site, ’ The forgotten Gospel’

 

[thistle]

Dear Manfred,
And yet, my work on unpicking the Latin text from the Codex Fuldensis Gospel indicates that St Jerome was using the same source as the compiler of that Gospel, a source which was available as early as AD 220, for his ‘new’ translation. That the text is in word - for - word, if not letter - for - letter agreement for 85% of the text, indicates that St Jerome’s work cannot have been de novo translation, but can only have been an editorial correction. The major part of that correction being to resequence the VL text into the order found in the Greek.
You can find the VL sequence of Matthew and John on the index page of my web-site, ’ The forgotten Gospel’

There is no forgotten gospel. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are the only 4 determined by the Catholic Church through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be inspired and part of the New Testament.The Canon is closed and accepted by both Catholic and Protestant. Anything else is just in your head.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

There is no forgotten gospel. We have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. These are the only 4 determined by the Catholic Church through the guidance of the Holy Spirit to be inspired and part of the New Testament.The Canon is closed and accepted by both Catholic and Protestant. Anything else is just in your head.

Dear Thistle,
You are shooting from the hip without even looking at your target.
When St Boniface was martyred, the Codex fuldensis was buried with him in his crypt, and there lay, almost forgotten for nearly 1000 years.
The CF contains a Harmonized Gospel, as opposed to the separate 4.
Virtually all copies of this Gospel have been lost, mutilated, or destroyed by zealous people who did not understand the value of this work, but lying forgotten in the crypt, it was overlooked.
Thus it is a Gospel, though not like the Four, but being the Four combined, it was forgotten for a millennium, hence I call it ‘the forgotten Gospel’.
It is generally believed that the title written by Tatian was:
‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’
It is commonly called ‘The Latin Diatessaron’.
The history of the Diatessaron is every bit as ancient as that of the Gospels, indeed, there are those who believe that some of the Gospels are in places influenced by the Diatessaron.
Now that you have an inkling of what I am talking about, consider whether you want to be among the scholars who will look ant ancient texts to find the roots of things, or the book-burners who want history forgotten so that they can present lies with impunity.

 

[thistle]

Dear Thistle,
You are shooting from the hip without even looking at your target.
When St Boniface was martyred, the Codex fuldensis was buried with him in his crypt, and there lay, almost forgotten for nearly 1000 years.
The CF contains a Harmonized Gospel, as opposed to the separate 4.
Virtually all copies of this Gospel have been lost, mutilated, or destroyed by zealous people who did not understand the value of this work, but lying forgotten in the crypt, it was overlooked.
Thus it is a Gospel, though not like the Four, but being the Four combined, it was forgotten for a millennium, hence I call it ‘the forgotten Gospel’.
It is generally believed that the title written by Tatian was:
‘The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God’
It is commonly called ‘The Latin Diatessaron’.
The history of the Diatessaron is every bit as ancient as that of the Gospels, indeed, there are those who believe that some of the Gospels are in places influenced by the Diatessaron.
Now that you have an inkling of what I am talking about, consider whether you want to be among the scholars who will look ant ancient texts to find the roots of things, or the book-burners who want history forgotten so that they can present lies with impunity.

In case I am doing you an injustice can you clarify what your “crusade” is about? Are you trying to tell us that the NT should only have one gospel (the forgotten one) or that it should have 5 gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John plus your forgotten one) or are you saying something else?

 

[mmortal03]

Dear Manfred,
And yet, my work on unpicking the Latin text from the Codex Fuldensis Gospel indicates that St Jerome was using the same source as the compiler of that Gospel, a source which was available as early as AD 220, for his ‘new’ translation. That the text is in word - for - word, if not letter - for - letter agreement for 85% of the text, indicates that St Jerome’s work cannot have been de novo translation, but can only have been an editorial correction. The major part of that correction being to resequence the VL text into the order found in the Greek.
You can find the VL sequence of Matthew and John on the index page of my web-site, ’ The forgotten Gospel’

This might be enough to convince some people, but not me.

First of all, you seem to be involving your New Testament comparison argument into our discussion of the Old Testament. Can you clarify this?

Also, are you familiar with any of the various analyses comparing the content of the Masoretic Texts to the Septuagint? Even though there are differences, they still overall match up very well, both because it would take a LOT of alterations for them to be very different coming from the same original texts and because the amount of text is very large.

In this same sense, it would seem to me that the OT of the Vulgate might also just as closely resemble previous translations of the OT and still be considered a “new translation”, because Jerome would have been very familiar with these. I’d like to know what percentage of change you would consider a “new translation”, and whether a percentage of change is more important than the accuracy of a “new translation”.

I think that what would be the most important thing to find out is which traditionally notable differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew were followed more closely by Jerome. Since we don’t have his originals, we can’t know for sure, but we can make an educated guess based on what is still extant, and I am sure that is what the scholars that say he based in on the Hebrew have done.

2/ Shortly after St Jerome completed his work, such translations which were unacceptable to ‘traditionalists’, were discarded, and the VL texts were substituted.

Thus the Clementine Vulgate is a MIXED text, containing:
1/ Vetus Latina which St Jerome did not update,
2/ Vetus Latina which was substituted for St Jeromes work by ‘traditionalist’, and,
3/ Edited Vetus Latina, or translation de novo.

From what I know, they weren’t discarded, but instead just initially not accepted, but later fully incorporated. I don’t know enough about the makeup of the Clementine Vulgate to comment on any notions of hybridism between it and the Old Latin Bible. From what I have always read, it was possible corruptions, revisions, and typos crept into Jerome’s original throughout the ages, but I had not heard anything about Old Latin Bible remnants somehow ultimately remaining and superseding his work.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to throw in this hypothesis: Couldn’t the fact that Greek and Latin are very similar contribute towards any resulting translations of the Old Testament from the Hebrew into the Latin also suitably be quite similar to a translation from the Hebrew to the Greek to the Latin? Now if a very high number amount of word order matches up, I guess because of the fact that they are both inflected languages (word order doesn’t matter so much) would tend to lend more credence to your hypothesis. I don’t know what values linguists would consider as statistically significant when comparing two different translations of ultimately the same originals but in different languages to see whether they were purely new translations or just had some word swapping going on.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

In case I am doing you an injustice can you clarify what your “crusade” is about? Are you trying to tell us that the NT should only have one gospel (the forgotten one) or that it should have 5 gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John plus your forgotten one) or are you saying something else?

Hi Thistle, now we are getting somewhere.
The situation is/was, between AD 546 and the late 800s, there exited two Vulgates, One was the Complete Vulgate work of St Jerome, which was a HUGE reference work, which if in one volume would weigh about 75 kilos, and require four men and a sedan chair to carry it, the other was the work of St Victor of Capua, which was a New Testament only Vulgate, containing most of the Epistles and a harmonized Gospel, and weighed as little as 1.2 kilos.
You might compare St Jerome’s work to a full operating theatre, while St Victor’s, you might see as a first aid kit.
The itinerant preachers who travelled about heathen Europe after the fall of Rome, had to live off the land, and travel light. For them, Victor’s NT Vulgate was an ideal tool. Once an area had been restored, and an abbey founded, then Jerome’s Vulgate could be used.
There were two versions of Bible for two very different purposes.
The NT Vulgate of St Victor was an ideal evangelizing tool designed to be understandable to the masses, and to avoid the appearance of conflicting accounts, while not abandoning truth, while the Complete Vulgate of St Jerome was/is an excellent reference book for anyone needing to get close to first principles in the university atmosphere of the abbey.
Modern technology has to a great part reduced the weight of the complete Bible, but only by recourse to fine print and exquisitly thin paper, but the simplicity of the Harmonized Gospel, originating with the work of Tatian has been lost.
I believe there is still work to do in the field of evangelism, and I still think that St Victor’s work has a part to play in that field.
Just because you have an excellent operating theatre in you back yard does not mean that you should throw away the first aid kit in you car.

 

[Voco_proTatiano]

This might be enough to convince some people, but not me.

First of all, you seem to be involving your New Testament comparison argument into our discussion of the Old Testament. Can you clarify this?

Hi Mmortal,
Firstly I have to confess that all I have studied myself closely are the Gospels in Clementine Latin, and the harmonized Gospel in the CF.
I started, taking at face value, the claims made by critics, that this was a Greek, or Syriac text, translated into Latin by comparison to a two column bi-lingual Gospel set.
So I constructed such a set, synchronizing the Douay-Rheims with the Clementine Vulgate Gospels, and repeated the operation to get an English translation.

Also, are you familiar with any of the various analyses comparing the content of the Masoretic Texts to the Septuagint? Even though there are differences, they still overall match up very well, both because it would take a LOT of alterations for them to be very different coming from the same original texts and because the amount of text is very large.

There is a world of difference between two texts, where one might be word for word, even letter for letter, and the other just following the gyst.
The probability of two independant translations of the same root text, even if both being a single stage translation from the same source, to the same target language, being word for word identical is vanishingly small. That I am getting 85%, (by complete verse count), identity between CF Gospel of Matthew, (extracted), and the Clementine Vulgate Matthew, has only three possibilities:
1/ Jerome copied from the CF Gospel,
2/ The CF Gospel is copied from Jerome’s, or
3/ They both copied from the same source, which is now lost.

In this same sense, it would seem to me that the OT of the Vulgate might also just as closely resemble previous translations of the OT and still be considered a “new translation”, because Jerome would have been very familiar with these. I’d like to know what percentage of change you would consider a “new translation”, and whether a percentage of change is more important than the accuracy of a “new translation”.

I class a verse as being altered if as little as the declension of a noun or adjective is altered, or a different substantive is used, even if the meaning has not been changed.

I think that what would be the most important thing to find out is which traditionally notable differences between the Septuagint and the Hebrew were followed more closely by Jerome. Since we don’t have his originals, we can’t know for sure, but we can make an educated guess based on what is still extant, and I am sure that is what the scholars that say he based in on the Hebrew have done.

agreed

From what I know, they weren’t discarded, but instead just initially not accepted, but later fully incorporated. I don’t know enough about the makeup of the Clementine Vulgate to comment on any notions of hybridism between it and the Old Latin Bible. From what I have always read, it was possible corruptions, revisions, and typos crept into Jerome’s original throughout the ages, but I had not heard anything about Old Latin Bible remnants somehow ultimately remaining and superseding his work.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to throw in this hypothesis: Couldn’t the fact that Greek and Latin are very similar contribute towards any resulting translations of the Old Testament from the Hebrew into the Latin also suitably be quite similar to a translation from the Hebrew to the Greek to the Latin? Now if a very high number amount of word order matches up, I guess because of the fact that they are both inflected languages (word order doesn’t matter so much) would tend to lend more credence to your hypothesis. I don’t know what values linguists would consider as statistically significant when comparing two different translations of ultimately the same originals but in different languages to see whether they were purely new translations or just had some word swapping going on.

I have to repeat that I can only speak with any certainty concerning the Gospels, particularly Matthew and John, which form the basis of the harmonized Gospel. The (name removed by moderator)ut from Luke and Mark is extremely fragmentary, though some of the fragments are quite large.
I have to reccommend that you look at Matthew.pdf which you will find on my web-site.
All the deviations and indirect witnesses are tabulated with comments, and the text is given with the relevant alterations to the Douay-Rheims readings.
My assumption is that what happenned with tjhe Gospels was equally likely to happen with the rest of the work.

 

[mmortal03]

That I am getting 85%, (by complete verse count), identity between CF Gospel of Matthew, (extracted), and the Clementine Vulgate Matthew, has only three possibilities:
1/ Jerome copied from the CF Gospel,
2/ The CF Gospel is copied from Jerome’s, or
3/ They both copied from the same source, which is now lost.

“The Codex Fuldensis, from around 545, is an earlier surviving manuscript that is based on the Vulgate, however the gospels are an edited version of the Diatessaron” - wikipedia.org

So the general historical opinion is that the Gospels of this text were taken from the Diatessaron, as you have described it, however, the rest (the Old Testament) was taken from a version of the Vulgate. There you go.

I have to repeat that I can only speak with any certainty concerning the Gospels, particularly Matthew and John, which form the basis of the harmonized Gospel.
…
My assumption is that what happenned with tjhe Gospels was equally likely to happen with the rest of the work.

Based on what I have read online, that assumption is incorrect, because it has been shown that the OT and NT portions of the CF came from two distinct sources. The similarities that you have found in the New Testament do not correspond to the Old Testament, and if they do, not for the same reasons. The Old Testament portion of that document came directly from the Vulgate, and not from an earlier source document that both Jerome and the CF used. The Gospels of it ARE reported to be how you describe.

 

[mmortal03]

Oh, and back to the original topic of this thread, I just noticed that the USCCB FAQ page has been updated, moving back the release of the OT NAB revision to late 2007.

“A revision of the translation of the Old Testament, excluding the Psalter, is currently underway and should be published in late 2007”

 

[Jerry-Jet]

Will they be able to unbutcher the Psalms and Genesis?