A while ago I watched a whole documentary on the KJV’s effects on the English language (on the History Channel of course) and my question is what effects, if any, did the Douai-Rheims have on the English language? Did it, having been published several years before, have any effects on the standardization English language (the choosing of which words, both being perfectly good English at the time, but both being particular to a certain region)? I’m guessing no, because it was revised several times (including to make it closer to the
KJV), however if it did or you have a link can you add it? Also, I know it was consulted in the writing of the KJV - is their any comparison between the original first edition copies of both if the KJV and the Douai to see if it [the KJV] borrowed (for the most part) the spellings used in the Douai?
Catholig
Allow me to quote from the Introduction to the Revised Standard Version:
"Tyndale’s work became the foundation of subsequent English versions, notably those of Coverdale, 1535; Thomas Matthew (probably a pseudonym for John Rogers), 1537; the Great Bible, 1539; the Geneva Bible, 1560; and the Bishops’ Bible, 1568. In 1582, a translation of the New Testament, made from the Latin Vulgate by Roman Catholic scholars, was published at Rheims.
"The translators who made the King James Version took into account all of these preceding versions; and comparison shows that it owes something to each of them. It kept felicitous phrases and apt expressions, from whatever source, which had stood the test of public usage. It owed most, especially in the New Testament, to Tyndale.
"The King James Version had to compete with the Geneva Bible in popular use; but in the end it prevailed, and for more than two and a half centuries no other authorized translation of the Bible into English was made. The King James Version became the ‘Authorized Version’ of the English-speaking peoples.
“The King James Version has with good reason been termed ‘the noblest monument of English prose.’ Its revisers in 1881 expressed admiration for ‘its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, the music of it cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm.’ It entered, as no other book has, into the making of the personal character and the public institutions of the English-speaking peoples. We owe to it an incalculable debt.”
Of course, this merely show the influence of the KJV on the English language. Very likely, the Douay-Rheims had a lesser influence, simply because it wasn’t as widely used as was the KJV. Why? Recall, the Catholic liturgy was in LATIN, not the vernacular, as were almost all the Protestant services. Also, private reading of the Bible among Catholics did not take hold then as it has in more recent times. Still, the KJV made sufficient inroads into the language that Bishop Challoner revisions more often then not approximated to the KJV. But this was more a matter of style. I would wager that where the KJV translators had recourse to the D-R, it was because the interpretation afforded by the use of the Vulgate shed light on some more obscure Hebrew/Greek texts.
Look at it this way - the NAB will hardly ever make an impact on the English language, even that spoken by us Catholics!
Manfred
