Knox Bible

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I know Baronius Press is re-releasing this Bible with a new Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat from the Archdiocese of Westminster and a new foreword by Scott Hahn. I was wondering if anyone who has the old edition can tell me what the notes are like. Is there any historical-critical method stuff in it? Also, what are your opinions of this translation?

-Thanks 🙂
 
I just flipped through mine to refresh my memory. Most of the notes seem to pertain to points of translation.

Knox uses traditional language. The best way to give you a feel for it by copying a bit:

“When the sixth month came, God sent the angel Gabriel to a city of Galilee called Nazareth, where a virgin dwelt, betrothed to a man of David’s lineage; his name was Joseph, and the virgin’s name was Mary. Into her presence the angel came, and said, Hail, thou who art full of grace; the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women. She was much perplexed at hearing him speak so, and cast about in her mind, what she was to make of such a greeting. Then the angel said to her, Mary, do not be afraid; thou hast found favour in the sight of God. And behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call him Jesus.”

Hope that helps.
 
Thank you. 🙂

Can you also please check the intros to 2 Peter, Daniel, and Jonah to see if it mentions anything about historicity or authorship? It would be much appreciated.

-God bless
 
There are no introductions to the individual books, at least not in the editions I have (1944 for New Testament; 1952 for Old Testament).
 
Thank you. 🙂

Can you also please check the intros to 2 Peter, Daniel, and Jonah to see if it mentions anything about historicity or authorship? It would be much appreciated.

-God bless
I have the Ronald Knox study bible; There are no introductions in them. Ronald Knox has footnotes to individual sentences where his scholarship is being used – but he doesn’t tend to make whole book comments.

The footnote on 2Pete 2:22, however, says
Cf. Prov 26. II; it does not appear, however, that St Peter is quoting Scripture, and it may be that there was a current saw of this kind. There is no reference, in the book of Proverbs, to the sow wallowing in the mire.
Emphasis,mine; Knox does not dispute the authorship of II Peter, and considers it Peter’s work.

The imprimatur in the book I have is 1954, so it is fairly clear that Knox wrote after the source hypothesis issues were being discussed; but I haven’t seen anything in Knox’s notes which indicate that he cared to entertain any of these source hypothesis.

IMHO, that’s just as well. Most of Quelle theory, etc, is based upon the temple falling in 70A.D.; And Josephus makes it clear that the military orders to destroy Jerusalem and the temple were known long before that time and long before Titus became involved.

eg: There was a failed military attempt to send troops at a much earlier date than 70AD that had to be recalled before it reached Jerusalem – however, that earlier order, which was recorded by Flavius Josephus, is sufficient evidence that Q. Theory is completely speculative. There is no legitimate reason, even granting higher criticism’s need for “no actual miracles”, that the Gospel’s prediction of Jerusalem’s fall needed to be post 70A.D.
The earlier dating of the Gospels is quite logical, even against historical criticism’s complaints to the contrary. The reasoning is simply faulty in more than one way.

Knox was quite prudent.
 
Here’s a shot of my set.

http://forums.catholic-questions.org/picture.php?albumid=1272&pictureid=11277

You will notice that there was a 3 volume commentary he wrote on the N.T. Keep in mind that he translated the Vulgate, but did compare his translation with original sources too. So for example in Isaiah 7:14 he does not use “a virgin will conceive” although the Vulgate uses “virgo.” Instead he says “Sign you ask none, but sign the Lord will give you. Maid shall be with child, and shall bear a son, that shall be called Emmanuel.” He follows the Hebrew “Almah” here.
 
I know Baronius Press is re-releasing this Bible with a new Imprimatur and Nihil Obstat from the Archdiocese of Westminster and a new foreword by Scott Hahn. I was wondering if anyone who has the old edition can tell me what the notes are like. Is there any historical-critical method stuff in it? Also, what are your opinions of this translation?

-Thanks 🙂
I cannot comment directly on any notes found in the Knox Bible. That said, the following quote from this blog concerning some of the satire that he wrote seems to indicate he found a lot of modern theories to be problematic
In Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes Knox is back in the twentieth century, satirizing the destructive tendencies of biblical scholars by applying their techniques to the Sherlock Holmes stories. The first thing is to distinguish the spurious stories from the genuine ones, which Knox does by listing the eleven distinct parts of which a true Holmes story should consist: the Prooimion, the Exegesis kata ton diakonta, the Ichneusis, and so on. A table lists the number of elements which each story contains, with stories such as the* Gloria Scott*, scoring only 4 out of 11, being clearly spurious and the work either of a separate “deutero-Watson” or of the real Watson, fallen into the alcoholic habits of his unfortunate brother and estranged from Holmes, trying to earn money for drink by writing more Holmes stories.
Knox intended the essay as a satire: no doubt it hit its target, and as a bonus it was also greatly enjoyed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself. Entirely unintentionally, it sowed the seeds of a self-propagating Holmes literature, treating the great detective as he really existed, which continues to the present day. Scarcely a decade passes without a new biography of Sherlock Holmes by some reputable writer. Perhaps the whole secondary-literature craze was ignited by this essay: any big work that captures the popular imagination generates supposedly non-fiction books not about the work but about the world of the work itself.* The Lord of the Rings*, Star Trek and Doctor Who are just a few examples.
Materials for a Boswellian Problem uses accepted scholarly techniques to show that Dr Johnson didn’t exist, or at least did not say any of the things Boswell attributed to him; and The Authorship of “In Memoriam” uses the hidden-anagram techniques of the “Bacon wrote Shakespeare” brigade (or, nowadays, of The Bible Code) to prove that Tennyson’s* In Memoriam* was really written by Queen Victoria.
 
I cannot comment directly on any notes found in the Knox Bible. That said, the following quote from this blog concerning some of the satire that he wrote seems to indicate he found a lot of modern theories to be problematic
Good stuff! 👍

i hope that, in a few hundred years, historians treat this present twisted age with the contempt it deserves.
All the better if they can prove it didn`t even exist. 😃
 
I did not know that the Knox Bible was being re-released. This is an enormous blessing upon Catholic Bible readers, indeed all Bible readers of any Christian denomination. Knox was a great Catholic and a very interesting man from all that I have read. He should be more widely known in the Catholic Anglosphere imho.
 
I still have my first Bible (Knox Version, published in one volume 1955). It is the ‘School edition’ so only cost me $2.80 brand new in 1967, I read it from cover to cover when I was 17. It is well footnoted throughout and reads well, as others have mentioned.
 
I absolutly love the Knox translation. So much so that I did a book search and was able to find his one volume New Testament Commentary. I have found this Commentary invaluable, in his own words the commentary was written to illuminate rather than illustrate the text, and being a linguistic schollar of the highest order it does just that. Highliting difficult to translate passages and words.
As far as I know the Church has only ever authorised two translations from the Vulgate the well known Douay-Rheims and the Knox translation.
In todays world when Bible translations are every where and even sectarian groups are producing their own versions it is great to have a translation and litterary commentary by a scholar of this callibar.
 
Good stuff! 👍

i hope that, in a few hundred years, historians treat this present twisted age with the contempt it deserves.
All the better if they can prove it didn`t even exist. 😃
lol. 🙂

BTW, just in case you wish to read it, here is Ronald Knox’s “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” (the page includes a link to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s comments on the paper.)

diogenes-club.com/studies.htm

Also, here is his book Absolute and abitofhell

archive.org/details/absoluteabitofhe00knoxuoft
 
BTW, just in case you wish to read it, here is Ronald Knox’s “Studies in the Literature of Sherlock Holmes” (the page includes a link to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s comments on the paper.)
Thanks a lot! i`m a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories.
 
No, I do not but I have seen the Knox Bible (my great uncle, who lived in the UK, had a Knox Bible from Knox himself).

I should add that my understanding from reading further is that the Knox Bible was a translation from the Latin Vulgate, and that once the RSV was published, the Knox version slowly fell out of favour.
 
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