But Manfred…I have to say that I’ve been easing up a bit on my opinion of the RSV-2CE. I think the layout with section headers is useful, and in several places its closer to the Douay Rheims (ie, the Latin Vulgate) than the original. So at least its a move in the right direction.
As I have said before, I humbly disagree, (sorry if I am beating a dead horse). I guess it really doesn’t matter, except as a theoretical criticism of the revision committee’s goals if a further revision is made. (In other words, I think they may be going down the wrong path with it.)
I think the places where it looks as if they brought it closer to the Douay Rheims were either the most inconsequential points as they could have possibly chosen for revision, or were regressions.
Here they are (that we know of):
Isaiah 7.14: LXX “virgin” (I am, I guess controversially, against them changing it to “virgin” here, that is, if in the rest of the translation they are steadfast with following the MT)
Psalm 8.5: LXX “little less than the angels” (same reasoning as the previous one)
Matthew 16.18: “gates of Hades” (they still didn’t get this right, it should say “hell”)
John 3.16: “only-begotten Son” (this one has been knocked around back and forth, over and over again for various reasons but to me, doesn’t really matter either way)
Throughout OT: “mercy” ; “donkey” (mercy is just not the right word for these places, and it can further be doctrinally ambiguous/confusing. the “censoring” of the other name for the donkey is just silly if that was the point, and if it was instead for the purposes of modern English clarity, I still think it was kind of splitting hairs)
Exodus 15.13: “merciful love” (atrociously confusing translation caused by trying to add “mercy” to everywhere else, and then having to come up with this “merciful love” thing to disambiguate between the two )
Various verses in NT: “behold”, “baby” (I think “lo” and “babe” are what are in the DR, right, and what people traditionally prefer? Can someone verify?)
Various last supper references: “chalice” (this is an anachronism)
1 John 5.16-17 “deadly sin” (isn’t mortal sin, like it is rendered in the other editions, more appropriate? Calling it “deadly sin”, because the DR says “death” is pointlessly confusing, especially if it is archaic, its like they want to modernize some parts, but then bring back the traditional wording in others!?)
Song Sol. 2.12: “time of pruning” (this is inconsequential to me, but I think someone did mention the significance somewhere in this thread)
Most of the rest of these are possibly useful, in that some of them include parts of source material that were missing from the main text or the text in total in previous editions, however, I don’t know enough to comment on their accuracy or worthiness.
Someone should pipe in about the importance of the changes they made to the two Psalms here. My opinion of these is that if these are the only positives the 2CE has over the hybrid, you could just as well write these in to the margins of the hybrid edition if you really care enough to have them. In other words, it wouldn’t be worth these alone to buy the RSV-2CE.
Song Sol. 2.10: “Arise, my love, my dove, my fair one, and come away”
Psalms 2.12: “rejoice” (“kiss his feet” moved to footnotes)
Psalms 110.3: “Yours is dominion…”
Psalms 110.3: “…in holy splendor…” (1959/1971 translation footnoted)
Psalms 110.3: “…I begot you.” (1959/1971 translation footnoted)
