N
numealinesimpet
Guest
It is untrue, of course, that the Catholic Church deplored vernacular translations. What she has always deplored are unauthorised translations: The Gothic Bishop Ulfilas in the 4th Century produced a “translation” into the Gothic language that “corrected” certain passages to accord with his own Arian heretical views. His “Gothic Bible” probably had a major influence on the widespread adoption of Arianism among the Germanic tribes that spread all over Europe in the next few centuries, with profound implications for the course of civilisation – and barbarism.
It was only very gradually that nation-states and standard national languages emerged from the breakup of the Roman Empire. People simply didn’t think of themselves as speaking “French” or “Italian” or “Spanish” – of which there were innumerable dialects, one for each city or town almost – they had “The High Tongue” (ie Latin) for formal occasions and “The Low Tongue” or “The Vulgar Tongue” for everyday talk. When national literature began to assert itself, Bible translations followed in most places without much fuss. There were 19 translations into German in circulation before Luther’s version.
The King James Bible & the Douay Bible were produced at around the same time. the actual aims of the two translations were different. The King James was for public services in the vernacular, and even this Irish Catholic is stirred by the beauty of much of the language. The Douay on the other hand was a study Bible and adhered as closely as possible to the actual text of the original Latin Vulgate – with an eye over the shoulder to the Greek. Hence it is not as smoothly-flowing as the King james, but is more reliable as to meaning.
Please note that, although the King James bypassed the Vulgate and went back to what they thought was “the Greek original”, the actual manuscripts used were actually quite late – 9th -12th centuries – and followed the least reliable of the four main “textual families”. The Vulgate of S.Jerome, on the other hand, was taken direct from many very ancient manuscripts that are no longer in existence. The Catholic Church has therefore insisted that the Vulgate is itself on the level of a Primary Reference. The Protestant claim that their Greek-based source is superior does not therefore stand real scrutiny.
I personally find the (old) Jerusalem Bible immensely readable. But it does have one subtle drawback. Often the original text does have two or more possible alternative meanings. The JB (along with many 20th century translations) chooses just one meaning and then expresses that meaning very clearly. That sounds great, but it is actually excluding the other possibilities. We can therefore get the wrong idea after all of what that Scripture passage can really say.
My personal favourite is the Catholic edition of the RSV. It is seldom difficult to understand, and I feel I am on solid ground when I read it.
It was only very gradually that nation-states and standard national languages emerged from the breakup of the Roman Empire. People simply didn’t think of themselves as speaking “French” or “Italian” or “Spanish” – of which there were innumerable dialects, one for each city or town almost – they had “The High Tongue” (ie Latin) for formal occasions and “The Low Tongue” or “The Vulgar Tongue” for everyday talk. When national literature began to assert itself, Bible translations followed in most places without much fuss. There were 19 translations into German in circulation before Luther’s version.
The King James Bible & the Douay Bible were produced at around the same time. the actual aims of the two translations were different. The King James was for public services in the vernacular, and even this Irish Catholic is stirred by the beauty of much of the language. The Douay on the other hand was a study Bible and adhered as closely as possible to the actual text of the original Latin Vulgate – with an eye over the shoulder to the Greek. Hence it is not as smoothly-flowing as the King james, but is more reliable as to meaning.
Please note that, although the King James bypassed the Vulgate and went back to what they thought was “the Greek original”, the actual manuscripts used were actually quite late – 9th -12th centuries – and followed the least reliable of the four main “textual families”. The Vulgate of S.Jerome, on the other hand, was taken direct from many very ancient manuscripts that are no longer in existence. The Catholic Church has therefore insisted that the Vulgate is itself on the level of a Primary Reference. The Protestant claim that their Greek-based source is superior does not therefore stand real scrutiny.
I personally find the (old) Jerusalem Bible immensely readable. But it does have one subtle drawback. Often the original text does have two or more possible alternative meanings. The JB (along with many 20th century translations) chooses just one meaning and then expresses that meaning very clearly. That sounds great, but it is actually excluding the other possibilities. We can therefore get the wrong idea after all of what that Scripture passage can really say.
My personal favourite is the Catholic edition of the RSV. It is seldom difficult to understand, and I feel I am on solid ground when I read it.
I would only add a few points to what you say by way of qualification.
I am not sure that the English Bible, from Tyndale, Coverdale, Geneva Bible, original Douay-Rheims, to Authorised “King James” Version (A.V.) had quite the same impact on English standardisation as Luther’s Bible did on German, but it must have had a lot of clout, especially when one realises how much the Bible, at least among Anglicans and other Protestants, was the primary source used, as a “reader” educationally, to teach children how to read. Honest studies have shown that the A.V. even today, despite some passing archaisms here and there (the pronouns being easily understood), requires an education of between 4th grade to 6th grade to read readily. The fourth grade assessment wisely excludes the A.V.'s old-fashioned punctuation from unduly affecting tests that computers undertake.
(I was long in academia myself, and your impression of it is, for the most part, very apt.) These ideas are quite old now, going back into the 19th century (and before Westcott and Hort themselves), even the 18th century. However, the ideas remain the same; nothing soothes academics like an “academic orthodoxy”, since it lets them off the hook on really coming to grips with the essential questions. What is fresh and vigourous is the new “Majority Text” movement, which neither gets bogged down in defending the Textus Receptus per se, nor accedes to the “Critical Text” partisan’s dross and moss covered tired, endlessly recycled old ideas.