Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures

[bitmousy]

Adventures in the scriptorium:

At the end of the nineteenth century, there was an serious attempt by a group of British and American scholars, under the leadership of Cuthbert Lattey S.J. and with the blessing of the Archbishop of Westminster, to produce a new translation of the original Greek and Hebrew scriptures (long before Divino Afflante Spiritu!).

By 1913, they had brought out a New Testament, parts of which can be found at the Digital Christian Library: thedcl.org/bible/wmv/ The whole New Testament was also published as a “small edition” with text and much reduced footnotes, a lovely little volume of Shakespearean prose and poetry.

Later on, parts of the Old Testament started to appear, but which??? I have these three:

• The Psalter: book one on its own, or a complete small edition (1944); very nice, apart from the dreaded Jehovah.
• Jona: a 50-odd page booklet (1938); which starts off sounding like an antisemitic rant, but amusingly takes a dig at the general editor’s preference for Jehovah
• Daniel (1948) has not one but two versions of Susanna and Bel and the Dragon!

There is also good evidence of these, but I can’t get hands or eyes on them:

• Obadiah, Micah and Zephaniah
• Nahum and Habakkuk
• Malachy
• Ruth

And according to the back cover of Jona, the following were also “in preparation”, but that notice had a new cover stuck on top, one that just says “other parts are in preparation” (this was 1938, after all):

• Amos and Joel
• Hosea
• Job

Were there other parts? Do you know of anyone who has any parts of the Old Testament? Have you got access to a library or seminary copy? Would you be able to send me some digital images of them? Or sell that dusty book for an Amazon book token?

David.

 

[osjknights]

I will post at some stage a complete list of OT Books.
When Fr Cuthbert Lattey SJ died suddenly in 1954 the project of producing a complete bible seemed to be dead. However Fr Philip Caraman SJ, in whom the copyright was vested began preparations to publish a complete Bible. The NT had already been through one revision, but the work to see the OT ready for publication would have kicked the project into the long grass. instead Fr Caraman used the Douay OT minus the Psalter, and used the Westminster Psalter & NT. The Bible - the Douay-Westminster version was published in 1958 as a family Bible, but only saw that one edition, which was quite bulky. This limited its success, plus by 1959 Fr Caraman was on to other things - the cause of the 40 martyrs! Dr Michael Foster