What Bible(s)?

[billcu1]

I know there’s been so many things added to the KJV and I read it sometimes. I know of the Vulgate and the septuagent, and the dead sea scrolls and their content. But what does you typical church going catholic read? I might need to go out and get me one of these bibles. I do not read the OT in any bible but the t’noch.

 

[landon13]

Well if you are looking for Catholic Bibles in English there are a wide variety that you can look for:

For a traditionalist: The Douay-Rheims Challoner Version. It is written in King James english.

For mass readings: The mass in the US uses the New American Bible.

For apologetics: Many people who do apologetics including this website recommend the Revised Standard Version-Catholic Edition.

For Protestants: Protestants use the New International Version. I would recommend to stay away from this Bible.

For me personally: I like all three of these Bibles but for some reason I feel drawn to the peaceful and more sophisticated style of the Douay-Rheims Bible because it seems more old timey and more venerating to God but I use all three of these often.

Blessings!

 

[BrethrenBoy]

For Protestants: Protestants use the New International Version. I would recommend to stay away this Bible.

Not the KJV crowd! I personally use the New Revised Standard Version, originally because it has the only Bible my family had that included the Apocrypha, which I wanted to read as so as I discovered its existence, and now because it it the translation used for the C. S. Lewis Study Bible.

 

[R_C]

I read Catholic bibles, and possibly go back to the Biblia Sacra Vulgata when the meaning is not clear - after all, the true meaning has been crystallized forever in Latin.

I profoundly distrust all translations in the vernacular that are not the work of the Church.

 

[po18guy]

Well if you are looking for Catholic Bibles in English there are a wide variety that you can look for:

For a traditionalist: The Douay-Rheims Challoner Version. It is written in King James english.

For mass readings: The mass in the US uses the New American Bible.

For apologetics: Many people who do apologetics including this website recommend the Revised Standard Version-Catholic Edition.

For Protestants: Protestants use the New International Version. I would recommend to stay away from this Bible.

For me personally: I like all three of these Bibles but for some reason I feel drawn to the peaceful and more sophisticated style of the Douay-Rheims Bible because it seems more old timey and more venerating to God but I use all three of these often.

Blessings!

Well said. The NIV, in particular, strikes me as a dumbed-down translation, and it has a certain fundamentalist agenda in it. Oh! It’s missing seven books. I think the NASB is better, the RSV better than that. I do not like either the NAB or the NAB/RE much at all. It is easier to defend Catholic doctrine from the KJV than from the NAB. What’s wrong with this picture?

Here is one to seriously consider: The Confraternity Bible (1941-1969). It is a very nice bridge from the antiquity of the D-R to our age. The 1941 versions have the pure D-R OT books with the Confraternity NT. As time went on, Confraternity translations of the OT were worked in. It is far more reflective of pure Catholic doctrine than the NAB. Its notes and introductions are solid. It is cheap! But, you must find them on eBay or in used book stores or thrift stores. I stumbled upon an excellent, leather-bound 1949 Confraternity at a Goodwill store for $1.99! Others, I have had to pay as much as $5-10 for.

One thing I note: this is the last American Catholic Bible translation (as far as I know) where the entire board of editors and translators was ordained clergy. The NAB, for instance, used secular theologians and even consulted with non-Catholic denominations in completing the NAB. Any wonder why Catholic doctrine is harder to find in it?

 

[billcu1]

I read Catholic bibles, and possibly go back to the Biblia Sacra Vulgata when the meaning is not clear - after all, the true meaning has been crystallized forever in Latin.

I profoundly distrust all translations in the vernacular that are not the work of the Church.

Amen there. Btw in 1611 when the KJV started did the peasantry have a bible. Course they were illiterate but simply went to Mass right? Then did the Tisdale come out? What were the priests reading from. Our bishop of my diocese allows no latin in the diocese so everything is undestood anyway.

 

[StudentMI]

The Douay Rheims Challoner Bible is great. Here are two sites where you can read it for free.

veritasbible.com/drb
drbo.org/

I also like the Jerusalem Bible, though some may find it a bit odd in that it translates The Lord as Yahweh. Still, it’s beautiful in parts and has a flow that some translations don’t.

The RSV-CE is quite nice, as well. Here’s a link to the text. EWTN has it on their website, but they are missing the third chapter of Zephaniah.

biblegateway.com/versions/Revised-Standard-Version-Catholic-Edition-RSVCE-Bible/

 

[R_C]

Amen there. Btw in 1611 when the KJV started did the peasantry have a bible. Course they were illiterate but simply went to Mass right? Then did the Tisdale come out? What were the priests reading from. Our bishop of my diocese allows no latin in the diocese so everything is undestood anyway.

Priests were reading from the Latin - obviously.

I do not think the bishop has authority to allow no Latin - it would sort of go against the Apostolic Constitutions Veterum Sapientia and Sacrosanctum Concilium. Perhaps he prefers and promotes the vernacular…

Even after the printed press was invented in the XVI Century (what a coincidence that Protestantism and “sola scriptura” pop up around that same time) the printed Bibles were quite expensive. It took a while for average people to be able to afford them - and by “average people” I mean sufficiently wealthy to have learned to read, since a majority of people did not have that privilege.

 

[The_GreyPilgrim]

I have my Ignatius Catholic Study bible and my NRSV for when studying or facilitating Bible study here in my parish. For personal reading or prayerful reading I use my NAB.

 

[HillbillyHermit]

I read the NAB, and have also read some of the RSV-CE. Lately I enjoy the NAB more because of the footnotes, and for praying the Psalms.
Not sure if I’m a typical church going Catholic. I rarely make it to church, but that’s not without good reason.

 

[NHInsider]

Amen there. Btw in 1611 when the KJV started did the peasantry have a bible. Course they were illiterate but simply went to Mass right? Then did the Tisdale come out? What were the priests reading from.

Not entirely sure what you mean here?

There were actually a surprising number of Bibles in print by the early 1600s (there were 100,000 within the first 10 years of Gutenberg’s first copy in 1476). These were in Latin, of course, but anyone who was literate could read Latin.

There were also English translations of the Bible that go back much further - in fact, back further than anything you would recognize as “English.”

I’m guessing you meant “Tyndale” rather than “Tisdale?” Tyndale worked on his translation into English while studying in Antwerp (in modern-day Belgium) in the 1520s and 1530s. He opposed Henry VIII’s divorce from Catherine and was arrested and, eventually, executed at the king’s command (despite all the people who try to make Tyndale into a martyr who stood up to the Catholic church). Just a few years later, Henry would commission an English translation of the Bible (the Coverdale Bible), which was largely based on the Tyndale.

The Reformation in England is a complicated picture - Henry VIII broke from the Pope but largely retained the catholic faith. His daughter Elizabeth was raised by people who had been heavily influenced by Calvinism and when she took the throne the English church moved closer to that kind of theology. James I (VI, if you’re a Scot) was baptized Catholic but taken away from his mother as an infant and raised as a Protestant. It was he who commissioned the translation of the King James Bible, largely to try and undercut the spread of assorted Calvinist translations then circulating. (The 1611 KJV included all the deuterocanonical books.)

Despite the Gunpowder Plot, James remained largely tolerant of Catholics and inclined toward an anglo-catholic English church. His successor, Charles I, continued in this trend and married a Catholic, however the interregnum under Cromwell moved England definitively into the Protestant camp, and the reigns of Charles II and his brother James II failed to re-ingratiate Catholicism in the English culture.

Sally