Windmill:
I got a DRV Bible because I thought it would be cool to read at adoration. Let’s just say, it’s like skipping through tar. It’s very slow going. You sometimes have to re-read parts.
I know there are those that defend this type of version, and I can certainly respect it, but for everyday use it is hard. I went to an Anglican Use parish for 4 years and loved how the Mass was said in Elizabethian English. I thought it dignified the liturgy dramatically. However, if you are wanting to be a daily Scripture “junkie” and soak in the text, then I wouldn’t recommend this version.
I would, however, love to see what it would be like if the DRV was read at Mass.
Hmmmmmmmmm…
OTOH, the NT was not written in the Greek equivalent of Elizabethan English - Shakespeare, who did write in such English, is very heavy going at times.
Isn’t it better understand what the NT writers are saying ?
Why is it so important for them to speak in a stately idiom which is 250 years old, and therefore risks hiding the meaning it seeks to convey ? Bishop Challoner modernised the DR, precisely because it was so old-fashioned that it was not getting the meaning across: he was, to a great extent, doing the same kind of thing that makers of modern versions do. The Vulgate took a couple of centuries to establish itself - there was a riot at one church, when it was frst made available, because the rendering of a word in the book of Jonah was untraditional, unfamiliar, and therefore, unwanted.
Modern Bibles are to be made from the original languages, not from Latin - see Pius XII in Divino Afflante Spiritu, 1943. Subsequent Popes, & Vatican II have confirmed this decision. Which is probably why the Challoner Bible is no longer read at Mass. (The Knox Bible - the NT was published in 1945 - is sometimes used in the Liturgy of the 1962 Missal, in the UK at least.)
The AV - known to some as the KJV - and the Challoner Bible are not much good for the Psalms. I’m told the Hebrew of the Psalms, and of Job, is pretty hard going. Challoner preserves Latinisms such as “Cocytus” in the Psalms, which is not helpful if one does not have a Classical background.
Some parts of the commentary accompanying the text of the Challoner revision has been rendered out of date by the great changes in knowledge of the background of the Bible which have come about since 1840 or so - archaeology barely existed in 1750.
The Challoner version has also been left behind, like the AV, by improved understanding of NT Greek, as well as by the growth of textual criticism (which got going only in the 1700s; as the CC was still wedded to the Vulgate of 1592, this had little effect or none on Challoner’s work).
Challoner’s use of proof-texts is not in favour now either - the Bible is now read as far as possible in its context, which has done a lot for a better understanding of the literal sense, and has discouraged the reading of Isaiah as though he were referring to the Church rather than to Judah, for example.
Which is why I hardly ever use Challoner’s version, or the Haydock edition of it. Haydock has far more notes, so it is interesting for the history of interpretation. ##
