Which Bible?

  • Thread starter Thread starter mdrummer5
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Scott_D said:
Who said anything about the Church owing the English? Don’t read more into statements than what’s there. The Church should provide a reliable, non-politically correct version of the Bible in English if the Vatican wants an educated laity. Waiting for our bishops and priests to tell us everything is not enough.
Click to expand...
Although if someone is going to Liturgy every week they will hear the entire Bible in English anyway many times during their life, together with commentary (in the homilies) - why isn’t that enough?
 
Scott_D said:
Who said anything about the Church owing the English? Don’t read more into statements than what’s there. The Church should provide a reliable, non-politically correct version of the Bible in English if the Vatican wants an educated laity. Waiting for our bishops and priests to tell us everything is not enough.
Click to expand...
I disagree. The Vatican isn’t expected to know every possible language on the planet. What makes the English-speaking so special? Even the 2007 SP hasn’t officially been translated into English yet so what makes you think they will have the entire Bible current for the English?

It is up to the bishops and priests and competent laity to explain Vatican documents, liturgy, and Bible in the language of those uneducated. Otherwise there is still the Latin Vulgate or the New Latin Vulgate for you to enjoy. Or Greek or Hebrew if you dislike Latin.
 
Cecilianus said:
Although if someone is going to Liturgy every week they will hear the entire Bible in English anyway many times during their life, together with commentary (in the homilies) - why isn’t that enough?
Click to expand...
No you wont, if you attend Daily Mass throughout the three yearly cycles, you still wont hear the whole Bible, you will only heard a small fraction of the OT and about half or just over of the NT, just attending Mass isn’t enough to fulfill scripture study, you should do your own aswell.

Anyway in terms of which bible i use, i use quite a few and they are:

1611 KJV transliterated into language that can be read (basicly modern spelling, instead of old English)
Douay Rheims
tri-linqual version of the bible (Greek/Hebrew with the Douay Rheims English next to it)
Jerusalem Bible (I have gone off this recently due to it rendering the name of God)
Latin Vulgate if im feeling especially scholarly
 
Cecilianus said:
(“Crieth” and “comest” are not Old English, by the way - they’re older forms still used as formal or poetic language, for example in more traditional Anglican liturgies, appropriately enough since it lacks the vulgarity of the contemporary form of slang. Old English is much older and less comprehensible. Here’s an example of it - the first 50-odd lines of Beowulf:
Click to expand...
Here’s the sound track on that. Sounds very Germanic.

1066andallthat.com/english_old/beowulf_prologue.asp

And some Middle English (used till 1500AD or so):

1066andallthat.com/english_middle/overview_video.asp
 
I have a NAB Catholic study Bible from 1990. After reading some of the commentary on the NAB I’ve been contemplating buying Scott Hahn’s RSV CE-2 study Bible. What are people’s thoughts out there? Is the NAB study Bible a reliable source, at least as reliable as Dr. Hahn and Ignatius Press?
 
Skeptic92 said:
No you wont, if you attend Daily Mass throughout the three yearly cycles, you still wont hear the whole Bible, you will only heard a small fraction of the OT and about half or just over of the NT, just attending Mass isn’t enough to fulfill scripture study, you should do your own aswell.
Click to expand...
I have posted this link several times (because it’s just so goshdarned interesting), but if you’d like to know exactly what percentage of the whole Bible, each testament, and each book is read at Mass, in both the pre-Vatican II and reformed lectionaries, in the daily cycle or just Sundays only, go here. In short, if you went every single day, then in the Latin Mass you would hear 0.39% of the Old Testament (plus Psalms), and 16.5% of the New Testament, including 22.4% of the Gospels. Under the modern lectionary, you would hear 13.5% of the Old Testament (plus Psalms), and 71.5% of the New Testament, including 89.8% of the Gospels. Three books are never read from at all: 1 Chronicles, Judith, and Obadiah.
 
Remember, the CHurch has ruled that the Latin Vulgate is entirely without error in matters of faith and morals and that no one can under any pretext reject it.

I would choose an edition based on translation from the Vulgate.

SO, I got the Douay-Rheims/Challoner and the Sacra BIblia English-Latin Bible! It’s awesome. Latin is not too hard to pick through, you can SEE that it is a literal translation.

I really want the original 1649 edition that is very hard to find. 🙂
 
Gregory_I said:
Remember, the CHurch has ruled that the Latin Vulgate is entirely without error in matters of faith and morals and that no one can under any pretext reject it.

I would choose an edition based on translation from the Vulgate.

SO, I got the Douay-Rheims/Challoner and the Sacra BIblia English-Latin Bible! It’s awesome. Latin is not too hard to pick through, you can SEE that it is a literal translation.

I really want the original 1649 edition that is very hard to find. 🙂
Click to expand...
Some people don’t want a version that only meets the standard of lacking error in matters of faith and morals, they want a version that translates the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts as closely as possible. You’re not going to get that in something translated from the Vulgate, since the Vulgate itself is a translation of the actual Bible, meaning you wind up with a second-generation translation. These days, we all know how much meanings can change and be lost in translating something, don’t we? “Lacking error” is of course a necessary baseline for any version of the Bible, but there’s an obvious benefit in accuracy when you go directly to the divinely-inspired source texts to make a translation. This article offers a pretty good rundown of some of the issues (“If someone utters the Spanish sentence 'La manzana es verde and I translate that as ‘The apple is red,’ then I have in not committed a moral or theological error, but I have committed a translation error (verde means green, not red).”).

It also needs pointing out that the so-called Challoner version of the Douay-Rheims is not the real Douay-Rheims. Challoner overhauled the text massively, cribbing material from the Protestant KJV and wiping out lots of the glorious uber-Latinate syntax and vocabulary of the authentic DR. I guess a compulsive need for tinkering and modernization were rampant even in Challoner’s day, huh? If you buy the Challoner version, just don’t be duped into thinking you are getting the real McCoy, the 1582/1610 Douay-Rheims that nurtured the Catholic faith through the height and depths of the Counter-Reformation. You’re getting a highly modernized and somewhat dumbed-down (i.e. “new and improved!”) product from a century and a half later that many would charge is scarcely entitled to wear the hallowed words “Douay-Rheims” on its cover. As the 1909 Catholic Encyclopedia explained:
Although the Bibles in use in the twentieth century by the Catholics of England and Ireland are popularly styled the Douay Version, they are most improperly so called; they are founded, with more or less alteration, on a series of revisions undertaken by Bishop Challoner in 1749-52. His object was to meet the practical want felt by the Catholics of his day of a Bible moderate in size and price, in readable English, and with notes more suitable to the time. . . . The changes introduced by him were so considerable that, according to Cardinal Newman, they “almost amounted to a new translation”. So also, Cardinal Wiseman wrote, “To call it any longer the Douay or Rheimish Version is an abuse of terms. It has been **altered and modified **until scarcely any sense remains as it was originally published”. In nearly every case Challoner’s changes took the form of approximating to the [King James] Authorized Version, though his three editions of the New Testament differ from one another in numerous passages.
 
Anyone know of a Catholic Bible with good commentary? I’ve been reading the Orthodox Study Bible, and it always seems to point to certain verses in most chapters of each book in the Bible with what the Church Fathers taught and how all of these things point towards Christ. It helps me to see what Christ meant when he said if we believed Moses, we would believe him! For Moses wrote about him…
 
THere are no “Original” texts left. Everything is copies from copies.

And the Latin translation is actually more accurate, because it was made 1600 years ago by a Person overwhelmingly fluent in The Three main Languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

Remember, he also had documents available that WE NO LONGER HAVE.

Hence the Latin translation is more accurate than modern translations in that it
  1. Reflects the MInd of the Church Fathers, since one of them translated it.
  2. Had access to more ancient documents than we do now
  3. Was translated by a person who made this single task the goal of his whole life.
I know the Challoner is not the original DOuay, THat is why I have an interlinear, to compare texts. That is why I want the 1649 Douay Original.
 
Gregory_I said:
THere are no “Original” texts left. Everything is copies from copies.

And the Latin translation is actually more accurate, because it was made 1600 years ago by a Person overwhelmingly fluent in The Three main Languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

Remember, he also had documents available that WE NO LONGER HAVE.

Hence the Latin translation is more accurate than modern translations in that it
  1. Reflects the MInd of the Church Fathers, since one of them translated it.
  2. Had access to more ancient documents than we do now
  3. Was translated by a person who made this single task the goal of his whole life.
I know the Challoner is not the original DOuay, THat is why I have an interlinear, to compare texts. That is why I want the 1649 Douay Original.
Click to expand...
Wishful hagiography aside, history bears out that Jerome was very good at Greek, and competent but hardly “overwhelmingly fluent” in Hebrew. And while he had access to some ancient texts that are now lost, by the same token we have access to other ancient texts that were not known to Jerome. (Jerome also did not devote his entire life to translating the Bible. Read a biography.) At any rate, your arguments amount to a reason for reading the Vulgate in Latin in preference to any other translation, but, still, the best that could ever be hoped for from the Vulgate would be for it to be “very close” to the original. Since it is conceptually impossible for the Vulgate to be better than the original (right?), there is no reason that an English translation made from the Vulgate would be better than an English translation made from the original.

Latin also has significant defects as a language, not least of which is lacking the definite and indefinite articles. English translators, including the translators of the 1582/1610 (not 1649:confused:) Douay-Rheims, have repeatedly been forced to check Jerome’s text against the originals (which do use articles) to help sort out where the Bible should say “a man” and where “the man,” or “a god” and “God,” and so on. Needless to say, of course, the Vulgate itself is hardly perfect, which is why it has gone through numerous revisions, critical editions, and the like over the centuries. The “Clementine Vulgate” which is now so famous didn’t even exist when the (real) Douay-Rheims was translated. And today we have the Nova Vulgata, the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church, which is yet another revision.

By the way, if you are concerned about historicity, please note that we do not have “Jerome’s Vulgate.” The earliest extant manuscripts of the Vulgate are from 500 or so years later than the earliest extant manuscripts of, for instance, the Greek New Testament; compare, e.g., [1] with [2]. Who knows what could have happened to Jerome’s actual text during the multiple centuries when we have no record at all of it.

Don’t get me wrong, the Vulgate is a venerable monument, and the relatively simple Latin makes it a lovely resource for people learning to read the language. By all means, read the Vulgate. But if you’re going to be reading English, why you would prefer having a translation from Jerome’s necessarily imperfect translation, over the divinely-inspired original, I can’t really understand.
 
Gregory_I said:
And the Latin translation is actually more accurate, because it was made 1600 years ago by a Person overwhelmingly fluent in The Three main Languages: Latin, Greek and Hebrew.

Remember, he also had documents available that WE NO LONGER HAVE.
Click to expand...
True, including the still older Vetus Latina, which was displaced by Jerome’s Vulgate.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top