Why is Catholic literature so rare?

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Omyo12

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I’m taking Latin and all I would like is a physical copy of the complete Nova Vulgata, however I can’t seem to find one!

All I can find is the Latin New Testament

For Protestants, they have many versions of the Hebrew and Greek texts, countless interlinears, countless commentaries, and even their own critical version of the Latin Vulgate! All (besides the commentary sets) at very affordable prices!

Yet no complete Nova Vulgata :mad:

There are also no Catholic interlinears. Sure the interlinear New Testaments by Protestants work too and perhaps even the interlinear Hebrew Bible, but there is no interlinear Deuterocanon!

I also want a physical copy of the Haydock Bible Commentary but I don’t want to pay $250 for it! Why is Matthew Henry’s commentary only $30 for 1 volume and $60 for the 6 volume version??

I understand why the Navarre Commentary is expensive, but the Haydock is only 1 volume…

Can anyone recommend a good commentary at a reasonable price?
Does anyone know where I can find a Nova Vulgata?
How about a Clementine Vulgate?
 
I think the biggest influence is not because of Catholic’s being behind in the game, but simply the market, that is, supply and demand. If those items or potential items would sell like hot cakes then there would be more competition and more in print and cheaper because of it. I think that as time goes on and there becomes more of a demand then the supply will be there.
 
Hi Omyo12 –

I understand your frustration, but things are better than you might think. There are actually quite a few very good Biblical sources out there.

For Vulgates, you have four selections:

Stuttgart Vulgate – This is a critical reconstruction of St. Jerome’s Vulgate – called the Stuttgart Vulgate. This edition is based on a project initiated by Pius X and performed by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome. This is includes all of the major variants, so it is a close to St. Jerome’s Vulgate as we are likely to get. It includes all of St. Jeromes prefaces. It is an excellent work. It includes the extended Deuterocanon used by Jerome and still by our Orthodox brethren – so it is the Catholic Canon plus! It is available here.

Clementine Vulgate – this is available in many editions, and you’ll find one interesting edition is a diglot with the Douay-Rheims-Challoner here.

Nova Vulgata – this is widely available – it is included with the various Navarre Bible editions with the RSV-CE (or for the Spanish edition, with the Navarra translaiton). You can buy a single volume copy as published by the Vatican here.

Novum Testamentum Latine – this is the Nova Vulgata with a critical apparatus (for the New Testament only). It is available by itself or in a diglot with the Greek.

For Internlinears, there really is no such thing as a “Catholic” interlinear – the interlinear translates on a word-by-word (or phrase-by-phrase) basis so it does not yield a true “translation”, much less and approved translation.

There are a variety of New Testament interlienar that also print the NRSV, an approved Catholic translation. For example: here or here. There are also a number of interlinears of the Hebrew Bible – most of them published by Jewish publishers. If you are interested, I can send you some links.

If you are interested in diglots rather than interlinears, I draw your attention to this volume using the RSV.

For Septuagints, the situation is changing rapidly because of scholars are still developing critical editions of the Septuagint. An older Septuagint with English diglot is here. The mid-century critical Septuagint is available here. The most widely used (and highly recommended) English translation is here.

Most major patristic writings are widely available in bilingual diglots. In particular, the Loeb Library volumes includes full bilignual collections of works by Augustine (in English/Latin), Basil (English/Greek), Bede (English/Latin), Boethius (English/Latin), Clement of Alexandria (English/Greek), Jerome (English/Latin), Tertullian (English/Latin), The Apostolic Fathers (English/Greek). A very nice diglot of the Summa Theologiæ is available here.

More to the point, now many scholars use program systems such as Logos, BibleWorks, or Accordance to do work on original language documents. These all have interlinear capabilities built in and include a vast array of texts including Vulgates, Septuagints, Hebrew Bibles, and Greek New Testaments.

You suggest that costs are higher for Catholics, but I don’t see it that way. Many Protestants claim that the cost of a “good Bible” is at least $100. While there are bargain editions available for both Catholics and Protestants; high quality editions are always pricier. In an era where many scholarly books costs $200 (for example, editions published by Brill), I think most Catholic books are a bargain.
 
Bible_Reader said:
Hi Omyo12 –

I understand your frustration, but things are better than you might think. There are actually quite a few very good Biblical sources out there.

For Vulgates, you have four selections:

Stuttgart Vulgate – This is a critical reconstruction of St. Jerome’s Vulgate – called the Stuttgart Vulgate. This edition is based on a project initiated by Pius X and performed by the monks of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Jerome. This is includes all of the major variants, so it is a close to St. Jerome’s Vulgate as we are likely to get. It includes all of St. Jeromes prefaces. It is an excellent work. It includes the extended Deuterocanon used by Jerome and still by our Orthodox brethren – so it is the Catholic Canon plus! It is available here.

Clementine Vulgate – this is available in many editions, and you’ll find one interesting edition is a diglot with the Douay-Rheims-Challoner here.

Nova Vulgata – this is widely available – it is included with the various Navarre Bible editions with the RSV-CE (or for the Spanish edition, with the Navarra translaiton). You can buy a single volume copy as published by the Vatican here.

Novum Testamentum Latine – this is the Nova Vulgata with a critical apparatus (for the New Testament only). It is available by itself or in a diglot with the Greek.

For Internlinears, there really is no such thing as a “Catholic” interlinear – the interlinear translates on a word-by-word (or phrase-by-phrase) basis so it does not yield a true “translation”, much less and approved translation.

There are a variety of New Testament interlienar that also print the NRSV, an approved Catholic translation. For example: here or here. There are also a number of interlinears of the Hebrew Bible – most of them published by Jewish publishers. If you are interested, I can send you some links.

If you are interested in diglots rather than interlinears, I draw your attention to this volume using the RSV.

For Septuagints, the situation is changing rapidly because of scholars are still developing critical editions of the Septuagint. An older Septuagint with English diglot is here. The mid-century critical Septuagint is available here. The most widely used (and highly recommended) English translation is here.

Most major patristic writings are widely available in bilingual diglots. In particular, the Loeb Library volumes includes full bilignual collections of works by Augustine (in English/Latin), Basil (English/Greek), Bede (English/Latin), Boethius (English/Latin), Clement of Alexandria (English/Greek), Jerome (English/Latin), Tertullian (English/Latin), The Apostolic Fathers (English/Greek). A very nice diglot of the Summa Theologiæ is available here.

More to the point, now many scholars use program systems such as Logos, BibleWorks, or Accordance to do work on original language documents. These all have interlinear capabilities built in and include a vast array of texts including Vulgates, Septuagints, Hebrew Bibles, and Greek New Testaments.

You suggest that costs are higher for Catholics, but I don’t see it that way. Many Protestants claim that the cost of a “good Bible” is at least $100. While there are bargain editions available for both Catholics and Protestants; high quality editions are always pricier. In an era where many scholarly books costs $200 (for example, editions published by Brill), I think most Catholic books are a bargain.
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Wowww… Great great GREAT!! 😃

Thank you so very much for all these resources!! 😃

so the Stuttgart Vulgate was initiated by Pope Pius X?? 🙂
I’ve always heard it was put together by Protestants! :eek:

God bless,
Omyo12
 
COPLAND_3 said:
I think the biggest influence is not because of Catholic’s being behind in the game, but simply the market, that is, supply and demand. If those items or potential items would sell like hot cakes then there would be more competition and more in print and cheaper because of it. I think that as time goes on and there becomes more of a demand then the supply will be there.
Click to expand...
Exactly! 😃

As a collector of Catholic literature, I have long been aware of this fact of life. However, online resources should not be so quickly discounted. There have been many times when I downloaded the literary item, printed it off and then made some sort of booklet out of it. I have used the plastic spiral binding, stapled pamphlet binding etc. to make the thing somewhat permanent in my collection. Many times, online resources are really the best option! 😉
 
AmbroseSJ said:
Exactly! 😃

As a collector of Catholic literature, I have long been aware of this fact of life. However, online resources should not be so quickly discounted. There have been many times when I downloaded the literary item, printed it off and then made some sort of booklet out of it. I have used the plastic spiral binding, stapled pamphlet binding etc. to make the thing somewhat permanent in my collection. Many times, online resources are really the best option! 😉
Click to expand...
Same here. Economics is one of my favorite topics, and with a little bit of experience in seeking various literature and providing some myself, I have learned a little bit. Something that comes to mind is when I have looked for certain resources and found that they don’t exist, and I have done a couple of projects to produce those resources and found that I was one of the rare people who had a deep interest in it, and it did not become a demanded item.

But I think that since Catholics are becoming more interested in Bible study these days, then certain resources mentioned in the OP will become available, cheaper and easier, especailly if more Catholics produce them and develop some competition among themselves.
 
Omyo12 said:
the Stuttgart Vulgate was initiated by Pope Pius X?
I’ve always heard it was put together by Protestants!
Click to expand...
Well, both statements have some truth to it.

The ultimate primary source text for the Stuttgart Vulgate is Codex Amiatinus, an 8th century one-volume manuscript of the entire Bible produced in England. This of course is a Catholic version. The work on the Old Testament of this edition was done, as mentioned, under the direction of Pius X, namely Biblia Sacra iuxta latinam vulgatam versionem ad codicum fidem cura et studio monachorum Pont. Abbatiae S. Hieronymi in Urbe edita, Romae. 1926–1994.

Further, the editors of the Stuttgart Vulgate come from the Vetus Latina Institut at the major Benedictine center, the Beuron Archabbey. (See also this and this website.) With names like Bonifatius Fischer, Walter Thiele, and Roger Gryson associated with the project, you can see that Catholics are involved in every stage of the project. However, the Stuttgart Vulgate is a scholarly and not a religious project, and the actual publisher, the German Bible Society (which also publishes the standard editions of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, and the Greek Bible used by all contemporary translators, including all modern Catholic Bibles) was founded by Protestants (and now distributes books for both Catholics and Protestants).

The bottom line is the Stuttgart Vulgate was primarily produced by a Catholic institute associated with a Catholic Archabbey, but it is a scholarly work, not a religious one, and non-Catholic scholarship (as well as Catholic scholarship) is cited in it. The work carries no special ecclesiastical status, but being based on *Codex Amiatinus, *it is the best version we have of Jerome’s Vulgate. The Nova Vulgata is notably closer to Stuttgart Vulgate than to the Clementine Vulgate, which is one of the complaints that traditionalist Catholics have cited against the Nova Vulgata.

The Stuttgart Vulgate is written in medieval Latin orthography (oe rather than ae), has inconsistent spelling, and uses line breaks rather than punctuation – just like medieval manuscripts. In this way, it is harder to read as a beginner.
 
Re: interlinears

What? No mention of the Glossa? 🙂

Medieval Bibles in Latin used to commonly include notes which were indeed written within the lines, “glossing” an unfamiliar Latin word with one that was more familiar, or the vernacular one; or adding explanations of the text. Some were pretty darned extensive (to the point of almost being full translations), and so of course scholars of medieval languages find them very useful and interesting.

This somehow turned, probably in Laon, into the Glossa Ordinaria, the standard and ever-growing Biblical commentary of the Middle Ages. It was usually written or printed in the outer margins of Bibles. Since it did grow and change, the edition in Migne is not the whole story. Scholars are working on critical editions for each book of the Bible. But it’s online in its Migne entirety in one of the volumes of Patrologia Latina and in the Patrologia Latina database.
 
Omyo12 said:
Wowww… Great great GREAT!! 😃

Thank you so very much for all these resources!! 😃

so the Stuttgart Vulgate was initiated by Pope Pius X?? 🙂
I’ve always heard it was put together by Protestants! :eek:

God bless,

Omyo12
Click to expand...

Boniface Fischer O.S.B., who is one of the editors, was not a Protestant. Even if he had been, that would not matter - for if an editor of a text were to choose readings on the basis of his own religious convictions:​

  • such a work would be very badly received by others competent to judge; as it should be
  • it’s a completely illegitimate method anyway
  • the vast majority of readings make no difference to anyone’s religious convictions, so it would not even be possible.
Catholics have no monopoly on good scholarship - it has been inter-confessional for a long time, in textual scholarship, liturgiology, Church history, the study of the Fathers, & so on. More recently, translations have become inter-confessional. It is certainly not confined to Christians: Talmon, Freedman, Cassuto, Speiser, Torczyner are just a few of the Jewish scholars whose work has helped to cast light on the OT & its background.

An example: the manual edition of Wordsworth & White’s Vulgate NT, first published about a century ago, contains many variant readings in its textual apparatus. As it should - that is what the apparatus is for: the recording of textual variants. Both editors - like a good few of their predecessors - were Anglicans. But they worked with the same texts & editions as Catholics or anyone else: the limitation on their work was imposed not by their religious convictions, but by the demands of space: there are very many variants in the textual tradition of the Vulgate NT, so - as with any textual apparatus of the NT text - only a very small number can be recorded; so they need to be significant, within the limitations of the work as undertaken by the editor in question. This is true for the Vulgate, and for the Greek. (The text of the Hebrew Bible has been standardised, so there are far fewer variants; but it still requires emendation).

When differences occur in textual *apparatus *of the NT, they appear far less in the choice of readings to translate, than in the translations - and very few of these are affected by the religious convictions of translators. A translation that is influenced by its translators’ beliefs is the New World Translation of the JWs - it falsifies the text of the NT at many points, & is so completely motivated by JW beliefs, rather than by the demands of sound scholarship, as it ought to be, that it has been severely criticised for these very flaws. It is probably no coincidence that the translators are anonymous.

The theological legitimacy or rightness of Catholicism cannot be made into an argument for the perfection, or for the superiority, of Catholic scholarship - to argue from the former to the latter is to confuse two things that are not, & need not be, remotely connected. They are different kinds of thing - just as one cannot argue from someone’s age to his moral character: no one would argue, “Bill is 70,** therefore** he is kind-hearted”: he may be kind-hearted, but the attempt to derive his kind heart from his age would be illogical, because there is no logical connection between age & character. Neither is there any logical connection between faith & scholarship - so one can have either, without the other; just as one can have both.

So in matters of textual scholarship, what is decisive is not the editor’s religion, but his competence as a student of the text. Which is why it is no matter whether he be a Catholic, or a Protestant. If being Catholic ensured the excellence or even the superiority of one’s competence as a scholar, it would be entirely right to ignore all but Catholics - but being Catholic does no such thing, & does not need to: because faith is not an acquired ability, but a sheerly Divine gift - whereas scholarly competence is not sheerly Divine, but owes a great deal to natural talent. They are incommensurable, because they have no third term in common: just as age & goodness do not.
 
Gottle of Geer:
The theological legitimacy or rightness of Catholicism cannot be made into an argument for the perfection, or for the superiority, of Catholic scholarship - to argue from the former to the latter is to confuse two things that are not, & need not be, remotely connected. They are different kinds of thing - just as one cannot argue from someone’s age to his moral character: no one would argue, “Bill is 70, therefore he is kind-hearted”: he may be kind-hearted, but the attempt to derive his kind heart from his age would be illogical, because there is no logical connection between age & character. Neither is there any logical connection between faith & scholarship - so one can have either, without the other; just as one can have both.

So in matters of textual scholarship, what is decisive is not the editor’s religion, but his competence as a student of the text. Which is why it is no matter whether he be a Catholic, or a Protestant. If being Catholic ensured the excellence or even the superiority of one’s competence as a scholar, it would be entirely right to ignore all but Catholics - but being Catholic does no such thing, & does not need to: because faith is not an acquired ability, but a sheerly Divine gift - whereas scholarly competence is not sheerly Divine, but owes a great deal to natural talent. They are incommensurable, because they have no third term in common: just as age & goodness do not.
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The problem with the above argument is that we are not discussing variant recensions of Beowulf or the Iliad, but Sacred Scripture, the Word of God. There are other forces at work other than dry textual criticism. The critics themselves, depending on their own faith background, and belief system will see or not see a tendency or drift of expression.

For scholars who are most impressed with only the very latest trends and developments in textual criticism, who approach the Sacred Scriptures as a Medical Examiner approaches a cadaver, then by all means, let them have their say, and let us give ear to what they say, when it aids in understanding the Holy Word. There are many instances imaginable when clarification would be welcome.

At the same time, because this is the Word of God, it’s transmission by a faith tradition is EQUALLY IMPORTANT. “If we would be true to the principles of criticism, we must read the gospels not in vacuo, but against a background of Christian Tradition which is older than themselves, and would have survived, in however distorted a form, if they had perished. That our Lord was born at Bethlehem, and that he suffered on Friday - we must not confine our study to the evidence of documents if we would examine the truth of statements like these. But how much importance should we attach to the stream of tradition, fouled as it clearly is by constant comparison with the written record? That is a question which may be variously answered…” -Ronald Knox

So in my view it would be unwise, and even uncritical to ignore the faith tradition of the translators and textual critics upon whom they may depend.
 
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