Catholic Info
Traditional Catholic Faith => Crisis in the Church => Topic started by: parentsfortruth on July 10, 2013, 09:11:23 AM
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I've found these publications to be very helpful when refuting KJV thumpers, and the people using the "new catholic" interpretations.
Please read this: (Catholicism proved by the Protestant Bible)
http://www.olrl.org/apologetics/cathprot.shtml
Please also read this. (Which Bible Should I Read?--- from Tan Books.)
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php?a=topic&t=6677
Also, if you want a good bible, but don't have one, visit this site to use it. (Douay-Rheims version)
http://drbo.org/
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Also, the entire Haydock Bible w/Commentary is available online here: http://haydock1859.tripod.com/index.html
Intratext of the Douay-Rheims: http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0011/_INDEX.HTM
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Be careful not to pick phrases out of context. That is what the Protestants do and then they use such out of context phrases against the catholics.
If you are in a Bible Study group, I wouldn't stick around. The catholics put the bible together, and all is translated and so Bible study groups tend to pick verses and such and tend to ask those present, "what do you think this means?" That is dangerous to be around. Catholics don't have to do that, it is already done.
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Be careful not to pick phrases out of context. That is what the Protestants do and then they use such out of context phrases against the catholics.
If you are in a Bible Study group, I wouldn't stick around. The catholics put the bible together, and all is translated and so Bible study groups tend to pick verses and such and tend to ask those present, "what do you think this means?" That is dangerous to be around. Catholics don't have to do that, it is already done.
Exactly. Bible studies should focus on what the Church and Church doctors say a book or chapter means. In fact, there are so many Church-approved resources that "study" should be someone with authority helping the group wade through all the commentary.
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.
The problem with "bible study groups" is, like the concept of
"dialogue" -- people from different religions meet, and presume
from the start than no one has the truth, and they are
meeting so as to 'discover' the truth for the first time.
Very dangerous.
God's truth doesn't change. So why would anyone want
to keep on 're-discovering' so-called truth?
The only possible reason is to make this so-called truth
into something it wasn't before, which means it changes,
and so, it can't be God's truth which never changes.
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Also, the entire Haydock Bible w/Commentary is available online here: http://haydock1859.tripod.com/index.html
Intratext of the Douay-Rheims: http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ENG0011/_INDEX.HTM
You can't go wrong with this.
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I can e-mail pdfs of scans of an original Doway Rhemes (1582 & 1609) to anyone who'd like one, free, just PM me. If I can ever find a free minute I'll put them online and post a link here.
You have the original Douay Rheims too. That's great. I have the original Douay Rheims New Testament, but not the old testament. I love the text and the notes are wonderful. They focus on refuting the errors of the protestant sects that were attacking the Church at the time. I would recommend the original Douay Rheims to anyone who asks which bible they should read.
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I crafted a perl script to search Holy Scripture
SEARCH TOOL (http://traditionalcatholic.net/Scripture/Search/index.html)
In the New Testament, I interpolated the Rheims English with Vulgate Latin.
Enjoy; God bless you and yours.
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I've managed to put the original 1582 & 1609 Doway-Rhemes pdfs online. You can download them from: http://www.the-freelance.com/doway-rhemes.html
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I hope someday we see the whole Douai-Rheims original up again on the web in plain text format, rather than just facsimile (large file).
I'm really grateful to read the facsimile!
It's simply more easily searchable and without the OCR difficulties of a facsimle.
It used to be up at a university website in that form, did have some OCR issues but overall pretty good impression made, but they took it down or at least down to the public.
I'd like to see it all line by line with the Latin under it.
Like this:
http://saintsbooks.net/Holy%20Scripture%20-%20Original%20Douai-Rheims%20and%20Clementine%20-%20Genesis%20-%20Chapter%20I%20-%20Sample.htm
But it's not going to happen over on SB, too much of a big project. Sigh.
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I hope someday we see the whole Douai-Rheims original up again on the web in plain text format, rather than just facsimile (large file).
I'm really grateful to read the facsimile!
It's simply more easily searchable and without the OCR difficulties of a facsimle.
It used to be up at a university website in that form, did have some OCR issues but overall pretty good impression made, but they took it down or at least down to the public.
I'd like to see it all line by line with the Latin under it.
Like this:
http://saintsbooks.net/Holy%20Scripture%20-%20Original%20Douai-Rheims%20and%20Clementine%20-%20Genesis%20-%20Chapter%20I%20-%20Sample.htm
But it's not going to happen over on SB, too much of a big project. Sigh.
May I inquire with regard to the visual format you suggest, is it your preference that the Latin is below the English, or as an alternate orientation, would it be acceptable to have the Latin to the side? I ask because it is a large project, and if I were to engage in the activity it would be best to start with the desired orientation. As it seems, I may have a head start on the project ...see at http://traditionalcatholic.net/Scripture/New_Testament/The_Holy_Gospel_of_Jesus_Christ,_According_to_St._Matthew/Chapter-24.html (http://traditionalcatholic.net/Scripture/New_Testament/The_Holy_Gospel_of_Jesus_Christ,_According_to_St._Matthew/Chapter-24.html)
As a side note, some time ago while developing a perl script to search Scripture, I discovered an interesting way to format the html code for each Bible page so that the perl script searching the html code can build virtual html representation of the search results ...try at http://traditionalcatholic.net/Scripture/Search/index.html (http://traditionalcatholic.net/Scripture/Search/index.html) (note, still under construction - the New Testament webpages are done, but while most the Old Testament text in English is formatted properly, none of the Vulgate Latin has been interpolated with the Douay English yet.)
At any rate, in this regard, I would be so grateful for your input.
Faithfully yours,
In Christ Jesus,
John Anthony Marie
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It is good to see.
I find the line under line Latin and English preferable. I wonder what other folks think?
FWIW It seems to be easier on the eyes.
I started the conversion process at
http://traditionalcatholic.net/Scripture/New_Testament/The_Holy_Gospel_of_Jesus_Christ,_According_to_St._Matthew/Chapter-1.html
Let me know your opinion about the presentation.
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The modern (post-18th century) "Douay-Rheims" (including the Haydock version, which differs only in having more extensive footnotes than other editions) is a significant revision of the original Doway-Rhemes. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 A.D. states:
"Although the Bibles in use at the present day 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 . . .
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 verse remains as it was originally published.' In nearly every case Challoner's changes took the form of approximating to the Authorized Version [King James]..."
The language is a bit stiff and can be a little difficult to understand at times, and the typography conventions take a little getting used to -- vv instead of w, etc. -- but the footnotes pull no punches and the whole thing is just remarkable, being a word-for-word LITERAL translation of the Vulgate.
I can e-mail pdfs of scans of an original Doway Rhemes (1582 & 1609) to anyone who'd like one, free, just PM me. If I can ever find a free minute I'll put them online and post a link here.
So the Bible at drbo.org and the one the SBC (i think it is) sells, which is the same one they have online, and the Haydock one, are worthless?
Or is the "grand alteration" just more modern and intelligible language, instead of a substantial change of meaning and words?
I compared some parts of the one at drbo.org with the one you posted, and they are almost the same.
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Well, I know of two websites that have examples to argue for the original Douai.
There's Dr. von Peter's website version, which is sold through the 'original douai' and 'real douai' websites were that argument is made there.
And then there's another fellow, a linguist, who does a comparison side by side of the words and how they were translated. Ah.. he was the fellow who I once asked for help with regarding putting it on the web but we fell out of touch. But then he is not online often. I hope he is doing well.
I see he has put forth a plain text PDF version of the original Douai on Scribd now. I didn't know about that till this moment.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/76920767/Catholic-Bible-Douay-Rheims-1610-Real-Douay-Rheims-Bible-in-Txt-Format
He makes a bit of the argument there in the intro (basing it in fact partly I think on the actual commentary introductions of the original Douai).
Now where did I put the link to his blog where he does the side by side.. Let me look.
You will have to weigh these arguments as best you will, I take to the extent I may, no responsibility for presenting the possibility of them to you one way or the other. Use at your own risk, &c.
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The modern (post-18th century) "Douay-Rheims" (including the Haydock version, which differs only in having more extensive footnotes than other editions) is a significant revision of the original Doway-Rhemes. The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 A.D. states:
"Although the Bibles in use at the present day 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 . . .
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 verse remains as it was originally published.' In nearly every case Challoner's changes took the form of approximating to the Authorized Version [King James]..."
The language is a bit stiff and can be a little difficult to understand at times, and the typography conventions take a little getting used to -- vv instead of w, etc. -- but the footnotes pull no punches and the whole thing is just remarkable, being a word-for-word LITERAL translation of the Vulgate.
I can e-mail pdfs of scans of an original Doway Rhemes (1582 & 1609) to anyone who'd like one, free, just PM me. If I can ever find a free minute I'll put them online and post a link here.
So the Bible at drbo.org and the one the SBC (i think it is) sells, which is the same one they have online, and the Haydock one, are worthless?
Or is the "grand alteration" just more modern and intelligible language, instead of a substantial change of meaning and words?
I compared some parts of the one at drbo.org with the one you posted, and they are almost the same.
(1) I'm not a Biblical expert.
(2) I certainly wouldn't say the Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims is "worthless," but I do think that the original is better. On the other hand, the Challoner is better than, say, the NAB.
(3) I suggest you take a look at Dr. Von Peters' arguments on his website ( http://www.realdouayrheims.com/ ). I have a hardback copy of his original Douay-Rheims set in modern type that I bought from lulu.com for about $200, and I think it's priceless. I've found a couple of typos, but they were obvious ones, and I could check the pdf facsimile for any that appear questionable, should I find any.
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By the way John Anthony Marie, are you putting up the original Douai, or the Challoner on that website?
I was under the impression you were doing the original, but reading the text it looks like the Challoner.
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By the way John Anthony Marie, are you putting up the original Douai, or the Challoner on that website?
I was under the impression you were doing the original, but reading the text it looks like the Challoner.
I utilize Challoner English. While I have a hardcopy of the original Douay Rheims Bible, for my original online project, KJ vs. DR, I used the more modern English wording of the Challoner.
oh, and btw, I am not putting this up, in that it has already been up since 1999 - I just thought I'd update the presentation some.
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Well, I know of two websites that have examples to argue for the original Douai.
There's Dr. von Peter's website version, which is sold through the 'original douai' and 'real douai' websites were that argument is made there.
And then there's another fellow, a linguist, who does a comparison side by side of the words and how they were translated. Ah.. he was the fellow who I once asked for help with regarding putting it on the web but we fell out of touch. But then he is not online often. I hope he is doing well.
I see he has put forth a plain text PDF version of the original Douai on Scribd now. I didn't know about that till this moment.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/76920767/Catholic-Bible-Douay-Rheims-1610-Real-Douay-Rheims-Bible-in-Txt-Format
He makes a bit of the argument there in the intro (basing it in fact partly I think on the actual commentary introductions of the original Douai).
Now where did I put the link to his blog where he does the side by side.. Let me look.
You will have to weigh these arguments as best you will, I take to the extent I may, no responsibility for presenting the possibility of them to you one way or the other. Use at your own risk, &c.
This is great! I downloaded the .txt version and used Calibre to convert it to .mobi and loaded it onto my Kindle. Whoopie!!! Thank you! The transcription was done at Cornell, and it looks spot-on. It retains all the original orthography and everything. There are occasional awkward constructions, like ?gpt for Egypt and spaces popping up in the middle of some words and one or two other quirks (probably used OCR), but they haven't been a problem. I am delighted. Thank you so much!
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:reading:
If you want to be absolutely sure, start studying Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek!
:dancing-banana:
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I love a good commentary as a companion to my Haydock.
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For the New Testament, I recommend The Layman's New Testament: Being the Rheims Text as First Revised by Bishop Challoner, Edited with Introduction and Notes by Rev. Fr. Hugh Pope, O. P. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1927).
It contains the first revision of Bp. Challoner, which is not much different from the original Rheims version (as opposed to the other revisions), with marginal notes and copious footnotes: the left hand page is the Scriptural text with marginal notes and the right hand facing page are the notes that include occasional comparisons with the original Rheims text and copious allusions to the Summa.
It is, in my opinion, the best handy edition of the New Testament for its clear layout and copious but succinct notes.
This book is not as rare as other editions and relatively easy and cheap to obtain. At least for right now...
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For the New Testament, I recommend The Layman's New Testament: Being the Rheims Text as First Revised by Bishop Challoner, Edited with Introduction and Notes by Rev. Fr. Hugh Pope, O. P. (London: Sheed & Ward, 1927).
It contains the first revision of Bp. Challoner, which is not much different from the original Rheims version (as opposed to the other revisions), with marginal notes and copious footnotes: the left hand page is the Scriptural text with marginal notes and the right hand facing page are the notes that include occasional comparisons with the original Rheims text and copious allusions to the Summa.
It is, in my opinion, the best handy edition of the New Testament for its clear layout and copious but succinct notes.
This book is not as rare as other editions and relatively easy and cheap to obtain. At least for right now...
Is it online? I would like to see for myself just how "accurate" that version is.
The ones at drbo.org and the Haydock are straight up bad and Protestant.
13 times in the Old Testament Christ is substituted by "anointed one" etc.
There is no online version. I can scan some pages if you want. What verse do you consider one that would show a significant difference between this version and the others (like a sort of litmus test)?
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The Challoner and Haydock "douays" are a sham!
Someone said Challoner may have been a secret Protestant. I agree. Why else would he do such a thing? …
You ought to think twice before smearing a great scholar and an unquestionably orthodox Catholic bishop. Richard Challoner spent his youth at the University of Douai, where he was one of those who worked on the earliest of a whole batch of nineteenth-century revisions of the Douay-Rheims translation of the Bible. Do you have any evidence—as opposed to hearsay and blather—that he subverted or falsified that text, which was the basis for the subsequent translations? If you do, you realize, I hope, that you are also implicating the entire faculty and rector of the university, since it was under the latter's auspices and name that the translation was published.
Furthermore, can you provide any evidence that the later Challoner revisions were ever banned, either by Cardinal Wiseman or his successor at Westminster, Henry Cardinal Manning, widely regarded as the greatest English Catholic prelate of the century? I ask because to the best of my own knowledge, various Challoner revisions were approved for liturgical use by both these prelates.
You write, mostly in fractured sentences, of the atrocities inflicted upon the original versions. Is your knowledge of Latin or Greek sufficient to sustain such a claim? Haven't you noticed by now that vast expanses of the original translation have become virtually unreadable and unintelligible because of the extraordinary changes in the English language between the 1580s and either the mid-1800s or the present day. It was for that very reason that the rector and the scholars of the University of Douai first decided that a revision had become essential if English-speaking Catholics of that time (and this, for that matter) were to continue to have practical access to the Bible outside Mass and other liturgical services.
Last but not least, the "introduced" resemblances to the King James Version aren't truly all that numerous, especially not in comparison with the far more numerous resemblances already there! And why were they there? Why, because the King James translators both possessed and admired the Douay translation and thus were frequently moved to mirror its wording. In other words, the original Douay NT influenced the KJ NT, so that incidental resemblances between the latter and the Challoner revision would be far more worthy of note were they not present.
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A footnote. In the late 1950s, the Challoner revision was in the process (then almost thirty years long) of being completely revised by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine. All of the NT and bits and pieces of the OT (the latter unpublished to my knowledge) were completed, to the universal applause of English-speaking Catholic biblical scholars from both sides of the Atlantic, before the translation was halted for good by the same forces responsible for Vatican II. Need I say that that superb translation, now long out of print, bears hardly any resemblance at all to the original Douay? Is it time for another Two-Minute Hate then?
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I've posted some important information regarding the Rheims version of the New Testament:
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php/Regarding-the-Rheims-Version-of-the-New-Testament
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To my knowledge, Archbishop Lefebvre and Pope Saint Pius X never had anything negative to say about the Challoner revision. So it's all good for me.
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Compare the penitential psalms with the one at drbo.org or the Haydock to the King James.
Then compare those to the real Douay, if you even have it that is, and then come back to me.
Seriously, just read this: http://www.realdouayrheims.com/
First of all, the drbo site to which you keep alluding and reverting has been familiar to me for close to ten years.
"Seriously," as you insist on saying, I first saw the "real" Douay when I was a teenager (I am sure I saw it earlier, in fact, but I am not going to make the absurd claim that I was an avid Bible reader before I hit the big "one-oh"); actual, physical copies of it could be found quite readily in the fifties and early sixties, not to mention before I was born. I am sure my rectory had such copies, and my high school library certainly had. The mainstay at that time here in the USA was Challoner-Rheims for the OT, the CCD revision of all previous Douay-associated versions for the NT.
When I was in college (early to mid sixties), I saw a half-dozen or so comparative translations of passages from the psalms and the NT (including the DR and three or four of the pre-KJ versions I listed under Hobbledehoy's billion-word posting in the Library). I was certainly not alone. Essentially everyone who took theology in a Catholic college in those far-off days had at least half a semester, sometimes more, devoted to biblical scholarship and to exegetical and translation history. Theology was, after all, viewed as a core element of the liberal arts curriculum.
There being no point in going on, I won't. Occasional claims, no matter how well founded, of more felicitous phrasing here and there in the "original" DR are hardly relevant. The bulk of the ur-DR had become unintelligible by 1800, if not earlier, to all but scholars and specialists. By 1930 the intelligibility and the continuing accuracy of both translations (words change their meaning all too regularly in this vale of tears, don't forget**) had generated such concern that the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine revision was authorized, funded, and begun. End of story.
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**Ever been to Australia? I was there in late 1968 on R&R. Working-class Ozzies spoke a brand of English that virtually demanded subtitled translations (it's probably worse now). A famous example was the explanation given to tourists who were respectable American women and girls that when the hotel clerk said he would knock you up at 6 a.m., he wasn't being fresh or indecent.
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There are plenty of people who have a similar problem with the Challoner-Douay for its "archaic" language. I read the original translation regularly, and there is almost nothing in it that I find indecipherable. According to your argument we should all be reading the NAB. I like the 1582 & 1609-10 D-R much better than any other version I've read. The footnotes alone are completely unlike those in later editions, which seem wishy-washy in comparison.
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This is what i think it says in the real douay, "facts", but im not sure. That's what it looks like.
All the other bibles have "Works".
Facts is there:
"I was mindful of old dayes, I have meditated in all thy workes: in the facts of thy hands did I meditate" (Ps. cxlii. 5)
The Sacred Vulgate text is as follows:
"Memor fui dierum antiquorum, meditatus sum in omnibus operibus tuis: in factis manuum tuarum meditabar."
In the rare Translation of the Psalms and Canticles with Commentary by Rev. Fr. James McSwiney, S. J., (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder, 1901) wherein he gives a literal translation of the Hebrew and Sacred Vulgate texts side by side, he has the Latin text translated as:
"I-remembered the days of old; I-meditated on all Thy works: I-mused on the doings of Thy hands."
"Works" (opera) and facts or "that which is wrought or done" (facta) are both there and rendered differently in the English. As you can see, the old Douay translation is quite literal. Fr. McSwiney uses the verb "muse" to translate the Latin "meditabar," which is technically correct but meditate seems to be more correct in that the verse is speaking of meditation as mental prayer, or so it seems.
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To my knowledge, Archbishop Lefebvre and Pope Saint Pius X never had anything negative to say about the Challoner revision. So it's all good for me.
Yours is the true Catholic attitude, and I applaud you for it. Absent any evidence or suggestion that generations of non-Modernist scholars and prelates approved and designated the use of the Challoner-Rheims for any vernacular citations and readings at Mass and other liturgical events in order to do us, the sheep of their fold, harm, we are morally obliged to believe that they were fulfilling the requirements of their God-given offices. In other words, they thought it was time for an updated and corrected English translation of the Bible in order that we Catholics might be better assisted in getting to the goal of our terrestrial journey: Heaven.
Furthermore, despite a request to Cathedra that he state his scholarly bona fides, especially as they relate to knowledge of biblical Latin and Greek, for deprecating the Challoner-Rheims version, I have received nothing in return but name-calling and moronic mockery, along with sneers suggesting that I am a closet Protestant for not agreeing with his fanboy attitude. In short, he's pounding the table because he has no facts nor evidence nor specialized learning to pound.
His attitude, which boils down to "I know better than the totally orthodox English-speaking hierarchy of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth (as well as the curial dicastery that ratified their actions) what the best translation of the Bible is," is miles closer to a Protestant attitude than can be found in anything I have written. If Cathedra is emblematic of emerging Resistance attitudes toward elements of the Faith that have been held licit and salutary by generations of unimpeachably Catholic prelates and authorities, then the Resistance is going to end up being a cause wherein every foot soldier declares himself a general and every guy in the pew anoints himself pope. It would thus be in far greater trouble than even Herr Krah can bring down upon it.
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Here follows a summary of the comments posted on this thread by Cathedra, with accompanying notes on their inadequacies.
Cathedra admits he lacks knowledge of the original languages and of biblical scholarship generally. Yet he is absolutely certain that he knows better than +Challoner and several dozen other unimpeachably orthodox scholars how the Late Latin vocabulary of the Vulgate ought to be translated. * Then he buttresses his case by cherry-picking quotes from Newman and Wiseman that he has lifted from a treatise (graciously provided by Hobbles) written by a scholar, G. Roger Hudleston, OSB, whose point is no more and no less than that, in those clerics' informed opinion, the Challoner revision might with far more accuracy be called a different translation.
Now this is where Cathedra really starts building a skyscraper out of matchsticks and rubber cement. A careful reader can't help noticing that nowhere in these cherry-picked quotes is there anything resembling a clear statement of the only thing that ought to distress someone reading the Bible for religious instruction or edification: namely, that the Challoner translation is deficient, misleading, or both. Cardinal Newman never says this. Cardinal Wiseman never says this.** Dom Hudleston never says this. In fact, Dom Hudleston pointedly refrains from disparaging the Challoner revision and confines his rationale for the publication of the original Douay-Rheims translation (well, more or less original, if truth be told) to very modest terms: (1) because its text differs to a significant degree and extent from Challoner's revision (NB: nothing about it being erroneous here, is there, Cathedra?)*** and (2) because owing to "the comparative rarity of all editions of the original translation, no apology need be made for this reprint of the Rheims text."
These are the words of someone with a bibliophilic motive, NOT a religious one. Let the reader compare, if he will, what Dom Hudleston has written in this extended essay with the stated motive of those who, in the year 2000, restored to print the original version of The Jerusalem Bible because they regarded its "revision," The New Jerusalem Bible, as a distortion and falsification of both the original and the sacred text, not least in that the latter edition embraces "the postmodern tendency toward inclusive language."**** Dom Hudleston's long and learned introduction would have been precisely the place for this studious monk to enumerate just the sort of complaints that Cathedra cavalierly tosses about had Dom Hudleston a mind to do so and had he had reason to believe that it was incuмbent upon him to do so.
He didn't.
As parrots and others may be heard saying every day, Cathedra is entitled to his opinions. Whether they are as worth airing as, say, a typical man on the street's opinion that the sun will probably rise tomorrow morning, however, is for others to judge. What is evident, however, is that Cathedra insists on supporting his opinions with arguments that can only be judged seriously deficient in every conceivable way. That their crippling deficiency leaves him open to the charge of culpably offending against charity with respect to +Challoner (as I said in the first paragraph of my first comment) is now even plainer than it was two days ago.
My positively final words on this matter are these: Cathedra and his supporters can down-thumb this comment till their fingers bleed. Nothing they do will change the fact that he doesn't know what he's talking about. If he fails to acknowledge by his actions that the time for him to hold his tongue—the sooner the better—has arrived, other readers might do far worse than what I shall do as soon as I finish typing: take to heart the counsel found in Ecclesiasticus 27:13 (DR; some other translations number it 27:12).
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* One wonders whether he'll soon be heard insisting that the Italian word caldo means "cold" rather than "hot," as several hundred million damn fools all over the world think it does. Why, the Italian word's very resemblance to the English word gives its true meaning away!
** Has Cathedra read the presumably longer passages from which these two prelates' words have been lifted? If he has, why hasn't he mentioned the fact? Or is this simply one more area where he shows himself a blatherer who is piggybacking on the hard work of others? This last is a bet worth taking, I believe.
*** Calling its changes "sweeping" is equivalent to calling them "wrong" or "false" or "poor" only in the mind of Cathedra or someone else who'd rather repeat his own pet notions than learn from the carefully and respectfully stated views of someone who genuinely knows what he's talking about.
**** I wish it to be clearly understood that in adducing this example, I am neither defending nor attacking The Jerusalem Bible, which was approved for liturgical use in Britain in the early years of the postconciliar neocatholic church. A far better (and far better-informed) critical assessment of it than I now am or ever was equipped to give may be found here (http://www.bible-researcher.com/jerusalem-bible.html). For what little it is worth, I find the reviewer's cavils persuasive.
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In the Douay psalm 22 (23 in Protestant and Novus Ordo bibles) says "The Lord ruleth me ...", but the Douay says shepherd, and of course the Protestants and even the Novus Ordos, say "The Lord is my shepherd" when reciting this psalm.
In spanish they use shepherd too, "El Señor es Mi pastor."
Is "shepherd", then, a mistranslation that should never be used?
Although in the Douay the commentary says ruleth comes from the Hebrew shepherd, but the word is not in the actual text of course. "Valley" is not in the Douay either.
The correct word is shepherd. It makes sense in that it was a prophecy of the coming of the Good Shepherd, Jesus.
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The Latin is:
Dominus regit me, et nihil mihi deerit:
Dominus is Lord. Regit is ruleth.
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The most crucial observation to keep in mind is that never once has 'Cathedra' (and 'poche'), nor only once has 'shin', quoted the actual Latin text of the Vulgate, which is not in dispute (thus I infer its uncontested acceptance) herein.
It seems to me that the most logical conclusion is that neither 'Cathedra' nor 'poche' knows any Latin beyond pronouncing words they see on the "Latin side" in their Missals. And thus far, all 'shin' has shown us is that he/she(?) is able, from time to time, to pattern-match or puzzle out an occasional word or two.
Yet the 2 principal protestors against the Bp.-Challoner translation stubbornly make broad claims disparaging the quality of his translation, and comparably broad claims promoting the Douay-Reims translation, which is, I suppose they keep forgetting, produced principally from the Latin of the Vulgate.
In fairness, I should probably credit 'shin' with an unintentional reminder to double-check my numbers:
The 1610 is an accurate translation of the Vulgate (though the Clementine had not been compiled yet).
The Catholic scholars translating the Douay-Reims version were unable to refer to the 'Clementine' revision of the Vulgate (named for Pope Clement VIII (s. 1592--1605), but produced at what was arguably lightning speed, principally by St. Robert Bellarmine), because it didn't appear until 9 Nov. 1592. What's that? You point out that it allowed for many years of work before the D.-R. Old Testament was published in Douay, in 2 volumes, in 1609 and 1610? So simple arithmetic suggests. But they had completed the actual work of its translation in Reims, at about the same time as they published the New Testament there: 1582. Nonetheless, they still had other versions of the Vulgate at hand, thanks to the new evangelism wonder-technology known as movable-type printing (e.g.: "Mazarin" edition: 1455).
Like i said i am no expert on anything, and i don't need to be one to see the obvious. The original Douay is a word-for-word literal translation of the Vulgate. The Challoner is not. End of story.
Your obstinacy blinds you to realizing that you can't possibly "see" anything when you don't understand the language from which the Douay-Reims is translated. Such as seeing how "literal" a translation is. Consider one of the current examples:
05 Memor fui dierum antiquorum : meditatus sum in omnibus operibus tuis, in factis manuum tuarum meditabar.
05 I remembered the days of old, I meditated on all thy works: I meditated upon the works of thy hands.
I take it that your principal objection to verse 5 is the 2nd appearance of "works" instead of substituting an at-best centuries-obsolete English "facts" for Latin "factis"? Why? Because the words sound the same? Altho' "works", in the sense of "things made", is certainly valid, "upon the deeds", in the sense of "things done", being a different plain-speakin' word dating back to Anglo-Saxon/Old English, might've been the best choice. Altho' do I recognize that I write from a perspective 400 years later than the scholars of Douay & Reims.
But in arguing the "literalness" of the translations, no one herein has yet offered anything resembling a definition or standard. So I'll offer mine: A translation is "literal" if (and only if) all translated words retain their respective parts of speech, retain their corresponding attributes (e.g.: case, person, tense, voice), and are placed in corresponding syntactic structures, to the degree that the source and target languages allow.
I'm not surprised that you failed to notice to notice the pachyderm in the library: Starting from the English translation above, readers aware of grammatical cases might assume that the first clause in Latin uses a transitive verb that takes the [/i]accusative[/i] case. They could do that, but they would be wrong. Instead, it uses a predicate verb that takes a predicate adjective in the nominative case, whose meaning is completed by a noun in the genitive case.
Here's a translation I've devised, matching the Latin syntax, accepting the cost of added complexity, to qualify as truly "literal":
05 I have been mindful of the days of old [....]
Would someone please post a verifiable original unChallonerized Douay-Reims version of this verse (or all 12 verses) in Ps. 142? If it doesn't look very much like what I offered immediately above, I'll need someone credible to explain to me why we won't have good cause to reject it as not "a word-for-word literal translation". It need not be identical, e.g.: Latin requires agreement of cases in noun-adjective phrases, but in English, the explicit double genitive "of days of old" is arguably no better a translation than the single agreed genitive "of old days".
Now that it'd no longer be a spoiler, I'll endorse the keen & more extensive comments of 'claudel' on this topic; I don't recall having any substantial disagreement. And I expect that his writing will be considered, over time, to provide better examples of charitably worded criticism than mine.
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Tangentially related, but related:
http://www.cathinfo.com/catholic.php/anyone-aware-ofuse-Logos-Software
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Are you saying that the original Douay Bible [....] is not even accurate?
No, I'm not saying that, e.g.:
05 I remembered the days of old, [...].
The English translation immediately above could be said to express the meaning of the Latin "accurately", in the sense that it conveys its meaning without operational omission nor distortion. Beware that I'm using "accurate" in a colloquial sense; it might not be the correct scholarly word in this instance.
That it is not a literal translation?
Not yet. I'm indeed saying that the Challonerized Douay-Reims Bible is not a literal translation, because it fails the definition or standard that I offered in my previous posting (Sep 01, 2013, 8:40 pm). I've made no claims about the unChallonerized "original Douay Bible" editions: I don't have one, nor do I know of any that have a budget-friendly cost or reasonable computer-resource requirements - . But I did provide a rather exact example of what a literal translation should look like for the specific verse in Psalms under discussion.
A literal translation might not matter much--nor even be desirable--for reading translations of some works originally written in Latin (e.g.: I.C. Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars?). But it might matter a lot when referring to the Bible to resolve religious disputes (assuming that the opposing minds are still open). Or trying to learn what nuance-intensive docuмents produced at, or inspired by, Vatican II really mean.
Note #: For whatever reason, <www.scribd.com> has always been a complete waste of time for my system; I suppose it demands something that I refuse to allow to any other Web sites.
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… A literal translation might not matter much--nor even be desirable--for reading translations of some works originally written in Latin (e.g.: I.C. Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic Wars?). But it might matter a lot when referring to the Bible to resolve religious disputes (assuming that the opposing minds are still open). …
Dear AlligatorDicax:
I'm writing this comment—and in so doing, alas, breaking my word not to contribute anything more to this thread that Cathedra's groundless and boundless egocentrism has despoiled—solely because I can't PM you.
I thank you for your kind words about my comments. Rather more to the point, however, I thank you for broaching a critically significant issue, one that Cathedra has clearly not even a clue about.* I speak, of course, of the vexed question of literal translation; specifically, what precisely the beast so styled actually consists in.
First, a bit of background.
As you know and Cathedra doesn't, this matter is justly termed vexed because it has vexed saints and scholars for two thousand years (OK, 1,975 years and counting). Had Cathedra spent less time posting rubbish here at CI and more time doing the kind of one-hand-tied-behind-one's-back research that the Internet has made possible, he would have long since learned that (to start three hundred years after the beginning) Jerome himself kept reworking his translations of the OT and the NT because he realized that he either had got things wrong or could simply do them much better. Between his death and the publication of the Clementine Vulgate, there must have been at least twenty fully authorized attempts at fixing the many parts of the Vulgate that fully orthodox popes, bishops, and scholars considered inadequate or worse. That most of those fixes came to be seen as cures worse than the disease does not expunge the central fact: those responsible to God Himself for the preservation and transmission of the Faith were gravely concerned that the Vulgate's transmission of the Hebrew and Greek originals—the only texts, as I'm sure you know, that the Church in its wisdom deems authored by God—was less than fully adequate to its task.
Work certainly didn't stop at the Clementine Vulgate, of course, though the process of revision and change, whether approved or merely proposed, was largely piecemeal until the first years of the twentieth century. It was then that Pope Saint Pius X called for a complete revision (amounting to replacement) of the Vulgate, with all work to stem from the original biblical sources, with due weight ("due," that is, in the opinion of the best biblical scholars available, their opinions to be subject to the approval of those with the appropriate Apostolic authority, of course) to be accorded to the many, many variant editions in how many languages and from how many sources only the Lord Himself knows (the "Versions" is—again, as I'm sure you're aware—the technical term applied to some of this confusion of riches). This was the larger project of which the sainted pontiff's quite radical restructuring of the Breviary was but a part.
Most folks know that most of this work unfortunately came to naught (a couple of wars and a little thing called Modernism interfered with priorities and budgets). Whether rightly or wrongly, even the Pian breviary has borne a lot of criticism, most of it, be it respectfully noted, from people who are and were as orthodox as he was (albeit less saintly). (My life being short and calls on my time being many, I shan't even consider opening the can of worms known as the Psalter of Pius XII.)
The last century, as it happens, is a target-rich environment for those with a serious interest in the Bible, especially for those whose interest is getting what God said as close to right as possible in available translations, whether into Latin or English or any of the other vulgar tongues. You know, I know, and perhaps even the robo-posting Cathedra knows that the institutional (or conciliar or neocatholic or whatever) church now has officially approved a replacement for the Vulgate, the Nova vulgata. You also know and I also know (all bets are off anent Cathedra, however) that only a fool would automatically assume that the New Vulgate is ipso facto sacrilegious or blasphemous (not to mention wrong!) because of the times in which it came to be or the (assumed) lack of orthodox faith among those that produced it. All that can be said for certain on this matter can be put in the form of a question: Do you or don't you accept the reasoning and the specific counsel given by Pius XII in Divino afflante Spiritu?
Let's get back to "literal translation." The essence of the problem with any definition of "literal" subsists in what I call the "venir de" situation.** What is true of English and French is and was also true of every form of Latin: namely, that the language, every last variant of it, is larded with idioms, an idiom being an expression whose true meaning is not derivable from the meaning of the words that are its components.
Take "venir de" as a locus classicus of the problem. In the profoundly misguided "literal" sense that Cathedra has deafened us all with, "Je viens de manger" ought to mean "I come about eating" or "… from eating" or "… for eating" or "… of eating" or … well, you get the drift. Any such translation is 100 percent wrong and deeply misleading, since what the several hundred million people who know at least schoolboy French already understand is that the expression means "I've just eaten." Can we agree that this horse, being now well and truly dead, needs no additional flogging?
Back then to the Vulgate. Jerome and the hundreds of other scholars who have been seriously concerned with biblical translation from his time to ours knew that Hebrew, Greek, and their own Latin was as ridden with equivalents to "venir de" as French or English is. One of the many problems for a translator, whether from Hebrew to Latin or from Latin to English, is coming to grips with a critical aspect of human psychology: the tendency to be blind to the idioms in one's mother tongue. One seldom hears scholars discussing this matter for any of several reasons: (1) true scholars tend largely to be a hermetic bunch; they don't much enjoy discussing their work with those they consider the Great Unwashed—you, me, and most other humans (I'm sure that this, too, ain't news to you); (2) dealing with more or less success with the question of what constitutes an authentically literal translation is as much a routine part of their day as using the bathroom and hence is considered as little worthy of comment. (There are reasons (3), (4), and (5), too, but I hope to goodness even Cathedra will have begun to see that this is yet another dead horse. [Yes, I know: fat chance of that.].)
The originally published Douay translation may with no little justice be judged guilty as charged—as indeed it has been so judged by people whose scholarly sandals I am not fit to loose—(a) in a failure to correctly discern the actual meaning of many of the idioms in the Latin of the various Vulgate editions they worked with, and (b) in a far more predictable and understandable failure to write in an English the meaning of whose words and idioms failed to remain stable for more than 150 years or so. That some of the commenters giving Cathedra attaboys here regard both the Vulgate and the "original" DR as ipso facto above reproach is both obvious and profoundly distressing. Plato's famous dictum, drawn from the teaching of his master Socrates, that opinion without techné is worthless was applauded and seconded by the Church Doctors and Fathers for 1,900 years. That it has been flushed down the toilet by so techné-less an individual as Cathedra—along with hundreds of millions of equally self-satisfied people, of course—is one of the worst effects of the triumph of the utterly worthless, even Satanic, form of governance known ludicrously as democracy.
On that dismal reflection, save for a last footnote,*** I bid you, Alligator, a humble and grateful adieu. Others will have to be satisfied with the penny plain version: adieu.
___________________
* Parenthetically, his truly shocking count of 500 comments in a mere two months—an average of damn near 9 a day, making him one of this site's biggest blowhards ever—should profoundly embarrass him, save that he is plainly unembarrassable.
** I here accept as given something a now-long-deceased college history teacher of mine, a La Sallian Christian Brother, said to a fellow student who told him that the only materials available in the college library on a topic he was assigned to write at length about were in French. "So what?" "I don't read French, Brother." "Nonsense! Everyone at least reads French!"
*** I truly wish you had told our self-styled scholars and exegetes that the word spelt in the Latin alphabet as "christos" is not necessarily a proper noun. Instead, and especially in the OT, it is no more and no less than the Greek for the Hebrew word Englished as Messiah. That is to say, its root meaning as a noun is "anointed one" and as an adjective, "anointed." Hence, using it in the OT as the proper-noun title for Our Blessed Lord is, more often than not, a grievous falsification of the inspired text. If you felt uneasy about pointing this fact out to one whose ignorance seems to be biogenetically invincible, you have my full sympathy. It's rather like trying to puzzle out a polite way of telling a spouse or a dear friend that leaving one's hair in the bathtub drain is a no-no.
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Um, I feel like a fifth grader after seeing claudel's monograph...
But, even grammar school boys give it a try. So I'll give my two cents.
The Rheims translation of the New Testament was published before the Clementine edition of the Sacred Vulgate, so there may be some differences between the 1582 Rhemish New Testament and the Vulgate New Testament. What these differences are, I do not know, especially since I do not have access to the Latin MSS used by the Priests at the Rheims College for their translation. They did however consult other texts and the Greek is noted in some marginal notes.
The Douay Old Testament was revised before its publication in 1609 (Vol. 1) and 1610 (Vol. 2) so as to conform with the Clementine Vulgate.
King James had a new translation of the English Innovators' mutilation of Holy Writ published in 1611 as the sole version authorized for the public liturgical use of Anglicans: hence its other name, "Authorised Version." This was necessary since the most popular English Protestant bibles were huge, overloaded with massive marginal notes and annotations that were polemical (i.e., anti-Catholic). This made it more expensive and logistically difficult for the tomes to be carried around. King James also wished to continue Elizabeth's "via media" between High Church Anglicans who wanted to revive the Sarum rites and the radical Calvinists who wanted to destroy any episcopal entity. Since the British empire was so vast and influential, the King James Bible was eventually adopted by various other Anglophone Protestant sects.
Scholars have established that the Rheims New Testament had a great influence upon the King James New Testament, which is especially seen in the original 1611 text where alternative translations were placed in the margins (something that later King James editions dropped).
Holy Mother Church has supreme authority over the text of the Sacred Scriptures, and to her alone had Christ committed this sacred treasure. One reason why Our Lord Himself never wrote anything that made it into the Canon of Holy Writ, or even dictated the final form of the same Canon, was because He wished for His Church to do so in His Name and to show that the Catholic Church alone is true and her authority alone is binding upon the faithful.
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Here's a translation I've devised, matching the Latin syntax, accepting the cost of added complexity, to qualify as truly "literal":
05 I have been mindful of the days of old [....]
[....] in English, the explicit double genitive "of days of old" is arguably no better a translation than the single-agreed genitive "of old days".
The pdf 1582 original i have says "[05] I was mindful of old days".
So I was practically spot-on, were it to be judged as Classical Latin. Perhaps some readers who're overly challenged to understand the match between the translation I offered and the "truly 'literal'" one alleged to be the exclusive domain of the original Douay-Reims:
:dancing-banana:
Or as it's summarized in Latin: Quod erat demonstrandum.
Technically, Latin "fui" is perfect active indicative, thus most precisely "I have been". English "I was" is "past tense", or more precisely, the imperfect active indicative of Latin, thus would've needed to be translated from a hypothetical Vulgate where the verb were "eram". But even my mid20th-century collegiate Classical Latin grammar descriptively/permissively offers it as a translation for "fui".
However, Vulgate Latin, being the Latin of, by, and for the common people of the Roman Empire, is simpler--or looser--than Classical Latin. So some classical forms, rules, or structures are different--or even absent.
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1 - Are you saying now that even the Vulgate is erroneous?
Of course not. I'm mystified that anything I've written could lead an honest reader to a conclusion anything like that.
2 - Which version is it then that is infallible and free of all error, according to you?
According to me? I  know perfectly well that my breadth & depth of knowledge on Biblical and other ancient Middle-Eastern history is so inadequate as to disqualify me from making any such pronouncement.
The Council of Trent declared the Latin Vulgate to be the official Bible of the Catholic Church, on April 8, 1546, and authorized the Pope to arrange for it to be corrected & stabilized.
On Nov. 9, 1592, Pope Clement VIII (s. 1592--1605) issued a revised edition of the Vulgate Bible (for which historians give substantial credit to St. Robert Bellarmine (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02411d.htm)), and declared it to be free of dogmatic errors. This formally approved edition became known as the the "Clementine" revision.
Is there some particular impediment that prevented you from searching the Web and tracking down matches for "Catholic"& "Bible", esp. in the St.-Pius-X-vintage Catholic Encyclopedia?
It's my understanding that Clement VIII's decree or proclamation was limited to the principal domains of concern for the Church (i.e.: "dogmatic" broadly interpreted to include faith and morals), and did not claim that there was no remaining error in history, astronomy, geology, paleontology, nor even in linguistic translation.
3 - The original Douai, from the 16th century, approved by the Church and praised by the author of "Where we got the Bible", is a bad  translation then?
I  have never made any such claim. You must be under a potent illusion of your own cleverness, to be posing such a blatantly obvious series of baiting questions.
4 - Is the King James a better translation than the original  Doaui  Douai ?
Who in the (expletive deleted) do you think I  am? The second coming of Origen (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/11306b.htm)? An answer de novo would require decades of dedicated study & effort. And I haven't any education in some crucial fields of knowledge, e.g.: Hebrew, that I'd need before leaping in to such a project.
I already said i recognize my ignorance here and i just want to learn how things are now.
All of us CathInfo members are fallible humans who are not omniscient. I, e.g., confess, without shame, that I'm disadvantaged by ignorance, too: I'm ignorant of popular t.v. shows, e.g.: American Idol and Dancing with the Stars. I'm especially ignorant of the allegedly-musical style of verbal diarrhea known as "hip-hop".
But "ignorance" ain't the issue herein. It seems to me that the issue you personally need to resolve is a deficiency in reading comprehension: Fabricating conclusions that I've neither presented any evidence for, nor advocated (e.g.: your '1', '2', and '3', above); while failing to recognize the very few simple conclusions to which I thought I'd led you plainly enough (i.e.: your '3', above, vs. my out-of-character animated banana: Sep 5, 2013, 9:35 pm).
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It appears I *might* have spoken to soon saying it would not occur. + JMJ
It looks like this project of putting up the original Douai and Clementine side by side, i.e. like so in this sample:
http://saintsbooks.net/Holy%20Scripture%20-%20Original%20Douai-Rheims%20and%20Clementine%20-%20Genesis%20-%20Chapter%20I%20-%20Sample.htm
is looking more feasible and being worked upon. Perhaps it will come about, in a similar form to the above. It's a significant project, so only time will tell.
If progress is made and the site goes semi-public I'll let folks know.
Prayers asked for.
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read the douay rheims challoner, and if you can't find it, the knox catholic bible or the New Jerusalem Bible
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After reading what has been posted here, I am given the impression that the King James version is more accurate than the original Douai of 1582-1610.
Is that what is being said here or am I wrong?
You are wrong. I don't know how any Catholic could have come up with this impression.
The King James version is based on Greek Latin and Hebrew MSS that are not sanctioned by the infallible magisterium of the Church, so there is no guarantee of the accuracy of those manuscripts.
It is for Holy Mother Church alone to determine which is the text that the faithful are to read. To her alone has Our Lord commissioned such an important task.
The original Douay-Rhemish version, Bp. Challoner's revisions thereof, and all other versions approved by ecclesiastical authority are all safe to read, whereas the heretical texts of the Scriptures, such as the King James, can never be read by a Catholic as if it were on the same level as versions officially sanctioned by the Church, much less make them the basis of catechesis or spiritual reading.
The Church existed before the Bible, so the Bible does not get to determine itself especially at the arbitration of private individuals who have usurped the mission and office given to the Apostles under the primacy of St. Peter and his successors.
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After reading what has been posted here, I am given the impression that the King James version is more accurate than the original Douai of 1582-1610.
Then—as Hobbledehoy politely implies and I state outright—you haven't been reading particularly closely. "Accuracy" is a vexed and vexing term, especially in that when one is speaking of translations, it is by no means clear to all that it is synonymous with "faithfulness," though it certainly should be.
Is that what is being said here …?
No. What I wrote is that Jerome himself and many popes and prelates after him considered the Vulgate imperfect—hence subject to correction. Ipso facto, no English translation from the Vulgate could logically be more faithful to the Vulgate's sources than the Vulgate itself is. (To put the case plainly, if you don't see the necessity of this deductive relationship, you ought not to be reading this thread.)
The Church, speaking authoritatively for the past five centuries and more, has never gone farther than to declare the Vulgate or any other approved (i.e., imprimatur'd) translation from either the Vulgate or the Greek and Hebrew originals—which the Church infallibly considers the sole divinely inspired Scriptures—free from doctrinal error. It is for this reason that a wide range of English translations has been approved by completely orthodox popes and prelates for use both in the liturgy and in private reading.
Thus, the debate over either the worthiness or the faithfulness or both of one translation or another, while a very, very important matter, is distinct in kind from the fitness of any given translation from the infallibly inspired sources to be declared free from doctrinal error. A reader's failure to see this distinction is not something I or anyone else commenting on this thread can remedy. Maturity and appropriate instruction alone will suffice to overcome that obstacle.
It is my considered opinion that Cathedra, whilst loudly pretending that his allegedly simple questions were never addressed, let alone answered, was lying in his teeth. He knew that he was confounding faithfulness to the source with doctrinal soundness, and no matter how often he was chided for doing so—Alligator Dicax was especially clear and eloquent in instruction—he continued in the pretense of being a plain, devout, humble servant of scriptural study, one whose deep-seated concerns were being obfuscated by fancy talk and specious reasoning. In fact, he was slandering learned and honorable and pious men, Bishop Challoner first and foremost, whose concern for the salvation of the Faithful perfectly matched that of the bishops, popes, and their designated scholarly aides whose desire for ever better translations of the Scriptures has been a constant in the True Church for darn near a thousand years.
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… The King James version is based on Greek Latin and Hebrew MSS that are not sanctioned by the infallible magisterium of the Church, so there is no guarantee of the accuracy of those manuscripts.
It is for Holy Mother Church alone to determine which is the text that the faithful are to read. To her alone has Our Lord commissioned such an important task.
Excellent sentiments, excellently expressed.
Are you aware, however, that there have been several imprimatur'd editions of the KJV? That is, very slightly adapted editions of the KLV declared free of doctrinal error and hence suitable for instructive reading by the Faithful? If I now had access to my full library, I could give you publication date and the name of the imprimatur'ing prelate, but I don't and so I can't.
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"Accuracy" is a vexed and vexing term, especially in that when one is speaking of translation, it is by no means clear to all that it is synonymous with "faithfulness," though it certainly should be.
To further clarify (for what I hope is the last time), "faithfulness" means "faithfulness to the source from which the translation is made"! Meeting this standard constitutes the full extent of the translator's brief. The doctrinal or textual "correctness" of the source from which he works is a matter extrinsic from his mission. Confusing faithful translation with doctrinal reliability is a grave error, no matter who makes it. Ultimately, the doctrinal accuracy or reliability of a given source or translation is above the pay grade of a translator.
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read the douay rheims challoner, and if you can't find it, the knox catholic bible or the New Jerusalem Bible
Well, I'd say you're batting .667, which is MVP-caliber stuff in baseball and not bad at all in biblical scholarship.
I have owned a copy of the Knox translation since 1958, when a curate in my parish gave it to me as a grammar school graduation present. It has always had critics—including outspoken ones—but it's never lacked defenders either. One of the latter is Father Anthony Cekada, who told me in a private communication that he thought highly of the Knox OT. (One needn't share Father Cekada's SVism—I don't—to greatly respect his opinion in such a matter as this.)
The New Jerusalem Bible is a dicier affair, however. Its editor and primary translator, Henry Wansbrough, has superintended a work that is often farther removed from the original Jerusalem Bible than the Challoner revision of the Douai-Rheims is from its putative source. In many ways this is a good thing, yet there is no getting around the NJB's overriding obstacle: the substitution of so-called gender neutrality for the sources' normative use of masculine pronouns and adjectives. Look up Psalm 1 online to get a sense of what you're in for if you make this version your vade mecuм.
___________________
P.S. Both the Knox and NJ bibles are post-Divino afflante spiritu products. That is, the former, while being officially a translation from the Vulgate, is described on the cover and title page as being translated "in the light of the Hebrew and Greek originals." Father Knox's notes make it amply clear when a reading he adopts or recommends depends on non-Vulgate sources. The NJB is a frankly declared translation from the original sources. Dr. Wansbrough announces that his primary OT source is the unpointed Masoretic text. He treats the Septuagint as, essentially, a backup reference, save in those canonically established texts for which the LXX is the only source. The Vulgate is demoted to one of the "versions."