Here, as elsewhere, in CI threads claiming superior accuracy, even "bestness," for one scriptural translation (usually the very first DR) over all others, what is painfully evident is the almost universal avoidance of one critical fact: literally no one here (emphatically including yours truly) has any period-appropriate Hebrew and Greek, and almost no one has any ecclesiastical Latin.
(I studied classical Latin for five years in high school and college, but what the finest Latin scholar I ever knew, the now long dead Brother Albion Anthony Moon, FSC, said of himself is, truth to tell, far truer of me [and at least equally so of you, gentle reader]: "I don't trust my own translations of Church Latin because I studied it closely for only five years or so." Thus, how especially cautious should everyone here be in declaring one version of a scriptural translation preferable to another on grounds of accuracy!)
The caution about the lack of Greek is especially relevant here for two reasons: (1) Though use of Greek and Hebrew originals for what are widely but somewhat sloppily called Catholic Bible translations into English has since Pius XII's time been standard and recommended practice, it should not be forgotten that the Vulgate (translated of course from various Greek and Hebrew sources, as well as earlier Latin translations), the sole basis of all earlier translations, has itself been subject to near-continuous revision (usually but not always of a minor nature) since Jerome's own time—and he never formally ceased revising and correcting his own work! The Clementine Vulgate of the sixteenth century was, of course, anything but a minor revision, and the revision process, placed thereafter in the charge of full-time Vatican Latinists, has continued unbroken since. (What's more, if anyone here knows of any hardline Trad criticism of even the Nova Vulgata of 1979, it will come as news to me.) As is well known, the first edition of DR was not based on the Clementine Vulgate, which was still incomplete and unpublished at the same time DR was in preparation. Thus, Gregory Martin and DR's other translators were keenly aware of the need to revise and correct DR's first edition. (2) Though much of the original KJV translation of the New Testament shows the influence of DR's wording, the former's translators were also able to consult both the Clementine Vulgate and whatever copies of the Septuagint and (for the OT) the Masoretic Hebrew text they could get their hands on. To take one very famous example, the start of Psalm 22/23, the first DR translation used the older Vulgate wording "Dominus regit me" to yield "The Lord ruleth me." The wording later adopted as undoubtedly preferable, "Dominus pascit me" (the Lord
shepherds me), did not (I believe) even appear in the pre-Clementine Vulgate as an alternative rendering.
Please note that I do not call attention to this matter to depreciate the DR, the Vulgate, or anything else. Rather, my point is to indicate that biblical translation, indeed biblical scholarship generally, is of the nature of quicksand: one false step, and you may sink without trace. Venturing into this boggy terrain should be left to true experts.… As I do not own it (and cannot find it online), I cannot provide the verse as it appears in the execrable Jerusalem Bible (the official translation of the NO in the UK) …
I do not share BTNYC's thoroughly negative assessment of the original JB, although I have in a much earlier thread linked to a
markedly censorious review by a man whose Latin and Greek and whose knowledge of biblical scholarship dwarfs all of ours taken in toto. I think that BTNYC's description may far more aptly be applied to the New Jerusalem Bible. This version—which, in the opinion of almost all scholars, far more closely mirrors the meaning of the Greek and Hebrew originals in numerous side-by-side comparisons with the original JB—tosses all its gains into the fire by being one of the earliest English Bible translations to adopt so-called gender neutrality almost everywhere that it can be managed without obvious ludicrousness of effect.
A brief note of correction: the original JB was one of
three English translations approved by the UK bishops (1) for English readings of the epistle and Gospel at Mass prior to the 2nd Vatican Council and (2) for use in the actual NOM itself back in the late sixties. The other versions so approved were Ronald Knox's and—here I do not entirely trust my recollection—the slightly emended version of the RSV that has been imprimatur'd for all English-speaking Catholics since the early 1950s. (For what it's worth, I've never met a Catholic biblical scholar who had anything but a high opinion of the imprimatur'd RSV.)
I freely admit to having no idea whether the old JB still holds its NO canonical status in the UK or whether it's been replaced by the NJB. I wouldn't be surprised were the latter the case since, after all, the NJB doesn't yet refer to God as "she". How soon, I wonder, till Papa Frank OK's the crossing of that bridge?
Topic: Vain Repetition (Read 2034 times)