Dear Vladimir,
As requested, here is my take on this.
As I have hitherto remarked to others, my personal preference shall ever be the Douay Old Testament and the Rheims New Testament as published at those French cities by the English College that educated and trained the clerics who fled from the persecution of Elizabeth I only to go back and save English souls (and some these Seminarians became the Priests whom we now honor as holy Martyrs). The reason is twofold: the literal (some would say slavish) fidelity to the Latinity of the Sacred Vulgate and the commentary (more on that in a moment or three).
A quick perusal at the mimeographed MSS of the 1582 Rheims New Testament and the 1635 Douay Old Testament will shew how necessary the orthographical emendations done by Bishop Challoner became during the course of the centuries. Elizabethan English orthography may intimidate most present day readers; since there was no such thing back then as "correct spelling" as we understand it now, since what mattered was the phonological enunciation of the words, and there are many ways of eliciting the same pronunciation of word with a various and sundry assortment of letters. Moreover, the mimeographed MSS, which the now incarcerated non-Catholic Gordon Winrod distributed some decades ago, and which Maximus Scriptorius Publications has happily reprinted (be thankful for that because my own copy of the tomes cost me over $400 when I was a young and lively University student), is somewhat difficult to read at some places, but (speaking of one who owns both the original Winrod tomes and the ChurchLatin.com reprints) this is a very minimal impediment. The recent reprint is better because it is somewhat larger than the original Winrod MSS, so it is clearer to read.
Regarding the Haydock Bible: a wonderful edition. It is more correct to speak of it as a variant of the Douay-Rheimish translation, rather than an edition of Bp. Challoner's emendation. I have heard some comment that Fr. Haydock's text is somewhat better and clearer than the edition of Bp. Challoner's text that was (and still is) widely in circulation.
Regarding the commentaries: the commentary found in the Haydock Bible is very concise and informative, and was meant for the average lettered Catholic who wished to understand more of the Holy Scriptures. The commentary in the pre-Challoner Douay-Rhemish translation (marginal notes, prefatory notes, annotations, &c.) had a specific apologetical purpose: to refute the heresies and errors of the Protestant editions of the Bible, which propagated their heresies. The commentary in the latter is more copious and more theologically detailed than the former, precisely because the Fathers of the English College wished for clerics and learned layfolk to have a translation of the Sacred Vulgate with the information necessary in order to both understand the texts and be enabled to answer the controversial questions of the day. The apologetical nature of these commentaries make them particularly desirable for our day, since the old Protestant errors have arisen in new forms, and the "Evangelicals" and other "non-denominational" Christians [sic] essentially bring up the questions Luther and Calvin and other heretics had brought up in the past (sola Scriptura, private interpretation, &c.). When it comes to questions of a purely archeological nature, the Haydock commentaries may be more thorough, since the specific purpose of the Haydock commentaries was informative rather than apologetically driven specifically against the Protestant heretics (though there is plenty of stuff in there that refutes them too).
My advice: if you can handle the Elizabethan orthography and the printing usages of that period, I would advise you to get the reprographically reprinted edition of the 1582 Rheims New Testament and the 1635 Douay Old Testament. Otherwise, the Haydock Bible would be a wonderful investment.
The commentaries of the 1582 Rheims New Testament and the 1635 Douay Old Testament there often mentions what portions of the Scriptures serve for lessons at Mass and at Matins, and there's a table of Epistles and Gospels as one of the appendices. Peculiar to this edition of the Douay-Rhemish translation alone, is the insertion as an appendix of the translation of the apocryphal books that were rejected from the Canon by the Church: the Prayer of King Manasses and the 3rd and 4th Books of Esdras.
Hey, that reminds me...
FUN FACT
The Introit of today's Mass (it is yet Whit-Tuesday here on the Pacific coast) is taken from the 4th Book of Esdras, proving against the Protestants that the Bible was the sole source of authority for the Christian of the first ages, and that the Missal itself is older than the Biblical Canon!
Topic: Haydock Commentary (Read 6196 times)