The best English version by far is the Douay Rheims Leo Haydock version.  This was the same version that JFK was sworn in to office with.  Catholic Treasures had a beautiful version with Blessed Pius IX's portrait in the front.


http://haydock1859.tripod.com/

I use the Douay-Rheims but for passages that are hard for me to understand I do refer to the RSV-Catholic Edition, not the New Revised Standard Version.  I can't point to any particular differences between the RSV and NRSV but I steer clear of anything with "new" in the title if I can help it.

Some of the words in the DR are a bit obscure (particularly the OT) and having a translation in contemporary English helps me to decipher them.

This was the same version that JFK was sworn in to office with.

Sad to say, this is hardly a recommendation of anything.

There was another English translation prior to Vatican II, called the "Confraternity Bible." Publications of this translations started in 1941, and continued through 1965, until it was replaced by the New American Bible. To my knowledge, few trads use this translation.

I use the Confraternity version (long out of print) to the fullest extent possible (i.e., only the NT is complete; the project was shut down before work had progressed far on the OT), and I recommend it without reservation. It has absolutely no connection with the NAB, whether in a scholarly capacity or in an administrative sense of any sort.

I use the Douay-Rheims but for passages that are hard for me to understand I do refer to the RSV Catholic Edition.

Good comment.

Yes, indeed. The RSV-CE is a superb edition, in many respects the most highly recommendable translation now in existence for English speakers.

I consider the Knox translation and the original Jerusalem Bible (very hard nowadays to find, alas) also completely recommendable. I have no hesitation either reading or consulting them, and I think no one else should either.

The RSV is a translation from the Greek version of the Scriptures (the Septuagint and the Greek N.T.).

This is incorrect; or rather, it is correct only in a very limited sense. Like the King James and virtually all Bible translations of the past eighty years (including Catholic translations approved prior to Vatican II), the RSV OT is based on a wide variety of ancient sources, with the unpointed Masoretic Hebrew MSS taken as primary (these were Jerome's primary sources for the Vulgate OT, of course). For the OT, the RSV certainly makes full use of the Septuagint, but this version serves as the primary source only for those books and passages no longer existing elsewhere that Jєωs and Protestants reject as uncanonical but we Catholics (along with the Eastern Orthodox) consider fully canonical (the term Bible scholars use is deuterocanonical). Examples are Tobias/Tobit, the Maccabees books, and the additions to Daniel.

… the New Revised Standard Version employs inclusive language, thus rendering poor and even falsified translations into English.

Correct. However, to its credit, the NRSV is not as thoroughgoing in this failing as most subsequent translations—sadly including the New Jerusalem Bible, which otherwise would be a truly monumental accomplishment.

I see that Ignatius Press has the RSV-CE on sale for $27 in paperback.  Don't care for the red cover though.

The Douay-Rheims wears the maillot jaune in the Biblical peloton. It's the tete de course in communicating the Lord's word to the soul.  :farmer:

At least for English speakers. :wink:

The true head of the pack is, of course, the Vulgate.

'cause you know Jesus definitely spoke Latin  :cheers:

'cause you know Jesus definitely spoke Latin  :cheers:

No, the Vulgate is the first because of the Council of Trent:

But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.

Moreover, the same sacred and holy Synod,--considering that no small utility may accrue to the Church of God, if it be made known which out of all the Latin editions, now in circulation, of the sacred books, is to be held as authentic,--ordains and declares, that the said old and vulgate edition, which, by the lengthened usage of so many years, has been approved of in the Church, be, in public lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, held as authentic; and that no one is to dare, or presume to reject it under any pretext whatever.

That's not to say things like the Septuagint have no value, far from it, just that the Vulgate is to be regarded as the definitive version of Sacred Scripture.