"Bethlehem-Ephrata! Least do they reckon thee among all the clans of Juda?
Nay, it is from thee I look to find a prince that shall rule over Israel. Whence
comes he? From the first beginning, from ages untold! Marvel not, then, if the Lord abandons his people for a time, until
she who is in travail has brought forth her child; others there are, brethren of
his, that must be
restored to the citizenship of Israel. Enabled by the Lord his God,
confident in that mighty protection, stands he, our shepherd, and safely folds
his flock; fame of him now reaches to the world’s end; who else
should be its hope of recovery?" -Knox Bible
"You, Bethlehem-Ephrathah too small to be among the clans of Judah, from
you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel; whose origin
is from of old, from ancient times. Therefore the Lord will give them up,
until the time when she who is to give birth has borne, and the rest of
his kindred shall return to the children of Israel. He shall stand firm
and shepherd his flock by the strength of the LORD, in the majestic name
of the LORD, his God; and they shall remain, for now his greatness shall
reach to the ends of the earth; he shall be peace." -NAB
9 comments:
I never owned (let alone read) the Knox translation before it recently came out again and you started posting readings from his translation (and I'm glad you are doing this), but I can honestly say I don't like the translation. It just always reads and sounds wooden and choppy to me. And maybe it is me, but I don't think I could read it for very long before I found my hand reaching for different translation.
I have no idea how many "copies" or "versions" of the Latin Vulgate are in existence, but I wish there was a modern, english translation of the Vulgate available for purchase.
I like Knox here, I think he wins by a decent margin.
There are only three full English translations of the Vulgate, and one additional partial one:
1. Douay-Rheims 1609-1582
2. DR-Challoner 1749
2.1 DR-Challoner 1750
2.2 DR-Challoner 1752*
3. Knox, 1940(?)
4. Confraternity NT
*The Challoner in Haydock Bibles is a different year, and a slightly different revision (I believe it's the 1752) compared to the DRC that's sold in most Douay-Rheims (Challoner) Bibles, which I believe is 1749 or 1750, or so I have been assured. I've not gone through the entire thing to look for a difference in punctuation here or some additional italics there.
There's also a Spanish translation, the Torres and Amat version.
For the Vulgate itself, there are, off the top of my head, three editions:
1. Clementina
2. Nova
3. Critica/Sttutgartensia
I'm not sure you could really call the 1941 NT a 'translation' of the Vulgate, given how frequently it corrects the text by referring to the Greek....
Knox refers to the Hebrew and Greek extensively as well, from what I can tell, and Challoner revised with an eye solely for the King James.
The original D-R is plainly and incomprehensibly Latin. It wears the Vulgate like a cloak. The later Challoners are almost Catholicized King James Bibles, especially in the NT.
I don't think, at that, there's anything as a "pure" translation (or one may say, translation in a vacuum) for example, from the Masoretic Hebrew and Received Greek alone, without any reference whatsoever to other versions in the same or other languages. Even the Vulgate of St Jerome was translated with eye to the Greek, Hebrew, and Old Latin at a minimum - and that for the Old Testament alone!
The King James NT was, as is common knowledge, "looted bodily from Tyndale", to adapt a phrase of Knox.
I don't think the Confraternity NT is any "less pure" of a Vulgate than Knox, although both are less so than Challoner, which is much less so that the original Rheimish version.
The Confraternity NT is a translation of the Vulgate, but it was a critical edition of the Vulgate that was used, not the Clementine. The introduction stated that using the critical edition of the Latin made it very close to the critical edition of the Greek, but by no means did they ever abandon the Latin in favor of the Greek.
I think the major change in the Confraternity NT was to simplify the english, much like the RSV did in comparison to the KJV. I still like the older ones better in many places because they are more literal, hence the many similarities between the Vulgate/DR and the KJV.
Actually if you read the marginal notes in the 1941 Confraternity NT they do so that there are several places where the Latin text has been replaced outright with the Greek text....and many other places where the Latin reading has been relegated to a footnote in favor of the Greek
I can only remember four places in the Confraternity NT where the Greek text is mentioned, Luke 16:9, John 10:8, 1 Cor. 15:51, Rom. 1:5. In each instance the translation in the Bible text is from the Latin, and the Greek alternate is in the footnote.
I know there were several bizarre editions of the Confraternity Bible produced in the 40's and the 50's, some with additional notes and cross references from the respective publisher, I would be interested to know what particular verses, and which particular edition of the Confraternity Bible is referred to in the above comment. Thanks :)
I found a couple of old Confraternity Bibles in my deep storage. I have one from Catholic Book Publishing Co. copyright 1951. It has the additional notes and cross-references I was referring to above. I compared this to another edition from P.J. Kennedy and Sons copyright 1961 and found them to be the same. The major differences were actually the study materials, illustrations, and maps. I am guessing that perhaps at some point the New Testament notes and cross references were officially enhanced, but perhaps they were simply condensed in the NT-only edition.
In the comment above, I was referring to the NT-only edition I am more familiar with (due to the fact that I was able to obtain a new edition and the other ancient ones are crusty and falling apart.) But I did go through the older ones as well and look at the footnotes. I found a few more references to the Greek text variations, but the Latin was used for translation because the Confraternity NT was used in the Liturgy. (I did a guest post about “Old Missals” recently on this blog which referred to this specifically.) Also, the notes showed a few instances where the Clementine Vulgate had some additional words that are not present in the critical edition of the Vulgate and Greek.
The interesting thing about the Confraternity NT in general is that is stands in the gap of Catholic Bible translations being made from the Latin and from the original languages. The Latin was used previously (for one reason,) because it was believed that the Vulgate text was better preserved than the available manuscripts in the original languages. As the critical texts began to emerge, it was apparent that not only was the Vulgate more reliable than the Textus Receptus, but that the critical edition of the Vulgate was very similar indeed to the critical edition of the Greek New Testament. I think that text notes in the Confraternity NT show that quite succinctly. The logical progression at this point, was to simply translate from the Greek, hence the timeliness of the Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943 that reoriented the CCD translation to be made from the original languages.
"Knox refers to the Hebrew and Greek extensively as well, from what I can tell,"
In 'On Englishing the Bible' Knox actually talks about how he wanted to correct the Latin text, but chose not to, because he wasn't commissioned to create a critical Latin text, he was asked to translate the Vulgate, and as such, changing the text, even when it was clearly wrong, was his job. He didn't reference to Greek to 'correct' the Latin, he used it only when the Latin was ambiguous or too corrupted to be able to translate.
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