Tuesday, October 31, 2017

A Cool Site

Just came across this site MaybeToday.org where there is a short history of the Catholic Bible in English.  Most of this we have discussed here, but they have done a nice job bringing it all together in one article.

18 comments:

Matthew Doe said...

That reminds me... does anybody know if there will be a Nicolas King bible, 2nd edition, which at a minimum adds the missing Letter of Jeremiah, better fixes internal formatting inconsistencies and adds verse numbers throughout, and best supplies the rest of the LXX as Apocrypha? I would buy that update, but I won't buy the current version.

(It's a pet peeve of mine that Catholic bibles do to the Eastern Orthodox what most Protestant bibles do to the Catholics: cut away the Apocrypha even though they were historically present. In a translation actually fully based on the LXX, this becomes highly irritating to me...)

johnwgillis said...

Timothy - thanks for the link. I'm glad you liked the article. I visit your site every once in a while - I think I learned about the existence of New Catholic Version here. You have a nice thing going here...
John

Timothy said...

Thank you John. I appreciate the fact that you have all the Bible’s conveniently together. Great job.

Jerry Mc Kenna said...

A very nice site, since in conveniently lists translations in one place.

Timothy said...

And I believe it’s being revised again.

johnwgillis said...

Michael Demers, thanks for the correction on the RGP publication date. I hadn't followed the history on that past 2008.

Biblical Catholic said...

Ever since I first learned about it, I have wanted to get a copy of the Kleist-Lily New Testament, but it is virtually impossible to find, and when you do find it, it costs a ridiculous amount, $100 or $150. It must not have sold very many copies when it was originally published.

I will probably have to wait until it goes into the public domain, around 2051, and hope someone reprints it.

johnwgillis said...

Biblical Catholic - you must not be looking in the right places! I picked up a Good quality hardcover copy from AbeBooks last year for $5. They show one available today for $4: https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22447766310&searchurl=tn%3Dnew%2Btestament%26sortby%3D17%26an%3Dkleist%2Bjames%2Blilly%2Bjoseph

They even have a Very Good copy for ~$20. Mine had no dust jacket, but was very clean inside.

Timothy said...

Michael,
Thanks for linking that article. I couldn’t remember where I had read that one. And yes, it is an utter mess. Who knows now with the new Motu Proprio.

Tom C said...

The original Douay-Rheims was available in print just a few years ago but I think it is again out of print, apart from the transliterated (updated spelling) version of Dr. William G. von Peters. There was a facsimile edition available from Maximus Scriptorius Publications. It consisted of scanned versions of the 1635 Douay OT and the 1582 Rheims NT complete with Early Modern English spelling. It was available as a download, CD-ROM or a 5-volume quarto hardcover set (print-on-demand). It is no longer listed in the main shopping area of their website, however.

The page describing it is still up:

http:// www.churchlatin.com/douayrheims.aspx

Jason MSpyridonP said...

That was a great read.

I had no idea there were so many attempts at creating a new Catholic English Bible between 1610 - 1900

It was very educational and interesting learning why none of them gained traction and why the Douay reigned supreme for 350 years.

Mike said...

The original Douay-Rheims was available in print just a few years ago but I think it is again out of print, apart from the transliterated (updated spelling) version of Dr. William G. von Peters.

I believe one can still get it from lulu.com here

Anonymous said...

Thank you johnwgillis for the tip, after looking into the Kleist/Lily New Testament, I decided to get a copy. There was a very nice looking VG copy on Amazon for only $500.00!

However, I decided it was probably better to get a nice looking good conditioned version for $9.50 ;-)
They had them for even cheaper but mine was listed with some pictures, so I decided to shell out the extra bucks for that one

Pax,
John

Bob said...

(Commenter sits down in a folding chair, looks at feet, sheepishly sips coffee from a styrofoam cup and brushes some hair off his sweating forehead.)

"Hi, My name's Bob, and I really don't mind inclusive language all that much".



Really though, inclusive language isn't a trend in bible translation. It is a trend in the English language itself. And in terms of inclusive language bible translations, it is a spectrum from very conservative use of inclusive language to quite a bit of it. I think its high time we have a real nuts-n-bolts conversation about what works, what doesn't, etc rather than just saying that its bad by definition. It is here to stay, like it or not.

The article was very interesting and well researched but I feel that it falls into a very cliche way of writing about inclusive language.

Bob said...

Now that that my grumble is off my chest though, I certainly have never seen a history of the revisions of the Douay Rheims so completely done!

Bravo to the author!

Timothy said...

Bob,

This could be a very good conversation. Would you be interested in authoring something short as a sort of conversation starter on inclusive language?

Biblical Catholic said...

"It is a trend in the English language itself. "

If that is true, then why did the state of California recently pass a law threatening prison terms for people who don't use the 'correct' inclusive pronouns when referring to people?

Do common trends that originate from the bottom up require threat of prison terms for people who refuse to go along with it? Or, is the use of coercion more typical of top-down authoritarian movements?

Bob said...

Biblical Catholic,

Since I don't frequent politically conservative websites (or Democrat aligned ones either for that matter), I had to look up what you were referencing about California.

I'm relieved to discover that this particular claim seems to be highly exaggerated. The bill definitely seems vague, but not as dangerous as some have made it out to be.

There could be fines or jail time if someone is discriminatory against LGBT seniors at nursing homes/long term care facilities, but it seems that something truly egregious, sustained, aggressive, repeated, and cruel would be required for the maximum brunt of this bill to come to bear.

(I got this information from a Politifact article entitled "Claims mislead about California forcing jail time for using wrong transgender pronoun". I have never been to Politifact's website before, but it seems trustworthy and unbiased to me. If anyone thinks differently, definitely correct me.)

To speak to your more general point, trends go in both directions. This is a trend in language that has been going on for wayyyyyy longer than the 5 or so years that the collegiate left has really gotten interested in language in this way. Pre-conversion I rolled in some pretty leftist circles at one of the most leftist colleges in America, and I can tell you that as recently as 2010, this language police stuff was on none of our radars.

(Also, the bible was not on any of our radars in those days! If people at secular colleges are interested in Bible translation, that is a fascinating but quite unexpected fact! In my opinion, people who tend to be in favor of inclusive language tend to be pastorally minded people who want to make sure women don't sit in the pews and go "oh, that parts written to the men" every time we hear from Paul, not from militant feminists. Frankly, I haven't met any of those in the Church, which is too bad because Jesus loves them an awful lot too.)

Governments pick and choose which popular trends to bless and which to extinguish. There has been a popular trend towards widespread drug use as a method of recreation. This has been criminalized.

The US government tends to follow the opinion of the merchant class rather than attempt to influence it. At least in my reading of history. We are living in a time of widespread corporate power and shrinking government power, for better or for worse.



Timothy,

I am unsure if I'd do an good job about it. Maybe publishing a correspondence would be interesting. Do you still spend a lot of time with the NRSV and the Message? I know the NRSV goes even further than the NAB (my standby) in the inclusive language department. I don't know too much about the Message, but Eugene Peterson strikes me as a guy sensitive to this kind of thing.