Thanks JoabAnias
I have the Challoner-Rheims. Is that the same one you are referring to when you say the Douay-Rheims or should I look for the original edition? I can't believe I still do not have the RSV-CE. That is definitely the next Bible I will buy. I would like to have all of those Bibles you listed one day.
No, The Bishop Richard Challoner is a mildly edited version but still a faithful and literal translation of St. Jerome's Vulgate into English.
Quoted and parphrased from the preface of my version:
"St. Jerome knew Latin and Greek perfectly; he also knew Hebrew and Aramaic nearly as well. He was 1500 years closer to the original languages than any scholar today, which made him a much better judge of the exact meaning of any Greek or Hebrew word in the Scriptures.
He had access to ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which have since perished and are no longer available to scholars today.
Jerome's translation was a carefully, word-for-word rendering of the original tests into Latin and read and honored by the Western Church for 1500 years.
The Douay-Rheims is a faithful, word-for-word translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible of St. Jerome.
The Douay-Rheims translators took great pains to translate
exactly.
Contrary to the procedure of modern Bible translators, when a passage seems strange and unintelligible they
left it alone, even if obscure, and "let the chips fall where they may."
Modern translators, on the other hand, will often look at an obscure passage, decide what they think it means, then translate the words that bring out
that meaning. The result is that the English is usually (but not always!) easier to understand, but not necessarily what the Bible says; rather, it is
their interpretation and understanding of what the Bible says. Moreover, the Holy Ghost may have hidden additional meanings in the passage. Those meanings may well be completely translated out."
The preface then goes on; to describe how the minor revisions of the Challoner came about and why which Bishop Challoner carefully checked against the Clementine Vulgate and the original-language texts.
