The Catholic Bible in English
By Br. James Thompson, O.P.
Before the Reformation
Many people think that before the Protestant Reformation there was no such thing as an English Bible. They also suppose that Catholicism was officially opposed to the idea of translating the Scriptures into the common language. There is a grain of truth to both of these assertions, but neither gives an accurate picture of the situation.
Some of the most famous men of the period following St. Augustine of Canterbury's missionary work in England translated the Gospels and other major portions of the Bible. Caedman, the Venerable Bede, and King Alfred, among others, made translations into Anglo-Saxon. After the Norman invasion, Norman French became the official tongue of the land, but 300 years later Middle English flourished as a literary language, and again, large sections were translated into the different dialects of English.
However, since the making of books was so expensive and laborious, it is true that there were no complete versions of the Bible in English until John Wiclif's version published in the 14th Century. This version became the dominant version of the Bible in English through the 15th & 16th Centuries. Many (but not all) bishops condemned the translation because of Wifclif's association with the heretical Lollard movement. Yet until the invention of the printing press, which roughly coincided with Reformation, most people could not afford to own a Bible, whether Latin or English.
During the Reformation: The Douay-Rheims Version
The English Reformers produced many different versions the Bible in English: Tyndale (1531), Coverdale (1535), the "Great Bible" (1539), "Cranmer's Bible" (1540), the "Bishop's Bible" (1568), as well as the independent "Geneva Bible" (1560). But nearly 30 years before the Protestant "King James Version" was completed (1611), Gregory Martin of the English College for exiled Catholics ? temporarily housed in Rheims (France) ? had translated the entire Bible. The New Testament was printed in Rheims in 1582, but the Old Testament was not finally published until 1609 when the College returned to Douay (then in Flanders, now France). Hence this translation is often referred to as the "Douay-Rheims Version," or just "Douay."
The Roman Catholic "Douay-Rheims Version," then, was not a reaction to the King James Version, as some think. Instead, the King James translators "diligently compared" the Rheims New Testament with other older versions when producing their "Authorized Version," and its latinized diction influenced some of their renderings. The Catholic "Douay" Bible was an attempt to produce a literal English version of the official Catholic Latin text of the Scriptures, as a conscience corrective to the theological agendas influencing the Protestant versions.
In the mid-18th Century, Catholicism was still illegal in England. Nevertheless, from 1741, Richard Challoner served as bishop in London, wearing lay clothes and bringing the sacraments to English Catholics in secret. He began issuing revisions of the Douay-Rheims Bible in 1750, and his fifth edition of 1772 became the standard Catholic Bible into 20th Century. This is the version most people mean when they speak about "the Douay translation," though it is also called the "Challoner-Rheims version."
Into the 20th Century
Three developments in the 20th Century affected Catholic Bible translation. The first was a growing convergence in biblical scholarship between Catholic and Protestant scholars. A much more literary approach to translation in general was another major factor. But a third tremendous influence was Pope Pius XII's 1943 encyclical "Divino Afflante Spiritu" in which he encouraged Catholic translations from the original Hebrew and Greek texts, rather than primarily from the official Latin version.
Confraternity (CCD) Version. The Episcopal Committee of the Confraternity for Christian Doctrine issued a revision of the Challoner-Rheims version of the New Testament in 1941, and work had begun on the Old Testament, which was abandoned after Pope Pius XII's encyclical.
Knox Bible. In England, Msgr. Ronald Knox produced a completely new translation of the Bible from the Latin into idiomatic English (1950), which the Catholic Bishops there endorsed. His free style was somewhat controversial at the time, but proved influential for later Catholic translators.
New American Bible. The American Bishops sponsored another entirely new translation, but based on the Greek and Hebrew originals, which was completed in 1970. The New Testament was revised in 1987. The NAB was the basis of the English Lectionary until the recent revision of the Lectionary came out.
The Jerusalem Bible. In 1954 the French Dominican scripture scholars in Jerusalem published a new translation in French, with copious notes, entitled La Sainte Bible. This, in turn, inspired the English-language Jerusalem Bible translation, also from the original languages, but following the same translation principles of La Sainte Bible, as well as translating its notes into English. The New Jerusalem Bible, a thorough revision of JB, appeared in 1985.
"The Common Bible"/Revised Standard Version. The 1952 Revised Standard Version was a Protestant revision of the King James Version. However, after Vatican II, an edition containing the books usually missing from Protestant Bibles was issued under the name The Common Bible, and was officially recognized by both Catholic Bishops conferences and Protestant denominations as suitable for liturgical use. However, the 1990 New Revised Standard Version has not met with such universal approval.