The Douay–Rheims Bible
(also known as the Rheims–Douai Bible or Douai Bible,
and abbreviated as D–R and DV) is a translation of the
Bible from the Latin Vulgate into English made by
members of the English College, Douai, in the service of
the Catholic Church. The New Testament portion was
published in Reims, France, in 1582, in one volume with
extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament
portion was published in two volumes twenty-seven years
later in 1609 and 1610 by the University of Douai. The
first volume, covering Genesis through Job, was
published in 1609; the second, covering Psalms to 2
Machabees plus the apocrypha of the Vulgate was
published in 1610. Marginal notes took up the bulk of
the volumes and had a strong polemical and patristic
character. They offered insights on issues of
translation, and on the Hebrew and Greek source texts of
the Vulgate.
The purpose of the version, both the text and notes, was
to uphold Catholic tradition in the face of the
Protestant Reformation which up till then had
overwhelmingly dominated Elizabethan religion and
academic debate. As such it was an impressive effort by
English Catholics to support the Counter-Reformation.
The New Testament was reprinted in 1600, 1621 and 1633.
The Old Testament volumes were reprinted in 1635 but
neither thereafter for another hundred years. In 1589,
William Fulke collated the complete Rheims text and
notes in parallel columns with those of the Bishops'
Bible. This work sold widely in England, being re-issued
in three further editions to 1633. It was predominantly
through Fulke's editions that the Rheims New Testament
came to exercise a significant influence on the
development of 17th century English.
Much of the text of the 1582/1610 bible employed a
densely Latinate vocabulary, making it extremely
difficult to read the text in places. Consequently, this
translation was replaced by a revision undertaken by
bishop Richard Challoner; the New Testament in three
editions of 1749, 1750, and 1752; the Old Testament
(minus the Vulgate deuterocanonical), in 1750. Although
retaining the title Douay–Rheims Bible, the Challoner
revision was a new version, tending to take as its base
text the King James Bible rigorously checked and
extensively adjusted for improved readability and
consistency with the Clementine edition of the Vulgate.
Subsequent editions of the Challoner revision, of which
there have been very many, reproduce his Old Testament
of 1750 with very few changes. Challoner's New Testament
was, however, extensively revised by Bernard MacMahon in
a series of Dublin editions from 1783 to 1810. These
Dublin versions are the source of some Challoner bibles
printed in the United States in the 19th century.
Subsequent editions of the Challoner Bible printed in
England most often follow Challoner's earlier New
Testament texts of 1749 and 1750, as do most
20th-century printings and on-line versions of the
Douay–Rheims bible circulating on the internet.
Although the Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible Revised
Edition, Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition, and
New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition are the
most commonly used in English-speaking Catholic
churches, the Challoner revision of the Douay–Rheims is
still often the Bible of choice of more traditional
English-speaking Catholics.
Regarded from the
point of view of scholarship, the Rheims-Douai Bible is
seen, despite its stilted prose, as a particularly
accurate version of The Bible; which was just what
Catholicism preferred in a time of various and specific
religious disputes. It deserves mention in the history
of the English Bible because it was one of the versions
consulted by the translators of the King James Version
(the Authorized Version), especially for the New
Testament. Though the Authorized Version is indeed
distinguished by the strongly English (as distinct from
Latin) character of its prose, some of the Latin
vocabulary it used (and used effectively: propitiation
Romans 3:25, concupiscence Romans 7:8, emulation Romans
11:14) was derived from the Rheims-Douai. Other words
adopted from Latin were introduced into the English
language directly by the Douai-Rheims Bible (not through
the intermediary of the Authorised Version), and
eventually became commonplace in both ecclesiastical and
secular vocabularies: "acquisition," "adulterate,"
"advent," "allegory," "verity," "calumniate,"
"character," "cooperate," "prescience," "resuscitate,"
"victim," and "evangelise
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