Amid such circumstances, recalling in some measure the origin of the Genevan version, the translation known as the Rhemes and Doway took its rise. The entire Bible appears to have been ready for issue together. But, owing to want of funds, a portion only could be published at a time. The NT was properly given the preference, and appeared in 1582 with the following title :—
‘The | Nevv Testament | of Iesvs Christ, trans| lated faithfvlly into English | ovt of the authentical Latin, according to the best cor|rected copies of the same, diligently conferred vvith | the Greeke and other editions in diuers languages: vvith | Argu- ments of bookes and chapters, annota|tions, and other necessarie helpes, for the better vnder|stand- ing of the text, and specially for the discouerie of the Corrvptions of diuers late translations, and for | cleering the Controversies in religion, of these daies.—In the English College of Rhemes. .. . Printed at Rhemes | by John Fogny | 1582 | cum privilegio.’
The volume is in a convenient 4to size,§ printed in clear-cut Roman type, no black letter being used. In some respects the arrangement of the RV is anticipated. The text is broken up into paragraphs, not verses. But the verse numeration 1s given in the inner margin, an obelus being pre- fixed to the beginning of each verse. ()uotations from the OT are printed in italics. At the head of each chapter is an ‘Argument,’ and ‘ Annota- tions’ at the end.
Of the preliminary matter, the long Preface to the Reader, occupying leaves a ij-c iv, well merits attention. The writers address themselves to three special points: (1) the translation of the Holy Scriptures into the vernacular, and, in particular, into English; (2) the reasons why the present version is made from the Vulgate ; (3) the principles on which the translators have proceeded. They do not publish their translation ‘vpon erroneous opinions of necessitie that the holy scriptures should alwaies be in our mother tongue, or that they ought or were ordained of God to be read
* Cardwell, Synodalia, i. 115.
+ Allen was born in 1532 at Rossall in Lancashire; entered Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1547. He founded the seminary at Douai in 1568, and removed with it to Rheims in 1578, when disturbances in Flanders made Douai unsafe. He died at Rome in 1594. ;
{See the art. by Thompson Cooper in the Dict. of Nat. Biography. Martin and Bristow both died of consumption at a comparatively early age. s re
§ In the copy before the present writer (Brit. Mus. 1008. c. 9) the page measures 8} by 6 inches,
252 VERSIONS (ENGLISH)
VERSIONS (ENGLISH)
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indifferently of all .... but vpon special con- sideration of the present time, state and condition of our country.’ Holy Church, while not en- couraging, had not absolutely forbidden such versions. Using the freedom thus left, divers learned Catholics, since Luther’s revolt, had already translated the Scriptures into the mother tongues of various nations of Europe; yet still repudiating the notion that all people alike might indifferently read, expound, and talk of them.
That the Latin Vulgate should have been taken as the basis of their work, in preference to any Greek text, is defended on the ground of its antiquity, of its freedom from the discrepancies visible in MSS of the Greek, and of its having been defined as exclusively authentic by the Council of Trent. Usually it would be found that the Vulgate agreed with the received text of the Greek ; and where that was not so it would prob- ably be found in accord with readings relegated to the margin, but not necessarily of less authority on that account. The issue, we think, within ten years of the date of this Preface, of the Sixtine edition of the Vulgate in 1590, and the Clementine in 1592, with the momentous corrections of ‘ preli vitia,’ as Bellarmin called them,* must have been a shock difficult for these apologists to withstand.
As regards the style of their translation, the Rhemists profess to have had one sole object in view. This was, without partiality and without licence, to express the sense of the Vulgate with the least possible change of form; ‘ continually keeping ourselves as near as is possible to our text, and to the very words and phrases which by long use are made venerable . . . [not doubting] that all sorts of Catholic readers will in short time think that familiar which at the first may seem strange.’ In carrying out this principle it is inevitable that some felicitous phrases and turns of expression should be hit upon in the course of a long work. ‘A palpable mount’ (He 12") is better than ‘the mount that might be touched’ of the AV. In the first chapter of James alone it is to the Rhemish version that we owe ‘ upbraideth not’ (v.°), ‘nothing doubting’ (v.°), ‘the engrafted word’ (v.*4), ‘ bridleth not’ (v.2°).+ As Plumptre has pointed out, so great an authority as Bacon (Of the Pacification of the Church) goes out of his way to praise the Rhemists for having restored ‘charity’ to the place from which Tindale had ousted it in favour of ‘love.’ In particular, the closeness with which the trans- lators kept to the Vulgate helped to save them from that needless variation in the rendering of the same or cognate words, which is an undoubted blemish in the AV. Thus, while dicasofy is cor- rectly rendered in our version ‘to justify,’ dtxacos and dicaootvn are more often than not represented by ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness.’ Once more, the antiquity of the MSS from which the Vulgate translation was made causes its readings at times to accord with the results of the highest critical scholarship. It will follow that the Rhemish version occasionally comes nearer our RV than does that of king James. Thus in Mt 5“ the clauses, interpolated from the parallel passage in St. Luke, which find no place in the RV, are partially omitted in the Rhemish. So, too, this tae agrees with the RV in reading ‘ Christ’ for ‘God’ in 1 P 3".