Origin of the
English Bibles

Catholic Version

Although the Jerusalem Bible, New American Bible (in the United States), the Revised Standard Version, the New Revised Standard Version and the New Jerusalem Bible 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.

---

Kindle Edition
FREE!

The Counter-Revolution Bible

The Douay—Rheims Bible is a translation of the Scriptures from the Latin Vulgate (declared authoritative for Catholics by the Council of Trent) into English undertaken by members of the English College, Douai (Flanders) in the service of the Catholic Church. The New Testament was published in Reims (France) in 1582, in one volume with extensive commentary and notes. The Old Testament, which was published by the University of Douai, followed nearly thirty years later in two volumes; the first volume (Genesis to Job) in 1609, the second (Psalms to 2 Machabees plus the apocrypha of the Clementine Vulgate) in 1610.

The volumes -- the content of which was made up of a good deal of polemic and patristic material -- was the Catholic Church's response to the Reformation. As such, there is a great deal of defensive material regarding the tenets of the Catholic Church being assailed by the Reformers. Is was nothing short of a herculean effort of the English Catholics to support the Counter-Reformation.

The emphasis on the Catholic/Latin content was so focused, however, that the 1582/1610 text was rendered nearly unreadable. Consequently the work was replaced by a revision by Bishop Richard Challoner in 1749-1752. Even though Challoner kept the Douay-Rheims title, the translation actually depended much on the King James Version and was intensively checked for accuracy against the Clementine Vulgate and for sheer readability.

The Challoner Douay-Rheims has been published in many editions; the Old Testament saw few changes over time, but Challoner's New Testament was extensively revised by Bernard MacMahon in a series of Dublin editions from 1783 to 1810. These various Dublin versions are the source of some Challoner bibles printed in the United States in the 19th Century. The British versions, however, tend to stay with the earlier Challoner text -- including those printed today and which are also available online. Many feel that Challoner's editions strayed so far from the original (and toward the King James) that it should never have carried the Douay title.

---