XX.
THE VULGATE AND THE REVISED PROTESTANT VERSION OF THE BIBLE.
In instituting here a comparison between the two approved and typical English Versions of the Bible as in use among Catholics and Protestants respectively, I have no intention to be aggressive or polemic. As from the first we have taken what may be called the common-sense point of view in judging the Bible as an historical work, which verifies its claims to be regarded as an organ communicating to us divine knowledge, so we proceed to make a brief suggestive examination of two English Bibles: one found in the homes of Catholics, the other in those of our Protestant friends and neighbors, many of whom believe with all sincerity that among the various doubts and difficulties of life they can consult no truer guide than that sacred volume.
Taking the two volumes as a whole, and considering only their general contents, there is but little difference between them. I compared them in a former chapter to the two American flags of North and South: viewed in themselves, these are both of the same origin, copied from the same pattern, and emblems, both, of American independence. Though they differ only in some detail that might escape the superficial observer, they nevertheless represent very widely different principles, for which the men of the South as of the North were willing to stake their lives. They might meet in friendly intercourse in all the walks of daily life, but if you ask a Union soldier to carry the Southern flag, he will say: No; for though it looks very much like my own, there is a difference, and that difference constitutes a vital principle with me.
Catholics have to make much the same answer when told that they might accept the Protestant Bible in their public relations with those who do not recognize the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church has the old Bible, as it came down the ages, complete and without changes. She has no reason to discard it, and she has good reason not to accept another Bible, though its English be sweeter and its periods fall upon the ear like the soft cadences of Southern army songs. We cannot sing from its tuneful pages, because it represents the principle of opposition to its original source and parent-stock, and no union can be effected except by the elimination of that principle.
Catholics claim that their Bible, in point of fidelity to the original—and this is the essential point when we speak of a translation of such a book—Catholics claim that their Bible, in point of fidelity to the original, is as superior to the Protestant English Bible of King James as it is, we admit, inferior in its English. "The translators of the Catholic Version considered it a lesser offence to violate some rules of grammar than to risk the sense of God's word for the sake of a fine period."[[1]]
What proof have we for such a claim? I answer that we have the strongest proof in the world which we could have on such a subject outside of a divine revelation, namely, the admission on the part of the guardians and translators themselves of the Protestant Bible. Now, when I say guardians and translators of the Protestant Bible, I do not mean merely the testimony of a few great authorities in the past or present who may have expressed their opinion as to the faults and defects of the latest English Protestant translation. That would not be fair. But I mean that the history itself of Protestant translations made since the days of King James, not to go back any farther, is a standing argument of the severest kind:
First, against the correctness of the Protestant English Versions; and,
Secondly, for the correctness of the Catholic English Version.
For if we compare the first Protestant English Version (which departed considerably from the received Catholic text of the Vulgate) with all the succeeding revisions made at various times by the English Protestants, we find that they have steadily returned towards the old Catholic Version. This is not only an improvement as an approach to the Catholic teaching, but it is also a confession, however reluctantly made, of past errors on the part of former Protestant translators.
At the time of their separation from the Catholic Church the reformers, so-called, had to give reasons for their defection. They found fault with one doctrine or another in the old Catholic Church, such as the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, the jurisdiction of bishops, the Holy Sacrifice, celibacy, confession, etc. To justify the rejection of these doctrines they must appeal to some authority: if not to the Pontiff, then to the king, or to the Bible, or to both simultaneously. But though the king might favor their novelties of doctrine inasmuch as they relieved his conscience of the reproach of disobedience to the Pontiff, who knew but one law of morals for the prince and the peasant, the Bible as hitherto read was against them. Now, Luther had given distracted Germany an example of what might be done in the way of whittling down the supernatural, and eliminating some of the irksome duties imposed by the old Church. He had made a new translation of the Bible, threw out passages, nay, whole books,[[2]] which did not meet his views, and added here and there a little word which did admirable service by setting him right with a world that for the most part could neither read Hebrew nor Latin nor Greek, and trusted him for a learned translator.
In similar fashion an English translation had already been attempted by Wiclif about 1380, and almost simultaneously by Nicolas of Hereford. There existed in England at the time of Luther an edition of the Scriptures called the "great Bible." It was Catholic up to its fourth edition, that of 1541. Then, as is generally supposed, it was revised by the Elizabethan bishops in 1508, and in 1611, after a more lengthened revision, it appeared as a King James "Authorized Version." Since then various revisions and corrections of this Bible have been printed, each succeeding one eliminating some of the previous errors. Mr. Thomas Ward has made up an interesting book called "Errata—the truth of the English translations of the Bible examined," or "a treatise showing some of the errors that are found in the English translation of the Sacred Scriptures used by Protestants against such points of religious doctrine as are the subject of controversy between them and the members of the Catholic Church." Dr. Ward's book embraces a comparison between the Catholic English translation and the various Protestant versions up to the year 1683, for since then no changes were made in the English Protestant Bible called the authorized version until 1871, when the work of a new revision, published between 1881-85, was undertaken, which is not included in Dr. Ward's "Errata."
Why was this last revision made? Was not the King James version of 1611, for the most part, beautiful English? As to the rest, was it not for every Protestant an absolute, infallible rule of faith? The language was good, the truth still better; what need, then, was there to revise?
The revisers of 1881 tell us that the language of the old English version could be improved, and that they meant to improve it. The older translators, they say, "seem to have been guided by the feeling that their version would secure for the words they used a lasting place in the language; ... but it cannot be doubted that the studied avoidance of uniformity in the rendering of the same words, even when occurring in the same context, is one of the blemishes in their work."
But are the changes of language or expression all that the reviewers of this infallible text-book aim at? No. Listen to what Dr. Ellicott in the Preface to the Pastoral Epistles says:
"It is vain to cheat our souls with the thought that these errors are either insignificant or imaginary. There are errors, there are inaccuracies, there are misconceptions, there are obscurities, not, indeed, so many in number or so grave in character as some of the forward spirits of our day would persuade us; but there are misrepresentations of the language of the Holy Ghost; and that man who, after being in any degree satisfied of this, permits himself to bow to the counsels of a timid or popular obstructiveness, or who, intellectually unable to test the truth of these allegations, nevertheless permits himself to denounce or deny them, will, if they be true, most surely at the dread day of final account have to sustain the tremendous charge of having dealt deceitfully with the inviolable Word of God."[[3]]
So this book, the infallible voice of God revealing His ways, this sole rule of faith for millions of Englishmen, and by which millions had lived and sworn and died during more than two centuries, had to be revised, not only as to the form, but in the matter also. Two committees were formed, about fifty of the members being from England, thirty from America—Presbyterians, Baptists, Methodists, etc. Cardinal Newman and Dr. Pusey were invited, but declined to attend. Mr. Vance Smith, a Unitarian, a distinguished scholar, but certainly no Christian, received a place in the New Testament committee. These gentlemen set to work in earnest to revise the Word of God and settle the Bible of the future. They had to consider the advance made in textual criticism represented by Lachmann, Scholz, Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Drs. Westcott and Hort.
They labored ten years and a half, as Dr. Ellicott assures us, "with thoroughness, loyalty to the authorized versions, and due recognition of the best judgment of antiquity. One of their rules, expressly laid down for their common guidance, was to introduce as few alterations as possible into the text of the authorized version."
How many corrections, think you, were made in the New Testament alone? About 20,000, of which fifty per cent. are textual, that is "9 to every five verses of the Gospels, and 15 to every five in the Epistles." Besides these changes, which must be a shock to many an English Protestant who has accustomed himself by long reading of the Bible to believe in verbal inspiration, there are a number of omissions in the New Revised Text which in all amount to about 40 entire verses. It appears, then, that the King James Bible of some years ago has not been as most Protestants of necessity claimed for it—the pure, authentic, unadulterated Word of God. And if not, what guarantee have we that the promiscuous body of recent translators, however learned, withal not inspired, have given us that pure, authentic, unadulterated Word of God?
Let us glance over a few pages of the New Testament to see of what nature and of what importance, from a doctrinal point of view, are the changes made by the late revisers of the "Authorized (Protestant) Version."
In the first place, they have acknowledged the reading of I. Cor. xi. 27, regarding communion under one kind, by translating the Greek [Greek: gamma] by or, and not by and, an error which had been repeated in all the Protestant translations since 1525, and which gave rise to endless abuse of the Catholic practice of giving the Blessed Sacrament to the laity under only one species. "Whosoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup" is the reading in the Greek as well as in the Latin Vulgate, and nothing but "theological fear or partiality," as Dean Stanley expressed it, could have warranted this mistranslation, which may be found in all the editions of 1520, 1538, 1562, 1508, 1577, 1579, 1611, etc.
But this is only one of many acts of justice which the learned revisers have done to Catholics by restoring the true reading; they have given us back the altar which, together with the Holy Sacrifice and confession and celibacy, had become obnoxious to the "reformers." We now read, I. Cor. x. 18, that "those that eat the hosts" are in "communion with the altar," where formerly they were only "partakers of the temple."
Having restored the Catholic practice of Holy Communion under one kind, and likewise the altar, we are not surprised that the "overseers" of the King James version should have become bishops, as in Acts xx. 28, although a good many of the overseers have been left in their places, possibly because the "elders" (Acts xv. 2; Tit. i. 5; I. Tim. v. 17 and 19, etc.) have not yet become priests, as they are in the Rhemish (Catholic) translation. However, the "elders" are likely to turn out priests at the next revision, because they are not only "ordained," but also "appointed," whereas in the old English revisions of 1562 and 1579 they were ordained elders "by election in every congregation," which is still done in Protestant churches where there are no bishops, and even in some which have "overseers" with the honorary title of "bishop."
As to the celibacy question, the revisers have not thought fit to endorse it by translating [Greek: àdelphên gynaicha] a "woman," a sister; but they adhere to the old "wife," as Beza, in his translation, makes the Apostles go about with their "wives" (Acts i. 14).
In the matter of "confession" we have got a degree nearer to the old Catholic version and practice likewise. The Protestant reformers had no "sins" to confess; they had only "faults." Hence they translate St. James v. 16 by "confess your faults." But the revisers of 1881 found out that these "faults" were downright sins, and so they put it. Accordingly we find that the Apostles have power literally "to forgive" sins, whereas formerly, the sins being only faults, it was enough to have them "remitted," which means a sort of passive yielding or condoning on the part of the overseers in favor of repentant sinners, but did not convey the idea of a sacramental power "binding and loosening" in heaven as on earth.
Our dear Blessed Lady also receives some justice at the hands of the new translators. She is not simply "highly favored" as in the times of King James and ever since, but now is "endued with grace," though only in a footnote.
"It was expected," says an anonymous writer in the above cited article of the Dublin Review,[[4]] "that the revisers, in deference to modern refinement, would get rid of 'hell' and 'damnation,' like the judge who was said to have dismissed hell with costs. 'Damnation' and kindred words have gone.... A new word, 'Hades,' Pluto's Greek name, has been brought into our language to save the old word 'hell' from overwork. The Rich Man is no longer in 'hell,' he is now 'in Hades;' but he is still 'in torment.' So Hades must be Purgatory, and the revisers have thus moved Dives into Purgatory, and Purgatory into the Gospel. Dives will not object; but what will Protestants say?"
An important change has been introduced in their treatment of the Lord's Prayer. Protestants, for over three hundred years, have concluded that prayer with the words: "for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." These words were to be found in St. Matt. vi. 13 according to the Protestant text. They were certainly wanting in St. Luke xi. 2, who also gives us the words of the "Our Father" with a very slight change of form. Catholics were reproached for not adding the 'doxology,' which proved to be a custom in the Greek Catholic Church, very much like our use of the "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son," etc., at the end of each psalm recited or sung at Vespers. Examination showed that the phrase "for Thine is the kingdom," etc., was to be found principally in versions made by and for the Catholics of the Greek Church, and this explained how the same had crept into the copyists' Greek version. This fact is recognized at length in the late revision where the words are omitted from the text of St. Matthew, whilst a footnote states that "many authorities, some ancient, but with variations, add: 'for Thine is the kingdom and the glory forever.'"
The American revisers had made a number of very sensible suggestions, which would have brought the new Protestant version of the Bible still nearer to the old Catholic translation of Rheims and Douay; but their voice was not considered weighty enough, and Mr. Vance Smith openly blames the English committee on this score, saying that "they have not shown that judicial freedom from theological bias which was certainly expected from them." On the other hand, the American revisers showed their national spirit and liberality to a degree which must have horrified the orthodox members of the Anglican Community. The Americans "suggested the removal of all mention of the sin of heresy—heresies in their eyes being only 'factions.' They desired also that the Apostles and Evangelists should drop their title of Saint, and be content to be called plain John, and Paul, and Thomas. This resulted, no doubt, from their democratic taste for strict equality, and their hatred of titles even in the kingdom of heaven."[[5]]
After all this the principle of faith in the Bible alone became somewhat insecure, and we find the revisers making a silent concession on this point by allowing something to the Catholic principle of a living, perpetually transmitted tradition. St. Paul, who speaks of the altar and of bishops, and who allows Communion under one kind, and who had no wife, and wanted none (I. Cor. vii.), praises the Corinthians, not simply for keeping his "ordinances," as in the time of King James, but for keeping the traditions as he had delivered them to the Greek churches before he found opportunity to write to the Corinthians.
There is one other point of difference between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles to which it is instructive to call attention. It is in regard to the writing of proper names, especially in the Old Testament. Thus where we in the Catholic Bibles have Nabuchodonosor for the king of Babylon, son of Nabopollassar, the Protestant version has Nebuchadnezzar; where we have Elias and Eliseus, the Protestant version has Elijah and Elisha, and so forth regarding many Hebrew names of persons and places. You will ask whence the difference, and which is right?
The difference arises from the fact that the Protestant Version follows the present Hebrew text of the Bible, whilst the Catholic Version follows the Greek. Which is the safer to follow on such points as the pronunciation of proper names—the Hebrew or the Greek? You will say the Hebrew, but it is not so. The old Hebrew writing had, as I mentioned before, no vowels. Hence it could not be read by any one who had not heard it read in the schools of the rabbis. Some six centuries after our Lord, certain Jewish doctors who were called Masorets, anxious to preserve the traditional sounds of the Hebrew language, supplied vowels in the shape of points, which they placed under the square consonants, without disturbing the latter. Hence the present vowel system in Hebrew, or, in other words, the present pronunciation of Hebrew according to the reading of the Bible, is the work of men who relied for the pronunciation of words on a tradition which carried them back over many centuries, that is, from the time when Hebrew was a living language to about six hundred years after Christ. It is not difficult to imagine how in such a length of time the true pronunciation may have been lost or certainly modified in some cases; for though the Hebrew words were there on the paper, written in consonants of the old form, the pronunciation of the vowels must have been doubtful if resting on tradition alone, since the Hebrew had already ceased to be a living language for many centuries.
In the meantime, the true pronunciation of the Hebrew proper names could have been preserved in some of the translations made long before the Masoretic doctors supplied their vowel points. One of these translations from the Hebrew is the Greek Septuagint. It was made, as we have seen, in the time of Ptolemy, i.e., some two and a half centuries before Christ. The learned Jews who made this translation knew perfectly well how the Hebrew of their day was pronounced, and we cannot suppose that they would mutilate the proper names of their mother tongue in the translation into Greek which, possessing written vowels, obliged them to express the full pronunciation of the persons and places which they transcribed.
Accordingly, we have two sources for our pronunciation of Hebrew proper names: one which dates from about the sixth or seventh century of the present era, when the Hebrew had become a dead language; and another, made about nine hundred years earlier by Jewish rabbis, who spoke the language perfectly well, and who could express the pronunciation of proper names accurately because they wrote in a language which had written vowels, and with which they were as conversant as with their own, the Hebrew.
Furthermore, we have other versions, made long before the Masoretic Doctors invented their vowel-points in order to fix the Hebrew pronunciation as they conceived it. Among these is the Latin Vulgate which, like the Greek of the Septuagint, should give us the correct pronunciation—because it was made by St. Jerome, who had studied the Hebrew and Chaldee in Palestine under a Jewish rabbi. He knew, therefore, the pronunciation of the Jews in his day (331-420), and there was no reason why he should not give it to us in his several different translations, whilst there might have been some cause why the Masoretic Jews who lived two or three centuries later should dislike to accept either the Greek or the Latin versions for an authority, because both versions were used and constantly cited by the Christians as proof that the Messiah had come.
Incidentally, the late archeological finds confirm this. Thus the name of Nabuchodonosor (IV. Kings xxiv. 1) (Protestant, Nebuchadnezzar), mentioned above as an example, reads in the cuneiform inscription of the Assyrian monument Nebukudursur, which is evidently the same form of vowel pronunciation as that employed in the Catholic version.
In comparing the two versions thus far little has been said as to the peculiar character or merits of the English Catholic version commonly called the Vulgate English or Douay Bible. But the main purpose of the present chapter has been attained by the necessary inference which the reader must have drawn, namely, that the old Catholic version is the more faithful, and that, after all, the Bible is not a safe guide without a Church to guard its integrity and to interpret its meaning.
But let me say just a word about the Vulgate. The Catholic Vulgate is practically the work of St. Jerome, and our English Catholic edition is made as literally as may be from this Latin Vulgate, "diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions in divers languages." The copies, most in use now, were made from an edition published by the English College at Rheims in 1582, and at Douay in 1609, revised by Dr. Challoner.
The need of a new revision has been recognized, and an effort to supply the want was made by the late Archbishop Kenrick, whose translation was recommended by the Council of Baltimore in 1858, although it has not been generally adopted. However, the changes to be made in the translation of the Catholic Bible in English cannot be very numerous nor affecting doctrines defined by the Church; nor is any accidental change of words or expressions so vital a matter to the Catholic mind as it must be with those who have but the Bible as their one primary rule of faith. So far Protestant revisions have done Catholics a service in removing by successive corrections one error after another from the "reformed" Bible, thus demonstrating the correctness of the old Vulgate; but they have also led Protestants to reflect seriously, and to realize that the "Bible only" principle is proved to be false and dangerous. They must see that the Scripture is powerless without the Church as the witness to its inspiration, the safeguard of its integrity, and the exponent of its meaning.
[[1]] Cf. a paper on the subject of the New Revision in the Dublin Review, 1881, vol. VI., ser. iii.
[[2]] These books have been mostly retained in the Protestant Bible under the name of Apocryphal, i.e., not inspired. The Church accepts and defines their inspiration, and in this is supported by the strong testimony of apostolic tradition.
[[3]] "Pastoral Epistles," p. 13.
[[4]] Vol. VI., ser. iii.
[[5]] Dublin Review, l.c.