Catholic Bibles: A Modest History of the English Versions

What follows is a modest history of Catholic Bible versions in English. The focus is primarily on the history of translations, rather than on the history of publication, but that is a blurry line. Translations of single books are generally overlooked, although several Psalters are included. The presentation is chronological, and includes several non-Catholic works published in “Catholic Editions”.

The essay is divided into major periods for easier navigation:

• The Early Versions
• From Challoner to Vatican I
• From Vatican I to Vatican II
• The 20th Century after Vatican II
• 21st Century Versions

The Early Versions

Douay-Rheims Holie Bible (1582, 1609/1610)

Elizabethan-era English Catholics exiled in Flanders established the English College at the University of Douay in 1568, under the future Cardinal William Allen, where a translation of the Bible from the Latin Vulgate to English was undertaken, principally by leading Oxford linguist Gregory Martin. The New Testament was published in 1582, while the College was temporarily located in Rheims due to political pressure in Douay – hence it is known as the Rheims New Testament. It would be reprinted, without significant change, in 1600, 1621, and 1633, and then again, a century later, in 1738 (with spelling changes), 1788, 1789, 1872 (Rheims/Vulgate parallel), and 1926
Ironically, the Rheims NT also saw wide distribution in its early years by Protestant polemicists such as Dr. William Fulke of Cambridge, who, in 1589, published the full Rheims NT (including annotations) in parallel with the Bishops’ Bible (commonly in use at the time in the English Protestant churches), along with his commentary criticizing the work of the “Papists of the traitorous seminarie at Rhemes”. Fulke’s work was republished in new editions in 1601, 1617, and 1633, and again in New York in 1834. Fellow Cambridge divine Thomas Cartwright produced a similar commentary on the full Rheims NT, which was published posthumously in 1618 as: “A Confutation of the Rhemists translation, glosses, and Annotations on the New Testament.

Although the Old Testament translation had been completed prior to Martin’s death in 1582, its publication was delayed until 1609, owing principally to lack of means, according to its preface. However, during this holdup, Pope Sixtus V and his successor Clement VIII (with William Allen contributing) edited and published official versions of the Vulgate (1590, corrected 1592). The Douay OT was thus updated per the Clementine edition prior to publication. In 1609, the first quarto volume (~9.5″ x 12″) was published, containing Genesis through Job. The remainder was published the following year, including an appendix of three apocryphal books (The Prayer of Manasses, and “the second and third Bookes of Esdras”). The Douay Old Testament was reprinted, again in two quarto volumes, in 1635: the last Catholic Old Testament printed in English for over 100 years.

Both Testaments of the Douay-Rheims Bible – but especially the Rheims NT – contained extensive notes and commentary, which tended toward polemic – as befit the circumstances of at the height of the English Reformation. The translation followed the Latin source very exactly, even slavishly, leading even the editors, in the preface, to make note that its closeness to the Latin: “may seeme to the vulgar reader and to common English eares not yet aquainted therewith, rudeness or ignorance”. The translation is notable for its consistency in translation of source words, as well as for its level of dependence on transliteration.

The Douay-Rheims Bible would serve as the textual starting point for numerous revisions, beginning in the 18th century. The title pages of these revisions would not infrequently tend to highlight their Douay ancestry, and downplay the roles of revisers. This trend continues today, as the Bibles commonly called “Douay” by Bible publishers and Bible Study software vendors are almost without exception an edited version of Dr. Challoner’s mid-18th century revisions.

Caryll’s Psalmes of David (1700)

In 1700, an English Catholic layman named John Caryll published a prose Psalter “intended only for the private devotions of Lay persons”, entitled: “The Psalmes of David, translated from the Vulgat”. Caryll, who had authored several poetic and dramatic works, was attached to the exiled court of King James II in St. Germain, France. In his preface, Caryll notes his reliance upon Robert Cardinal Bellarmine’s “excellent Treatise upon the Psalms” for interpretative guidance on difficult passages. The work was published, with ecclesial sanction, in a duodecimo format (~5″ x 7.5″) of 347 pages, and was subsequently revised by Caryll in 1704.

The Four Gospels, with Moral Reflections (1707—1709)

Between 1707 and 1709, a small group of English Catholics anonymously produced translations of the Vulgate Gospels, following the Rheims, though not strictly, which they interleaved with a verse-by-verse English translation of Jansenist French Oratorian priest Pasquier Quesnel’s popular devotional commentary “Réflexions morales sur le Nouveau Testament”. Quesnel had begun publishing his commentary advancing Jansenist viewpoints in 1668, and published a French New Testament translation incorporating it in 1693. After receiving ecclesial approbation at the time of publication, his commentary was later condemned by Pope Clement XI in a 1708 brief, which failed to deter further propagation in Gallican France. Subsequently, the work was condemned more formally in the 1713 papal bull Unigenitus Dei Filius, which explicitly condemned 101 propositions Quesnel had advanced in “Réflexions morales”. The anonymous English Gospels faded into obscurity, though the commentary survives.

Nary’s New Testament (1718)

In 1718, Dr. Cornelius Nary, parish priest of St. Michan’s, Dublin, published the first new Catholic translation of the New Testament into English since the Rheims edition of 1582: “The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Newly translated out of the Latin Vulgat And with the Original Greek and divers Translations in vulgar languages diligently compared and revised Together with Annotations upon the most remarkable passages in the gospels and Marginal Notes upon other difficult Texts of the same and upon the rest of the books of the New Testament for the better understanding of the literal sense”.

This also appears to have been the first printing of a Catholic New Testament since the fourth edition of the Rheims had been published 85 years previously (in 1633, probably in Rouen). Unlike the large quarto format of the earlier editions, this volume was printed in more portable duodecimo format. In his preface, Dr. Nary laments not just the bulkiness, but also the scarcity and cost of the Rheims editions, “the language of which had become so old, the words so obsolete, the orthography so bad, and the translation so literal, that in a number of places it is unintelligible”. His goal was, in the words of one ecclesial supporter, “reconciling a literal Translation with the Purity of the English Tongue”.

Dr. Nary’s translation, although reprinted in 1719, was not widely adopted. It was criticized by Dr. Robert Witham, President of the College of Douay, for not being literal enough. Dr. Witham would publish the next new translation of the New Testament, twelve years later.

Witham’s New Testament (1730)

In 1730, Dr. Robert Witham, then-President of the English College at Douay, published “Annotations on the New Testament of Jesus Christ”, a controversial work that was well received among Catholics. The work’s title obscures the fact that it was a new translation of the New Testament from the Latin Vulgate, with corresponding annotations. It would be republished the following year, again at Douay, as well as at Dublin in 1740. All three editions were printed in octavo format (~6″ x 9″).

Witham’s stated aim was to elucidate the literal sense according to the ancient Fathers; to criticize and refute false interpretations advanced by the Protestants, and to demonstrate the differences between the Latin Vulgate and the Greek Text, always with the purpose of defending the integrity of the Vulgate. A major focus of the exposition was on the Apocalypse, and the defense of the Catholic Church against the pernicious fulminations of Protestant polemicists linking the Apostolic Church to the Anti-Christ.

Witham also sought to mitigate the obscurities arising out of the literal renderings of the Rheims translation, recognizing both the excesses to which the earlier translators went in maintaining a literal reproduction of the source text, and the fact of an occasional unintelligibility of the Rheims due to changes in the English language over the preceding century and a half.

Webster New Testament (1730)

William Webster, Curate of St. Dunstan’s in the West, published a New Testament in two quarto volumes in London in 1730, entitled: “The New Testament of our Saviour Jesus Christ, according to the antient Latin Edition. With critical Remarks upon the literal meaning in difficult places. From the French of Father Simon”. This English edition was highly unusual for being a re-translation of a French translation, rather than a revision of the Rheims. French translations were known to be less literal than the Rheims. This version is not to be confused with the Bible published by American Noah Webster in 1833, which was a revision of the Protestant Authorized Version.

From Challoner to Vatican I

Challoner Version (1749—1763)

By the mid-18th century, over a century had passed since an edition of the Catholic Old Testament had been printed, and those editions had been expensive, large quarto volumes (~9.5″ x 12″), containing Biblical text that even at the time of original publication had been considered obscure and difficult to understand. To remedy that, English Bishop Richard Challoner, after returning from a teaching post at the English College at Douay, produced a significant and influential revision of the entire Douay-Rheims Bible, published in a convenient duodecimo size (~5.5″ x 7.5″). The New Testament was published in 1749, followed in 1750 by a four-volume Old Testament and a lightly revised second edition of the NT. In 1752, Challoner published a more substantially revised third edition of the NT in two volumes:

• 1749: First edition of the New Testament.
• 1750: First edition of the Old Testament, plus a lightly revised New Testament:
  • Vol. I: Genesis to Ruth
  • Vol. II: 1 Kingdoms to Esther
  • Vol. III: Job to Isaias
  • Vol. IV: Jeremias to 2 Machabees
  • Vol. V: New Testament, Second Edition
• 1752: Third edition of the New Testament

While certainly using the Rheims and Douay versions as a basis for the finished text, the textual changes introduced by Challoner were significant enough that contemporary critics such as Cardinals Newman and Wiseman considered the work a new translation. Nonetheless, the title pages gave little evidence of either Challoner’s involvement, or of the literary distance between the revisions and the originals. Many of the earlier texts’ Latinisms were eliminated by Challoner, and a considerable number of the changes he introduced moved the translation closer to the Protestant Authorized Version. Thus, the work was both much more readable, and more consistent with the English Bible as known outside the Catholic Church. Much of the original notes and commentary was eliminated or replaced, considerably toning down the anti-Protestant polemic. Visually, paragraph formatting was abandoned in favor of beginning each verse on its own line. Challoner also eliminated an appendix containing three apocryphal books (3 & 4 Esdras, Prayer of Manasses), thus creating the first Bible in English containing precisely the 73-book Biblical canon as confirmed by the Council of Trent, which would serve as model for all subsequent Catholic Bibles in English.

During his lifetime (d. 1781), both testaments were reprinted as a full Bible in 1763/64, and the New Testament was reprinted again in 1772 and in 1777. Over the following two centuries, many more reprints would follow, often as pastiches of his three distinct New Testament editions, and not uncommonly with the various printers taking minor translation liberties. In 1790, Philadelphia printer Mathew Carey published Challoner’s second edition in a quarto format. Surprisingly, this was only the second English-language Bible published in the Americas, the first having been an edition of the Authorized Version [King James version] from fellow Philadelphian Robert Aitken in 1782.

For modern-day Catholics, the most notable Challoner reprint edition was published in 1899 by the John Murphy Company of Baltimore, with the approbation of Baltimore Archbishop James Cardinal Gibbons. This edition was later photographically reproduced by TAN Books & Publishers, and republished in 1971 as the “Douay-Rheims Version”. That text was subsequently digitized and leveraged for several well-made editions available from print publishers such as TAN, Saint Benedict, Baronius, Loreto, Angelus, and others. Likewise, it serves as the basis for various web-based “Douay” Bibles. The major Bible Study software platforms have also utilized the “1899 American edition” for their digital versions, although none of them have included the edition’s annotations. The Gibbons/Murphy text, like many later “Challoner” editions, appears to be an amalgam of the different editions of Challoner’s work: some renderings present in the TAN text were, according to Dr. Cotton’s tables, unique to Challoner’s 1752 edition, others were unique to the 1750 edition, and at least one was unique to the 1749 edition.

Challoner’s work would also serve as the base text for almost all subsequent Catholic Bible revisors until the middle of the 20^th Century,

Carpenter’s New Testament (1783)

Shortly after Bishop Challoner’s death, Dublin Archbishop John Carpenter employed the Rev. Bernard McMahon in a revision of Challoner’s New Testament. McMahon introduced over 500 changes to the text, being less inclined than Challoner to follow the Protestants’ Authorized Version. McMahon’s edition of the New Testament was published in Dublin in 1783, in a conveniently sized duodecimo volume. Archbishop Carpenter’s approbation of this 1783 edition would identify the work as “the fourth edition, revised and corrected anew”, positioning the work as a continuation of and successor to Challoner’s stream of revisions (1749, 1750, 1752).

Troy’s Bible (1791/1794)

In 1791, a new Dublin prelate, Archbishop John Thomas Troy, published a revision of the entire Challoner Bible, with Bernard McMahon again serving as reviser. It was originally published in a quarto format, styled as a “fifth edition. Three years later it was reprinted in a large-format folio (~12″ x 19″), which was billed as the “sixth edition”. The annotations were largely taken over from Challoner, but not without a fair amount of expansion. This version would serve as the basis of several reprints during the 19^th Century, including an early American quarto edition published in Philadelphia in 1805 by Mathew Carey, with its Edition on the title page given as: “First American, From the Fifth Dublin Edition”. This was the second Catholic Bible from Carey’s press, and was also the first illustrated Catholic Bible published in America.

The Old Testament of the Troy editions differ from Challoner only slightly, but the New Testament is the modified McMahon New Testament of 1783, with upwards of another two hundred revisions to Challoner. This amounted to some 800 changes to the Challoner NT, typically more colloquial, and not all of them improvements. One significant improvement, however, was the addition of cross-references in the margins.

Geddes Old Testament (1792—1797/1807)

One of the more interesting works of Biblical translation to come out of Catholic circles in the late 18^th Century was an incomplete Old Testament called: “The Holy Bible, or the Books accounted Sacred by Jews and Christians: otherwise called the Books of the Old and New Covenants: faithfully translated from corrected texts of the Originals. With various readings, Explanatory notes, and Critical remarks. By the Rev. Alexander Geddes, LL. D.” The preface identifies about twenty-five textual sources, including resources in Hebrew, Chaldee, Coptic, Syriac, Arabic, Greek, and Latin. Geddes’ use of textual markups and variant readings place him among the pioneers in Old Testament textual criticism. He managed to publish only the first two volumes before his death. Volume I, in 1792, was a roughly 400-page quarto volume covering Genesis to Joshua. Volume II, in 1797, of similar size, covered Judges through Chronicles, plus the Prayer of Manasseh. Geddes’ incomplete work on the Psalms was published posthumously (1807) in octavo format; it is published today in Logos ebook format by Faithlife.

Geddes, a Scot, was quite open to fellowship with Protestants, establishing a friendship with a clergyman of the Scotch Church, and even attending his public services, for which Geddes’ bishop suspended him, in 1779, from his ecclesial functions. Eschewing the common interpretation of the Council of Trent concerning the superiority of the Latin Vulgate, Geddes resolved to translate his Bible from the original languages. He also explicitly determined not to seek ecclesial approbation, asserting that the judgment of whether his work possessed “intrinsic value” is one “for the learned public to determine: and if their determination be favorable, not the sentence of a whole synod of bishops can reverse it”. For a Catholic (or perhaps anyone) to assert that popular opinion holds greater weight than a synod of bishops in the judgment of Biblical translation is rather astonishing, and it comes as no surprise that Geddes’ work was not well received within the Church – it was, rather, condemned. It was better received in non-Catholic circles – although his explicit rejection, in the preface to Vol. II, of the Divine inspiration of the “Jewish historians” would have limited his reception in those circles as well.

Hay/Geddes/Robertson New Testament (1792)

The first English language Catholic Bible published in Scotland was produced in 1792 under Vicar Apostolic of the Lowland District George Hay (1729-1811). This revision of the Challoner New Testament was edited by the Benedictine friar James Robertson, supervised by Hay’s coadjutor, Bishop John Geddes – not to be confused with his “cousin” Alexander Geddes, who began publishing his translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew that same year. Prefiguring modern “expanded” translations, the work interposed explanatory words placed within brackets, such as in Matt 13:4: “some [of the seed] fell by the wayside”. This was a controversial revision (e.g., replacing penance with repentance in some places) which was not widely accepted. However, the Gospels and Acts were incorporated into a low-cost, portable (duodecimo) Bible published at Newcastle by the Reverend John Worswick in 1812: a pastiche of a work that used Challoner’s translation for the Epistles and Apocalypse. A few years later (1796/1797), Bishop Hay would sponsor a reprinting of the 1750 (OT) / 1752 (NT) Challenor Bible, with which the 1792 NT revision should not be confused.

McMahon’s New Testament (1803/1810)

After Bernard McMahon completed his work for Bishop Troy, he published two revised editions of the New Testament version he had originally produced for Bishop Carpenter in 1783. These new duodecimo editions (1803 and 1810) incorporated some of the changes made by McMahon in his 1791 revision for Dr. Troy, but reverted others back to align with his earlier work.

Haydock’s Bible (1811-1814)

The Haydock Bible did not represent an updated version of the Biblical text, utilizing as it did McMahon’s revisions of Challoner, but it is noteworthy due to its long-standing popularity. Fr. George Leo Haydock, an English convert to Catholicism in the waning days of the repressive anti-Catholic penal laws, sought to supply the public with a compelling apology for the Catholic faith in the face of officially organized resistance to repeal of the penal laws, with which the populace was increasingly uncomfortable. Haydock assembled his own notes on the Old Testament, combining them with excerpts from Challoner and other commentators from over the preceding decades, and then engaged Fr. Benjamin Rayment to assist in doing the same for the New Testament. Together, they produced an extensively annotated Bible which was published initially in folio-sized fascicles to subscribers, who would eventually have the works bound together. Haydock’s brother Thomas was the publisher, originally in Manchester, and later in Dublin. Other editions would soon be published in London, Liverpool, Belfast, Newry, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Philadelphia, New York, and other publishing centers in the Anglospere, often in smaller and cheaper octavo or duodecimo sizes. Many of the later editions utilized a Challoner Bible text, rather than the McMahon revision.

The annotations have come to be known as Haydock’s Commentary, the notes being about twice the volume of the Biblical text. Now over two hundred years old, it had been continuously in print for a century, and since the late 20^th Century has been available again in various forms: both in print editions and in electronic reproduction, where it is typically found as a public domain work consisting of only the commentary.

Lingard’s Four Gospels (1836)

Father John Lingard was an English Catholic priest-scholar, whose translation of the gospels from Greek was originally published anonymously (1836, reprinted 1846, in London). The work’s title obscures the fact that it is a translation directly from the Greek: “A New Version of The Four Gospels; with Notes Critical and Explanatory, by a Catholic “. After Lingard’s death in 1851, it was subsequently released in a second edition with his name attached. As a scholar, Lingard is best-known for his seminal history of England, originally published as an 8-volume work in 1819 called: “The History of England, From the First Invasion by the Romans to the Accession of Henry VIII”, which he later expanded, up to the accession of William & Mary in 1688. The primary thrust of the history is a demonstration of the damage done to England by the Reformation. It is still available in print, as is his Four Gospels. Lingard was a pioneer among Catholics in translating the New Testament directly from the Greek. His Four Gospels would influence Francis Kenrick.

Kenrick’s Challoner Revision (1849—1862)

Francis Patrick Kenrick (1797-1863) was an Irish-born priest, skilled in Greek and Hebrew, who was assigned to the Diocese of Bardstown, Kentucky, where he taught theology, history, and Greek at both Bardstown Seminary and the College of St. Joseph, until being called to become Bishop of Philadelphia in 1830. He was regarded a leading Catholic theologian in mid-19^th century America, who wrestled with the theories and approaches of historical critical interpretation current in Protestant Biblical scholarship. While in Philadelphia, in the 1840s, Bishop Kenrick undertook a revision of the Challoner version, which he completed after being translated to Baltimore as archbishop in 1851. His revision, along with extensive textual and interpretive commentary, was published in six substantial octavo volumes (4,000+ pages) of single-column text between 1849 and 1860.

• The Four Gospels (1849)
• The Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, the Catholic Epistles, and the Apocalypse (1851)
• The Psalms, Books of Wisdom, and Canticle of Canticles (1857)
• The Book of Job, and the Prophets (1859)
• The Pentateuch (1860)
• The Historical Books of the Old Testament (1860)

A revised New Testament was subsequently published in a consolidated single volume in 1862.

Kenrick undertook his revision of the Douay translation with the goal of defending the Vulgate against critics, and to provide the English-speaking Church with a more consonant and precise translation. His work was praised by some, but also met criticism for being too open to “rationalist” approaches (especially in his voluminous marginal notes). His translation of metanoia as “repent” rather than with the traditional “do penance” was a source of conflict within ecclesial circles, as was his decision to translate baptizo as “immersion” – both decisions seeming to give credence to Protestant positions in ongoing doctrinal controversies. The “General Introduction” of his second volume contained an apology for his use of non-Catholic scholarship:

“The freedom with which I have quoted Protestant and Rationalistic authors may seem scarcely consistent with the Rules of the Index, which require that the annotations should be taken from the fathers, or from Catholic divines. The attentive reader will, however, observe, that in all matters of doctrine and moral instruction I draw from the purest fountains of orthodox faith, and that I avail myself of the testimonies of those who are outside the pale of the Church, only by way of acknowledgment on their part, or in matters purely critical, in which they have brought their stores of erudition and their natural acuteness of mind to the vindication of the sacred text.”

At the same time, Kenrick also met criticism, primarily from within academic circles, for hewing too closely to the Latin Vulgate, particularly in the Old Testament. This was especially the case concerning the Pentateuch, where Kenrick himself observed that Jerome had departed from strict conformance to the Hebrew in order to “give smoothness to the narrative”. Nonetheless, Kendrick saw his task as primarily one of re-presenting the text as handed down in the Vulgate, “since this is the standard of all vernacular versions for general use, according to the settled usage of the Holy See.” His translational philosophy was firmly in the camp that moderns would call formal equivalence, and his defense of that approach, also given in his “General Introduction” to Volume II, is both concise and compelling:

“I have endeavoured to be strictly literal, especially where the text was likely to be employed in matters of controversy, that no suspicion of bias might arise; so that in some few instances I have left the sense imperfect, rather than supply by conjecture anything, which might affect its doctrinal bearing. The value of the ancient translations arises precisely from their close character, which serves as an index to the reading of the text: but the difference of idiom and of construction should not be wholly disregarded. Where the meaning of the text is clear, the translator may present it divested of those anomalies which would render it harsh or unintelligible: but in cases of doubt, conjecture should not easily be indulged, especially in matters appertaining to doctrine. In such circumstances fidelity requires the closest adherence to the text, which may be illustrated by notes, according to the best judgment of the interpreter. Readers easily give the praise of excellence to a translation which is fluent and perspicuous, without reflecting that they may be misled by a guide who gives no intimation of the difficulties which embarrass himself in the choice of his own course. If there be a single passage in which the meaning of the sacred text is wilfully perverted, it is enough to involve the whole work in condemnation. A jot, or a letter, must not be taken from the law. The word of God must be preserved in its integrity. It is treason against the Supreme Majesty to change a word in a charter under the seal of the Great King. Not without a special design of Providence, the closing book of the sacred volume denounces woes to the man who shall take away from, or add to, the words of that prophecy; a threat which extends to all who adulterate the word of God, changing that which should remain inviolate, though heaven and earth pass away.”

Despite his stature as Archbishop of Baltimore, and thus the leading prelate in America, his work would not be widely accepted, found entirely pleasing to neither the traditionalists nor the reformists. The translation would fade into obscurity following Kenrick’s death in 1863, although his Psalter was republished in 1913 under the approbation of Cardinal Gibbons of Baltimore. Faithlife is currently attempting to secure sufficient customer interest in the full set to fund development of a Logos electronic edition. It has been reprinted in facsimile volumes since about the beginning of the current century.

From Vatican I to Vatican II

Spencer New Testament (1897/1898/1937)

In 1893, Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Providentissimus Deus (The God of all Providence), which called for the prudent appropriation of “scientific” methods of Biblical study that had emerged over several preceding generations, including the prudent use of original language texts. One of the early adopters of this more critical approach was American Dominican Fr. Francis Aloysius Spencer, who began his translation work with a well-received translation of the Gospels from the Vulgate, initiated in 1894 and published in 1897. The following year, he published an equally well-received translation of the Gospels from the Greek: The Four Gospels – A New Translation from the Greek Text Direct with Reference to the Vulgate and the Ancient Syriac Version. The work was published in New York by W. H. Young & Co., with approbation from his Dominican Provincial Prior, and the archbishops of New York (Augustine) and Baltimore (Gibbons). Cardinal Gibbons also provided a preface, praising the “earnest simplicity” of the work.

Following his second set of Gospels, Spencer spent the remainder of his years producing a complete New Testament from the Greek, including new versions of the Gospels. He finalized the translation just months before his death in 1913. The translation was the first of the entire New Testament in English from the Greek by a Catholic. However, the work went unpublished for a couple of decades, until the prospect of publishing it came up at the 1935 annual meeting of the American Catholic bishops. Fellow Dominican Frs. Charles J. Callan and John A. McHugh were charged with preparing the text for publication, amending it with additional notes, introductions, indexes, and maps.

It was printed in single column paragraph format, with verse numbering in the margins. He employed section headings liberally, where he would provide parallels and cross-references. He italicized the spoken words of Jesus, and used small caps to identify Old Testament quotations or allusions in the New Testament. He also generally used Hebrew transliteration forms to spell Hebrew proper names, rather than the Greek forms typical in Catholic Bibles at the time. The work, published by Macmillan in 1937 as The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Translated into English from the Original Greek, was very well received among both critics and readers, being reprinted in 1940, 1941, 1943, 1945, 1946, and 1948.

Early 20^th Century Psalters

In 1901, Jesuit James McSwiney published a 700-page study of the Psalter containing literal translations of both the Hebrew and Vulgate texts in parallel columns, with a critical and exegetical commentary (Dublin & St Louis). McSwiney was the first Catholic to translate the complete Psalter into English from Hebrew. This is available in facsimile today, and is also available as a multi-part Logos ebook resource.

Irish priest Patrick Boylan published a two-volume A Study of the Vulgate Psalter in the Light of the Hebrew Text in two octavo volumes totaling nearly 800 pages, which present the Vulgate and Boylan’s English translation of it in parallel columns, along with extensive running commentary (Dublin: 1920/1924). This work is also available today in facsimile and as a multi-part Logos resource.

In 1927, Thomas E. Bird of Oscott College published A Commentary on the Psalms, a work of about 900 pages in two octavo volumes (London) in which he presents both the Vulgate Psalter and a translation made primarily from the Hebrew, with recourse to other ancient authorities. The work is structured like certain modern commentaries with distinct sections providing introduction, critical exegesis, and exposition for each Psalm. The second volume is rare, and the work is not in print.

Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures (1913—1949)

The Westminster Version was a British effort led by Jesuit Fr. Cuthbert Lattey (1877-1954), which, if completed, would have been the first complete Catholic Bible in English translated from the original languages. The various books were assigned to particular scholars, who completed translation and commentary more or less independently. The New Testament was released in fascicles, from 1913 through 1935. It was also released in four lavish volumes between 1921 and 1936. A handy single volume edition of New Testament was published in 1948 with minimal annotations. All the New Testament releases were published in London by Longmans, Green and Co. The letters of St. Paul (including Hebrews) are re-ordered according to a proposed chronological order in these editions.

Fascicles of Old Testament books began appearing in 1934, with continued periodic releases until 1953, after which the death of Fr. Lattey effectively brought the project to a close. During that period, several publishers were engaged to publish Westminster translations of twelve of the forty-six Old Testament books: nine of the twelve Minor Prophets (excluding Hosea, Joel, Amos), Daniel, Ruth, and Psalms. In 1958, Hawthorne Book Publishers (Caxton Publishing in the US) released a single volume “Family Bible” which contained the Westminster translations of the New Testament and Psalms, and used the Challoner version for the remainder of the Old Testament. Overall, the Westminster translation is considered competent but stylistically overly archaic.

The Confraternity New Testament (1941)

At their 1936 annual conference, the American bishops agreed to undertake a revision of Bishop Challoner’s New Testament, which would be carried out by the newly formed Catholic Biblical Association of America (CBA), established by Bishop Edwin O’Hara, chair of the Episcopal Committee on the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine (CCD). The Clementine Vulgate would be the primary translation source, but it was to be corrected against the original language manuscripts, employing the scientific methods promoted by Providentissimus Deus. A provisional version of the Gospel of John provided to American bishops and Biblical scholars in 1938 by CBA translator William L. Newton is available in used book markets. In 1941, the full Confraternity New Testament was published in a volume that swapped the traditional two-column verse-by-verse layout with a single-column paragraph format. There were also two-column editions issued which retained the new paragraph layout.

A corresponding revision of the Old Testament was permanently suspended, however, after Pope Pius XII issued his 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu (Inspired by the Divine Spirit), which called for Catholic Biblical translations directly from the best original language manuscripts, compelling the CBA to embark on brand new translations of both the Old and New Testaments.

In 2016, Scepter published a pocket edition of the Confraternity NT, and in 2020, Sophia Institute Press published The Catholic Reader’s Bible, a two-volume edition of the Confraternity NT published in single-column format and stripped of all annotation, including chapter markings and versification. These 2020 volumes are also available in ePub format.

Callan Psalters (1944-1949)

In 1944, Dominican Fr Charles Callan published The Psalms, Translated from the Latin Psalter, in the light of the Hebrew, of the Septuagint, and Peshitta versions, and of the Psalterium Juxta Hebraeos of St. Jerome, with Introductions, Critical Notes and Spiritual Reflections. This was a large volume of 700pp, which sets the Gallican Psalter and Callan’s English translation in parallel columns. In 1945, the Pontifical Biblical Institute (of which Callan was a consultor), at the behest of Pope Pius XII, published a new Latin Psalter translated principally from a critical Hebrew text. In 1949, Callan published a second Psalter study in English, replacing the Gallican Psalter with the new Psalter of Pius XII.

The Knox Version (1944-1950)

At about the same time the CCD in America was preparing its revision of the Challoner translation of the Vulgate New Testament, an Englishman and Anglican convert to Catholicism, Monsignor Ronald Knox, at the behest of the English hierarchy, was producing a much more dynamic translation of the Vulgate, which would be very well-received. It was a very modern translation for the most part, but retained some archaic word forms. He released a “trial edition” New Testament in 1944, and a final edition in 1945. His Old Testament Vulgate translation was released in two volumes between 1948 and 1949. The volume two contained a second, alternate edition of the Psalms, translated from the Pontifical Biblical Institute’s 1945 Latin Psalter from the Hebrew. In 1950, the Knox version was published in a single volume as: The Holy Bible: A Translation From the Latin Vulgate in the Light of the Hebrew and Greek Originals.

Unhappily for the fate of this work, before Knox had even completed his Vulgate New Testament translation, Pope Pius XII issued the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, urging Catholic scholars to produce Scripture translations from the original languages. Knox’s effort would thus soon be overshadowed by those original language translations. The Knox translation received considerable exposure in America as the version preferred by Venerable Fulton Sheen during the time of his popular television ministry.

After having been out of print for decades, the Knox New Testament was published in facsimile in 1997 by Templegate Publishing. In 2012, the complete Bible was published in a fine, single column print edition from Baronius Press. Electronically, it is available as an excellent on-line text from New Advent (in a three-column parallel format set against Latin and Greek texts), but it is not available in any ebook format.

Benziger Prayer Book (1947)

In 1947, Benziger Brothers published an anonymous English translation of the Psalter and the other canticles of the breviary in parallel columns with the new Pius XII Latin text. This work, entitled The Psalms: A Prayer Book, and intended for personal prayer, features modest annotations for each Psalm and canticle, as well as introductory articles on the use of the Psalms. The work is associated with the name of its principal editor, William H McClellan, S.J. It was published as a 470-page volume which liberally uses eye-catching red ink in heading text.

Confraternity Bibles (1948-1969)

Beginning with a preliminary version of Genesis in 1948, the CBA started publishing its new translations of the Old Testament from original languages to accompany its 1941 New Testament from the Latin. A new Psalter translation followed in 1950. The resulting published full Bibles, containing an evolving hybrid of Challoner text filling in the gaps of the new CBA translations, became known as Confraternity Bibles. They would be updated with sets of new books translated from the original languages as the CBA published its Old Testament translation in four volumes:

• 1952: Vol. 1 – Genesis-Ruth
• 1955: Vol. 3 – The Sapiential Books: Job-Sirach
• 1961: Vol. 4 – The Prophetic Books: Isaiah-Malachi
• 1969: Vol. 2 – Samuel-Maccabees

Although Samuel-Maccabees was published as a stand-alone volume in 1969, it was never released in a Confraternity Bible. The complete Confraternity/CBA Old Testament would instead be combined with a CBA New Testament newly translated from the Greek and rebranded for publication in 1970 as the New American Bible.

Kleist–Lilly New Testament (1954)

Published posthumously by Bruce Publishing, The New Testament: Rendered From the Original Greek With Explanator Notes was a collaboration between two American priests in translating the Greek New Testament in the immediate wake of Divino Afflante Spiritu: the German-born James Aloysius Kleist, S.J., and Joseph L. Lilly, C.M.

Kleist produced the Gospels, generally considered the superior part of the work. He began his translation work after the promulgation of Divino Afflante Spiritu in September 1943, using as a source text the Greek of J. M. Bover’s Greek/Latin New Testament (Madrid, 1943). He’d finished the Gospels by Christmas, 1948, the year before his death. Lilly, working from the same source text, produced the remainder of the NT, although parts of Acts appear to have been taken from the Confraternity New Testament, suggesting that Lilly may not have completed the work before his death in 1952.

The aim of the translation was to produce a modern language version for Catholics, using functional equivalence and “common vocabulary” techniques, to relay the fruits of modern Biblical scholarship to the general reader. Verse numbering is pushed to the margins, without precise division markings within the text. The notes for the Four Gospels in this edition are largely the work of the Jesuit Henry Willmering. Fr. Lilly provided his own notes for the remaining books. This work was not widely adopted, but was reprinted several times, and is quite accessible to the modern ear compared to the Confraternity New Testament published the previous decade.

Kleist–Lynam Psalms in Rhythmic Prose (1954)

In 1947, Fr. James Aloysius Kleist had begun working with Thomas J. Lynam on a new version of the Psalms translated from the 1945 Pius XII Latin Psalter, intended for “meditative reading and prayer”. Published as The Psalms in Rhythmic Prose, each Psalm is composed using iambic rhythms to try to capture the feel of the original songs. Annotations are minimal and explanatory. Final revisions were completed by Lynam after Kleist’s death in 1949. The work was published in a 236-page volume in Milwaukee by Bruce in 1954. It was republished in 2021 in both hardback and paperback in editions that appear to have been OCR’d.

Grail Psalter (1963)

In 1963, an English lay women’s community, called The Ladies of the Grail, published a dynamic English translation of the Psalms from the recently published French La Bible de Jérusalem. The Grail Psalms were crafted for chanting to the music of French liturgical composer Joseph Gelineau. This work became widely used in other settings, as it was incorporated into the Lectionaries of Great Britain and Australia, as well as into the English edition of the Liturgy of the Hours adopted worldwide, where it continues to be used to this day. While the translators took some liberties at times for the sake of lyricism, the accentuated cadences of their metrical style render the Psalms particularly suitable for singing, chanting, or praying.

The 20^th Century after Vatican II

Jerusalem Bible (1966)

Following Pope Pius XII’s call for original language translations of the Bible in 1943, French Dominicans at the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem produced the well-received La Bible de Jérusalem, published in whole in 1956. The British Catholic Biblical Association, under General Editor Alexander Jones, produced a derivative edition in English, published by Darton, Longman & Todd (DLT) and by Doubleday in 1966 as The Jerusalem Bible (JB).

While the text is mostly a fresh translation of the Biblical text into English from original language manuscripts using a dynamic equivalence approach, it was read against the French edition, and follows it closely. Extensive annotations and introductions were translated directly from the French edition. The “dynamic” approach placed a priority on the work’s readability in English, and little concern was given to maintaining “traditional” Biblical language. It was published in single-column format, with verse numbering relegated to the gutter, and ample cross-references populating the outside margins, aligned to the relevant referent. In addition to the fully annotated regular edition, a Reader’s Edition with minimal annotations was published in 1968. The single-column format contributes to these being hefty volumes: the standard edition hardcover is 6.5”x9.5”x3”; the Reader’s Edition hardcover is 6.25”x9.5”x2.5”.

Excepting the Psalms, for which the 1963 Grail Psalms were substituted, the JB was adopted as the vernacular liturgical text for the Mass in Great Britain and several other English-speaking regions following the Second Vatican Council. However, the JB is notable for the use of “Yahweh” as an attempted transliteration of the Divine Name in Hebrew, which is unsuitable for liturgical use according to norms published shortly after the turn of the millennium. In response to a need for cheaper editions of the JB in Africa, England’s Catholic Truth Society published an edition in 2007 containing the JB text with Grail Psalms, which included a new, reduced set of annotations not derived from the Ecole Biblique material (The CTS New Catholic Bible). The CTS edition replaces the JB’s use of “Yahweh” with “the Lord”. No electronic editions of the JB have been published.

Revised Standard Version—Catholic Edition (1966)

A “Catholic Edition” of the mainline Protestant Revised Standard Version (RSV) New Testament was published in 1965 by the Catholic Biblical Association of Great Britain. Modifications for the Catholic edition largely consisted of swapping primary and marginal readings in the original RSV NT text, which had relegated to the margins numerous words or verses considered of questionable authenticity by many textual scholars of the day, but which were accepted as genuine by the Catholic tradition (and were largely restored to the RSV itself in 1971). In 1966, a “Catholic edition” of the RSV Old Testament was prepared, which simply placed the Deuterocanonical books from the RSV Apocrypha in Catholic canonical order, and eliminated the rest.

A full “Catholic” RSV Bible was thus published in 1966 as the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (RSV-CE), with imprimaturs declared by archbishops from Scotland and America. Out of print for several years, it was re-published in 1994 by Ignatius Press of San Francisco, containing a useful appendix detailing the textual changes from the 1946 RSV NT. It has since been released by several other publishers as well, including an electronic edition in Logos format boasting a reverse interlinear apparatus.

New American Bible (1970)

By 1970, the Catholic Biblical Association of America (CBA) had completed their “Confraternity” translations “from the original languages or from the oldest extant form of the text”. Rebranded and published as The New American Bible (NAB), the final work comprised lightly re-edited versions of OT books that had been published in stages within Confraternity Bibles since 1952, alongside a fresh translation of the NT, which had been partially previewed as readings in a 1964 provisional lectionary. One noticeable departure from the preliminary Confraternity texts was the adoption of the Hebrew form in transliterating proper names (including book names), following the common practice in Protestant Bibles.

The books of the Jewish canon were translated primarily from the Masoretic text, as corrected against the Qumran manuscripts and other ancient authorities. The Psalms, however, were translated not from the Masoretic but from the critical Hebrew source text behind the recently published (1944) Pope Pius XII edition of the Latin Psalter. Baruch is translated from the LXX, but “with some readings derived from an underlying Hebrew form no longer extant”. The other books of the Deuterocanon were mostly translated from LXX, although Daniel is taken from “Theodotian”, and Sirach was translated in large part from Hebrew fragments. Sirach is one of a dozen OT books in which the editors have occasionally “corrected” the ordering of some verses to conform to a perceived original Hebrew order. The NT was translated primarily from the 25th edition of the Nestle-Aland critical text.

Following both general academic trends of the day and guidance from the Concilium responsible for implementing the Vatican II liturgical reform, the translational approach was effectively one of dynamic equivalence, with the committee’s mission being to “convey as directly as possible the thought and individual style of the inspired writers”, and “to present the sense of the biblical text in as correct a form as possible”. It was published with adequately modest explanatory notes and cross-references.

The NAB supplied the Lectionary texts in the US when the 1970 revised Lectionary for Mass was promulgated, and remains the basis for the OT readings (excluding the Psalms) in the current (1998/2001) Lectionaries. It is also the basis for the 1975 American English edition of the Liturgy of the Hours (excluding the Psalms), which remains the current edition today. Electronic editions of the 1970 NAB have been withdrawn.

Alba House New Testament (1970)

In 1970, Alba House (Society of St. Paul) published a small (18mo), loosely translated, highly colloquial, “plain, simple, modern language” translation of the Gospels from the Greek “prepared” by Kevin Condon, entitled The Alba House New Testament, The Accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. An Irish edition was published (also 1970) by Mercier Press as The Mercier New Testament. It was subsequently republished in 1972 by Pyramid Books as New Testament for the New World.

Contrary to the book titles, this work consists only of the four Gospels. It is based on a German edition published in 1964 called Das Neue Testament für Menschen Unserer Zeit, but is itself translated new from the Greek, “in a free-flowing style”. The translation is very colloquial; the opening verse of “Matthew’s Account” is illustrative: “This book tells the story of Jesus Christ. By his family-tree Jesus was descended from King David, who was himself descended from the patriarch Abraham.” The work contains no annotations per se, but poetic quotations are liberally distributed as section headings throughout the text to reflect “parallel evocations from the poets of a similar line of thought”. Roughly 100 full-page photographs provide further aesthetic context. This work should not be confused with the New Testament translated by Mark Wauck for Alba House a couple decades later. A novelty, it is long out of print.

The Catholic Living Bible (1976)

Catholic publisher Our Sunday Visitor, recognizing the great popularity of Kenneth Taylor’s Living Bible paraphrase, produced similar paraphrases of the Deuterocanonical books, which were combined with Taylor’s work in a “Complete Catholic Edition” for an illustrated edition called The Way, first published in 1976. The Table of Contents lists the Deuterocanonicals in their proper places within the canon, but the books themselves are appended after the New Testament. The work was published with the imprimatur of the Catholic bishop of Fort Wayne – South Bend, Indiana. Other editions would follow for more than a decade, from both Our Sunday Visitor and Tyndale House Publishers, known as The Catholic Living Bible. The “Catholic” edition of the Living Bible is no longer published.

Good News Translation Catholic Edition (1979/1992)

In 1979, the American Bible Society (ABS) published an edition of their popular Good News Bible: Today’s English Version “with Deuterocanonicals/Apocrypha” for which they obtained the imprimatur of the archbishop of Hartford. The disputed books were placed in two groups between the OT and the NT, with short articles explaining the canonical history of each group. As with the protocanonical text, footnotes and cross references are sparse. Later editions were published as The Good News Translation Catholic Edition, at least some of which placed the Deuterocanonical books in the Catholic canonical order. A full revision of the Good News Translation was published as a Second Edition in 1992, primarily attending to “the negative effects of exclusive language”. The later edition is still in print in Catholic editions, mostly aimed at a juvenile readership. It is approved by the American bishops for private use. The translation was prepared using the “dynamic equivalence” approach developed by ABS linguist Eugene Nida, and is geared toward those with middle school level reading skills and vocabulary.

New Jerusalem Bible (1985)

A thorough revision of the French Bible de Jérusalem was published in 1973, prompting a revision of its English cousin, the Jerusalem Bible. Led by a new general editor, English Benedictine Fr. Henry Wansbrough, the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) was published in 1985. As with its predecessor, the annotations and introductions were generally taken directly from the French edition. The translation itself is less reliant on the French edition than the JB had been, but it continues to be interpretively guided by it.

This revision was less paraphrastic and colloquial than the JB, and especially more attentive to linguistic consistency, aiming to better reflect and illuminate the underlying texts, even if it incorporated gender-neutral terms rather liberally. The NJB retains the use of “Yahweh” for the Divine Name, rendering it unsuitable for liturgical use.

The Standard Edition page layout follows that of the JB, employing a single column arrangement, with verse numbering in the gutter, cross-references placed tactically in the margins, and ample footnotes presented in two columns at the bottom of each right-hand page, as well as about 70 pages of tables, indexes, and maps. Using thinner paper, the volume is more compact than the corresponding JB volume. The NJB was also published in a Reader’s Edition in 1990, which strips out most annotations and supplements, and presents most books in two-column format.

The NJB is published by Doubleday in the US, and by DLT in the UK. It is also widely available electronically in the Reader’s Edition. Faithlife publishes both editions in Logos format.

New American Bible with Revised New Testament (1986)

A revision of the NAB New Testament was begun in 1978, just eight years after the publication of the original edition. It was published in 1986 as the Revised New Testament of the New American Bible. It remains the NT text of the current NAB version.

Translated from the 3rd edition of the UBS critical Greek text, the revision would be somewhat less creative and more “formal” in its translation approach, being both less colloquial and more consistent in its vocabulary. Annotations and cross references were re-worked and expanded. The primary aim of the revision was to produce a text better suited to the dignity of public proclamation in the liturgy. The translators adopted a measured approach to controversies over “language that discriminates”, sensitive to the fact that the underlying questions had not been resolved. The text would be incorporated into the revised Lectionary for Mass (1998/2001), but not without being modified to utilize gender neutral language more liberally for the sake of public proclamation in the liturgy.

Christian Community Bible (1988—2013)

The Christian Community Bible (CCB) is the English language entry in a network of simplified translations used in the Catholic missions which are grounded in an originating work of Bernando Hurault, a French Claretian missionary who was stationed in Chile in the 1960s. Hurault developed his own Spanish language translation to assist the poor he served, using a loose translation approach that simplified the text. This he published in 1971 as La Biblia Latinoamericana, heavily annotating the text with a “pastoral” commentary drawing on his homilies and on the life situation of the oppressed poor he lived among, informed by the “theology of liberation” that was in ascendency at the time in European universities and in third-world slums and pueblos.

The work was outlawed as Marxist agitprop by some of the repressive right-wing regimes in the Spanish-speaking south, and by the mid-1980s, Hurault was living in the Philippines, where a fellow Claretian missionary, Argentinian-born Alberto Rossa, convinced Hurault (who did not know English) to produce an English-language version of his Bible, which would incorporate his commentary. This was published in 1988 by the Rossa-managed Claretian Publications.

The translation appears to have been updated many times, but a version history is not readily available. The Old Testament book sequence for many years reflected of a strange pastiche of the arrangements of the Jewish Bible and the Vulgate, although this odd ordering has been abandoned in the most recent revisions. The current edition of the CCB is dated 2013. It is published in the Philippines by Claretian Publications and distributed primarily in so-called mission lands, although Paulist Press in the US published The New Testament with Lectio Divina, based on the CCB NT, in 2020.

New Revised Standard Version–Catholic Edition (1990/1993)

The 1993 New Revised Standard Version–Catholic Edition (NRSV-CE) differs from the common NRSV (1990) only in the elimination of those few books of the NRSV Apocrypha not accepted in the Catholic canon, and in the canonical arrangement of the books. Like it’s “ecumenical” sister edition, it is an essentially formal equivalence translation that has managed to modernize and smooth out the English of the RSV nicely, yet also introduced “gender-neutral language” on a scale that has made it something of a poster child for that movement, even succumbing to the dubious practice of representing the masculine singular in the source languages with an English plural (e.g.: they). Widely accepted within academia, the NRSV itself has not found the same welcome in ecclesial circles.

After being rejected for liturgical use by the Orthodox Church in America in 1990, it received the imprimatur for personal use and study from both American and Canadian bishops in 1991, which it retains to this day. The following year, the American bishops received preliminary approbation from the Vatican to use the NRSV for catechetical and liturgical purposes, and on the basis of that approval, the Canadian bishops published the first volume of a revised Lectionary based on the NRSV. However, in 1994, after closer inspection, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) rescinded the previous approbation, and rejected the use of the NRSV in liturgical or catechetical settings. That left the Canadians with a partially completed Lectionary based on a rejected text, which they continued to use for several years. After long discussions, the Vatican in 2008 approved a Canadian Lectionary based on a modified edition of the NRSV that avoided plural pronouns for singular subjects, and the use of awkward neologisms like “humankind”.

Print editions of the NRSV-CE are available in both standard (American) and Anglicized editions. It is the translation used in the remarkable seven-volume Word on Fire Bible being produced by Bishop Robert Barron. Electronically, Logos and the common ebook platforms offer the NRSV in the NRSV-CE arrangement. The copyright holder has recently partnered with the Society of Biblical Literature to produce an “Update Edition” (NRSVue), but this revision continues the NRSV practice of translating singular pronouns with plurals, which is likely to limit its use in Catholic communities.

Contemporary English Version (1991/1999)

In 1991, the American bishops, looking for a text suitable for a Lectionary for Masses with Children, collaborated with the American Bible Society (ABS) to produce one based on an early version of the ABS’ paraphrastic, limited vocabulary Contemporary English Version (CEV), aimed at readers with third grade language skills. Qualified Vatican approval for its experimental use was granted in 1992 “On the basis of the assurance given by Your Excellency that the [CEV] does not present any doctrinal problems in the sphere of the issue of the inclusive language question at present under study”. Even though the CEV translation most certainly suffers from the very doctrinal problems the Vatican alluded to (among others), a five-year experimental period was undertaken in the US, which was subsequently extended for three additional years. A request for another extension in 2000 did not yield a positive response from the Vatican.

In 1999, the ABS began publishing CEV Bible editions containing the Apocrypha. Some of these distinguish the Deuterocanon, and sometimes bear the label “Catholic”. Like most CEVs, these are often packaged as youth or children’s Bibles. The CEV New Testament and Psalms remain approved for personal use by the US Catholic Bishops.

Revised Psalms of the New American Bible (1992)

Between 1988 and 1991, the American Catholic Biblical Association produced a new, ill-fated translation of the NAB Psalms called The Revised Psalms of the New American Bible. which received the imprimatur of bishops’ Conference president Daniel Pilarczyk, and was subsequently published both as an independent volume, and as the embedded psalter of NAB Bibles published from 1992 until 2011.

The work was a thoroughgoing revision of the 1970 NAB psalter, which had originally been published in 1950. Annotations were reworked and expanded, and the language was significantly updated to utilize more modern and colloquial vocabulary, including the adoption of “inclusive language” to obscure the masculine gender of many words. This practice extended even to the use of “vertical inclusive language” circumlocutions, which led to considerable criticism.

In early 1992, the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship (CDW) approved a proposal to use this psalter in liturgical settings, and in June the American bishops approved a revised Lectionary incorporating the Revised NAB Psalms and New Testament, which was then submitted to the Vatican for approval. The approval was not forthcoming, and in 1994, the CDW rescinded its approval for liturgical use of the RNAB Psalms. That resulted in a long, difficult discussion between the American bishops and the Vatican concerning both the norms for translation of Biblical texts, and the specifics of the new American Lectionary. A new Lectionary for Mass for the US was finally approved and published in 1998, but would not incorporate the RNAB Psalter. When the remainder of the NAB Old Testament was finally published in revision in 2011, the 1991 revised Psalms would be replaced by a third version.

Wauck Illustrated Alba House New Testament (1992/1994)

Alba House sponsored a solo translation of the New Testament by Mark Wauck, first published in 1992 as The Alba House Gospels: So You May Believe. This was followed in 1994 by the complete NT, called Books of the New Testament, which included a light revision of the Gospels, and condensed the introductions and annotations. Translated from UBS3 and NA26, it tilts toward formal equivalence for accuracy, yet is creatively direct, modern in vocabulary, and noticeably conversational in tone – for example, in its liberal use of contractions. The full work was published in 2000 under the Pauline Books and Media imprint as The New Testament: St. Paul Catholic Edition. Notable for its time is its restrained use of inclusive language. Alba House would later re-release that work’s Pauline corpus (Romans-Hebrews!) in 2008 as Letters of Saint Paul, in a compact edition providing expanded book introductions. Both editions are listed on the website of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) as “Approved Translations of the Sacred Scriptures for Private Use and Study by Catholics”.

The New Testament volume was published in a remarkable layout, with single-column text framed on heavy, colorful pastel pages sporting bold red text for headings and heavy black bolding to identify OT quotations. Verse numbering is relegated to the center gutter, with bullets marking verse delineations in the text. The typeface is dark with subtle serifs, and generous in size, making it very easy to read. Annotations are modest but helpful, and focus on the text. The 650-page work also contains over 130 illustrations sprinkled throughout the text: mostly photos of the Holy Land or archeological objects.

The St. Paul Catholic Edition NT and the Letters of Saint Paul remain available in print, but no electronic editions exist.

ICEL Psalter (1995)

The International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) was formed following the Second Vatican Council to coordinate vernacular text development among various English-speaking bishops’ Conferences. ICEL members had for years been embracing “dynamic equivalence” and “inclusive language” translation principles increasingly at odds with the Roman hierarchy.

In July 1995, American Bishops’ Conference President William Keeler gave his imprimatur to a Psalter and companion volume produced by the ICEL – but only after the editors agreed to restore at least some masculine terms referring to the Deity. In April 1996, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith Prefect Joseph Ratzinger required the withdrawal of the imprimatur, on the basis that the work was doctrinally flawed. Keeler’s successor, Anthony Pilla, revoked the imprimatur, two years later. However, the ICEL and its Chicago archdiocesan publisher continued to sell the work until 2000, when the Vatican further insisted it be withdrawn from circulation.

21^st Century Versions

Nicolas King Bible (2004—2013)

Jesuit Fr. Nicholas King of Oxford produced a solo translation of the entire Bible from Greek, beginning with a New Testament in 2004. This was followed by a translation of the Rahlfs Septuagint, which was released in four volumes, completed in 2013. It is published in England by Kevin Mayhew Publishers of Suffolk, marketed simply as The Bible. The OT books are limited to the scope and ordering of the Roman Catholic canon, except that the author decided against including the Letter of Jeremiah, which comprises chapter six of the Book of Baruch in that canon. The work was published without ecclesial approbation.

The NT is not versified, but is presented as literary units identified with verse ranges, having an interleaved commentary woven into the single-column text. On the contrary, the OT shows individual verse numbers in an extra-wide left-hand margin, and lacks the interwoven commentary, but instead has footnotes presented in two columns below the single-column LXX translation. The translation is freer than most LXX translations, is at times startlingly casual, and is not particularly consistent in the rendering of Greek words throughout the text. The thorny issue of pronoun gender representation is often addressed by using the English plural in place of the Greek singular.

Revised Standard Version—Second Catholic Edition (2006)

A “Second Catholic Edition” revision of the RSV (RSV2CE, 2006), was undertaken by Ignatius Press, primarily to eliminate archaic pronouns referring to God (Thee, Thou, etc.), but also to modernize outdated terms: belt replaces girdle, behold replaces lo, mute replaces dumb, etc. It is more natural sounding to the modern ear than the earlier 1966 Catholic Edition, without differing substantially from it. So that it might be considered for Lectionary usage, the text was submitted to Rome for editing guidance in light of Liturgiam Authenticam, A 2001 Vatican Instruction that had called for translators to avoid paraphrase, imprecision, and culturally fashionable influences. It was subsequently adopted for the Lectionary in the Antilles.

Also known as the “Ignatius Bible”, it is published in print by Ignatius Press in limited formats, which tend to be condensed, sturdy, and attractive, utilizing creamy and somewhat glossy paper. It takes over the modest cross-references and New Testament footnotes introduced in the RSV-CE, and presents them in a more easily readable format, set off in the corner of the page. It also adds a small number of footnotes in the Old Testament, and replaces the RSV-CE appendix of textual modifications with eight pages of color maps. It serves as the underlying text for the superb Ignatius Catholic Study Bible project (NT in 2010; OT in progress). Likewise, Midwest Theological Forum (MTF) uses the RSV-2CE as the underlying Biblical text for the “Ignatius Version” of its Didache Study Bible. It is available digitally in Logos format, with or without reverse-interlinear tagging, or in common ebook formats.

New Community Bible: Catholic Edition (2008—2012)

The New Community Bible is a revision of the Christian Community Bible begun in 1990 by the Society of Saint Paul in India, with collaborators drawn from the Jesuits and the Carmelites of Mary Immaculate, among others. Like the CCB, it targets a readership in missionary lands who speak English as a second language. It is deliberately attuned to the diversity of native religious cultures. The English of the CCB was improved upon for this revision, but is not always smooth. Although the stated aim is to provide a text “understandable to all English-speaking readers”, traditional “bible” vocabulary sometimes replaces simpler words from the CCB it revises. The CCB’s routine use of “Yahweh” is abandoned. Still heavily annotated, Hurault’s commentary is replaced by annotations that are both more academic and that shift the “pastoral” emphasis more toward salvation and less toward liberation. It nonetheless created considerable controversy in India upon publication in 2008.

Some of the annotations attempt to relate the Biblical stories to the life situation and cultural traditions of the Indian population for which they were written, offending some Indian Catholics critical of what they saw as the new commentary’s syncretized appropriation of Hindu and other “world religions”, as well as drawing the ire of nationalistic Hindus who viewed the revision as culturally aggressive. The Indian Bishops’ Conference withdrew the work from publication as a result, and then re-issued a lightly revised version in 2011.

The work was subsequently released in 2012 in an “International Edition” by the Society of Saint Paul in Australia as an inexpensive volume of almost 2,300 thin pages with narrow margins. It presents the text in double columns (except for Psalms, which is printed single-column), separated from double-column annotations below by a slim box of well-formatted cross references. The hardcover is a stout 8.5” x 5.5” x 2.5”. The volume is being sold in the USA by Alba House and the Daughters of St Paul. Electronically, the translation is available via mobile apps for Apple and Android, but at least the Apple version is pretty flaky.

Catholic Public Domain Version (2009)

The Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV) is a personal work by Ronald L. Conte Jr of what he has called a “fairly literal” translation of the Clementine Vulgate, using the Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims as a literary guide. It was self-published in 2009 without copyright, intended to be “in the public domain in perpetuity.” In reverting to the use of the 1592 Clementine Vulgate as source text, Conte has overlooked the Neo Vulgate, the current official Latin text of the Catholic Church, which has been corrected against the best original language manuscripts (published 1979; revised 1986). Thus, Conte’s work effectively ignores the last 400 years or so of advances in textual studies. The work is published without annotations or explanations, which are required of Catholic Bibles by the Second Vatican Council’s Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation: Dei Verbum (#25). No ecclesial approbation has been obtained for this public rendering of the Sacred Word. Properly speaking, this is not a Catholic Bible. A novelty, it is primarily available electronically.

Revised Grail Psalter (2010)

At the request of the US bishops, Benedictine Abbot Gregory Polan of Conception Abbey (Missouri) began a Grail revision in 2004 that would be compliant with the 2001 Vatican instruction Liturgiam Authenticam, with its requirements for literary fidelity to source texts. In 2008, the completed revision was approved as a liturgical Psalter by the USCCB, and sent to the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship for formal recognitio. A mildly updated text was returned with recognition in March of 2010, and was published as The Revised Grail Psalter late in the year. It is published in print by GIA and other publishers in editions for either recitation or singing. Electronic editions are available in Kindle and Logos format.

New American Bible Revised Edition (2011)

The Catholic Biblical Association began revising the NAB Old Testament in 1994, using a source text strategy analogous to that used for the 1970 edition. The initial translation work was completed in 2002. Between 2002 and 2008, the CBA and oversight bodies within the USCCB exchanged drafts of the work, and then a second revision of the NAB Psalter was undertaken between 2009-2010 to replace the inadequate 1991 Psalter – this despite the USCCB having settled in 2008 on adopting the Revised Grail Psalter for future liturgical use. The complete New American Bible, Revised Old Testament was approved for private use and study on the Feast of St. Jerome (September 30), 2010. This work was then combined with the 1986 Revised New Testament, and published on Ash Wednesday of 2011 as The New American Bible Revised Edition (NABRE)

Like the 1986 revised NT, the revised OT is somewhat more formal in translation than the text it replaced, and more consistent in vocabulary. If some questionable decisions were taken, particularly in the service of obscuring alleged social offences in the received texts, it does improve clarity and precision over the 1970 text. The improvement over the anemic 1991 Psalter is substantial. Annotations have been considerably expanded, but like the 1986 revision, the editorial work bears a clear impress of post-Vatican II liberal academic scholarship, and footnotes sometimes wade into academic theories of dubious value to the everyday Catholic seeking to understand what God is saying in Scripture.

In 2012, the USCCB announced a 2025 target date (which appears to have slipped at least a year) for additional revision work aimed at a long-desired re-convergence of the publicly available Biblical texts (OT/NT) with the texts of the liturgical books (e.g. lectionaries, the Liturgy of the Hours, etc.). The NABRE is published in print by a dozen publishers in a wide range of editions, and is available on ebook and major computer Bible Study platforms. The Logos/Verbum edition is offered with reverse interlinear tagging to facilitate lexical study.

New Living Translation Catholic Edition (2015/2017)

Catholic biblical scholars in India, needing an easy-to-read English version, collaborated with Tyndale House to produce a “Catholic Edition” of the New Living Translation (NLT): incorporating the deuterocanon and replacing some weak renderings. Although improving upon many dubious readings from the Living Bible it revises, the NLT remains both very colloquial and imprecise, aimed at readers with minimal reading skills and little familiarity with the Bible. The corrected work received approval from the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India for non-liturgical use, and was published in 2015 in Bangalore by Tyndale in conjunction with the Asian Trading Company. Tyndale House subsequently published the formally approved effort in America in 2017 as: Catholic Holy Bible, New Living Translation, Catholic Reader’s Edition. This edition is also published in ePub and Kindle formats.

The NLT itself has been published under three copyrights: 1996, 2004, and 2015. Tyndale published an initial “Catholic Edition” of their NLT in 2002, which incorporated the Deuterocanonical books in their proper placement, but no ecclesiastical approval was sought for publishing it as a “Catholic” Bible. That unauthorized edition, based on original 1996 NLT, was called the New Living Translation Catholic Reference Edition.

New Catholic Bible (2015/2019)

Touting the benefits of having many translations, New Jersey-based Catholic Book Publishing Company (CBP), long-time publisher of Saint Joseph’s Edition bibles, published The New Catholic Bible (NCB) in 2019: a fresh formal equivalence translation of the Catholic canon that reads clearly and smoothly. Motivated by “a deep desire to be faithful to God’s inspired words”, the translators strove to “achieve a dignified and accurate version”. The annotations are thorough, particularly in the NT and Psalms, and are refreshingly expository. The full Bible was preceded in 2015 by The New Catholic Version New Testament. An edition of the Psalms had been published in 2002.

Despite being published by an American publishing house, the translation received its ecclesial approvals (for private use and study) from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines. The imprimaturs are dated 2007 (NT) and 2013 (OT). Public background information on the effort is sparse, other than that the translation team was led by Conventual Franciscan Fr. Jude Winkler. The Bible is published by CBP in numerous print formats. The work is well-suited for personal devotions or study, except that it lacks ebook editions.

The English Standard Version Catholic Edition (2018)

When Crossway published the “essentially literal” English Standard Version (ESV) in 2001, hopes for a Catholic Edition seemed vain. Then, in 2009, Oxford University Press revised the 1977 RSV Apocrypha and combined it with the ESV to produce an ESV with Apocrypha, but this was short-lived and never existed in a Catholic Edition. However, the Conference of Catholic Bishops of India (CCBI) used that Oxford ESV Apocrypha as the basis for producing a translation of the Deuterocanonical books for the ESV, which was then combined with a very lightly edited ESV 2016 text, in collaboration with Crossway and the Asian Trading Corporation (ATC).

That combined work was granted the Imprimatur of the President of the CCBI on Pentecost Sunday, 2017, and it was commercially published in February 2018 by the ATC as the English Standard Version Catholic Edition. In December 2019, the Vatican approved a new Lectionary for India based on the ESV-CE (to include the “final version” of the Revised Grail Psalms), which was formally adopted and employed by the CCBI as of Palm Sunday, 2020. In November 2018, the Bishops’ Conference of England & Wales similarly adopted a new Lectionary based on the ESV-CE with Revised Grail Psalms, with implementation planned for late 2022. Following that, the Bishops’ Conference of Scotland followed the same Lectionary path in November 2020.

Commercially, an American edition of the ESV-CE was published in late 2019 by the Augustine Institute as The Augustine Bible – an edition that was quickly converted to Logos/Verbum format by Faithlife in 2020, for which a reverse interlinear apparatus was supplied. UK publisher SPCK released an Anglicized print edition of the ESV-CE in October 2021.

Revised New Jerusalem Bible (2018/2019)

The Revised New Jerusalem Bible (RNJB), the third entry in the “Jerusalem Bible” (JB) family of translations, is a revision of the 1985 New Jerusalem Bible (NJB), prepared under the same editor: Henry Wansbrough. The Revised New Jerusalem Bible New Testament and Psalms was released in February 2018, and the full Study Edition Bible in December 2019. While the NJB translation approach had somewhat shifted away from the JB’s free rendering tendencies, a guiding principle of this revision explicitly rejects dynamic equivalence. Despite this significant philosophical change, the revision happily retains much of the JB family’s literary character. A second guiding principle was to translate primarily for public proclamation, which calls for a more dignified and less casual presentation. Thirdly, the revision seeks ameliorate what the editor sees as “the inbuilt bias of the English language” in addressing the Word to women and men alike.

Departing from the preceding versions, the RNJB does not revise the historic JB/NJB psalter, but instead incorporates a lightly edited edition of the 2010 Revised Grail Psalter. Unfortunately, the modifications do not align with the set of modifications incorporated into the “final version” of that Psalter in 2018. Happily, the RNJB also abandons the JB/NJB transliteration of the Tetragrammaton (“Yahweh”) for the more traditional, ecumenically sensitive, and liturgically acceptable rendering “the Lord”. Measures and measurements are given in modern metric equivalents to the ancient terms.

Consistent with the earlier versions, the RNJB presents Biblical text in an easy-to-read single-column format, with verse numbering relegated to the gutter. Footnotes are presented in two columns at the bottom of the page, but they are based on the much sparser annotation set created for the 2008 CTS edition of the JB rather than on notes from the Ecole Biblique. Cross references are arrayed in the margins next to their referent, but these also have been reduced in this version to a more focused set. In 2021, the RNJB was released in a Readers’ Edition which condenses the Study Edition’s 2,400 pages by about 900.

The RNJB is published by DLT (UK) and by Image (US). The Study Edition is also available electronically in ePub, and for Kindle and Nook. The Catholic Bishops’ Conferences of Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland have each indicated a desire to authorize an RNJB-based Lectionary for Mass.

The Abbey Psalms and Canticles (2019)

By late 2014, preliminary usage of the Revised Grail Psalms had indicated need for some additional textual modifications, which were proposed to and approved by the USCCB. During that period, the translator-monks of Conception Abbey were also preparing compatible translations of the various OT and NT canticles used in the Liturgy of the Hours that are found outside the Psalter. These new canticle texts were likewise approved for liturgy by the USCCB in June 2015, and transmitted to Vatican for approval in 2016, along with the Psalter updates.

The Vatican shared those texts with other English-speaking bishops’ conferences in the hope of aligning on a single English-language version of these important liturgical texts. Several ensuing recommended tweaks were approved by both the USCCB and Vatican in 2018, setting the stage for a unified English version, and facilitating completion of new lectionaries in development. The copyright was transferred from Conception Abbey to the USCCB in July 2019, and the combined Canticles and Psalter was published commercially in Nov 2019 as The Abbey Psalms and Canticles. This is expected to be the working version of the liturgical Psalter in English for several decades, throughout the English-speaking Church.

Bibliography

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• Britt, Matthew. A Dictionary of the Psalter. New York: Benziger Brothers, 1928.
• Bruce, F.F., History of the English Bible. Third Edition. Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 1979.
• Burton, Edwin H. The Life and Times of Bishop Challoner (1691-1781). London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909.
• Comfort, Philip W. The Complete Guide to Bible Versions: Revised & Expanded. Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1996.
• Cotton, Henry. Rhemes and Doway. An Attempt to Shew What Has Been Done by Roman Catholics for the Diffusion of the Holy Scriptures in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1855.
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• Newman, John Henry. “The History of the Text of the Rheims and Douay Version of Holy Scripture.” In Tracts: Theological and Ecclesiastical. London: Basil Montagu Pickering, 1874). 357-399.
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• Shea, John Dawson Gilmary. A Bibliographical Account of Catholic Bibles, Testaments, and Other Portions of Scripture Translated from the Latin Vulgate, and Printed in the United States. New York: Cramoisy Press, 1859.
• Turnbull, Michael T. R. B. “Bishop John Geddes, Robert Burns and Dr Alexander Geddes”. The Innes Review. 67.1 (2016): 55-61
• Westcott, Brooke Foss. A General View of the History of the English Bible. Second Edition: Revised. London: MacMillan and Co., 1872.