3916 — The Catholic Bible
By Editor
Is the Catholic Bible an older and better translation than ours? Are the additional books in that Bible inspired?
Inquirer. The Catholic Bible is sometimes called the Douay Version. In 1582 the Reims Version of the New Testament was translated at Reims, the Old Testament at the same time, but printed at Douay in 1609, 1610. In 1611 appeared what is commonly called the Authorized Version, but previous to the Douay Version were the translations of Wyclif, and Tyndale, and Coverdale, and Matthew, and Taverner,—the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, and the Bishops' Bible. No, it is not a better translation. It is not a translation from the original Greek, but from the Latin Vulgate,—a translation from a translation. The additional books in the Douay Version were not in the ancient Hebrew collection, nor even in the earliest editions of the Vulgate, and they were considered as uncanonical books by the early fathers in the Christian church. Then their doctrines indicate that that is the case also. If one will read them, and compare them with the other Scriptures, he will certainly find reasons sufficient to set them aside, even as they were set aside by the early Christians, and by the Jews themselves, as Apocryphal writings.