What's the best English Catholic Bible? Where to buy a Vulgate? Septuagint?

[MegaSilver]

I've grown up reading the standard Protestant Bibles without the Deuterocanonical books. For completion's sake, I'd like to start reading a Bible that includes them, but I have no idea which translation would be the best. Poetry is be nice, but if it eclipses the meaning (as it sometimes seems to do in the King James Bible), I'd prefer to go with something simpler. What can you recommend that's clear, concise, and faithful to the original text (presumably the Septuagint)?

Also, I'd like to buy a Greek Septuagint, a Latin Vulgate, and a French Bible. Amazon.com has a Septuagint with both Greek and English texts, but I'm having trouble finding an affordable Vulgate. And does anyone know of a faithful French translation that includes the Deuterocanonical books?

Any help would be much appreciated.

[the_Watchman]

I'm a Protestant who likes the Jerusalem Bible. It is a fairly good translation and it is a good reading Bible.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

http://www.drbo.org/

Rheims/Douay c.1582/1610: the official [English] Roman Catholic Bible

[Lokibob]

E-bay....

http://search.ebay.com/Vulgate-bible_W0QQhtZ1QQsosortpropertyZ1

[GottaLuvAkitas1]

Good News Bible is my favorite. Plus it's easy to follow.

Also look under: Good News Translation Bibles

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

"Catholic Treasures http://www.catholictreasures.com/ is preparing to re-print the The Douay-Rheims Bible with a Comprehensive Commentary compiled by Reverend Father George Leo Haydock This publication is a three-volume set comprised of the Old Testament translated at the College of Douay (1609), the New Testament translated at the College of Rheims (1582), and an illustrated Bible Dictionary. The Haydock commentaries includes the teachings of the saints, such as St. Augustine and St. John Chrysostom, the early Church Father, and noted Catholic theologians from all ages of the Holy Church."

http://www.icubed.com/~rpoe/bib_std.htm

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

http://www.catholictreasures.com/cartdescrip/11050.html

[Aliska]

Here's a page with some comments on catholic bibles:

http://www.fetchbook.info/search_0195282779/tab_reviews.html

I liked the St. Joseph's one for general use as well as the Douay-Rheims, but I'm still partial to the KJV of my childhood. Somewhere I have an Oxford English something that I don't use much any more, but it was good because it was approved as both a catholic and protestant bible by the scholars who put it together.

[TotusTuus]

Christos Voskrese!

I'd recommend the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version (RSV-CE). I don't know what's happening now, but it had been the official English text used by the Holy See for English translations of Holy Scripture.

It is also the English text used for the Navarre Bible which contains the Latin Vulgate as well and, additionally, copious commentary. The New Testament and the Torah are finished, with the rest of the Old Testemant due out soon. ('Salvation' posts this commentary daily on FR for the daily readings)

[PetroniusMaximus]

The Septuagint by Sir L.C.L. Brenton is exceptionally good (used with Redpath's Concordance.)

Why stop with the Apocrypha? What about the Pseudopigraphia?

:)

[Podkayne]

The navarre bible is always considered the best Catholic bible. It can be purchased at religious supply stores and comes in volumes - one per book. I bought a Navarre new testament (all books) as a gift and it cost @ $50 a year ago. It took many years to complete and is the best bible for any Christian denomination.

[the_Watchman]

I'll add that the Jerusalem Bible can be acquired in French. I have a copy given to me by a friend. It reads quite well in French.

[Desdemona]

I like the Douay-Rheims available from Tan Books. The translation is very different in spots and some whole passages read differently, but it's the first offical Catholic English translation.

[TotusTuus]

Christos Voskrese!

It is available from Ignatius Press and is called the "Ignatius Bible" as a result.

Sceptre Publishers (i.e. Opus Dei) also publishes it. I have a leatherbound edition.

MS, one of the "problems" with the D-R version, not really a problem, but, it is a translation of the Latin Vulgate into English and not from the original Hebrew and Greek.

[Pyro7480]

MS, one of the "problems" with the D-R version, not really a problem, but, it is a translation of the Latin Vulgate into English and not from the original Hebrew and Greek.

From HMBA's link above at drbo.org:

"Pope Damasus assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned St. Jerome to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official version, in 1546."

Also, "St. Jerome, who was one of the four great Western Fathers of the Church, was a man raised up by God to translate the Holy Bible into the common Latin tongue of his day. He knew Latin and Greek perfectly. He was 1500 years closer to the original languages than any scholar today, which would make him a better judge of the exact meaning of any Greek or Hebrew word in the Scriptures. Besides being a towering linguistic genius, he was also a great saint, and he had access to ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which have since perished and are no longer available to scholars today. St. Jerome's translation, moreover, was a careful, word-for-word rendering of the original texts into Latin.

And from the Baronius Press website, whose excellent edition of the D-R I recently bought (it was digitally typeset and printed just last year. It's a beautiful leather-bound volume), "In 1546, the Council of Trent declared the Latin Vulgate Bible as authentic, and declared that “No one (may) dare or presume under any pretext whatsoever to reject it” (4th Session, April 8, 1546). In 1943, Pope Pius XII stated that the continuous use of the Vulgate Bible in the Church for many centuries showed that it was “free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals” (Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943), paragraph 21)."

[dangus]

This quote sounds right:
"In 1546, the Council of Trent declared the Latin Vulgate Bible as authentic, and declared that “No one (may) dare or presume under any pretext whatsoever to reject it"

But this does NOT:
"which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible and was declared by the Church to be the only authentic and official version, in 1546."

I could swear I've read before from a Council of Trent document, where the Septuagint is considered authoritative. The differences between the two, while not presenting any doctrinal crises, are huge! St. Jerome, falsely believed that the Masoretic texts were the established scriptures at the time of Christ, and used them as the basis for the O.T. It took a miraculous apparition to prevent him from denying the Isaiah prophecy of a virgin birth!

If you doubt how severe the discrepencies are, compare the septuagint-based scripture citations of the NT (for instance, Luke 4), with the Masoretic-text based OT. (Isaiah 61). Unfortunately, a purely Septuagint-based English translation is virtually impossible to come by, and I have yet to see a Septuagint concordance.

[rmichaelj]

from an anglican website:

The early Christians, most of whom knew Greek but not Hebrew, were accustomed to use the LXX as their version of the Old Testament Scriptures. (So, for that matter, did most Jews living in the Roman Empire outside of the land of Israel itself.) The Old Latin translation had been made from the Greek. But Jerome was determined to make his translation from the Hebrew, partly because he considered it to be more accurate, and partly because he wanted a text that he could use as a basis for argument with Jewish opponents, without having them object, "But that is not what the Hebrew text says."

I'm assuming that he used the Septugaint for the Deuterocanons as they would not be in the Hebrew texts.