Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Bible versions Message-ID: Date: 8 Jul 90 03:58:08 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Harvey Mudd College Lines: 45 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu On an interesting note along these lines, I saw recently in a local bookstore a Bible labelled as a Catholic edition with the name "Tyndale" on the spine. If any of you are familiar with 16th C. religious history, this name should be familiar to you as the first translator of the Bible into English and a staunch Calvinist who made quite a few enemies by publishing this translation (incidentally, Tyndale's text was the basis for a good portion of the King James translation). I didn't get a chance to look closely at this Bible at the time since I was in a hurry and I think it might have been shrink-wrapped, but I'm curious to see if it bears the imprimatur and nihil obstat. Also, a good book on the topic of English translations of the Bible (although it's a bit dated now) is _The English Bible_ by Sir Herbert Grierson. It was written in the 40s or 50s if I recall correctly and is out of print (I found a copy in a used book store in St. Louis that had purchased the entire holdings of the library of a recently closed seminary), but larger libraries should have this book. -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont Consulting and dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu production work. Free Estimates. dhosek@ymir.bitnet uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147 [I can certainly see why seeing Tyndale on a Catholic Bible would seem ironic. However I suspect this was a Catholic edition of some modern translation. Tyndale is a publishing house that publishes lots of Bibles, so I rather suspect it was the publisher. In every case I've seen, the word "Catholic" on a Bible, even when a translation made by Protestants, means that there is an imprimature. There are Catholic editions of most major translations. It used to be that the Catholic editions had changes in a couple of key passages. However there has now been enough convergence between Catholic and Protestant scholarship that this is seldom true anymore. It normally means that the Bible includes the Apocrypha, and has sufficient explanatory notes to satisfy Catholic requirements. It is perfectly possible to write those notes in such a way that they are acceptable to both Catholics and Protestants. (The Good News Bible is a good example.) I should note that the primary problem with 16th Cent. Protestant translations from the Catholic point of view was not so much the text as the exegetical footnotes. --clh]