Replies

You wrote:

“Not into the common German. Those were high german, and unreadable by the common man.”

False. First, There were Bibles in Low German. The article I linked to talked about exactly that: http://www.jstor.org/pss/3723092 Once again, you are wrong. Second, in my day I could read both High German and Low German. An educated German could probably read both in the 15th and 16th centuries. What they couldn’t do so easily is speak both. Third without the slightest difficulty. I bet you are under the mistaken belief that High and Low are about education or culture as in High Brow and Low Brow. Wrong. They are regional dialects and have nothing to do with education in themselves in the early modern period.

“That is why Luther’s excellent translation sold in incredible numbers.”

No, actually it isn’t.

“Of course, the Catholic Church, with access to good scholars and ample money, COULD have made a good translation and put it into the hands of the common man, but they did not - because they didn’t WANT to. 100,000 copies in 40 years opened the Bible to millions.”

No. National hierarchies and individuals are responsible for translations. Many had been made and all were sold and sold and sold, then reprinted and sold, sold, sold. As fast as Catholic could make them they were sold. It was not the responsibility of the Catholic Church to translate Bibles into the various dialects of German. Germans did that and were quite good at it - long before Luther came along.

“Had More cared about the truth, he would have admitted what he KNEW: Tyndale’s translation was excellent.”

Prove he knw it. When you fail, what will that tell us about someone who makes such a claim?

“Tyndale’s translation survived largely intact in the KJV, except where the KJV degraded accuracy for King Jame’s politics.”

The KJV is not accounted as the most accurate translation so you’re not helping your case with that.

“When the DR was revised to make it readable,”

It was always readable. I have a facsimile reprint of the original edition and have no difficulty in reading it. There are only two or three sentences which are difficult. The same could be said of the 1611 KJV.

“it took the KJV and revised it for Catholic theology - so much of Tyndale slid into the DR.”

Nope. The Douay and Tyndale largely agreed to begin with. Quite frankly almost all English Bibles do except for dated vocabularly.

“Again, the DR was a step down, since it was more concerned with promoting Catholic theology than being an accurate translation.”

False. It was a very accurate translation - of St. Jerome’s Vulgate. That’s not a step down. It’s just a difference. It’s a translation of a translation.

OK. German Bibles were readily available before Luther with the support of the Catholic Church - in your world. In mine, those translations just never ended up in the hands of the people, while Luther’s did. 100,000 copies in 40 years.

Odd isn’t it. The Catholics supported getting scripture into the hands of common men (according to you), yet it just didn’t happen. It took a heretic to make it happen, and he did it in a couple of years. One year for the New Testament.

Isn’t it odd that God chose a heretic to do what the Catholic Church with all its power, money and influence could not?

But then, it is only odd if you accept the false notion that the Catholic Church WANTED commoners to read scripture. Or if you believe that before LUther, there were Bibles in the common tongue being bought and sold as fast as they could be produced...but then, maybe Luther was just a good producer.

More obvioulsy lied. His arguments against translating love as love, or elder as elder, or repent as do penance were stupid. Perhaps you ought to look at the Catholic Church approved NAB: “If I speak in human and angelic tongues 2 but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.” The KJV translators were dishonest - they were specifically required to translate it charity, and bishop, and church because a correct translation would undermine King James power. “No Bishop, No King” was an idea he learned in Scotland, and was the cause of his refusal to allow a correct translation.

But Tyndale’s refutation of More was both succinct and overwhelming. More was either incredibly stupid, which he was not, or a liar.

“The KJV is not accounted as the most accurate translation so you’re not helping your case with that.”

Never said it was. In fact, in the sentence of mine you quoted, I was making the point that it was LESS accurate than Tyndale’s translation 85 years earlier, and for dishonest reasons. The DR felt free to follow that dishonesty, although the NAB corrected some of it hundreds of years later.

As for the DR, you write, “It was always readable. I have a facsimile reprint of the original edition and have no difficulty in reading it.”

“Much of the text of the 1582/1610 bible, however, employed a densely latinate vocabulary, to the extent of being in places unreadable; and consequently this translation was replaced by a revision undertaken by bishop Richard Challoner; the New Testament in three editions 1749, 1750, and 1752; the Old Testament (minus the Vulgate apocrypha), in 1750. Although retaining the title Douay–Rheims Bible, the Challoner revision was in fact a new version, tending to take as its base text the King James Bible rigorously checked and extensively adjusted for improved readability and consistency with the Clementine edition of the Vulgate.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay%E2%80%93Rheims_Bible

“Although the Bibles in use in the twentieth century by the Catholics of England and Ireland are popularly styled the Douay Version, they are most improperly so called; they are founded, with more or less alteration, on a series of revisions undertaken by Bishop Challoner in 1749-52. His object was to meet the practical want felt by the Catholics of his day of a Bible moderate in size and price, in readable English, and with notes more suitable to the time. He brought out three editions of the New Testament, in 1749, 1750, and 1752 respectively, and one of the Old Testament in 1750. The changes introduced by him were so considerable that, according to Cardinal Newman, they “almost amounted to a new translation”. So also, Cardinal Wiseman wrote, “To call it any longer the Douay or Rheimish Version is an abuse of terms. It has been altered and modified until scarcely any sense remains as it was originally published”. In nearly every case Challoner’s changes took the form of approximating to the Authorized Version, though his three editions of the New Testament differ from one another in numerous passages. “

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05140a.htm