The Rampant Liberalism Of The Nab

[Hananiah]

Since the NAB is so incredibly widely disseminated throughout the American Catholic Church, and since it promotes so many ideas inimical to the Catholic faith, I have felt it necessary to produce a catalogue of its heterodox statements, which contrasts the NAB to the traditional teachings of the Church as well as informs the reader how to refute its charges of error. I have finished Genesis so far. As this is a huge project which I am undertaking, I would greatly appreciate any help. Thank you.

[url="http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/b/m/bmd175/NAB.htm"]The Rampant Liberalism of the NAB[/url]

Edited June 27, 2004 by Hananiah

[MorphRC]

Ill take on a Chapter. Ill use the NJBC for help and the Catechism. Then get it checked. That bible destroyed any faith I had.

[qfnol31]

[quote name='MorphRC' date='Jun 27 2004, 03:12 AM'] Ill take on a Chapter. Ill use the NJBC for help and the Catechism. Then get it checked. That bible destroyed any faith I had. [/quote]
That's sad...

[P3chrmd]

I do not like the NAB at all!


THE JERUSALEM BIBLE and THE NEW JERUSALEM BIBLE

are the ONLY 2 Translations I will use...PERIOD!!!!

[Quietfire]

[quote]Ill take on a Chapter. Ill use the NJBC for help and the Catechism. Then get it checked. That bible destroyed any faith I had.[/quote]

MorphRC,

If you are now aware of this, and were once Catholic, then you see your dilemma right?
Or is it not that simple?
I have the feeling because of this translation, you are no longer Catholic?
When you now know that this translation is the reason, and still are not Catholic, then it isnt the translation. There is something else, correct?

Peace :peace:

[p0lar_bear]

Are we talking about errors in the commentary or in the translation itself?

As I understand it, the footnotes and commentary are really bad, but the translation is fair. All translations are going to be a bit different because any translation involves some degree of interpretation. There are some really bad translations ("What you say is my flashlight," instead of "Your word is a lamp unto my feet"). And no translation is perfect or definitive. From what I know, the NAB is one on the better translations. (True study should involve a number of translations).

Most of us are probably not Greek or Aramaic scholars, so arguing about the translation comes down to comparing it to the other translations we have available. While that has some legitimacy, it rarely involves something that can be proven by the Catechism, etc.

[EcceNovaFacioOmni]

I think the Douay-Rheims Bible is the best. You can view it online at:
[url="http://www.drbo.org/"]http://www.drbo.org/[/url]
(Very easy to use but has links to SSPX sites.)

Since it's so expensive to get in print, I read the NAB. Does anyone have a link to an inexpensive D-R?

Edited June 27, 2004 by thedude

[cmotherofpirl]

[quote name='Hananiah' date='Jun 27 2004, 04:14 AM'] Since the NAB is so incredibly widely disseminated throughout the American Catholic Church, and since it promotes so many ideas inimical to the Catholic faith, I have felt it necessary to produce a catalogue of its heterodox statements, which contrasts the NAB to the traditional teachings of the Church as well as informs the reader how to refute its charges of error.  I have finished Genesis so far.  As this is a huge project which I am undertaking, I would greatly appreciate any help.  Thank you.

[url="http://www.personal.psu.edu/users/b/m/bmd175/NAB.htm"]The Rampant Liberalism of the NAB[/url] [/quote]


Since you are not a linguistic scholar, I assume you are referring to the footnotes .

The NAB footnotes are the work of many different scholars and are of uneven quality. The ones in Genesis are not that bad.
Remember not to throw out the baby with the bathwater.


Your commentary on Genesis would be much better if you stuck to facts rather than personal opinons. Otherwise you will be seen as just another complaining Trad instead of someone pointing out what he considered errors in the footnotes.
You point will come across much better.

Keep in mind the phorum guidelines as you type.

Edited June 27, 2004 by cmotherofpirl

[Quietfire]

[quote]Since it's so expensive to get in print, I read the NAB. Does anyone have a link to an inexpensive D-R?[/quote]

Well, yes I do. Right here at Phatmass.

At top of page it has "reading room"
Click on "online text and documents"

There are 2 different D-R's for ya.

Peace. :peace:

[Archbishop 10-K]

Question: I'm interested in the Douay-Rheims, but can I be sure of it's accuracy? After all, it's a translation of a translation, and that in itself sounds kinda scary.

[Aloysius]

well, it's a translation of the Latin Vulgate

and the Council of Trent declared the Latin Vulgate free from doctrinal error

and think about it, the Latin Vulgate was made by St. Jerome whom God commissioned to translate the scriptures. He also more than likely had manuscripts available to him that we no longer have available to us. i mean, it's not like all these new translations are from the VERY ORIGINALS, just the oldest possible ones. I trust the Latin Vulgate, it was translated by St. Jerome and endorsed by the Council of Trent, 'tis OK to trust

[RandomProddy]

[quote name='thedude' date='Jun 27 2004, 07:04 PM'] Since it's so expensive to get in print, I read the NAB. Does anyone have a link to an inexpensive D-R? [/quote]
I have the entire thing on text files but I'm trying to split it into it's books and get it in my site. It's hard going to code it all, lol.

[amarkich]

Hananiah, I agree with you about the liberalism of the NAB, and I commend you for such a great task as this. In response to the individual who questioned the authenticity of the Douay-Rheims, I will direct you to this website which is the first one that I could find which contains the one-page explanation by TAN Publishing, Co. as to why the Douay-Rheims should be the only English translation of the Bible read. Here is the website:
[url="http://www.angelfire.com/sd2/mendellhouse/douay.html"]http://www.angelfire.com/sd2/mendellhouse/douay.html[/url]

Here is the text from the website:
Why Should You Read Only the Douay-Rheims Translation of the Bible?

The Douay-Rheims Bible Fast gaining recognition as THE Bible in English...

The Douay-Rheims Bible is a scrupulously faithful translation into English of the Latin Vulgate Bible which St. Jerome (342-420) translated into Latin from the original languages. The Vulgate quickly became the Bible universally used in the Latin Rite (by far the largest rite of the Catholic Church).

Which Bible Should You Read? is a short, provocative analysis showing which is the most accurate, safest English translation of the Bible. Not so surprisingly, the Douay-Rheims traditional Catholic version of the Bible emerges from this analysis and comparison as the best, safest, most accurate Bible in English of the ten versions compared. Read this and see where the Douay-Rheims gets the translation right and the other Bibles, Protestant and Catholic, fall very short.

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.

The Latin Vulgate Bible has been read and honored by the Western Church for fifteen-hundred years! It was declared by the Council of Trent to be the official Latin version of the original. Hear what the Sacred Council decreed: "Moreover, the same Holy Council . . . ordains and declares that the old Latin Vulgate Edition, which, in use for so many hundred years, has been approved by the Church, be in public lectures, disputatious, sermons and expositions held as authentic, and so no one dare or presume under any pretext whatsoever to reject it." (Fourth Session, April 8, 1546). As Pope Pius XII stated in his 1943 encyclical letter Divino Afflante Spiritu, this means the Vulgate is "free from any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals." And the Douay-Rheims bible is a faithful, word-for-word translation of the Latin Vulgate Bible of St. Jerome.

In their translation, the Douay-Rheims translators took great pains to translate exactly. Contrary to the procedure of the modern Bible translators, when a passage seemed strange and unintelligible they left it alone, even if obscure, and "let the chips fall as they may." The modern Bible translators, on the other hand, will often look at an obscure passage, decide what they think it means, then translate in words that bring out that meaning. The result is that the English is usually (not always!) easier to understand, but it is not necessarily what the Bible says; rather, it is their interpretation and understanding of what the Bible says. Moreover, the Holy Ghost may have hidden several additional meanings in the passage. Those meanings may well be completely translated out!

Sometimes the question is raised: Why translate from a translation (the Latin Vulgate) rather than from the original Greek and Hebrew? This question was also raised in the 16th century when the Douay-Rheims translators (Fr. Gregory Martin and his assistants) first published the Rheims New Testament. They gave ten reasons, ending up by stating that the Latin Vulgate "is not only better then al other Latin translations, but then the Greek text itself, in those places where they disagree." (Preface to the Rheims New Testament, 1582). They state that the Vulgate is "more pure then the Hebrew or Greek now extant" and that "the same Latin hath bene barre better conserved from corruption." (Preface to the Douay Old Testament, 1609).

The present Bible is the Challoner revision (1749-1752) of the Douay-Rheims Bible. Catholics owe the saintly Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781) a great debt of gratitude for undertaking this work. Challoner was one of those courageous priests who traveled around offering Mass secretly for small groups during the religious persecutions in England. Such Catholics needed a Bible, and had needed one for 100 years. The Douay-Rheims Bible had been printed a few times on the Continent but had never really spread to England. Some Catholics in England were even reading the King James version--a situation which Bishop Challoner knew had to be rectified.

Some of the passages in the original Douay-Rheims Bible were needlessly obscure. As an extreme example, Ephesians 6:12 read, "For our wrestling is not against flesh and bloud: but against Princes and Potestats, against the rectors of the world of this dankness, against the spirituals of wickedness in the celestials." The spellings were archaic, and the verses were not set off by new lines for clarity. Challoner rectified these problems, checking carefully against the Clementine Vulgate and the original-language texts. On the whole, Bishop Challoner's revisions were minor. He replaced certain anglicized Latin words and archaic words and expressions, rearranged the word order of the sentences, and yet maintained the overall word-for-word accuracy of the 16th/17th-century Douay-Rheims Bible.

The Challoner revision of the Douay-Rheims Bible was a godsend. It became the standard Catholic Bible in English until the mid-20th century (when the Confraternity Bible was published). It continued to be called the "Douay-Rheims" because of its similarity to the original Douay-Rheims Bible. The great work English Versions of the Bible, by Frs. Pope and Bullough, states that English-speaking Catholics the world over owe Dr. Challoner an immense debt of gratitude, for he provided them for the first time in history with a portable, cheap and readable version of the Bible, which has stood the test of 200 years of use. Moreover, it is more accurate than any modern Bible because it is based on ancient texts, no longer extant, which were "captured" and "frozen," so to speak, by St. Jerome (342-420) in his Latin Vulgate. The Douay-Rheims is thus the most reliable English-language Bible there is. We look forward to the day when the Christian world will rediscover this fact and come to a renewed appreciation of the monumental work of St. Jerome, of the Douay-Rheims translators and of Bishop Richard Challoner--men who were raised up by God to make the Bible available to the English-speaking world.


God bless.

Adam

N.B., Of course, reading only the Vulgate is the preferred course of action if one knows Latin.

[MorphRC]

[quote name='Quietfire' date='Jun 27 2004, 11:23 PM']
MorphRC,

If you are now aware of this, and were once Catholic, then you see your dilemma right?
Or is it not that simple?
I have the feeling because of this translation, you are no longer Catholic?
When you now know that this translation is the reason, and still are not Catholic, then it isnt the translation. There is something else, correct?

Peace :peace: [/quote]
Theres more to it yes, but this pretty much clenched it. Anyways I wont bother, no use anyways.

cyaz

[Hananiah]

[quote name='p0lar_bear' date='Jun 27 2004, 09:20 AM'] Are we talking about errors in the commentary or in the translation itself? [/quote]
Mostly the errors in the commentary, but so far I have written about two errors in the translation: Gen 21:14 and 37:28. In both cases the mistranslation was deliberate, and done in order to reinforce what they believed to be contradiction. In Gen 21:14 they come right out and say that this is what they are doing in the footnote. In 37:28 they just say that they've rearranged it, and don't say why, but since their mistranslation renders the contradiction they accused Scripture of containing in the previous footnote impossible to reconcile, whereas it is possible to do so if the Hebrew is translated literally, their motivation is clear.

[quote]As I understand it, the footnotes and commentary are really bad, but the translation is fair.[/quote]
The translation is odd, to say the least. The NAB has a penchant for big, fancy words which no one uses in everyday conversation. Seriously, how many people, if they saw a ghost, would scream, "AHHH! I see a pretenatural being!!!!" Also, the translators take far too many liberties with the text. It's about halfway between a literal translation and a paraphrase.