Produced by Dennis McCarthy and Tad Book
Translated from the Latin Vulgate
Diligently Compared with the Hebrew, Greek,and Other Editions in Divers Languages
THE OLD TESTAMENT
First Published by the English College at Douay
A.D. 1609 & 1610
and
THE NEW TESTAMENT
First Published by the English College at Rheims
A.D. 1582
With Annotations
The Whole Revised and Diligently Compared withthe Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard ChallonerA.D. 1749-1752
Without the assistance of many individuals and groups, this text of theDouay-Rheims Version of the Holy Bible would not be available for theProject Gutenberg collection. Our most grateful and sincere thanks goesto those at 'Catholic Software' who have provided the electronic plaintexts of the 73 books of the Bible. 'Catholic Software' also produces aDouay Bible program on CD-ROM that features a fully searchable Douay-Rheims Bible, footnotes, Latin text and dictionary, topical index, maps,Biblical art gallery, and other features. For more information of thisand many other products contact:
Catholic SoftwareBox 1914Murray, KY 42071(502) 753-8198http://www.catholicity.com/market/CSoftware/waubrey@aol.com
Additional production assistance has been provided by volunteers fromthe Atlanta Council of the Knights of Columbus. Tad Book compiled andreformatted the texts to Project Gutenberg standards. Dennis McCarthyassisted Mr. Book and transcribed selections from the first editionsincluded as appendices.
This three volume e-text set comes from multiple editions of Challoner'srevised Douay-Rheims Version of the Holy Bible. The division of the OldTestaments into two parts follows the two tome format of the 1609/1610printing of the Old Testament. In 1568 English exiles, many fromOxford, established the English College of Douay (Douai/Doway), Flanders,under William (later Cardinal) Allen. In October, 1578, Gregory Martinbegan the work of preparing an English translation of the Bible forCatholic readers, the first such translation into Modern English.Assisting were William Allen, Richard Bristow, Thomas Worthington, andWilliam Reynolds who revised, criticized, and corrected Dr. Martin'swork. The college published the New Testament at Rheims (Reims/Rhemes),France, in 1582 through John Fogny with a preface and explanatory notes,authored chiefly by Bristol, Allen, and Worthington. Later the OldTestament was published at Douay in two parts (1609 and 1610) by LaurenceKellam through the efforts of Dr. Worthington, then superior of theseminary. The translation had been prepared before the appearance of theNew Testament, but the publication was delayed due to financialdifficulties. The religious and scholarly adherence to the Latin Vulgatetext led to the less elegant and idiomatic words and phrases often foundin the translation. In some instances where no English word conveyed thefull meaning of the Latin, a Latin word was Anglicized and its meaningdefined in a glossary. Although ridiculed by critics, many of thesewords later found common usage in the English language. Spellings ofproper names and the numbering of the Psalms are adopted from the LatinVulgate.
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