i-^m J.O. Boyd The Character and Claims of the Roman Catholic English Bible ^l?'V iili B5I8 o. THE CHARACTER AND CLAIMS OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE. The Bible is a collection of books ; it dates from antiquity ; it was written in other tongues than English. It need occa- sion no surprise, therefore, to discover that two English Bibles may differ in these three respects : the number of books they contain, the exact wording of their respective originals, and the phraseology used in their translation. As a matter of fact, the English Bible authorized by the Roman Catholic Church on the one hand, and the Eng- lish Bible in use among Protestants on the other hand, do differ in all these three respects, (i) They differ in their canon. That is, the Roman Catholic Bible admits into the sacred volume certain books and parts of books that the Protestant Bible excludes. (2) They differ in their text. That is, the ancient original from which the one is trans- lated does not coincide in its wording with that from which the other is translated. (3) They differ in their version. That is, the translators, in the work of turning those origin- als into English, had different motives and methods. A Protestant's examination of the Roman Catholic English Bible, therefore, will naturally follow these three lines, the canon, the text and the version. But first of all, what is the English Bible of the Romanist? The only English Bible authorized by the Roman Catholic Church is that translation which was made by certain teach- ers of the English Seminary at Douai in Belgium in the 1 6th century,^ and first published by them, tlie New Testa- ^ For records of this Seminary and its Masters, see the following works : Husenbeth's English Colleges and Convents on the Continent", 1849 ; "The Records of English Catholics tinder the Penal Laivs", two volumes, of which the tirst is "The Diaries of the English College. Douay," London, 1878, and the second is "Letters and Memorials of William^ Cardinal Allen", London, 1882, both volumes being provided with an historical introduction by Thos. Fr. Knox, D.D. ; also Dr. Alphons Bellesheim's "Wilhelm, Cardinal Allen"; and the general biographies. 568 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW ment at Rheims in France in 1582, the entire Bible at Douai in 1609-10. In its successive editions and revisions it has repeatedly received the imprimatur of the authorities of the Catholic Church, from its first publication down to the present day.- That Church is committed to it not only positively by this ecclesiastical approval, but also negatively by an unvarying opposition to all other English, versions. In so far as the authorities of the Roman Catholic Church on English-speaking soil are unwilling to advocate the en- tire suppression of vernacular Bibles,^ their opposition to other English versions is obviously the exact measure of their adhesion to the Douai Version. Or, stated in another way, the alternative for an English-speaking Catholic is the Douai Bible in one or another of its editions, or no English Bible, as long as he remains a good Catholic. ' The original editions indeed bore no official imprimatur, but the New Testament bore a recommendation signed by four members of the Faculty of Rheims, and the Old Testament a similar recommendation signed by three divines of the University of Douai. Numerous Dub- lin editions bearing the approval of John Thos. Troy, R. C. Arch- bishop of Dublin, refer to the Douai Old Testament, the Rheims New Testament, and the Challoner editions (1749, 1750 and 1752), all in one breath, as "Anglicis jam approbatis versionibus" . Challoner's edi- tions bore the approbation of Green and Walton, and these dignitaries' names were repeated in later reprints of Challoner (as MacMahon's "eighth", 1810). The first issue of MacMahon's Challoner (1783) was approved by James Carpenter, predecessor of Dr. Troy at Dublin. The Scotch editions of Challoner bore the approbation of Dr. Hey, "one of the Vicars Apostolic in Scotland". Haydock's Manchester- Dublin editions were originally approved by Dr. Gibson, Vicar Apos- tolic, and a Haydock's Bible of 1850 (Husenbeth's reprint) carries the "approbation and sanction" of Bishop Wareing, the editor's eccle- siastical superior, and "the concurrent approbation and sanction of all the Right Rev. Vicars x\postolic of Great Britain". The editions for sale today at American bookshops (many of them Archbishop Ken- rick's revision, 1849-1859) are approved by Cardinal Gibbons, the most exalted dignitary of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in this countrJ^ * See for example Cardinal Gibbons' Faith of Ottr Fatliers", pp. 116 117: "The Church, far from being opposed to the reading of the Scriptures, does all she can to encourage their perusal" ; "Be assured that if you become a Catholic, you will never be forbidden to read the Bible. It is our earnest wish that every word of the Gospel may be imprinted on your memory and on your heart." THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 569 The Canon. When the Protestant picks up a CathoHc Bible for the first time, the most obvious difference between it and the Bible with which he is familiar is the greater bulk of the Catholic Bible. In the New Testament they are alike, but in the Old Testament the Catholic Bible contains, mingled with the books of the Protestant canon, a few books that the Protestant Bible excludes. On closer investigation these additions prove to be Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, and First and Second Maccabees. There are also sections added by the Catholics to books present in their shorter form in the Protestant Old Testament. So to Esther they add seven chapters at the end ;^ to Daniel, the Hymn of the Three Children (in Chap. 3), the History of Susanna (Chap. 13), and Bel and the Dragon (Chap. 14) ; and to Jeremiah, the six chapters under the separate title of Baruch, of which the last is the Epistle of Jeremiah.^ Why did the Douai translators admit, and why does the Protestant's Bible exclude, these books and sections? The Douai translators admitted them, because the Council of Trent had declared in 1546 that they belonged in the canon, ^ and because for these translators the decrees of the Council of Trent had binding authority.'^ * Chap. X. 4 — chap. xvi. "The decree of Trent reads: "Jereniias cum Baruch"; though ar- ranged in the Douai Bible as a separate book, Baruch is thus officially- regarded as an addition to Jeremiah. '^"Sacrorutn librorum indicem huic decreto adscribendum censuit [sc, synodus], ne cui dubitatio suboriri possit, quinam sint qui ab ipsa synodo suscipiuntur. Stmt vero infra scripti. Testamenti veteris: quinque Moysis, id est: Genesis — Deuteronomium; Josuae — Nehemias, Tobias, Judith, Esther, Job — Canticum Canticorum, Sapientia, Eccle- siasticus, Isaias, Jeremias cum Baruch, Ezechiel — Malachias, duo Machabaeorum , primus et secundus. Test, novis: &c. . . . Si quis autem libros ipsos integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout in ecclesia catholica legi consueverunt, et in veteri vulgata latina editone haben- tur, pro sacris et canonicis non susceperit, et traditiones praedictas sciens et prudens contempserit, anathema sit. Omnes itaque intelligant, quo ordine et via ipsa synodus post jactum fidei confessionis funda- mentum sit progressura, et quibus potissimum testimoniis ac praesidiis 570 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW It should be observed that this answer is in two parts. With the second part the present discussion has nothing- to do. If a doubt rise in the mind of any person whether the dehverances of the Council of Trent have binding au- thority, let him consider, first, that we have here to do only with an historical fact — the Douai translators did feel them- selves bound by that Council; and second, that at the pres- ent day, even if not in 1582, every Catholic is bound to the canon of Trent, for in 1870 the Vatican Council declared:* "If anyone accept not the books of Holy Scripture, entire with all their parts as they were named by the Holy Synod of Trent, as sacred and canonical, or deny that they were divinely inspired, let him be anathema !" It is with the first part of the above answer that this dis- cussion is concerned. By what right did the Council of Trent include these books in the canon of the Old Testa- ment? Thus the question is simply pushed one step further back. Whatever the motives that contributed to this decision of the Council,® the only rational grounds for the decision in confirmandis dogviatibus et instaurandis in ecclesia inoribus sit usura." (Sessio qnarta, Decretum de canonicis scripturis) . ^ Referring to the Vulgate, the preface to the Rheims New Testament (§26) says : "The Holy Council of Trent . . . hath declared and defined this only of all other Latin translations, to be authentical, and so only to be used and taken in public lessons, . . . and that no man presume upon any pretence to reject or refuse the same." The quotation of this decree as authoritative shows that the Rhemists con- sidered themselves bound by the decrees of the Council. * Constit. de fide, xi. can. 4: "Si quis sac. scrip, libros integros cum omnibus suis partibus, prout illos sac. Trident, synodus recensiiit, pro sacris et canonicis nan susceperit, aut eos divinitus inspiratos esse negaverit, anathema sit." Also, Constit. de fide, c.ii: "Vet. et Nov. Testamen. libri, prout in ejusdem [Trident.] concilii decreto censen- tur, et in veteri vulgata latina editione habentur, pro sacris et canoni- cis suscipiendi sunt." *The motives that influenced the Council are displayed in the reports of its debates that have been published by several who were in at- tendance. For even among the few prelates (about thirty) who par- ticipated in these debates, there was considerable diversity of opinion. Johannes Delitzsch {" Lehrsystem der romischen Kirche") summarizes these motives under the four following heads: (i) the serviceable- THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 57I were the existence of these books in the Greek Old Testament side by side with those belonging to the Hebrew canon, their presence in the canonical lists of earlier Councils, and their place for centuries in the manuscripts and liturgies of the Latin Church. Were these grounds sufficient to justify the course adopted at Trent? ( I ) It is the Old Testament canon of Protestants and not that of Rome, which coincides exactly with the canon of the Jews. The Old Testament of the Jews was the Old Testa- ment of our Lord and His Apostles. Whatever authority, therefore, is possessed by Christ and the Apostles to decide for the Christian Church the extent of the Old Testament, that authority attaches to the Old Testament iiiinus the Cath- olic additions. These assertions of the Protestants are attacked by Ro- manists. The disputed books, they say, were in the Septua- gint at the time of Christ and the Apostles, who quote the Old Testament generally according to the Septuagint ver- sion, thus sanctioning it. There are even some citations of these books in the New Testament writings. Does not this prove that the New Testament guarantees the author- ity of the larger canon of Catholicism ? This "Septuagint", of which so much is thus made, used to be regarded as a version of Scripture definite and fixed with respect to its date, its authors and its text. So ran that ness of the Apocrypha for proving Romish dogmas that the canonical books do not prove. (So angelic intercession Tob. xii. 12, and that of the dead II Mace. xv. I4ff, Baruch iii. 4; purgatory, and intercession of the living for the dead II Mace. xii. 42ff; the merit of good works Tob. iv. 7). Tanner, the Catholic controversialist, {"Das cath. Tradi- tions- und das prot. Schriftprincip") admits : "The Church declared these books canonical for the reason that . . . the Church found her own spirit in these books." (2) In order not to weaken the respect for the Vulgate by sundering out the Apocrypha. (3) To strengthen m every way the contrast with the Protestants, who had committed themselves to the Hebrew canon. (4) To fill the gap in the contin- uous inspiration of the Church, which otherwise would yawn between the Old and New Testaments, and would thus create a presumption against the Catholic doctrine of inspiration continued in the Church after the Apostles. 573 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW ancient tradition of tlie seventy-two scribes working sev- erity-two days, which gave to the Septuagint its name. But modern scholarship has shown that the sacred books of the Jews were given their vulgar Greek dress in quite a different manner. Under the pressure of Alexandrian in- fluence, Greek-speaking Jews turned their Scriptures into the Hellenistic Greek of the day, not all at once nor even in one generation. It was a slow work, performed by many hands and exhibiting all the unevenness of such a process. The revered Law of Moses was rendered first and best, probably before the middle of the 3d centuiy B.C. The prophetical, poetical and historical books followed in the course of about a century. From the Prologue to the Greek translation of Ecclesiasticus, about 132 B.C., we learn that before that time "the Law and the Prophets and the rest of the books" had already been translated. But not alone those "books of the fathers", ^° revered as divine by the whole Jewish nation, received a Greek dress. This same Prologue shows how other books, like Ecclesiasticus itself, "profit- able to those who love learning."^^ came also to be translated into Greek or written in Greek. Such "profitable" compo- sitions, based upon Israel's religion and history, came not unnaturally to be cherished by Jews of a later age, and, when the Christian Church took over the Greek Old Testament from the Jews, it took with it these "profitable" writings of kindred spirit. Yet the point at issue is not touched when certain of these books are pointed out to us in the most ancient codices of the Septuagint and in the versions made from it.^^ Presence in " Quoted from the Prologue to Ecclesiasticus. "By "learning" the author of the Prologue means the Scriptures. "The Vatican manuscript, B, contains the books of the Roman Cath- olic canon, except I and II Maccabees, and adds III (I) Esdras. The Sinaitic manuscript, X, omits II Maccabees but adds IV Maccabees. Manuscript A, nearly as old as these, adds III Esdras, III and IV Maccabees, and the Prayer of Manasses. The Old Latin version of the African Church (2nd century), being made from the Greek and not the Hebrew, translated the Greek Apocrypha along with the Greek Old Testament. All these sources are Christian. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLCSH BIBLE 573 a manuscript does not prove canonicity ; not even the opin- ion of the scribe or owner of the manuscript can be argued therefrom, much less the opinion of his age or country. To be "in the Septuagint" means really no more than to be a popularly cherished Jewish book in Greek, circulated with the Old Testament among the early Christians. Not among the Jews of Christ's time, be it noted. For we have no evi- dence whatever that the Jews had been in the habit of ming- ling these "profitable" writings indiscriminately with "the books of the fathers" ; all our Septuagint codices and ver- sions are from Christian sources. On the contrar}^, as will presently appear, there is most positive testimony to the unique place that the genuine Scriptures held in the esteem of the Greek-speaking Jews contemporary with Christ and the Apostles. And down to the 4th century there seems to have lived on in the best-instructed Christian circles the opinion that the twenty-two^ ^ books of the true Old Testa- ment were all that constituted the Old Testament even in the Septuagint. For the list of the "books of the Old Covenant" received by Melito from the Jewish Christians of Palestine in the 2nd century '''' follows the order of the Septuagint, as well as exhibiting the Septuagint titles and adopting the Septuagint divisions : that is, it is the canon of the Palestinian Septuagint as it circulated in sub-apostolic times. And Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem (died 386) says:^^ "Learn from the Church what are the books of the Old Covenant . . . and I pray you read nothing of the Apocryphal books ... " As will appear presently, the numbers twenty-two and twenty-four always indicate the shorter canon of the Jews. In the Protestant Old Testament count the double books (Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra-Nehemiah) as single books, and unite the twelve minor prophets in one book, and twenty-four is the sum ; attach Ruth to Judges and Lamentations to Jeremiah, and the total is twenty-two. The canon of Trent cannot possibly be so reckoned as to yield these numbers, nor does anyone claim that it can be. ^ See page 576. "In his instructions to catechumens, (Catechesis IV, "De decern dogmatibus") , §§ 33fif, "On the divine Scriptures"; quoted by West- cott, "The Bible in the Church", pp. i68f. See also page 578, note 28. 574 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW Read the divine Scriptures, the twenty-two books of the Old Covenant, which were translated by the seventy-two translators . . . For the translation of the divine Scriptures which were spoken by the Holy Spirit was accomplished through the Holy Spirit. Read the twenty-two books which these rendered, but have nothing to do with the Apocry- phal writings." Again, the fact that in the New Testament the Old Testa- ment is frequently (by no means always) quoted according to its wording in the Septuagint, has clearly no bearing upon the extent of the canon. The New Testament writers wrote in Greek for Hellenistic readers, and when they quoted the Old Testament it was most natural for them to quote it as it lay at hand in this old Hellenistic version long familiar to all Greek-speaking Jews. As for allusions in the New Testament to apocryphal writings, the argument, if it proved anything, would prove too much to suit the Roman Catholic. For the clearest cases of such allusions^*^ to books not in the Hebrew canon concern books not even in the Roman Catholic canon. ^'^ Such references in fact lend no more authority to these apocry- phal Jewish productions, than Paul's quotations from heathen poets^^ serve to make their writings canonical. On the other hand, the Protestant can point to indisput- able contemporary evidence that his canon contains no more and no less than that Old Testament of which our Lord said that "the Scripture catmot be broken. "^^ Without appealing to the uniform and repeated but un- "Allusions", "traces of acquaintance", "reminiscences", not cita- tions; see admissions of this by friends of the Apocrypha, as Bleek, in "Studien umd Kritiken" for 1853, pp. 267-354, and Stier, quoted by Oehler in Herzog's "Rcal-Encyclopaedie", vol. vii, p. 257. "As, for example, Jude 14, (compare the "Book of Enoch", chap, ii), and Jude 9 (compare the "Assumption of Moses", as recorded by Origen De principiis, iii. 2, i). "Titus i. 12 from Epimenides, a Cretan of the 6th century B. C. Acts xvii. 28 from Aratus, a Cihcian of the 2nd century B. C. i Cor. XV. 33 from the celebrated comedian Menander, of the 3d century B. C. "John X. 35. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 575 dated testimony of the Talmud to the twenty-four constit- uent elements of the Jewish canon, ^^ the Protestant can summon two witnesses who establish his case beyond ques- tion. These are Josephus and Philo. They are admirably adapted to supplement each other's testimony. That of Jose- phus is affirmative, that of Philo negative; Josephus was a contemporary of the Apostles only, Philo of our Lord also; Josephus was a Palestinian Jew, Philo an Alexandrian Jew. Both were of priestly origin, well-read in the sacred books of their nation, and anxious to commend them to the world. Now Josephus, in his work against Apion, explicitly states^^ that the Jews have not an indefinite number of sacred writings, "but only twenty-two, containing the record of all time, which have been justly believed to be divine." He proceeds to divide these twenty-two books into three classes, consisting respectively of five, thirteen and four, and to describe each division in such a way that the Protestant Old Testament, no more and no less, is evidently intended. But as if there might be any remaining doubt concerning his atttitude towards the books whose cononicity is maintained by the Roman Catholic Church, he adds : "From the time of Artaxerxes to our own time each event has been recorded ; but the records have not been deemed worthy of the same credit as those of earlier date . . . Though so long a time has now passed, no one has dared either to add anything to them [that is, to the true sacred writings] , or to take any- thing from them, or to alter anything." Whatever may be held true concerning the formation of the Old Testament ^ These Jewish writings record for us the discussions carried on between rival schools and doctors of the Law, concerning the right of certain books that were in the canon to remain in it. There was never any question of admitting other books, such as Ecclesiasticus, and the canonicity of those already in the canon was never in serious danger of being disproved. In IV (II) Esdras, however, which dates from the end of the first century of our era, the canon already con- sists of twenty- four books ; this is the number obtained by deducting the seventy secret books of tradition from the total of ninety-four written by Ezra (chap. xiv. verses 44-46). ^ Against Apion i. 8. 576 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW canon, no doubt can be entertained as to what was thought to be true concerning it in the first century of our era, both in Palestine, and in Alexandria where Apion lived. Philo flourished half a century earlier, and is the repre- sentative writer of Alexandrian Judaism. If anywhere, surely in Alexandria, the apocryphal writings received a regard that might be mistaken for canonization. Yet in Philo's voluminous works, in which he quotes largely from the canonical Scriptures of his nation, he does not once quote from the apocryphal writings. This negative testi- mony is all the more striking because we know that Philo must have been familiar with at least a part of the Apoc- rypha, and because its spirit is often singularly akin to his own.^^ The assertion, therefore, that at the time of our Lord the canon of the Jews included these disputed writings, can only be made in the face of unchallenged and unmistakable opposing evidence. (2) It is the Old Testament canon of Protestants that coincides with the Old Testament canon of the early Chris- tian Church. This would naturally be expected after the proof of the first proposition. But there is ample evidence to prove it independently. The evidence begins with Melito, Bishop of Sardis about 175 A.D. Eusebius, the historian of the early Church, has happily preserved for us (Hist. Eccles. iv. 26) Melito's list of the sacred books, which he learned, we are told, "by exact inquiry on a journey to the East" (Palestine). His canon, save for the omission of Esther,^^ is the canon of ^ "The greatest Philo scholar of the present day, C. Siegfried, says of Philo (in his 'Philo', Jena, 1875, p. 161) : 'His canon is already essentially our own'" [that is, the Protestant canon]. Strack, in Her- zog-Plitt "Real-Encyclopaedie" , vol. vii., p. 425. *^ This may be an accidental omission, like that of the Minor Prophets from Origen's list in Eusebius ; for Esther's place at the end of the list, following Esdras (Ezra), a name that so much resembles Esther, was very precarious. Some have thought that, like Nehemiah, Esther was included in one book with Esdras, but this is improbable. It is prob- able that the Palestinian Christians, like Athanasius at a later time. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 57/ the Jews, of the Apostles, and of the Protestants. To the same century and probably to a date earlier than Melito, though naturally indefinite, must be referred the earliest Syriac translation. The Old Testament was translated di- rectly from the Hebrew and included only the Jewish canon. The apocryphal books were not added to it till much later. In the Western Church, Justin Martyr (about A.D, 150), though writing in Greek and quoting the Old Testament ac- cording to the Septuagint, never quotes from the Apoc- rypha ;-^ and Tertullian in North Africa, however much he quotes the Apocrypha with a respect justly due only to Holy Scripture, yet preserves the true tradition of the canon by giving the number of the Old Testament books as twenty- four. All these witnesses belong to the 2nd century, the age of the primitive Church. In the next generation, Origen at Alexandria continues the chain of evidence by a list of the Old Testament books, preserved, like Melito's list, in Euse- bius' history, ^^ and, in a more perfect form, in a Latin trans- lation by Ruffinus. It numbers the familiar twenty-two. In North Africa, Cyprian proves the authority of a passage that he quotes from the Apocrypha, by appealing to "the testimony of truth", the Book of Acts. In the 4th and 5th centuries there are many lists naming twenty-two books, differing slightly in their treatment of Esther and the additions to Jeremiah, and differing con- siderably in the order of the books, but all of them pre- senting the shorter canon of Protestantism, not the larger canon of Roman Catholicism, as the true canon of Scrip- were misled into rejecting Esther as apocryphal because of its apoc- ryphal additions. Thus the early "Synopsis of Divine Scriptures" (wrongly attributed to Athanasius and printed with his works, ed. Migne, vol. iv., col. 283) says that Esther "begins with the dream of Mordecai" ; but this is in fact the beginning of the apocryphal section. " In debating with Trypho, an Ephesian Jew, the differences between the Jews and the Christians, Justin never alludes to a different canon. ** Eusebius, Hist. Eccles. vi. 25. He omits the Minor Prophets (but this is a copyist's error), and includes the "Epistle of Jeremiah", which is probably the same as chap. vi. of Baruch in the Vulgate. 578 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW ture. The names of the authors of these lists are the most distinguished names in Church History, and are distributed over the whole Church : in the Eastern Church, Athanas- ius in Egypt,^^ Gregory Nazianzen at Constantinople,^'^ Cyril in Palestine, ^^ Epiphanius in Cyprus,^^ and Amphil- ochius in Asia Minor ;^° in the Western Church, Hilary in Gaul,^^ Ruffinus in Italy, ^- and, at once the most distin- guished, the most competent, and the most emphatic witness of them all, Jerome, the Roman Presbyter, father of the Latin Vulgate Bible. This learned Biblical scholar of an- tiquity writes in the "Prologiis Galeatiis" prefixed to his ^Epist. fest., 39. He omits Esther, reckons Ruth separately, and adds to Jeremiah not only Lamentations but also Baruch and the Epistle. ^ Carmina lib. I, § i, 12. He counts Ruth separately and omits Esther. -^ Catech. iv 35 (compare page 573). He adds to Jeremiah his Epis- tle and Baruch, as well as Lamentations. The same list, perhaps derived from Cyril, is usually appended to the decrees of the Council of Laodicea (A. D. 363), but is a later interpolation. ^ He gives three lists. Two of these {De mens, et pond., § 4 and § 2Z) are identical with the Hebrew canon. The third {Haer. viii. 6) adds to Jeremiah his Epistle and that of Baruch, as well as Lamenta- tions. ^ Iambi ad Seleuc, 2. He counts Ruth instead of Esther, but at the end says : "Some add Esther." ^^Prol. in lib. Psalmorum, 15. The same canon as that of Origen, without the omission of the Minor Prophets. ^ Comm. in symb. apost., 37, 38. His list is exactly the Jewish canon. His added remarks are worthy of notice : "These are the books which the Fathers included within the canon, and from which it was their will that the dogmas of our faith should be maintained. Yet it must be known that there are other books which have been called by the ancients not canonical, but ecclesiastical, that is, the Wis- dom (as it is called) of Solomon, and the other Wisdom of the Son of Sirach . . . The Book of Tobias is of the same class, and Judith, and the Book of the Maccabees ... all which they willed should be read in the churches, but not alleged to support any article of faith" (Tr. by Westcott). In general, from the formal lists of all these Fathers, we know how to interpret their use of the Apocrypha. Their informal, uncritical habit of promiscuous quotation when writ- ing controversially or didactically on other topics, is to be checked by these formal expressions of their true belief when writing spe- cifically on the subject of the canon. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 579 translation of the Old Testament: "This prologue to the Scriptures may serve as a sort of helmeted front for all the books that we have translated from Hebrew into Latin, in order that we may know that whatever is outside of these must be put among the Apocrypha. Hence Wisdom, com- monly called that of Solomon, and the Book of Jesus son of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) and Judith and Tobias and the Shepherd are not in the canon." And this is but one of many declarations by Jerome to the same effect. ^^ Against all this, Roman Catholics allege the presence of these books in the canonical lists of certain Councils, and the sanction given them by certain Fathers. The only Coun- cils previous to Trent that have left authentic canonical lists^* embodying the larger Old Testament canon are two **So, for example, in the preface to the books of Solomon: "As the Church reads the books of Judith and Tobias and Maccabees, but does not receive them among the canonical Scriptures, so also it reads Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus for the edification of the people, not for the authoritative confirmation of doctrine" (Westcott's transl.). At first Jerome intended to pass by the apocryphal books in his Biblical labors, but on the entreaty of others he hastily revised Tobias and Judith. "The Council of Carthage 397 revised and ratified the decrees of an earlier Council of Hippo 393 (Augustine's see), in which the canon had been one of the subjects debated and decided. All these African Councils expressly submitted their decisions to the judgment of the European Churches and the Bishop of Rome. But papal lists, such as those of Innocent I and Gelasius, which used to be appealed to in confirmation of the larger canon, are probably not genuine ; whereas Pope Gregory's remark about Maccabees (quoted on page 581) gives a papal verdict against the equality of the Apocrypha. The Council of Constantinople called the "Quini-sextine" or "Trullan" (A. D. 692) ratified the decrees of Carthage with their longer Augustinian canon ; but it also confirmed in the same breath the shorter canonical list contained in the so-called "Apostolical Constitutions"; and finally, by erecting the canons of Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen and Amphilo- chius into unalterable ecclesiastical law, it sanctioned also their testi- mony to the shorter Old Testament canon. Hence its voice is uncer- tain and appeal is no longer made to it by Romanists. The canonical list ascribed to the late Council of Florence (A. D. 1439) is not found in the older collection of the decrees of this Council, but only in the Caranza collection of 1633; there is no evidence to prove that the Council ever sanctioned the list. A canonical list printed at the end of the decrees of the Council of Laodicea (A. D. 363) is identical with that of Cyril (see page 578, note 28), but it is undoubtedly an early interpolation. 580 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW Councils of the North African clergy in the time of Augus- tine : Carthage A.D. 397, and Carthage A.D. 419. And the only notable instance of a Church Father who not merely quotes from the disputed books but expressly in- cludes them in a formal list, is Augustine. It will be ob- served, then, that these three testimonies are in fact not three but one, inasmuch as Augustine's influence was para- mount in these Councils of his African fellow-Bishops. What is to be thought of this apparent contradiction be- tween Augustine on the one hand, and the mass of em- phatic testimony against cannonicity on the other hand? Does not common-sense suggest in advance the answer that there must be some simple solution ?^^ Let Cardinal Cajetan answer for us, that famous scholar of the 1 6th century appointed by the Pope to argue against Luther. At the end of his commentary on the historical books he formulates as clearly as any Protestant writer the true significance of Augustine's canon. "Here", he writes, "we terminate the commentaries on the historical books of the Old Testament. For the rest, (namely Judith, Tobias and the Maccabees), are accounted by St. Jerome as out- side of the canonical books, and placed among the Apoc- rypha with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus, as appears in the Prologiis Galeatus. But be not disturbed, young scholar, if anywhere either in sacred Councils or in sacred Doctors you find those books counted among the canonical. For to the correction of Jerome must be subjected the judgment both of Councils and of Doctors; and according to his opinion addressed to the Bishops Chromatins and Heliodorus, those books (and any similar books that may be in the canon of the Bible) are not canonical, that is, are not a standard for establishing matters of faith; nevertheless they may be ■^Is it likely that the Bible of the Church of North Africa dififered radically from the Bible of the rest of the Church, especially when in this very province ^& find Tertullian before Augustine and Primasius after Augustine limiting the Old Testament to 24 books, and when we find Cyprian before Augustine and Junilius after Augustine rating the authority of some books in their larger canon below the authority of other books? THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 581 termed canonical in the sense that they are standards for the edification of believers, having been for this purpose received and authorized in the canon of the Bible. With this distinction you will be able to understand Augustine's expressions and what is written in the Provincial Council of Carthage." For these natural, sensible remarks the learned Cardinal was abused by later Roman Catholic writers, ^*^ but the abuse might have been spared him if these words of Pope Gregory the Great had been given their due weight : "We do not act unduly," he says,^^ "if we adduce in this connection testimony drawn from books not canonical, yet put forth for the edification of the Church," and he proceeds to quote from the Maccabees. And Pope Gregory lived more than a century after Augus- tine and his African Councils. But there is grave danger in such a question that the de- bate may degenerate into a mere strife about a word. The Protestant feels no deep concern in attaching a particular meaning to the word "canonical", no real quarrel with the Romanist who prefers to call some of the apocryphal books canonical, following a custom ancient and honorable, though unfortunate. The real point at issue is of far greater im- portance. When Augustine and the forty-four Bishops of the North African Church, when the Council of Trent, when Catholics to-day, call these books canonical, do they or do they not mean that all are equally the inspired Word of God? Every Protestant who holds to the fundamental principle of the Reformation, the supreme authority of the Word of God as the rule of faith and practise, is interested to know the limits of that Word of God. He may bind in the same volume with those sacred books a dozen, a score or a hundred other books. The old Geneva Bible, the most Protestant of all the English versions, contains the Apoc- rypha. But there is a distinction. All are of use for pur- ** For example, by Catharinus, afterwards a member of the Council of Trent, in his "Annotations on the Commentary by Cajetan", book i. "Commentary on Job ("Morals"), Book xix, § 34. 582 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW poses of edification and worship; not all are God's Word. But to the Catholic Church of to-day all alike are divinely- inspired. Witness the deliverance of the Vatican Council of 1870 already quoted, ^^ with its anathema upon all who hold otherwise. Catholic writers have differed in their in- terpretation of the Tridentine decree on the canon, some writers denying that the Council intended not only to admit the disputed books, but also to declare all equally canoni- cal.^^ Yet only those writers do justice to the evident in- tent of the decree of Trent who say, with Perrone :^" "The authority of both classes of books, the protocanonical and the deuterocanonical, is the same in the Catholic Church, which recognizes no distinction among them." On the other hand hear Augustine :'^^ 'Tn the matter of the canonical Scriptures, let him (that is, the student of the divine Scriptures) follow the authority of the largest pos- sible number of the Catholic Churches, among which are clearly those that were held worthy of the honor to possess the Sees and receive the Epistles of the Apostles. He will adhere, therefore, to this principle in the matter of the canonical Scriptures, that he should prefer those accepted by all Catholic Churches to those that some Churches do ^ See page 570, note 8. ^ So Lamy, "Appar. ad Bibl.", II, 5, p. 383 ; Jahn, "Einleitung in die gottl. BUcher des alien Bundes, 2nd ed., Vienna 1802, pp. iigff, i4off; Mohler, "Symholik", p. 376. ^ Praelectiones, Part II, Sect, i, chap. i. Compare also the "Declara- tion of an Assembly of Cardinals to Interpret the Tridentine Council" (Jan. 17, 1576), which sanctioned the infallibility of every syllable and every jot of the Vulgate-text (Van Ess, "Geschichte der Vulgata", pp. 208-212, 40if). "De doctr. christ. ii. 8. Compare also De civ. Dei, xviii. 36, where Augustine denies to II Maccabees the authority of Scripture. The Donatist sect drew from this book the Scriptural sanction that they claimed for suicide, but Augustine distinctly places it outside the canon to which Christ gave His authoritative witness ; however, on account of its narratives of heroic martyrs "it is received by the Church not unprofitably, if it is read and heard soberly" (Contra Gaudentium, i. 38). Are such limitations as these, "not unprofitably" and "soberly", appropriate to any book of the Hebrew canon, the canon of Christ? Do they not show clearly Augustine's broad conception of "canonicity" ? THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 583 not accept: and that in the case of the Scriptures not ac- cepted by all, he should prefer those accepted by Churches of greater number or dignity to those held by Churches of less number or authority". This weighty utterance, which immediately precedes his list of "the entire canon of Scrip- tures within which the above principle is to be applied", shows clearly the error of those who would have us sup- pose that Augustine is on the side of the Roman Catholic Church of to-day in the matter of the canon. Where there is perfect equality there can be no preference; where there is preference there is no longer perfect equality. The authority of Augustine and his Provincial Councils may justly be cited for including the Apocrypha in the canon; it may not be cited to support the equality of the books in the Roman Catholic canon, as tha<- doctrine is implied in the decree of Trent and formulated by the Vatican Council. Generally, Protestants go one step further and affirm the inadvisability of binding these disputed books in the same volume with the Word of God. For the heresy of the Roman Church of to-day is the culmination of an historic process that began in this same innocent custom of mere external incorporation, grew next into the Augustine cus- tom, still innocent yet dangerous, of including the Apoc- rypha in the term "canonical", passed next into the indis- criminate use of all the "canonical" books as if all were equally the Word of God, and ended by the positive declara- tion, capped with an anathema on all dissenters, that all these "canonical" Scriptures alike, with all their parts, are sacred and divinely inspired. If Church History has lessons of value for the Church of to-day, surely one of them is, that it is better not to print and bind any apocryphal books with the Scriptures of our Lord, the Apostles and the early Christian Church. The Text. While the most obvious difference between the Catholic Bible and the Bibles with which the Protestant is familiar 584 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW is in their canon, the most sitrprising difference is that which lies in their text. To the average man Genesis is just Genesis, and Matthew is just Matthew. The mere suggestion of "various read- ings" is for him a perplexity; when he learns that these variations mount up into the tens of thousands he is con- founded. Yet how could the centuries during which his Bible was transmitted to him through the manual toil of innumerable copyists, many ignorant, all fallible, fail to leave their stamp upon the sacred text in mistaken words, distorted phrases, errors of eye, of ear, of hand, omissions, transpositions, additions, even a few intentional alterations ? After due reflection on all these possible sources of corrup- tion through the long ages of manuscripts, and after com- parison of the condition of the Biblical text with the text of classical authors, it is probable that the first feeling of con- sternation will change to wonder — a wonder now no longer that there are myriads of various readings, but that there are no more than there are, and particularly that they are so comparatively trivial as to leave the entire body of Biblical doctrine and history unaffected by the issue. Comparatively trivial; yes, for what Christian, Catholic or Protestant, can regard the preservation and restoration of the sacred text as quite trivial? Though no fundamen- tal truths of his religion are at stake, yet the words of divine utterance are not as man's words. If scholars devote their lives to the toilsome task of establishing the genuine text of a Greek tragedian or a Latin historian, what excuse could the Church of to-day find to give to her Lord, if she used less than her highest skill, learning, patience and industry, in restoring the very words of Prophet and Apostle, and of Him who "spake as never man spake" ! With all the progress of theological studies during the past century or two, it is safe to assert that no department has made more rapid strides than that of textual criticism. Indeed before that time there seems scarcely to have been a textual criticism worthy of the name. The Biblical schol- THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 585 ars of the i6th and 17th centuries, both Cathohc and Prot- estant, hardly saw the outhnes of the problem facing them. As textual critics, Erasmus, Ximenes and Beza are dwarfed by contrast even with Origen, Lucian and Jerome of the ancient Church. We may say that in part it was the fault of the time : a Tischendorf had yet to discover, a Vercellone to publish, a Hort to classify, and many others to contrib- ute their share of aid, before the materials of criticism should be available for use. But also in part it was the fault of those earlier scholars themselves, who lacked the scientific principles and methods, without which even all the material now available would be a meaningless mass. It must be confessed, however, that we at the present day are far from seeing the completion of the great task of undoing the mischief of the centuries. Not only are the original autographs of the sacred writers unfound and be- yond all hope of finding, but certainty as to their exact text, the goal of textual criticism, is yet unattainable. This is especially true in the Old Testament books, where the prob- lem presents features of peculiar difficulty. In the New Testament there is a bewildering multiplicity of readings of great antiquity, drawn from Greek manuscripts, from ancient versions, and from quotations by the Fathers. But in the Old Testament there is an almost complete uniformity in the Hebrew manuscripts, which are all late ; there is only one version, the Septuagint, really ancient, and the text of this stands in as great need of purification as the text of the New Testament, yet with fewer materials for its accom- plishment ; and finally, there are very few ancient quotations. Keeping in view both the progress already made and the problems yet to be solved, in what spirit ought the Chris- tian of to-day to approach the subject of the Biblical text? The following principles ought to command the immediate assent of all who value the Bible as the Word of God. (i ) Biblical scholarship should make every effort to ascertain as nearly as possible the very words of the original authors. (2) Our Bibles should be purged of every element that by 586 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW the gradual progress of the science of textual criticism is demonstrated to be a corruption. (3) Wherever the evi- dence is not sufficiently decisive to demonstrate which is the original reading, our Bibles should present to their readers, by means of marginal notes, the most important variations. Passing from these considerations to our investigation of the Roman Catholic Bible, the contrast would be amusing if it were not so serious. In the Douai Bible we are still in the atmosphere of the 1 6th century. It would be unfair to say, of the Middle Ages, for Gregory Martin and his Rhemish brethren were no mean scholars, and those are no idle boasts on the title- pages of their version : "diligently conferred with the Greek", "diligently conferred with the Hebrew, Greek and other Editions". Vigorously as they defend the Latin Vul- gate in their prefaces, and closely as they adhere to it in their entire work, they nevertheless produce a version quite different from Wicklif's, for example, or that of any other translator who had only the Latin and not the original tongues before him. Yet if we decline to do injustice to the men of Douai by exaggerating their dependence on the Vul- gate, we are the more emphatic in characterizing this Cath- olic version a Bible of the i6th century. The basis of the text of the Douai Bibles circulated to-day is still the same as that of the first editions. The prefaces have been omitted, the English rendering has been considerably modernized and even assimilated to the phraseology of the Authorized Ver- sion, and the marginal notes have been toned down. All these are improvements. But the text itself is the same. All the progress of the centuries between is unrecorded for the Catholic reader.*^ *^The estimate of these later editions of the Douai Bible, ("most im- properly so called", according to Mgr. Ward in art. "Douay Bible" in the Catholic Encyclopedia), expressed by the distinguished English Cardinal Wiseman, (Essays, vol. i, pp.73-100), is anything but favor- able. "So far as simplicity and energy of style are concerned, the changes are generally for the worse." "Challoner's alterations were far from giving stability to the text." He calls for a definite revision conducted by competent scholars, and endeavors to show the great THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 587 Thus far in general. More particularly, the "type of text" represented by the Catholic Bible calls for remarks. The basis of the Douai text is avowedly and actually "the old vulgar approved Latin", "the authentical Latin ac- cording to the best corrected copies of the same." Not only do the men of Douai in their prefaces announce and defend this their position while attacking the text used by Pro- testant translators, but they even throw down this bold chal- lenge : "What then do our countrymen that refuse this Latin but deprive themselves of the best?" Even in our own day we find some Catholic writers maintaining the same posi- tion. Thus Heinrich, the German theologian -.'^^ "Li declar- ing the Vulgate authentic, the Council of Trent did a thing need of it. This paper was called forth by the publication of Dr. Lingard's "revision" of the Rhemish Gospels, but extended in its suggestions far beyond the limits of an ordinary review. It is interest- ing, as furnishing a fair estimate of what ought to have been done, but has not been done, in the direction of improving and iixing the form of the modern English Catholic Bible. "Our principal object at present", he writes (p. 79), "is to turn the attention of the Catholic clergy, and particularly the Bishops of Ireland and the Vicars Apos- tolic of England and Scotland, to the want of a complete revision of the [Douai] version itself, for the purpose of settling a standard text, from which editors in future will not be allowed to depart . . . It is far from our purpose to undertake a complete exposure of the many passages which want emendation — such a task would require a treatise. In order to confine ourselves within reasonable limits, we will only consider the necessity which a new revision would impose on those who should undertake it, of a minute and often complicated study of the original texts. We have selected this view of the matter, because we think it the ponit most neglected in the past, and most likely to be overlooked, and to form the great stumbling-block in any future revision. For, at first sight, it must appear an almost super- fluous task to proceed, in such an undertaking, beyond the accurate study of the work immediately translated. The Vulgate is written in Latin, and it would therefore appear sufficient to possess an accurate knowledge of the Latin language, in order to translate any work written in it into our own. It is our wish to prove the fallacy of such reasoning, and, on the contrary, to show what varied, and often deli- cate, questions of philology the translation may involve; and how impossible it is to correct or discover the mistakes of our Douai version, without a constant recourse to the original Hebrew and Greek texts. The object of such reference will be, to decide the true mean- ing of expressions obscure or doubtful in the Latin." 58S THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW which no doubt is easily exphcable from the ecclesiastical standpoint and according to the Catholic principle of tradi- tion ; but at the same time its choice was from the scientific- critical standpoint the best. For critical science has steadily- become more and more convinced that the text of the Vul- gate is on the whole the best and most trustworthy text, surpassing not only other versions but even the existing original-texts** in correctness and trutworthiness : for evi- dently there stood at the command of the framers of the Itala, as of St. Jerome, far older and better original-texts than the oldest and best of the manuscripts preserved to us, even as a similar fact is true of the text of the Septuagint received by the Church, over against the Massora that is often influenced by Jewish polemic." Beside this boast, put this admission of the same writer :*' "By no means is the possibility of textual errors and mis- takes in translation hereby excluded, in matters that do not touch Christian doctrine of faith and morals". The best, then, without being perfect — this is precisely what many Catholics claim for their Latin text declared "authentic" by the Council of Trent. We say, many; for there are other Catholic writers who are more distrustful of the Vulgate. Nearly a century ago, Leander van Ess, a Catholic priest and professor at Marburg, published an ex- tended treatise on the history of the Vulgate, whose double object was to show his fellow-churchmen that "the Catholic is not legally bound to the Vulgate", and that the Vulgate of to-day is a badly corrupted form of a mixture of faulty translations made in large part from a degenerate text. In the light of the further textual studies of the last century, it is hard to see how van Ess's verdict on the value of the Vulgate**^ can be disputed by any unprejudiced ^"Dogmatik", vol. i, p. 82of. " By "original-texts" this writer means the text in the original lan- guages, Hebrew in the Old Testament and Greek in the New. "^"Dognwtik", p. 824. " The distinction should always be observed, between a good text in the absolute and ecclesiastical sense, and a valuable text from the standpoint of the textual critic. For example, the New Testament THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 589 thinker. A few paragraphs will suffice to show the basis of this unfavorable estimate of the current Vulgate-text. (i) Its history has been a career of increasing corrup- tion, only aggravated by repeated attempts to correct it, "On account of its constant and frequent use, it has had as many and as unfortunate experiences as other manu- scripts and books have had, and from its very cradle it has been so uncritically handled in even its better parts that later attempts at improvement have not been able, and will not be able, to restore it to purity.""'"^ (2) The circumstances of its origin were not favorable for producing a faithful version. Briefly, these circum- stances were as follows. The Old Latin version, at least in its African form, dated back to the 2nd century, as quotations by Tertullian and Cyprian prove. Besides this African version, there existed one or more versions or revisions current in Europe in the 3d and 4th centuries.^^ These became so mixed and the confusion of text thereby produced became so great, that Augustine believed there must have been innumerable in- text of Tischendorf's famous manuscript Aleph is an exceedingly valu- able text, but it is not a good text to put into the hands of the Church as her New Testament. A textual critic, for his scientific purposes, prefers a manuscript embodying a degenerate text, even an almost unintelligible text, which has escaped some ecclesiastical recension, to another manuscript that reflects that recension, even though this latter be more ancient, more homogeneous, and altogether better adapted for ecclesiastical use. Illustrations might be drawn from the history of almost any of the versions. In the case of the Latin version, the current Vulgate has preserved in the New Testament many a reading derived from the Old Latin text, and thus representing the Greek text of the 2nd century; here lies its value from the standpoint of the textual critic. But in the same chapter with sitch a critical prize as one of these readings, there may stand some worthless interpolation or scribal corruption that mars the version for Church purposes. In a word, the critic can pick the good and leave the bad; the Church has to take all indiscriminately. *^Van Ess, "Geschickte der Vulgata", p. 472f. ** Scholars are still uncertain as to the exact relationship of the three different types of Old Latin, which it is customary to designate as the African, the European and the Italian. This at least is their true chronological order. 590 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW dependent translators,^^ and Jerome could say/*^ "there are almost as many versions as manuscripts". To remedy this intolerable state of affairs Jerome, at the request of Pope Damasus (about 382), set himself to bring order out of the chaos. His first work was the revision of the New Testa- ment, beginning- with the Gospels. He next produced two editions of the Psalter, one revised according to that text of the Septuagint which was commonly current in the Church, and the other according to the corrected text of Origen's great critical edition of the Old Testament known as the Hexapla. Then Jerome revised, with the help of the Hexapla, the books of Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Chronicles, and probably all the Old Testament.^ ^ Of the Apocrypha he rendered Tobias, Judith, and the addi- tions to Esther and Daniel. Finally — the crowning achieve- ment of this ancient Biblical scholar — Jerome issued a fresh translation of the Old Testament made directly from the Hebrew original. Not all these labors found complete or unanimous accep- tance. Ruffinus and other men of influence were uncom- promisingly opposed to Jerome and his work. Even Augus- tine, with his more profound but less critical mind, failed for a time to understand and appreciate. The various parts of Holy Scripture thus translated or revised were received differently: some readily, as the New Testament revision, some slowly, as the so-called "Gallican" Psalter (that re- vised from the Hexapla), and some not at all, as the Psalter *" De doctr. christ., ii. ir. ** Preface to the Four Gospels, addressed to Damasus. "Tot sunt emm exemphria penc quot codices." As Van Ess urges, p. 16, Jerome must have intended by cxemplaria something more than mere corrup- tions in the codices. Whether rightly or wrongly, Jerome had in mind nothing less than divergent texts. "Compare the expression in the well-known passage (Comm. in Tihim c. Ill), "pmncs veteris legis Ubros emendare". If this "all" is. literally true, the rest of the books so revised have been lost; but then, Jerome complains to Augustine of this very thing: "Pleraque prions laboris amisimns" . THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 59I translated from the Hebrew.^^ Side by side with these prod- ucts of Jerome's scholarship, there lived on in the Church for centuries the Old Latin versions, until at length, by the 7th century, the great reviser's triumph was complete, though dearly bought by much admixture of elements incor- porated from the earlier versions. The Vulgate declared authentic by the Council of Trent, "that old and vulgar edition which has been approved by long use through so many centuries in the Church", the Vul- gate of the official Clementine edition, is made up, therefore, of the following heterogeneous elements : The Old Testament translated from the Hebrew by Jerome, but with considerable importations from the Old Latin versions and from Jerome's own earlier revisions ac- cording to the Greek (notably the entire Psalter, which is his second revision, according to the Hexaplaric text). The Apocrypha, partly from Jerome's version, partly from the Old Latin versions. The New Testament according to Jerome's restricted revision of the old versions.^^ Such being, in brief, the origin of the Vulgate, it is not hard to see how unfavorable were the conditions for attain- ing the best possible Latin text. Damasus, in whose pon- tificate Jerome commenced his task, died in 384. The Old Testament translation was not finished until 405. During all that time, as we learn from his letters, Jerome's work was being issued, frequently (so he says) snatched up be- " It is a curious fact that those parts of Jerome's work which the Church received apparently with the greatest readiness, were just the parts that were latest in finding universal acceptance. On the contrary, his Old Testament from the Hebrew, against which the whole Church at first seemed to be arrayed, attained general currency far earlier than his New Testament revision, and as a consequence the former escaped much of the corruption that overtook the latter through long- continued use side by side with the Old Latin. ■'^How restricted this revision was, may be learned from what is said below of the ecclesiastical criticism that Jerome dreaded, and like- wise from many expressions in his works, such as the following: "Ut his tantum, quae sensiim videbantur mutare, correciis, reliqua manere pateremur, ut fuerunt" (from the Preface to the Gospels). 592 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW fore he was through with its correction. Long passages were often executed in incredible haste. Proverbs, Ecclesi- astes and the Song of Solomon were completed in three days, Tobit in one day ; "sometimes", he writes, "I reach the total of a thousand verses a day".^* He used an amanuen- sis.^^ His eyesight was feeble.^® Many Hebrew words he failed to understand. For his Latin Jerome himself apolo- gizes '^"^ "I beg of you, reader, not to demand that finished style which through long study of the Hebrew tongue I have lost." But the greatest hindrance of all to an exact version was the stubbornness of the Latin Church in holding to what was familiar even though wrong. This prevented Jerome from exercising to the full his critical gifts or using the critical material that he possessed. Again and again he com- plains of this opposition to all change; indeed it was only the same spirit of obscurantism and envy of superior learn- ing that culminated in the bitter invectives of Ruffinus, Pal- ladius and his other personal enemies. He undertook the New Testament revision and all his earlier work in this fear of offending. The well-known passage in his preface to the Gospels addressed to Damasus shows the rigor and ignor- ance of the criticism he dreaded: "Who is there," he asks, "learned or unlearned, that will not break out with charges of forgery and sacrilege, if I dare to add, alter or amend anything in the ancient books?" This applies to his earlier work. But that the same dread affected even his latest work, his Old Testament translation, is shown where he says of it :^^ "Following the old interpretation, we have been unwilling to change anything that was not doing actual harm." (3) But, besides the history of the Vulgate, and the cir- "Comm. on Eph., book ii (at the beginning). ** Comm. on Gal., book iii (at the beginning) : "propter oculorum et totius corpusculi infirmitatem, manu mea ipse non scriho." "■ On Ezekiel, xx. " On Haggai, at the end. °' Epist. to Sun. and Fretel., he writes : "De Hebraeo transferens magis me LXX interpretum consuetudine captavi." THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 593 cumstances attending its origin, there is one other reason for the unfavorable verdict passed upon it. The Greek texts from which much of it was made were corrupt. In the New Testament there stood at Jerome's command a good Greek text. But it was particularly in the New Testament that Jerome was bound most closely to the Latin text already current in the Church. Now these Old Latin versions were early in their origin, and for purposes of textual criticism to-day they rank very high as a means of confirming the earliest readings of the best Greek manu- scripts. But as current in the Church in Jerome's day, these did not present what could in any sense be called a good text. They were faulty in three ways, through errors in translation, errors in transmission, and mixture with one another. The Fathers frequently point out their shortcomings. Jerome's and Augustine's complaints of them are well-known. Hilary's complaint is less often quoted :^^ "The Latin translation, ignorant of the real force of what is said, has introduced great obscurity, not dis- cerning the right meaning of an ambiguous expression." And Tertullian^^ punningly calls the current version an "eversion", so completely does it destroy the force of the original. Yet it was to this Old Latin text that Jerome must needs adhere in his New Testament, altering as little as possible and curbing his critical powiers lest he offend through novelty.^^ In the Old Testament there existed three different texts among which the Latin translator might choose his original : the Hebrew, the old Greek Septuagint, and the Greek text of Origen's Hexapla, with its asterisks and obelisks to in- dicate divergences between the Hebrew and the Septuagint readings. As has been seen, Jerome made use of each of ^* Tract, in Psalm. 138 (43), quoted by Van Ess, p. 9. *" De monogam., c. xi, quoted by Van Ess, p. 9. '^Jerome says that he selected for his revision of the Gospels Greek manuscripts "that were old, but did not differ much from the form of the Latin text". "Veterum, nee quae multum a lectionis latinae con- stietudinis discreparent" (from Preface to Gospels). 594 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW these at different times. Where he used the first, the He- brew, he had before him ahnost precisely the same text as that of our Hebrew Bibles to-day, a good text, altogether the best attainable even with the means now at our command or then at the command of Jerome.*'^ Where he used the Septuagint, he had but a corrupted text, vitiated by cen- turies of transmission, and even in its best state often unin- telligible in Psalm and Prophet. It was undoubtedly due to its inherent obscurity that the "Roman" Psalter (that made first and from the Septuagint), "was soon corrupted by scribes and became more defective than the former un- revised text".^^ Finally, where Jerome used the Hexaplaric Greek text, he had one that was theoretically good, but practically the worst of all. Both in the Greek and in the Latin manuscripts, the asterisks and obelisks became hope- lessly displaced through the error, ignorance or indifference of the scribes, and "the last state was worse than the first". While intending the best for the Biblical text, Origen actual- ly introduced more confusion that that which he set about his laborious task to remedy. The obscurity of the Psalter in the Vulgate of to-day, and in the Douai Version made from it, is due to the fact that it is the Old Latin Psalter of the first ages of the Church, translated originally from the Septuagint manuscripts current in the Western Church, then revised in accordance with the Hexapla, then mixed with readings from Jerome's earlier Psalter, and finally corrupted by scribal errors through centuries of transmis- sion in the Latin. ^^ "^ The old charges of intentional Jewish corruptions, pressed by- earlier Catholic writers, have long since been exploded, unless possibly in one or two passages. "^ Van Ess, p. 105, who quotes Jerome's Prologue to Psalm ii : "Quod rursum videtis scriptorum vitio depravatum, plusque antiquum errorem, quam novavi emendationem valere." "What wonder, then, is it that we find in the Douai Psalter such monstrosities as the following: Ps. Ixv (Ixiv). ID (11), for "Thou makest it soft with showers: Thou blessest the springing thereof," Douai reads : "Inebriate her rivers ; in her drops so she shall re- joice springing". THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 595 In the light of these historical facts, drawn from the writings of the Fathers, confirmed by examination of the Vulgate itself, and marshalled by a Catholic writer, what is to be said of Heinrich's boast quoted above, that in the Vulgate we have "on the whole the best and most trust- worthy text, surpassing not only other versions, but even the existing original-texts in correctness and trustworthi- ness?" Such then is the text that formed the basis of the Douai Version. The comparison of it with the Hebrew and Greek originals was, as has been remarked, no idle boast, for evi- dences are forthcoming throughout, but particularly in the New Testament, that these translators felt free to have re- course to the Greek because of the multiplicity of Latin readings.^^ "We bind not ourselves", say they, "to the points of any one copy, print or edition of the vulgar Latin, in places of no controversy, but follow the pointing most agreeable to the Greek and to the Fathers' commentaries." "We translate sometime the word that is in the Latin mar- gin, and not that in the text, when by the Greek or the Fathers we see it is a manifest fault of the writers hereto- Ps. Ixviii (Ixvii). 15 (16), "A mountain of God is the mountain of Bashan; A high mountain is the mountain of Bashan." Douai reads : "A mountain crudded as cheese, a fat mountain." Ps. Ixxii (Ixxi). 16, "There shall be abundance (margin, a handful) of grain in the earth upon the top of the mountains." Douai reads : "There shall be a firmament in the earth in the tops of the mountains." (From Eadie, "The English Bible", vol. ii., p. 144, where see' numer- ous other examples.) " Bellarmine, the leading Jesuit theologian of the i6th century, allows recourse to the text in the original tongues under these four conditions: when the Latin text (i) seems to show an error of copy- ists; (2) exhibits uncertainty of reading through variation in the Latin codices; (3) contains an expression of double signification; or (4) may receive a fuller understanding by comparison of the original. It should not be forgotten that the first edition of the Rhemish Testa- ment (1582) appeared a decade before the publication of those official editions of the Vulgate which had been called for by the Council of Trent. The New Testament text of the Douai Bible (1609-10), how- ever, is said to be conformed to the text of the official Clementine Vulgate. 596 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW fore, that mistook one word for another." In a word, their practice was better than their theory, for, as has been well pointed out, their "critical rules and opinions are character- ized by a peculiar lubricity. Their statement is that the Latin does usually agree with the Greek text; that any dis- agreement is often found to be coincident with some old copy, 'as may be seen in Stephens' margin', and that the adversaries sometimes accept such marginal readings; that where Greek copies exhibit a different text, the Vulgate is found to agree with patristic quotations; that emendations may be resorted to if such authority be wanting, or recourse may be had to the Latin Fathers, and if in this appeal dis- crepancy should be found, the blame is to be laid to 'the great diversity and multitude' of Latin copies. So that in this easy and incoherent way of moving from post to pillar, as often as their position is felt to be untenable, the superi- ority of the Latin translation to the Greek original is dem- onstrated."^^ The Version. The most immediately obvious difference which the Prot- estant notices between the Catholic Bible and his own Bible is in their canon; the most surprising difference is in their text ; the most pervasive and characteristic difference is to be found in the motives and methods of their version, that is, in the actual work of translating into the English tongue their respective originals. The motives and methods of translators may be com- pared both abstractly, as formulated in the principles avowed in their prefaces and other explanatory writings, and con- cretely, as exhibited in their practice, their actual produc- tions. As just intimated, the translators of the Catholic Bible differ from the translators of the Protestant Bible in both motives and methods, both avowed principles and evi- dent practice. First, their motives. The long prefaces originally published with the Rheims "Eadie, vol. ii., p. 128. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 59/ New Testament and the Douai Old Testament set forth the intention of those EngHsh exiles who, "having compassion to see our beloved countrymen, with extreme danger of their souls, use only such profane translations, and erroneous men's mere phantasies, for the pure and blessed word of truth, much also moved thereunto by the desires of many devout persons: have set forth, for you (benign readers) the New Testament to begin withal, trusting that it may give occasion to you, after diligent perusing thereof, to lay away at least such of their impure versions as hitherto you have been forced to occupy." Now the many sections of these prefaces devoted to an elaborate attack upon the gen- eral circulation of vernacular Bibles seem to prepare the way but ill for any vernacular Bible, but they at least serve this purpose : to underscore with a hundred-fold emphasis this statement of motive when at length it is given. The evident hostility to all vulgarizing of this esoteric treasure of God's Word (this "pearl" that must not be "cast before swine" ),^''' is in fact the exact measure of the compelling force that urged these translators to what was in itself an unwelcome task. So strong, then, was this purpose in them, to undo the harm that existing English versions were doing. The impression thus openly created in the prefaces is only deepened by the study of what they produced. The char- acter of its numerous controversial notes may be judged from this estimate passed upon them by the Roman Catho- lic priest, Alexander Geddes (1787) :^^ "The translation is accompanied with virulent annotations against the Protest- ant religion, and is manifestly calculated to support a sys- tem, not of genuine catholicity, but of transalpine popery."^^ •"Similarly, Cardinal Hosius, "De expresso verbo Dei," I, p. 640: "Laicis lectionem Scr. permittere est sanctum canibus dare et margari- tas ante porcos projicere." "Author of the learned treatise "De vulgarium S. Scr. versionum vitiis", freely cited by Van Ess, op. cit. **The original New Testament notes were prepared by Richard Bristow. Their character may be judged from this latest chapter in their history: when reprinted at Dublin a century ago (by McNamara- Coyne, 1816, with Archbishop Troy's approbation), they aroused so 598 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW On the other hand, a careful inspection of the text of their version reveals the substantial truthfulness of that solemn asseveration with which their preface to the New Testament closes : "Thus we have endeavoured ... to deal most sincerely before God and man, in translating and expound- ing the most sacred text of the Holy Testament." Allow them their uncritical Vulgate-text, with its variety of read- ings to support whatever was most congenial to the Rom- ish system; grant them the methods of translating which they adopt and defend; and one must admit that on the whole they have "dealt most sincerely in translating the most sacred text". While distinctively Romish ecclesiastical terms are retained, such as sacrament, penance, priest, this is in line with an avowed principle of their method. If "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" (John 2:4) is rendered: "What is to me and thee, woman?" in order to avoid even the appearance of a slight to the Blessed Virgin, this also is but a literalism and in accord with another prin- ciple laid down in the preface. "^^ Thus motive and method are intermingled in such a way that while the method is defended on independent grounds, the real reason for its much indignation in Great Britain that the matter was brought up in Parliament, and the Archbishop of Dublin and the rest of the Roman Clergy were constrained to withdraw their approbation. These anno- tations frequently descend from doctrines to personalities; for exam- ple, the "two masters" of Matt. vi. 24 are explained as "Christ and Calvin", with more alliterative skill than exegetical soundness. Some notes that do not assail the Protestants maintain peculiar Roman Catholic doctrines, in a spirit that may be judged from the following examples (cited by Dr. Eadie, vol. ii, p. 145) : — On II Tim. iv: "The parable also of the men sent into the vineyard proveth that heaven is our own right, bargained for and wrought for, and accordingly paid unto us as our hire at the day of judgment." On Rev. vi. 9: "Saints be present at their tombs and relics." On Rev. xvii. 6: "Putting here- tics to death is not to shed the blood of the saints." "Heresy and apostasy from the Catholic faith punishable by death." ™ Later Catholic editors are less fair than the Rhemists in this pas- sage. Both Haydock's and Troy's Bibles read : "Woman, what is that to me and to thee?" Of the alternative interpretations permitted by the wording of the original edition (and so explained in an accompany- ing note), these editors have thus adopted unreservedly the inferior choice, simply because it better agrees with Roman Catholic dogma. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 599 adoption is to be sought in the motive. Every point is to be made, in the text, that can honestly be made, against Protestantism and for Roman CathoHcism. Of the motives of later editors of the Douai Bible the fol- lowing may be said. In accordance with the changed spirit of the times, the English Catholic Bible was to be made less virulent, less strikingly sectarian and partisan. Yet in ac- cordance with the purpose of its original translators, this "minority Bible" was not to lose its identity by yielding its distinctive features, nor fail in its mission of counteracting the baleful influence of Protestant Bibles. The approved English Bibles of Catholic America to-day show the work- ing of both these motives. No concession is made on the canon, and practically none on the text ; the changes in trans- lation are more to modernize the language than to broaden the spirit; the chief concession lies wholly outside the ver- sion as such, in the omission of the now indefensible prefaces and in the alteration of the original annotations. Yet it is emphatically to-day, as it was three centuries ago, the Bible of a sect; as we have had a Unitarian Bible, and a Baptist Bible, so in the Douai Version we have a Roman Catholic Bible."^! But, second, different motives have led to the adoption of different methods. It is therefore to the consideration of these methods of the Catholic translators that we are now " It is customary now to print on the fly-kaf of Catholic Bibles, together with the certified approbation of the ecclesiastics having jur- isdiction, two papal pronouncements of the i8th century in favor of vernacular Bibles: (i) the decree of Benedict XIV (i757) which per- mits "to all the faithful to read the Holy Scriptures in their mother- tongue, if the translations are approved by the Apostolic See, or pro- vided with notes from the Fathers or from Catholic scholars"; and (2) the letter of Pius VI to Archbishop Martini (1778) commend- ing his Italian version of the Bible. It may be remarked in passing that this Italian Bible appeared in 23 quarto volumes. Hardly a popular Bible, this! A later edition of it, without notes (1818), was at once put "on the index" of prohibited books. "Furthermore, the Encyclical of Leo XII (1824) makes no exceptions in its denunciation of the "poisonous pastures" of vernacular Bibles, by whose publication "more evil than advantage will arise because of the rashness of men'. 600 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW brought ; first, to their avowed principles, and second, to the faithlessness and success with which these principles are carried out. "We are very precise and religious", say the Rhemists, "in following our copy, the old vulgar approved Latin : not only in sense, which we hope we always do, but sometimes in the very words also and phrases." Again, "we have used no partiality for the disadvantage of our adversaries, nor no more license than is sufferable in translating: . . . ac- knowledging with St. Jerome, that in other writings it is enough to give in translation, sense for sense, but that in Scriptures, lest we miss the sense, we must keep the very words." And again, "knowing that the good and simple may easily be seduced by some few obstinate persons of per- dition, . . . and finding by experience this same saying of St. Augustine to be most true, 'If the prejudice of any erroneous persuasion preoccupate the mind, whatsoever the Scripture hath to the contrary, men take it for a figurative speech' : for these causes, and somewhat to help the faithful reader in the difficulties of divers places, we have also set forth reasonable large annotations." Here is a profession of three principles in the method of making a version : first, honest rendering ; second, literal rendering; and third, polemic and doctrinal notes. Does a candid examination of the version show actual adherence to the principles thus advertised ? It does. In treating of the motives we have already seen the sincerity of the Rhemists in the rendering of their text such as it was. Through all the violent attacks of English Protestants, this boast has never been proved idle. If the English form in which, for example, they clothed Christ's language to Mary in John 2 : 4 is an expression less offen- sive to ears accustomed to hearing Mary's name coupled with the attributes of divinity, it is at least no falsification of the original ; it is too literal, it is un-English, its Catholic motive is transparent ; but it is not dishonest. Literalism is the most marked characteristic of the Douai THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 6or Bible. Being made from the Latin, this HteraHsm means Latinity of phraseology, and as it is carried to an extreme, it means Latinity of diction to a degree unequalled by any popular book in our tongue. There are, it is true, many good Saxon words and phrases. A few of these are even used in this version for the first time ; the bulk of them are borrowed from earlier English versions : in the Old Testa- ment mainly from Coverdale, who like the Catholics trans- lated this Testament from the Latin, and in the New Testa- ment, strange to say, predominatingly from the men of Geneva, the most Protestant of all the translators.^^. Yet the distinctive tone of the Douai Bible is its excessive use of Latin words carried over bodily into English, either graced with an English termination, or sometimes quite un- changed, like gratis and depositum. Master Fulke makes fun of their professed intention to transfer into English the Greek words retained by the Latin translators and so present in the Vulgate. "As for Greek terms", he writes,'^^ "which may well enough be expressed in the English tongue, we see no cause why we should retain them, as Parasceve, asymes, neophyte. And if you had so religious a care to use all the Greek words in your English translation which you find in your vulgar Latin text, then you would as well have trans- lated these and such like Greek words as your Latin text hath: Magi, Mages, and not as you have done. Sages; Ecclesia, Ecclese, not Church; Architrichlinus, Architrich- line, not Chief Steward ; Encoenia, Encenes, not Dedication ; " It is but very recently that systematic comparison has revealed the closeness of the bonds by vt-hich the Rhemish Testament is bound, on the one side to the i6th century versions that preceded it, and on the other side to the Authorized Version of 1611. See "The Part of Rheims in the Making of the English Bible", by J. G. Carleton, D.D., Oxford, 1902. This v^rriter gives a table containing over six hun- dred passages in the New Testament common to the Authorized, Rheims and Geneva versions. And besides these, there are doubtless some others common to Rheims and Geneva, that v^^ere not subse- quently adopted by the Authorized Version. ""^ Confutation of the Rhemish Testament", Preface. A little freedom has been u<^ed in recasting Fulke's sentences for greater clear- ness. 602 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW Dyscolis, Discoles, not Wayward; Pyra, Pyre, not Fire; Nauclerus, Nauclere, not Master of the Ship; Typhonicus, Typhonic, not Tempestuous; Bolis, Bole, not Sound; Artemon, Artemon, not Mainsail ; Dithalassus, Dithalass, not a Place between the Two Seas : where, if we should pick quarrels as you do against us, we should make ourselves to all wise people ridiculous, as you are." A selected example will show to readers unfamiliar with the Rheims Testament the practical effect of this principle of literalism. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter three, Paul is made to say : "To me the least of all the saints is given this grace, among the Gentiles to evangelize the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to illuminate all men what is the dispensation of the sacrament hidden from worlds in God, who created all things : that the manifold wisdom of God may be notified to the Princes and Potestats in the celes- tials by the Church, according to the prefinition of worlds." What wonder that the Protestants of their day were tempted to taunt them with intentional obscurity for the simple Eng- lish reader, as where in the address prefixed to the Author- ized Version we read : "We have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their asymes, tunike, rationall, holocausts, prepuce, pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late translation is full, and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof it may be kept from being understood." Fulke, blunt as always, says :'^^" "Not the desire of sincerity, but rather of obscurity, hath made you thrust in a great number of words, not only Hebrew or Syriac, which are found in the Greek text, but also Greek and Latin words, leaving the English words of the same, which by long use are well known and familiar in the English tongue." Severe as are these arraignments, it cannot be denied that the Rhemish translators threw themselves open to them by their slavish adherence to the Latin before them. It is no dis- credit to their skill in English, for many a felicitous turn '*" Op. cit. THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 603 proves mastery of their mother-tongue. Rather, it is but another evidence of that cramped and ilHberal view of the uses of. Scripture which is openly avowed in their preface, but which CathoHcs of this later day are at great pains, if not to contradict, at least to modify and explain away. Such was, and such remains, an all-pervasive, obtrusive blemish of a version of which a distinguished Protestant like Alford could say :'^^ "With many great defects, it is by far the most carefully made of all in our language", (that is, up till 1868, the year he wrote these words) ; and of which an authority on the English Bible like Dr. Moulton of Cam- bridge could write :''^' "Every other English version is to be preferred to this, if it must be taken as a whole; no other English version will prove more instructive to the student who will take the pains to separate what is good and useful from what is ill-advised and wrong". Of the third principle, the association of polemic and doctrinal notes with the sacred Scripture, enough has per- haps been said already. Catholics have taken a step in the right direction, in modifying the tone of the original notes. It remains for them to acknowledge the justice of that principle upon which Protestants now firmly stand : an unmixed Word of God ; a Bible without note, interpretative heading, controversial preface or appendix; a volume that in its canon, text and rendering presents to its reader as nearly as possible that, and only that, which "men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit". If Ihere is any unity discoverable in the complex impres- sion left by the detailed exhibition of these differences between the English Bible of the Catholic and that of the Protestant, is it not to be found in that one great outstanding contrast between the Romish and the Protestant interpreta- tions of Christianity? Romanism seeks to save the world by the spread of a single, infallible, visible Church ; Protes- tantism, by the spread of the Gospel of God's grace in Christ. ''* Contemporary Review," 1868, VIII, 332. ^^ "History of the English Bible", p. 188. 604 THE PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL REVIEW The two views of the vernacular Bible spring from these contrasted views of the essence of Christianity. To the Romanist, the Bible is one of the sources of the Church's doctrine, written by men of the Church (of course under the Spirit's inspiration), committed to the care of the Church, authenticated by the Church, interpreted infallibly through the head of the Church, designed for the uses of the Church. As such, the Bible for the men of Rheims and Douai numbered such books in its canon as the Church of Rome pronounced divine. It existed in its only authentic form in a (hypothetical) perfect edition of the Vulgate, the text of the Roman Church. It was to be translated and issued in the vernacular, if at all, only in such forms of speech, at such times, and with such interpretative accom- paniments, as might best serve the Church's immediate need. On the other hand, the Bible is to the Protestant the message of God to mankind about salvation, promised and prepared for, granted and urged. As such, the Bible for the makers of the Protestant version, in all its various editions, is the book of the Saviour, containing the books vouched for, where possible, by Christ Himself, where that was chrono- logically impossible, by those who lived nearest to Him. Its only authentic form is that given it primitively by its divine Author, while present editions are more or less authentic only according as they more or less exactly reproduce that form. And it is to be faithfully translated into every tongue of earth, left quite unmixed with the words of men, and by the most practical form given the widest possible circulation. It is by such means, the Protestant believes, that the salva- tion of God can best be spread, which lies indeed in a "king- dom", but one that is "not eating and drinking, but right- eousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit". Too much, however, must not be made of this contrast in ultimate principia as determining necessarily the attitude of Catholic and Protestant respectively toward these problems of Biblical scholarship and dissemination. For there have been not a few in the Roman Catholic Church, like Leander THE ROMAN CATHOLIC ENGLISH BIBLE 605 van Ess, who, as right in their conclusions as they were illogical in their processes, have come out squarely for a vernacular Bible constructed wholly, in canon, text and ver- sion, on the principles that have yielded us our Protestant Bible. To the words of van Ess'^^ would that all Christians, Catholic and Protestant, could say a hearty amen ! — "As sure as it is that the hostile assertion by each Christian confession that it alone possesses the true Bible, has done much to sunder Christian from Christian and to break the bond of love and peace; just so surely will it come to pass that Chris- tians will draw nearer to each other, if the belief becomes more general that all Christian confessions have one and the same Bible, and at length even one and the same version in their own tongue, and not, like children, childishly quarrel about rival Church-versions; if in the Catholic Church the distribution of the Bible becomes more wide-spread, while in the Protestant Church there returns that old pious belief in the Bible, which the unchristian spirit of the age is striving to destroy." Princeton. J. Oscar Boyd. "In the preface to his "Geschichte der Vulgata". THE RELIGION OF THE EMPEROR JULIAN. Julian the Emperor, of the dynasty of the "Great" Con- stantine whose nephew he was, will always be an object of wide concern and curious interest. The student of the History of Christianity no less than the philosopher, the politician and historian as well as the classicist, cannot but approach his figure and personality with many ques- tions. Apostasy from Christianity is indeed not nearly so common as is the quiet denial or the practical renunciation of its noble and transcendental postulates, but here we deal with one who after some substantial acquaintance with his- torical Christianity, a pupil of Eusebius, though probably never more than a very young and merely academic Chris- tian, was won for paganism largely through philosophical influences as well as by the glamor which overwhelmed his young and eager mind and by the power inherent in what he certainly considered a surpassing and triumphant cul- ture, "Paganism" — how easily do we pen the word, how glibly often do we utter the term! Many years of earnest and exact reading have at last taught the present writer to dis- abuse his mind and to redeem his historical vision from much of the idealizing glamor which like an iridescent film — but still a film — has somehow come to cling to the sur- face of the classical world in its distant reflection. Fine letters and exquisite marbles and bronzes and architecture, as well as the dead mechanism of sheer tradition, have much to do with this artificial and grossly unhistorical perversion of perspective. From the fine and wearisome theories spun out by archaeologists and other aesthetical persons concerning Greek Religion so called, let us turn back for a moment, to certain data furnished by an earnest devotee of both that culture and that religion, Pausanias.^ In him we have a Cf. the writer's Testimonium Animae 1908, pp. sqq. Stockton, Calif. DATE DUE MINI ^ ^ ^^ ' "»J 1 Demco. Inc. 38-293 The chafaaer and claims of the Roman Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 1 1012 00052 8150 •-*.'i**,"%" ■