Thanks to reader Jay for sharing the following links for TAN Book’s new Douay-Rheims Readers Bible, which will be published in November:
Black Leatherette: https://tanbooks.com/products/books/douay-rheims-reader-s-bible-black-leatherette/
Cloth Hardcover: https://tanbooks.com/products/books/douay-rheims-reader-s-bible-hardcover-cloth/
Ignatius Press has a new version of their RSV-2CE Note-Taking and Journaling Bible:
Imitation Leather: https://ignatius.com/ignatius-note-taking-journaling-bible-ib2jlp/
A Douay Rheims in a paragraph format single column? Did the Apocalypse occur and I miss it? Temp below 32F/0C down yonder???
(That’s really amazing…)
I know, right???
It’s honestly pretty crazy that it’s taken this long for a paragraph-style edition of the 1899 Douay text to become available (outside of very niche one-offs in the past). The addition of quotation marks in the Douay is also quite daring. That said, the sample image of Matthew 25, where the entire page is red text, burns my eyes. Might still pick it up, despite having lots of 1899 Douays.
Agreed. I don’t ever see the need to have the words of Christ in red, for the obvious theological reasons that have been discussed on this blog and others. But personally, I just have no desire to actual read a red text…even if done well.
The red-letter text looks like the only downside to me. I’ma huge fan of single column Bibles AND hardback Bibles. Why, oh why, did they have to make it red-letter? I’m still going to get it, and hopefully love it, but…
Yes, and the Notetaker RSV is also single-column, which will be a great improvement over the first version of this bible they released a few years back.
They did everything right – except the red letter text for “words of Christ.” Oh well, you can’t win them all.
I have been dreaming of this kind of Douay for years (sans the red letters, as everyone’s noted). It’s incredibly unlikely, but if TAN went back and actually corrected the longstanding typos in the oft-used 1899 text, this would be absolutely revolutionary for this venerable translation. The most notable of those typos, off the top of my head, are the missing first sentence in Mark 8:6 (sometimes corrected, depending on the printing), the missing “of promise, as in a strange country” in Hebrews 11:9, and “the king’s guard” instead of the correct “the king’s garden” in Nehemiah 3:15. There are others, as was long-documented in Catholic periodicals and books in the 19th and 20th centuries. I have a CTS “pocket” Douay from 1956 that made all those corrections, and I often wish that CTS edition was what TAN revived in the 1970s and thus made into the standard text today.
I purchased Loretto Douay Rheims a few years ago. It was lovely: big readable font, but also but lots of typos. It put me off to be honest. I would also like to see a Knox translation in a clear reader friendly forma: I find the Baronius edition too taxing on my eyes. I was in a small Christian bookstore yesterday and there was an abundance of choice for the KJV, including a nice contemporary edition with a 14 point font. Douay and Knox are not my go to translations, but I appreciate them and it would be nice to have more readable options – I would certainly spend a bit more time with the Knox if this were the case.
The Loretto font and text block is great. What gets me is the advertisements in the last few pages. That seems… inappropriate at best …
Yeah, great idea for a Douay-Rheims ruined by that awful red lettering.
When are these publishers going to learn that (if they insist on doing this at all) they need to make the text a dark, rich, high-contrast maroon and not FADED PINK?
Just when I was thinking I would really stick to the “no new Bible except a CAB and the LOTH” thing, that TAN edition comes in and checks enough boxes to make me probably get it. Oh well, it was a longer streak than I had any real reason to expect.
I wish Ignatius would take that journaling version and cut the margins off of it to make it a relatively small single-column edition. That would end up on my shelf quickly.
I love idea of the DR in a Reader’s Edition, it’s my favorite format.
I’m going against the grain here. I’m a convert, and when I got my first Catholic Edition of the bible and the words of Christ were not in red, I was shocked!, this can’t be a real bible! As a pure KJV, red letter reader in my pre-Catholic days, I love, and look for, red letter Catholic editions. Besides, I think the red letters look beautiful on the page.
I’d be interested in seeing a red letter Bible that actually applies red ink to any instance where the early Church Fathers wrote of the Logos (Word) or Wisdom of God speaking throughout the Old Testament.
If we can get the words of Christ in his post-resurrection appearances, can we also get them in his pre-incarnation utterances?
Weird question perhaps – but what are everyone’s thoughts on a “New Douay Rheims? (NDR)”
Something like New King James Version that could retain the classical old language of the DR but make some modest corrections to grammar, sentence structure and odd phrases (Unicorns for example).
I would be down for it. As someone who reads a lot of pre 1500 monastic literature I dream of a translation of the Vulgate into contemporary English. I love the Knox, but it is not quite that.
I’d love to see it! Ideally, I’d prefer it to be an update to the original DR rather than the DRC, but I’d take either (or both!).
And please, please let’s stop using the words “new”, “revised”, “updated”, or anything similar in the names of translations.
How else is one supposed to tell the difference between the older and updated versions? Should publishers be dishonest like the NIV and publish a radically updated text without anything indicating that the text is different?
No, publishers should not be dishonest.
How else? Well, if a text has been radically updated, then perhaps a completely new name is appropriate. Or the word “radical” could be incorporated. That’d provide something actually novel (and fun!).
For less radical updates, the publication year could be used, or an ordinal number like is used for people with the same name as their forebears, or a version number like is used in software (that could accommodate both non-radical and radical updates by moving either to the next decimal or the next integer). I’m not seriously suggesting all these; I’m just saying there are other options.
I guess I’m getting tired of all the synonyms for “new”. I mean, look at the NRSVUE. Half of those letters are just telling you it’s a shiny, new product. Will the next revision add another?
And then there’re the NAB & NCB that started out “new”.
If they just completed and released the revision of the Douay Old Testament that was being worked on for the Confraternity Bible before Divino Aflante Spiritu was released…
That is exactly what was originally planned in the 1930s; they never got beyond the New Testament, published in 1941, before the plan was scrapped in favor of a fresh translation from the original languages, which was published in 1970 as the New American Bible.
One of the coolest things about the NKJV is that it it very transparent with manuscript variances between the TR, critical apparatus, and Byz Majority text. I would love for a “New DR” to do that with Vulgate texts – including making use of a critical text of the Vulgate.
The Byzantine text and the Majority Text are two distinct textual traditions.
And I recently discovered another textual tradition, the “Patriarchai Text”, which is used by the Greek Orthodox Church and several other Eastern Orthodox Churches. It is a Greek New Testament text that is based on the lectionaries used for centuries in the East. It is similar, but not identical to, the Byzantine text.
I have a St. Benedict Press (Tan) DR and it is very nice: well formatted, sewn binding, medium size. It does have the red letters but it is the words of Jesus on earth.
I have a KJV Bible that actually attempted to put all the words of God in the OT in red. God spoke “at sundry times” in the Old Testament a LOT… in the *1st person* but under the veil of the angels or through the prophets and psalmists. (It is surprising to see how much of that KJV is printed in red!) The red letters in Bibles typically denote God speaking to us “in these last days through his Son,” and the distinction is that God interacted with man directly face to face, without angel, cloud, or veil. Having red letters in the OT could cause theological confusion regarding the unity of the Trinity, as if the Son was speaking apart from the Father. I don’t think a Catholic publisher would do this but I think it is worth noting. I hope someone from Tan reads the many comments and takes these suggestions to heart. A lighter red can be harder to see in low light areas but a deep, dark red for the words of Christ on earth is easy to read pleasing to the eye.
Regardless of the red letters I am stoked about this Readers Edition. The 1899 verse by verse format and punctuation can be distracting but the modernized format will make it much more enjoyable to read for an extended time. It is amazing it took this long for someone to do it! I am pre-ordering but for those who can wait it will certainly go on sale at some point.
Looks like they also will have a paperback version of the DR readers bible:
https://tanbooks.com/products/books/douay-rheims-reader-s-bible-paperbound/
A post above also asked about a modernized DR, that kind of already exists as the Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV): https://sacredbible.org/catholic/
I don’t think there will ever be an approved “new” DR, though, since the Vatican now requires new translations to be from the original languages.
Looking at the TAN DR’s pics, it looks like they print the Psalms in paragraph format, one paragraph per numbered verse. That seems to me to take the paragraph-ing too far. It’s wonderful that they’re doing single-column but IMHO they’ve lost a golden opportunity to print the Hebrew poetry beautifully. With that much horizontal space, they could’ve printed poetry in verse format while avoiding most of the extra line wrapping forced by a narrow 2-column format. Is this a DR thing?
RSV2CE Publishing News:
I just got off the phone with Ignatius Customer Service and a new compact leather edition of the RSV2CE will be published sometime this Fall. Good news for those of you waiting for this information.
I’m excited about the release of the DRV in single column, paragraph format although like you all, not thrilled about the red lettering of Christ’s words. I wrote to Tan asking if they intended on publishing a version in black lettering only but have not heard back.
I also sent a message out to Baronius Press asking if they intended on publishing the DRV in single column, paragraph format and this was the response:
Dear Daniel ,
Thank you for your email. We do not have any plans to introduce such an edition of the Douay-Rheims Bible. Given the venerable character and long history of this translation, we would be reluctant to publish it in a novel or unconventional format, particularly one for which there appears to be very limited demand. We believe that doing so would be both an editorially and commercially questionable course to take.
Please understand that, as a publisher, we determine our editions and formats according to our overall publishing programme, production considerations, and anticipated demand. We are therefore not able to produce bespoke editions or alternative formats in response to individual customer requests, as might be possible with a small custom printing service.
Kind regards,
Carlos Palad
Baronius Press
Maybe it’s me but the tone of the response is as if he was offended that I asked. His remark that there is not much demand for the type of volume mentioned also mystified me as I have heard many times on this blog and in conversations that a single volume format would very welcomed.
I had to respond:
Good day, Carlos,
Thank you for responding so quickly. Well, I understand what you’re saying but I beg to differ with you because in the circles that I run around in, people are always questioning why a single column format for DRV is not more readily available. After all, the original 1582 edition of the New Testament followed by the Old Testament all in single column format with copious notes. That would be a beautiful thing to reproduce I think but thank you for getting back to me.
Dan
We’ll see…..
There is a strange, almost mythical character given to the 1899 DRV, which is unusual, because it’s not like it’s a photocopy of any of Challoner’s own editions. It’s just the particular form of the eclectic DRV that caught on, like the Haydock texts before it. Another dream of mine would be for someone to actual compare Challoner’s three originals and the 1899 “received” text against the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate Latin; catch all the various typos and omissions; correct them either with another edition of the DRV, the original 1582/1610 DRV, or a conjectural emendation (in brackets, of course); list all those corrections in an appendix; and then publish this now-purified DRV in single-column, paragraph format, as well release it to the public (offering it to BibleGateway, Logos, etc.) to replace the flawed text constantly reprinted by every DRV publisher today.
Baronius Press has a longstanding policy of not responding to proposals for new publications or editions. They’re sitting on a lot of rights – including many volumes by Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange – following a legal dispute with Tan some years ago. I think their reticence stems from the multiple delays they had in releasing a three volume bilingual edition of the Roman Breviary. The process must have exhausted their very limited resources. I shouldn’t think they make much return on their publications.
Personally I hope they prioritise releases of some of the Garrigou-Lagrange volumes.
Goodness gracious, I just posted about this issue above. I’ve asked Baronius Press about Garrigou-Lagrange’s works several times, and they won’t respond to me. TAN had issued decent paperback editions of his writings, but a lawsuit with Baronius resulted in these being terminated. Yet, Baronius, after five or six years now, still hasn’t published they’re editions. It is a miserable thing that these legal squabbles between Catholic publishers have so far resulted only in the loss of the works of a brilliant theologian. He has much to offer our bleak agnostic world.
You should be privileged that Baronius Press responded to you at all. They now ignore my emails. I’ve been asking for years when on earth they’re going to start publishing the works of Garrigou-Lagrange – one of my favorite theologians. They won a lawsuit with TAN Books over it, and the only result is that now Garrigou-Lagrange’s books are largely unpublished.
Update:
His response to mine was basically a reiteration of what first wrote in addition to mistakenly saying that I requested that they publish a single column format:
Thank you for your reply. You are quite correct that the original Rheims New Testament of 1582 was printed in a single-column format and accompanied by extensive annotations. However, when we speak of the Douay-Rheims Bible that we publish, we are referring specifically to the text as revised by Bishop Challoner in the eighteenth century, which has a rather different publishing history and has traditionally been presented in a double-column format.
We are generally very cautious about making substantial changes to the traditional presentation of texts such as this. A significant portion of our readership values continuity with familiar Catholic editions and does not necessarily welcome innovations in typography or format, even when there may be perfectly respectable historical precedents for them. In all the years that we have been publishing the Douay-Rheims, yours is, to the best of our recollection, the only request we have received for a single-column edition.
I certainly do not doubt that there may be interest in such an edition within the circles you mention. However, as a publisher we necessarily have to base our decisions on the demand that we encounter across our own customer base, and our experience thus far has been quite different.
Thank you nevertheless for taking the time to share the suggestion with us.
Kind regards,
Carlos Palad
Baronius Press
Oh well….