One for All

Protestant and Roman Catholic Bibles have historically evolved like two separate streams that shift course from time to time but never quite join. The best-known Protestant translations of Scripture in English, the King James and Revised Standard versions, come essentially from the original Hebrew and Greek; such Catholic editions as the Douay and Knox Bibles follow St. Jerome's 4th century Latin Vulgate. For centuries, the churches have stressed the differences. Now the two streams seem destined to join in a common Bible that would be acceptable to all Christians.

Scholars agree that many of the differences in translations are absurdly anachronistic in the Ecumenical Century. For Catholics, the list of Old Testament prophets includes Osee and Sophonias; Protestants call them Hosea and Zephaniah. In Protestant Bibles, one of the books attributed to St. John is called Revelation; Catholics call it the Apocalypse. Other differences are more substantial: the Protestant Old Testament, for example, has 39 books; the Catholic, 45. Nonetheless, the Rev. J. Coert Rylaarsdam, an Episcopalian and chairman of Biblical studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School, believes that "nothing now is in the way of English translations that could be had by all." Adds English Jesuit Thomas J. Corbishley: "It ties up with the whole question of Christian unity. It would emphasize that Catholics and Protestants have this in common."

In Many Languages. The chief U.S. advocate for the common Bible is Oxford-educated Father Walter Abbott, feature editor of the Jesuit weekly America. Abbott hopes to win the approval of U.S. Catholic bishops for a scholarly translation now being prepared for Doubleday's Anchor Books by more than 30 Catholic, Protestant and Jewish scholars under the general editorship of David Noel Freedman, a Presbyterian, of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, and William F. Albright, a Methodist, of Johns Hopkins.* Jesuit Corbishley argues that Britain's still incomplete New English Bible could easily be modified for Catholic use; other Catholic scholars favor the Revised Standard Version, which is used in many Catholic seminaries. Last spring Roman Catholic Bishop Peter Bartholome of St. Cloud, Minn., gave his imprimatur to a booklet of Holy Week devotions in which Scriptural quotations were taken from the R.S.V.

In Germany, teams of Catholic and Protestant scholars are at work on brand-new translations of Scripture; eventually, they hope to gain ecclesiastical permission to fuse their two versions into one joint translation. Scholarly Catholic missionaries are collaborating with Protestant ministers in translating the Bible into Singhalese, Indonesian, Swahili, Zulu and Japanese. In Wales the Catholic Archbishop of Cardiff has agreed to cooperate with the Protestant and Anglican churches in sponsoring a new translation into Welsh. Many French Protestant churches use the excellent "Jerusalem Bible," translated by Dominican Fathers Roland de Vaux, Pierre Benoit and other Catholic scholars of Jordan's Ecole Biblique.

A Common Philology. One unifying factor is that scholars of all faiths, working side by side on such projects as the translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, accept the same philological principles. And thanks to Pope Pius XII's 1943 encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu, Catholic translators are no longer bound to the 400-year-old ruling of the Council of Trent that all vernacular versions intended for use in public worship must follow the language of the Vulgate rather than the original Hebrew or Greek. Many Catholic Scriptural exegetes now use Protestant spellings of Old Testament names rather than ones derived from the Vulgate.

A common Bible would not attempt to do more than establish a text that both Catholics and Protestants could accept; interpretations of the meaning would still differ. Many Catholic questions about existing Protestant translations could be resolved in footnotes. Where the Revised Standard Version has "And she gave birth to her first-born son" in Luke 2:7, Catholics, to safeguard the traditional view that Mary bore just one child, would want a note explaining that "firstborn" was a Jewish legal title that could be applied to an only son.

What About Judith? Protestant objections to a common Bible may be harder to resolve. Catholic canon law requires that all Bibles must contain notes explaining difficult passages, although it does not say where or how many. Many Protestants who are strongly wedded to the right of individual-interpretation feel that the Word of God should appear unadorned by human commentary. Since the Council of Trent, Catholics have accepted as canonical the books of the Apocrypha,* which are found in the historic Greek translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew Bible used by Palestinian Jews. Most of the Reformation leaders did not ascribe the same authority to these "deuterocanonical" writings as to the Old Testament, and they have been printed in Protestant Bibles, if at all, as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments. Today, however, there is a growing interest among Protestant scholars in these books.

Two years ago, the U.S. Protestant Episcopal House of Bishops and House of Deputies came out in favor of devising a Bible that would be acceptable to all Christians. A number of Catholic prelates--including Boston's Richard Cardinal Cushing and Utrecht's Bernard Jan Cardinal Alfrink--have gone on record as hoping that the Vatican Council will follow suit. Such a Bible could not be imposed on individual churches, and many would probably prefer to stay with whatever versions they now use. The common Bible would still fill plenty of needs. Says the Rev. Eugene Maly, president of the Catholic Biblical Association of America: "A common Bible would serve as the text to be used in those public, nonliturgical gatherings where both Catholic and Protestant would be represented. It could serve well as a text for ecumenical dialogues. And not least of all would be its value as a symbol to the world of that agreement that sincere Christians can reach when the effort is made."

* Albright, dean of U.S. Biblical archaeologists, argues that it will be "nothing remotely resembling a common Bible," and describes it simply as a new translation made by "the best men we can find--scholars not only familiar with the latest discoveries but willing to use them." Begun seven years ago, the Anchor Bible will probably not be completed until 1969, although the first four books are scheduled for publication next fall. Judging by the section now ready for the press, Genesis as translated by Dr. Ephraim Speiser of the University of Pennsylvania, the Anchor Bible will have a brisk, colloquial tone far removed from the ornate measures of the classic English versions. Sample comparative verses:

KING JAMES: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

"And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

"And God said, Let there be light: and there was light."

DOUAY: "In the beginning God created heaven, and earth.

"And the earth was void and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of God moved over the waters.

"And God said: Be light made. And light was made."

ANCHOR: "When God set about to create heaven and earth--the world being then a formless waste, with darkness over the seas and only an awesome wind sweeping over the water --God said, 'Let there be light.' And there was light."

* Tobias, Judith, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, First and Second Maccabees, parts of Esther and Daniel.

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