THE HOLY BIBLE




Translated from the Latin Vulgate


Diligently Compared with the Hebrew, Greek,
and Other Editions in Divers Languages


THE OLD TESTAMENT
First Published by the English College at Douay
A.D. 1609 & 1610

and

THE NEW TESTAMENT
First Published by the English College at Rheims
A.D. 1582


With Annotations


The Whole Revised and Diligently Compared with
the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner
A.D. 1749-1752



VOLUME I: THE FIRST PART OF THE OLD TESTAMENT




CREDITS


Without the assistance of many individuals and groups, this text of the
Douay-Rheims Version of the Holy Bible would not be available for the
Project Gutenberg collection. Our most grateful and sincere thanks goes
to those at 'Catholic Software' who have provided the electronic plain
texts of the 73 books of the Bible. 'Catholic Software' also produces a
Douay Bible program on CD-ROM that features a fully searchable Douay-
Rheims Bible, footnotes, Latin text and dictionary, topical index, maps,
Biblical art gallery, and other features. For more information of this
and many other products contact:

Catholic Software
Box 1914
Murray, KY 42071
(502) 753-8198
http://www.catholicity.com/market/CSoftware/
waubrey@aol.com

Additional production assistance has been provided by volunteers from
the Atlanta Council of the Knights of Columbus. Tad Book compiled and
reformatted the texts to Project Gutenberg standards. Dennis McCarthy
assisted Mr. Book and transcribed selections from the first editions
included as appendices.




HISTORY


This three volume e-text set comes from multiple editions of Challoner's
revised Douay-Rheims Version of the Holy Bible. The division of the Old
Testaments into two parts follows the two tome format of the 1609/1610
printing of the Old Testament. In 1568 English exiles, many from
Oxford, established the English College of Douay (Douai/Doway), Flanders,
under William (later Cardinal) Allen. In October, 1578, Gregory Martin
began the work of preparing an English translation of the Bible for
Catholic readers, the first such translation into Modern English.
Assisting were William Allen, Richard Bristow, Thomas Worthington, and
William Reynolds who revised, criticized, and corrected Dr. Martin's
work. The college published the New Testament at Rheims (Reims/Rhemes),
France, in 1582 through John Fogny with a preface and explanatory notes,
authored chiefly by Bristol, Allen, and Worthington. Later the Old
Testament was published at Douay in two parts (1609 and 1610) by Laurence
Kellam through the efforts of Dr. Worthington, then superior of the
seminary. The translation had been prepared before the appearance of the
New Testament, but the publication was delayed due to financial
difficulties. The religious and scholarly adherence to the Latin Vulgate
text led to the less elegant and idiomatic words and phrases often found
in the translation. In some instances where no English word conveyed the
full meaning of the Latin, a Latin word was Anglicized and its meaning
defined in a glossary. Although ridiculed by critics, many of these
words later found common usage in the English language. Spellings of
proper names and the numbering of the Psalms are adopted from the Latin
Vulgate.

In 1749 Dr. Richard Challoner began a major revision of the Douay and
Rheims texts, the spellings and phrasing of which had become increasingly
archaic in the almost two centuries since the translations were first
produced. He modernized the diction and introduced a more fluid style,
while faithfully maintaining the accuracy of Dr. Martin's texts. This


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