The First Sunday of Advent 2024 sees new Scripture readings at Mass. Although the Bible verses used haven’t changed, some of the words have. Some people will think, ‘About time, too,’ while others will complain that there was nothing wrong with the old readings. The reasons for the change go to the nature of the Bible.
We shall be using the English Standard Version – Catholic Edition, which you can see in the image on the right. It was first published in 2018, so is a fairly new translation. (Although it is based on a version published a few years earlier.)
You can read the Bishops’ Conference page about the change here.
The Language of the Bible
Jesus, of course, didn’t speak English. Neither did the apostles, nor Moses, nor the prophets. The New Testament was originally written in a form of Greek called Koine. This was the common form of Greek around most of the world at the time. Most of the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, with some of it in Aramaic, and some books in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles in Greek. Aramaic was the language of theBabylonian empire and was the main language used in the Middle East from about 600 BC to about 700 AD.
Translating the Bible
A couple of centuries before Christ, the Jewish community in Alexandria in Egypt decided to translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek. Living away from Judea, in a place where Greek was the main language spoken by everyone, many people could no longer understand Hebrew. The Septuagint (also called LXX) was the result. In some places it is different from the Hebrew Bible. If both are translated into English, most of it woud be the same, some a little different, and some very different.
In Christ’s time, Greek was the main language of the Mediterranean world. Paul’s letters are the oldest part of the New Testament, and they were written in Greek. Most of his quotes from the Old Testament are from the Septuagint, where the Greek and Hebrew versions are different. The same applies to the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament.
With the rise of the Roman Empire, Latin became the language spoken by almost everybody. Christians translated the Old and New Testaments from Greek into Latin. In the 4th century, St Jerome produced a new translation into Latin. He learnt Hebrew from a friend so that he could translate the Old Testament from the Hebrew. (He didn’t translate all of it; he left some bits the same.) His version is called the Vulgate. It was the official Bible of the Catholic Church for several centuries.
Later Translations
Some people are very good at foreign languages; some of us are not. The Venerable Bede died (in 735) after translating the Gospel of John into English. A couple of centuries later, Saints Cyril and Methodius invented the Cyrillic alphabet so that they could translate the Bible into the languages of the Balkans. Church Slavonic is still the official language of some Churches in that region. Over the centuries, Christianity spread, and peope translated the Bible into new languages.
All these translations were done by hand. Monks copied Bibles as part of their daily labour. The Jewish scribes had done the same thing centuries before (and still did). Since no one is perfect, errors crept in. This is probably one of the reasons the Septuagint is different from the Hebrew Bible. There were lots of different versions available at the same time. Sometimes a copyist would see something that didn’t look right and try to ‘correct’ it. When people translated the Bible, they had to work with whatever version they had.
Modern Translations
Languages change over time. New words are invented, some old words go out of use, and other words change their meanings. Many words have several meanings anyway. The Douay-Rheims Bible was translated in 1582 (New Testament) and 1609-1610 (Old Testament). The translators used the Vulgate for their translation. This means that the Old Testament is a translation (English) of a translation (Latin) of a translation (Greek) of the original (Hebrew). The King James Version, used by Anglicans, came out in 1611. As well as ‘thee’ and ‘thou’, both versions use words that are not usually used today. Some of the words in them have different meanings now than they had 400 years ago.
There are two ways of translating from one language to another. The first is to translate each word as literally as possible, and then try to make it make sense. The second way is to translate the overall sense, without getting bogged down in the literal meaning of a word. This is called a dynamic translation.
One example is the word ‘cubit’ which is an English word. The Hebrew word is ammah, the Greek is pechys, and the Latin is cubitus. Some translations will translate it as a distance in feet or metres, using 18 inches or 225 cm to a cubit. Poetry, such as the Psalms, is even more difficult to translate.
A major issue in recent translations is gender inclusiveness. St Paul often used the word adelphoi, which means ‘brothers’. In both Greek and Hebrew this includes women as well as men. The same used to be true for English but is now less acceptable. Many translations now use ‘brothers and sisters’. St Paul was not writing exclusively to men; he asked his letters to be read out in the churches (Col 4:16), so women would also hear them.
The more literal a translation is, the more difficult it is to read. On the other hand, a dynamic translation can easily lose important points about the original choice of words in the Hebrew or Greek. Every translation, therefore, is a compromise between readability and precision.
The ESV-CE
The English Standard Version Catholic Edition is now the official Bible for readings at Mass. It is a more literal translation than the Jerusalem Bible, which we have used for over 50 years. It still uses ‘brothers,’ with a footnote saying, ‘or brothers and sisters.’ In many other ways it is more accurate than the Jerusalem Bible, yet there are some verses that are clearer in the Jerusalem Bible. (Although I’ve read both, I haven’t done a verse-by-verse comparison, so I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head.)
There is also a new translation of the Psalms. We used to use the Grail Psalter, now we use the Abbey Psalms and Canticles. This is an updated version of the Grail Psalter. Both translations are designed to to make the Psalms easy to sing or chant, as we do seven times a day in the Divine Office. I mentioned above that it cn be difficult translate poetry. (For the time being, we are still using the Grail for the Divine Office.)
In ten or twenty years’ time, most of us will see the ESV-CE as the way we’ve ‘always’ heard the readings at Mass. Before then, just give it a try. If you have an old Missal, you could try comparing the readings in the two versions. When you see differences, pray to God to ask Him to help you understand what the differences mean.