New Psalms

A new translation of the Psalms came out last week. The new Psalms, issued by the Roman Catholic Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, lacked the high literary shine of Msgr. Ronald Knox's version (TIME, March 24, 1947), but they often make the triple-translated renderings of the Catholic Douay Version* sound like a third-year Latin scholar reading at sight. Sample (Psalm 2):

Why do the nations rage

and the people utter folly?

The kings of the earth rise up,

and the princes conspire together

against the Lord and his anointed ...

He who is throned in heaven laughs;

the Lord derides them.

Then in anger he speaks to them;

he terrifies them in his wrath:

"I myself have set up my king

on Sion, my holy mountain."

Though it would tempt few Protestants away from the ringing English of the King James version, the new translation gave Catholics a fitting orchestration for the songs of David.

*The Psalms in the Douay Bible are translated from a Latin translation of a Greek translation of the Hebrew. Though most of the Latin Vulgate on which the Douay Bible is based is taken directly from the Hebrew, the 4th Century scholars were reluctant, when the Vulgate was being made, to give up the older versions of the Psalms, most of which they had learned by heart.

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