Critics of the Douay-Rheims Bible argue that the DR was primarily the work of one man, St. Jerome, and that no single scholar-not even a saint and Doctor of the Church-could produce as good a translation as teams of modern scholars who have access to many manuscripts that were not available to St. Jerome, as well as knowledge gained from archaeology and other areas of knowledge that St. Jerome did not possess. This criticism will not hold up under close examination, however. In the first place, although the DR is a literal interpretation of St. Jerome's Vulgate, it would be wrong to imagine that St. Jerome produced the Vulgate without regard to the work of the scribes and editors who preceded him. Moreover, St. Jerome was fluent in Latin, Hebrew and Greek, at a time when the texts of the New Testament were more recent to him than the works of Shakespeare are to us today. After careful study, the learned translators of St. Jerome's Vulgate into the Douay-Rheims English version concluded that the Vulgate was actually superior to most of the Greek and Hebrew texts available to them because of the errors that had crept into them over the more than a thousand years that had elapsed since St. Jerome had produced his translation at the behest of Pope St. Damasus I.
At the Council of Trent, the Magisterium of the Church solemnly defined that the Vulgate is free from all error in doctrine on faith and morals, and this is the most important reason to prize this translation. In his booklet Which Bible Should You Read? Thomas Nelson gives many examples of important texts in the Douay-Rheims which are mistranslated in most of the other versions of the Bible in use today, including the King James Version and the Catholic Revised Standard Version. Critics argue that freedom from error in faith and morals is not the same as freedom from error in translation. But the fact that other versions contain false or ambiguous translations that lead readers into error or confusion about the Church's teaching is reason enough to abandon them in favor of the Douay-Rheims.
One of the best of many examples of the superiority of the DR to other translations, including the CRSV, is its faithful rendering of St. Jerome's translation of Genesis 3:15. Thomas Nelson explains:
In Genesis 3:15 (Douay-Rheims Bible) we read God's judgment against Lucifer for his part in Original Sin, as well as God's prophecy concerning him. "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie I nwait for her heel." (DRB)
All three modern Catholic translations are fundamentally different from the Douay-Rheims, but all basically agree with each other. First in order is the translation of the New American Bible, the one that is used in the Catholic liturgy [in the United States] today:
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel." (NAB, '70 and '86). This renders a very different meaning indeed from the Douay-Rheims version. Now read how the other versions render this passage:
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed andher seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise your heel." (CRSV, '66).
"I will make you enemies of each other: you and the woman, your offspring and her offspring. It will crush your head and you will strike its heel. (JB, '66).
"I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your brood and hers. They [note the plural] shall strike at your head, and you shall strike at their heel. (NEB, '76).
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel." (NIV, '78).
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel." (NRSV, '89).
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall bruise you on the head, and you shall bruise him on the heel." (NASV, '77).
To this we might add that the pronoun in this verse is an epicene personal pronoun--i.e., it has no gender--so "sola scriptura" exegesis cannot give us an infallible interpretation of this important verse; we absolutely require the assistance of Sacred Tradition. Moreover, the epicene personal pronoun is only found in the first five books of the Bible, which, of course, makes no sense if the Pentateuch was cobbled together by Hebrew scribes after the Babylonian Captivity, as most priests have been taught in most seminaries for many decades. Indeed, as author Taylor Marshall explains in an article on his website:
Our three best Jewish witnesses to Genesis 3:15 interpret the passage as "She shall crush." These are Philo Judaeus, the historian Josephus, and Moses Maimonides, the great medieval Jewish philosopher. Philo argues that the Hebrew parallel poetry of Genesis 3:15 demands the reading of "She shall crush." Josephus, also writing in Greek, describes the passage for us as reading "She shall crush." Finally, Maimonides also states that Genesis 3:15 teaches that the Woman shall crush the head of the serpent.
Thomas Nelson adds this important additional commentary:
The JB takes the pronoun to be neuter, "it" (seemingly an indecisive cop-out) and the NEB takes it to be plural, referring to the woman's "brood." But most take the pronoun to be masculine, referring to Our Lord as the one to "bruise" or "crush" the head of the serpent, rather than "she," referring to Our Lady. Some may think that this is a "small" difference, but in fact, it is very great indeed. For, from this prophecy in the Douay-Rheims comes a longstanding Catholic tradition that toward the End of Time the Blessed Virgin Mary will crush the head of Satan, after her devotees have promoted her honor and devotion and directed countless prayers for her intercession during a long period of time. This ancient tradition, which is based on Genesis 3:15, is in danger of being relegated to the scrap-heap if we accept these non-traditional translations.
