Divino Afflante Spiritu
The Jerusalem Bible & the Legacy of a Papal Encyclical Letter
By Johannes Krejberg Haahr
Editor and Concept Developer at 2K/DENMARK
Saint Jerome (c. 347–420) Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus was born at Stridon, a town in the Roman province of Dalmatia. The theologian, priest and historian is best known for his translation of the Bible into Latin from the Greek and Hebrew sources, but his list of writings is extensive.
Marie-Joseph Lagrange (1855–1938) A French Catholic priest of the Dominican Order. He was professor of Church History and Holy Scripture, and studied Rabbinic Litterature. In Jerusalem in 1890, he founded the academic institution that became known from 1920 as Ecole Biblique.
Pope Pius XII (1876–1958) Born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, the Italian was elected to the papacy in 1939 on his 63rd birthday. He took the same papal name as his predecessor, Pius XI, a title used exclusively by Italian Popes. He was suceeded after he died in 1958 by Pope John XXIII.
Roland de Vaux (1903–1971) A French Dominican priest. From 1945 to 1965 he was the director of the Ecole Biblique in Jerusalem. He became the editor in chief for the official publication of editions of the Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in Qumran in 1946 and the following years.
Henry Wansbrough (1934–) An English biblical scholar, Roman Catholic priest, and monk residing at Ampleforth Abbey Monastery. He was the General Editor of the New Jerusalem Bible and the Revised New Jerusalem Bible and member of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (1997–2007).
The encyclical letter, Divino afflante Spiritu (“Inspired by the Holy Spirit) was issued by Pope Pius XII on 30 September 1943. Besides calling for new Bible translations, it encouraged textual criticism of the Bible manuscripts and their transmission.
The many significant events that occurred in Europe in 1943 probably excuse the way that the publication of the encyclical letter Divino afflante Spiritu (“inspired by the Holy Spirit”), issued by Pope Pius XII, has mostly been overlooked. However, the lasting impact of this letter is immediately felt by many Bible readers today, especially among Catholics.
In his letter, Pope Pius XII called for Bible translators to present the Bible in vernacular languages based on translations of the original Hebrew and Greek sources instead of using the Vulgate translation as their textual basis, as had hitherto been the norm (see appendage below). The Vulgate is a Latin translation from the late 4th century completed by Saint Jerome. Fittingly, or maybe ironically, Divino afflante Spiritu – the letter that encouraged translators to evade or at least deprioritise Jerome's work – was issued on the 30th of September — the Feast Day of Saint Jerome.
Pope Pius XII emphasised the recent changes in “the conditions of biblical studies and their subsidiary sciences” and acknowledged that the increase in archaeological excavations and discoveries of written documents in Palestine had shed new light on the biblical texts:
All these advantages which, not without a special design of Divine Providence, our age has acquired, are as it were an invitation and inducement to interpreters of the Sacred Literature to make diligent use of this light, so abundantly given, to penetrate more deeply, explain more clearly and expound more lucidly the Divine Oracles.
The French publisher, Éditions du Cerf, responded to these requests. The publishing house was founded in 1929 on the request of Pope Pius XI — the predecessor of Pope Pius XII. It is operated by the Dominican Order and had close connections to a famous French academic establishment that was equipped to take on the task of bringing into being a new Catholic Bible translation based on the original languages and most recent archaeological discoveries.
École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem is located outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The French academic institution is specialising in Biblical exegesis and archeology. Following the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the scholars of the school has been involved in the translation and publication of the texts.
École Biblique and La Bible de Jérusalem
Back in 1890, the French Dominican priest, Marie-Joseph Lagrange, founded the academic institution that is today commonly known as École Biblique. It is located around the Basilica of St. Stephen (Saint-Étienne), just outside the Northern walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. This French Dominican school with the full name École biblique et archéologique française de Jérusalem specialised in biblical archaeology and exegesis and was the natural context for the preparation of a new Catholic Bible translation based upon academic research of linguistics and biblical manuscripts in the original languages. In the years after the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Qumran caves from 1946 and the following years, École Biblique was heavily involved in the translations and interpretation of these “new” texts. The French Dominican priest and archaeology expert, Father Roland de Vaux, was the director of École Biblique from 1945 to 1965. In the early 50s, he oversaw the excavations of Qumran caves on the West Bank in which several ancient scrolls were found during these years. Alongside and possibly in fruitful collaboration with this, the work on what would become known as La Bible de Jérusalem began.
The Dominican father Thomas-Georges Chifflot, literary director at Éditions du Cerf in Paris, worked together with Roland de Vaux in producing 43 booklets published from 1948 to 1955. Each booklet contained a part of the new French translation, as well as introductions and critical notes. In 1956, La Bible de Jérusalem was published for the first time as a single volume. The translation had been revised, and the critical notes condensed and completed. This translation stands as a milestone in that it was the first modern Catholic Bible translation that had not been primarily based on the Vulgate. Furthermore, it was also the first Bible translation that could possibly make use of the new insights gained from the groundbreaking discoveries of the Dead Sea Scrolls since this translation was produced in Jerusalem almost in tandem by the same people who were also involved in the excavations performed 25 km to the East. Lastly, this translation would make way for several other Catholic Bible translations in English and Spanish.
An English Jerusalem Bible in 1966
The English Jerusalem Bible was published in 1966 as the first Catholic translation of the Bible into English that was not exclusively based on Jerome's Latin Bible translation, Vulgate, from the fourth century A.D.
Under the general editorship of Alexander Jones, assisted by 27 Roman Catholic scholars based in the UK, the English Jerusalem Bible (JB) was published in 1966 by Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd in London. In the Editor's Foreword, the “present volume” is presented as the “English equivalent” of La Bible de Jérusalem (1956). The committee saw to it that, in line with the ambitions set forth by Pope Pius XII in Divino afflante Spiritu, the actual wording of the translation was based upon studies of the Hebrew and Greek manuscripts rather than a mere translation from French. When passages present more than one obvious reading, the translation followed by the French version was generally accepted. For a small number of OT books, the translation was made directly from the French and then revised by comparing the translation word for word with the original Hebrew texts. All footnotes and book introductions were literal translations from the French predecessor.
The approach of the translation is that of dynamic equivalence (see appendage below), being more thought-for-thought than word-for-word compared to other modern translations and, in general, the translation has been praised for its literary quality — especially the Old Testament texts. One of the individuals responsible for this is none other than the famous novelist J.R.R. Tolkien, who served as both a stylist and a translator of at least the book of Jonah. Where the JB has received praise for its literary quality and style, it was later critiqued for its rather undisciplined use of the source materials and its reliance on the Septuagint and (despite ambitions otherwise) Vulgate.
Nevertheless, this Bible translation stands as a hallmark in that it was the first Catholic translation of the Bible into English that was not exclusively based on the Vulgate, and it was also the first widely accepted and used English translation since the Douay-Rheims Version from the 17th century. Not only is it now the most widely used Catholic Bible translation in the English-speaking world outside the US and Canada, it is also the translation used in the Lectionary for English mass in the Roman Catholic Church. In 1969, the Jerusalem Bible became the first Roman Catholic translation to be authorised for use in services of the Church of England and, thus, the first Catholic translation to be approved for Anglican churches since the Reformation.
Revisions of the JB in 1985 and 2019
In 1985, a completely revised version of the Jerusalem Bible was published as the New Jerusalem Bible (NJB). It was edited by the biblical scholar and Catholic monk Henry Wansbrough. The translation strategy employed in the New Jerusalem Bible is, when compared to the dynamic equivalence of its predecessor, more towards the formal or direct equivalence, making for a slightly less literary but more literal translation.
Wansbrough said about the first Jerusalem Bible, that “Despite claims to the contrary, it is clear that the Jerusalem Bible was translated from French, possibly with occasional glances at the Hebrew or Greek, rather than vice versa.” It goes without saying that he and his colleagues have taken great care to translate the New Jerusalem Bible from the original languages and not tie it to the French edition in other ways than the indirect links, established through some of the stylistic and interpretive choices, that have come to be associated with the Jerusalem Bible.
One of the more controversial of these links is the translation of the so-called Tetragrammaton, the name of God in the Old Testament. Traditionally, the JHWH of the Hebrew Bible has been treated carefully since some groups prefer the name of God to be left unpronounced, and translations typically replace this word with “The LORD” or in the case of the French Jerusalem Bible “l'Eternel.” The New Jerusalem follows its predecessor in rendering the Tetragrammaton as Yahweh. While some have welcomed this decision, others have found it unacceptable. The most notable among the latter group is the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments — a governing body of the Roman Catholic Church. In 2008, this congregation wrote to the presidents of all conferences of bishops at the behest of Pope Benedict XVI, that the use of the name “Yahweh” was to be dropped from Catholic Bibles in liturgical usage. This meant that both the JB and the NJB text could not be used in the English Lectionaries without changing each of the 6.823 instances of “Yahweh” to “the LORD.”
Consequently, when a revision of the New Jerusalem Bible was published in 2019 as RNJB, the Divine name YHWH was translated as “The LORD.” Henry Wansbrough is the editor of the RNJB, and Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd. is still the publisher. The new edition is a substantial revision of the NJB that moves this Bible even further towards the formal equivalence translation strategy with a more accurate rendering of the original scriptures. The RNJB takes further steps in the direction that the NJB already towards inclusive and gender-neutral language. Wansbrough also wrote new study notes and book introductions for this new edition of the English Jerusalem Bible.
A Bible and its traditions
The French “original” Jerusalem Bible, with its first edition published in 1956, has gone through several revisions: The second revised edition published in 1973, and the third edition published in 1998. The third edition obtained the imprimatur — the official authorisation of the Catholic Church — in 1999.
The most widely accepted Catholic Bible in Spanish is a version of the Jerusalem Bible, known as La Biblia de Jerusalén, translated from Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek with the exegetical notes translated into Spanish from the French original Jerusalem Bible. La Biblia de Jerusalén was first published in 1967 and revised in 1975 and 2009. It is also available in a modern Latin American version. Two groups of experts, one from the Pontifical University of Mexico and the other from Colombian and Argentine specialists, have reviewed the complete edition introducing the necessary adaptations to make the biblical message more understandable to Latin American readers. It is published by Editorial Desclée De Brouwer in Bilbao, Spain, who under the direction of Javier Gogeaskoetxea, Consejero delegado, published the newest revision in 2018.
An ambitious Bible translation project is currently being produced by École Biblique, called The Bible in its traditions. It has been in the works since 2010. Standing on the shoulders of the work performed on earlier generations, an international collaborative online platform brings together dozens of researchers from different academic fields to form teams that are working through the Bible book by book. The result will be a new kind of annotated Bible that puts the historical study of the Scriptures in dialogue with their wide variety of interpretations over the centuries. More weight will be given to the Septuagint in the translation of the Hebrew Bible scriptures as it constitutes a major part of the rich tradition of the Bible. Still, according to the notes, the Masoretic Text will remain the primary source. The Bible in its traditions is not a new La Bible de Jérusalem, but maybe it will also be the beginning of a new tradition in (Catholic) Bible translation as its spiritual predecessor came to be.
Appendages
The textual basis for the Bible
The textual evidence for the Old Testament texts consists of Hebrew manuscripts from 3rd century BC to 12th century AD as well as ancient fragments and translations in Aramaic, Greek, Syriac, and Latin. As a general rule, the oldest document carries the higher authority.
The Masoretic text is the most important group of manuscripts, considered the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (it counts as one book each Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah and counts the Twelve Minor Prophets as a single book). The Masoretes (literally the “transmitters”) were a group of Jews succeeding the old scribes as the custodians of the sacred texts. They were active from around 5-600 to 1000 AD. At this time, the writing of consonants only became insufficient as Hebrew was no longer a spoken language, so the Masoretes introduced vowel-signs and punctuation or accentual marks into the original consonantal text. The Masoretic text was used as the basis for translations of the Old Testament in Protestant Bibles such as the King James Version and American Standard Version and, as explained in this article, for some versions of Catholic Bibles. This began with the French Jerusalem Bible of 1956, replacing the Vulgate translation as the primary source, although the Vulgate had itself already been revised in light of the Masoretic text in the 1500s.
The Septuagint is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament produced around 200 B.C. It was made to meet the needs of an increasingly Hellenised Middle East area. As such, the Septuagint quickly became the preferred basis for Jewish worship and instruction in the synagogues. When the New Testament writers cite texts from the Old Testament, they cite from the Septuagint more often than the Hebrew Old Testament. The Septuagint is often abbreviated LXX (70 in Roman numerals) because “septuaginta” means 70 in Latin. The number refers to the tradition that 70 (or 72) Greek-speaking Jewish scholars from Alexandria translated the texts in 72 days, working separately. The Septuagint is a significant source for an understanding of how certain words and texts were understood during the Second Temple period.
The Greek manuscripts that serve as our primary source to the New Testament texts are exhaustingly plentiful and are found in several different materials. The first and oldest category of these is the papyri, of which we have more than 130 registered. Some contain only small fragments of text (such as the oldest 𝔓 52 from c.125 contain only fractions of 4 verses from John 18). In contrast, others include larger portions of text (such as 𝔓 46 from c.250 that contains considerable parts of Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians, and Hebrews). The other major category of Greek manuscripts is the parchment codices — the oldest of which are written in capital letters and therefore called the Uncials. Most prominent among the Uncials are the following: Codex Sinaiticus (א) from c.330-360. It contains about half of the Greek Old Testament, along with a complete New Testament, but it is assumed that the codex originally contained the whole Bible. Codex Vaticanus (B) that is slightly older than א, but lacks the latter part of NT from Hebrews 9:14 and also lacks 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon. It is nevertheless regarded as “the oldest extant copy of the Bible.” Together with Codex Alexandrinus (A) and Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (C), these four are regarded as the “great uncial codices” and the only remaining uncial codices that initially contained the entire Bible text.
As the New Testament texts have been preserved in more manuscripts than any other work of literature, the task of NT text criticism is vast and unfinished. Indeed, significant advances have been made in the last 300 years, but more will come and thus call for new Bible translations and new treasures to be brought forth from this incredible collection of texts.
The Vulgate is a translation of the entire Bible by Jerome in the fourth century A.D. It is primarily based on the Hebrew text of the OT rather than reliance on the Septuagint or other Greek translations. For hundreds of years, it was the main and, often, only Bible used in Europe. The word “vulgate” comes from the Latin verb vulgo meaning “to make common, or accessible.” Directly or indirectly, it can be called the parent of all the vernacular translations we know today. Its most significant influence was exerted in the English version of Wycliffe — a famous literal translation from the Vulgate from 1383. As mentioned above, until 1956, this Bible translation was the textual basis for all Catholic Bible translations.
Catholic and Protestant Bible canons
A Catholic Bible includes the 73-book canon that is recognised by the Catholic Church, whereas a Protestant Bible typically only consists of 66 books. The Catholic Bible remained unchanged following the Reformation and kept the deuterocanonical books that Martin Luther and other reformers rejected.
“Deuterocanonical” is a Greek word meaning “belonging to the second canon” and denotes books and passages considered by the Catholic Church to be canonical. These “extra” books are found in the Greek Septuagint collection but not in the shorter Hebrew Masoretic Text collection (see below).
The seven books included in Catholic Bibles that are not found in Protestant Bibles are the books of Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, and Baruch. Furthermore, Catholic Bibles include extended versions of both Esther and Daniel. The New Testament book canon is the same between Catholic and non-catholic Bibles.
When the Catholic Church, at the Council of Rome in 382, settled the list of Scripture, it did not accept some of the books of the Septuagint as being inspired and canonical, namely, the Book of Enoch, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, and some others. Some of these books are included in the even larger canon of the Orthodox Churches.
The group of books called “Apocrypha” that can be found as a non-canonical section between the Old and the New Testaments in some Protestant Bibles often contains all the “deuterocanonical books” — both those considered canonical by the Catholic Church and the last mentioned group of books only regarded canonical in the Orthodox Churches.
Translation philosophies
Christians, more consistently than, for example, Jews or Muslims, have customarily assumed that vernacular translations of the Scriptures were a necessary expression of the universality of their faith and witness. One opinion has been that translations should generally give priority to reproducing the meaning of the text, rather than its sounds or its grammatical structures. In this case meaning includes not only reference but also such features as emphasis and emotion. This naturally means that the order of words and clauses may be changed to convey the meaning more clearly, but also more faithfully (even if this means a “looser” formal connection between the original and the translated text). Most translations are thus designed to transfer, as precisely as possible, the meaning and content of the original text into the vernacular of the given language.
Strategies for translating between languages between which there is a great divide linguistically, historically, and culturally is often conceptualised on a continuum between strictly dynamic and strictly formal equivalence. Dynamic equivalence is a theory of translation that strives for the true sense of the source language in the translation. This approach is often described as thought-for-thought correspondence as opposed to the word-for-word approach employed in the other end of the spectrum. Here, the formal (or direct) equivalence strategy aims at a one-to-one correspondence between the particular words in the source language and the target language, preserving as much syntactical structure from the original languages as possible. Such a translation is less interpretive than more dynamic translations but will often read less fluently and naturally in modern languages. In contrast, the dynamic translation will necessarily be more interpretive but will appear more fluent and natural to the modern reader.
Most Bible translations will appear somewhere on the continuum between the unmitigated application of one of these two strategies. Just outside each of these two — where we can no longer truly talk about translations, we find in one end the paraphrase and, in the other end, the interlinear text presentation. The paraphrase is a dynamic “translation” where the translator, so to speak, will read a passage in the original language and then close the book and forms his or her own sentences to retell the passage (probably) in another language. The interlinear is simply a presentation of the original text along with a lexical translation of each word (ideally contextualised to some extent) to a modern language on the line below. Such “translations” are mostly used in the academic study of the Bible, where the scholar is unfamiliar with the original languages.
