02-04-2021, 11:06 PM
CHAPTER I
PROPHETIC TEXTS FROM THE BIBLE
PROPHETIC TEXTS FROM THE BIBLE
We have used the Old Testament Scriptures as they exist in English in the Douay Version. This is the translation in common use among Catholics and the only complete Bible in the English language. It is translated from the Latin Vulgate in comparison with the Hebrew and Greek texts as they were recognized in A.D. 1582.
This version has several advantages. First, it is a translation of the whole canonical Old Testament. The non-Catholic versions leave out several books and parts of books. The Protestant divines chose to admit as sacred only those books which the Jewish rabbis, who refused to accept Christ, decided to retain in the Jewish Bible. This selection was made by the rabbis not earlier than two hundred years after the birth of Christ therefore long after Judaism had ceased to be guided by the Holy Ghost, as the true religion must be guided, and by a group of men without authority even under the Mosaic Law. Priests, Prophets, and Kings and not teachers (rabbis) represented Jehovah (Yahwey in Hebrew) in the Old Dispensation.
Modern Jewish authors (1) readily admit that the rabbis of the early Christian times repudiated or reinterpreted all Jewish literature which could be produced in support of the claims of Jesus Christ, himself a Jew, the last of the true Jews, and the one who from the beginning of time was destined to turn Judaism into a religion for all men of good will and not for just one particular race irrespective of the will, good or otherwise, of the members of that race.
Second, the Douay version has the approval of the successor of St. Peter and all the bishops of the Church Universal, whereas the chief and basic Protestant Bible contents itself with the approval of King James of England and the parliament of that nation. As is evident even to the most superficial students of Sacred Scripture there is nothing in the Bible, or elsewhere, except the laws made by Englishmen, that gives an English or any other King or any civil government any right whatever over the Word of God. "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church." "Whatsoever thou shalt bind shall be bound." These words refer to Apostles and their successors exactly as they were spoken to Peter alone or Peter with all. Kings, princes and dead limbs cut off into national or autonomous churches have no authority over God's word and much less so has each man just because he happens to be born.
Third, the Vulgate, from which the Douay derives, not only resulted from manuscripts hundreds of years older than those used by King James' men but derived from a canon (i.e. list of Sacred Books), which the whole Church for 1600 years before Luther held to be Sacred. In fact the Septuagint Greek Bible, the Bible used by Greek speaking Jews and gotten together long before Christ and when no one "had an ax to grind," is the true index to the books which the pre-Christian Jews and all the first Christians held sac~ed. The Septuagint has the same books as the Vulgate and in fact it was used as a guide by the translators of the Vulgate 1200 years before the first Protestant was born and just about the time that the Jewish rabbis were deciding that they wanted no part of some of the texts their ancestors had venerated.
For these then and many other reasons we use the Douay version considering the King James and its filial versions fit reading for a study of the English language but not for an impartial survey of the Word of God.
While it would have made this book much shorter to have given only the Scriptural references letting each one go to his own Bible, we reproduce the texts here to save time for our readers, and so that standing alone and in the usual paragraph form they may be more easily integrated with each other and with private prophesies.
(1) E.g. Waxlnan: A History of Jewish Literature, Vol. I.