Petrus Canisius 1939

History

This was the first Dutch Catholic translation made directly from the original biblical texts rather than from the Vulgate. Until then, the Dutch Catholic translations available were based on the Latin text: the first version the Catholic Encyclopedia calls authorized for Catholics was that of Nicolaas van Winghe, with the collaboration of Peter de Cort and Godevaert Stryode, published at Louvain in 1548. It followed the edition of the Vulgate prepared by Johannes Henten, published the year before. In 1599 van Winghe’s translation was revised against the Clementine Vulgate and published by Jan Moretus, giving rise to the so-called Bible of Moerentorf. That revision went through more than a hundred editions and, according to the Catholic Encyclopedia, was still in use in 1912.

The new translation was the initiative of the Apologetische Vereniging “Petrus Canisius”, a society founded in 1904 and named in honour of the Dutch theologian and Jesuit Petrus Canisius (1521–1597), who was born in Nijmegen. Canisius was the first Dutchman to join the Society of Jesus.

In 1906 the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles were published, the work of four translators, in a volume that became known as the Canisius Bijbeltje. The complete New Testament appeared in 1929. The Old Testament was published in four parts between 1937 and 1939. A group of translators worked under the direction of the Dominican R. Jansen, whose part in the work was considered excessively dominant. Although it provoked resistance, his involvement made the final result more homogeneous. The first complete edition appeared in 1939, published by Het Spectrum in Utrecht and Brussels. Its full title describes the project: De Heilige Schrift, vertaling uit de grondtekst met aantekeningen, in opdracht van de Apologetische Vereniging “Petrus Canisius” ondernomen met goedkeuring van de hoogwaardige bisschoppen van Nederland — “Holy Scripture, a translation from the original text with annotations, undertaken at the request of the Apologetic Society ‘Petrus Canisius’, with the approval of the most reverend bishops of the Netherlands”.

Those responsible for the translation explained the choice of source text in quite direct terms: they judged that they could render the word of God more accurately and more clearly through an immediate translation from the original texts than through a translation of the Latin text, “which is itself already a translation”.

Four years later, on 30 September 1943, Pius XII wrote in Divino afflante Spiritu that the authority of the Vulgate in matters of doctrine does not rule out recourse to the original texts, and that the decree of the Council of Trent does not forbid translations into the vernacular “even directly from the original texts themselves”, for the use of the faithful and for a better understanding of the divine word. The encyclical added that this had already been done in a laudable manner in many countries, with the approval of the ecclesiastical authority.

The Canisius was later succeeded by the Willibrordvertaling, whose New Testament began to appear in 1961 and whose complete edition appeared in 1975.

Curiosities

The name of God is written out in full as “Jahweh”. In the Old Testament the translation uses this form in place of “Heer” (“Lord”) thousands of times. Using the name was a deliberate choice by the translators, who considered the systematic substitution of the title “Heer” inadequate. The translation itself opens Psalm 23 with: “Mijn Herder is Jahweh!” — “Jahweh is my Shepherd!”.

This is where the two numberings part company. The psalms follow the Hebrew numbering: the shepherd psalm is 23, while 22 is the one that begins “Mijn God, mijn God ... Waarom hebt Gij mij verlaten?” (“My God, my God... why have you forsaken me?”). The chapter division, however, does not follow that same tradition throughout: Joel is divided into three chapters and Malachi into four, as in the Douay-Rheims.

Crampon, the French edition in this collection, uses the Hebrew numbering both in the psalms and in these prophetic books; Brenton’s Septuagint does the opposite on the second point: it keeps the Greek numbering of the psalms but divides Joel and Malachi according to the Hebrew numbering. That is why this site treats the two separately.

Sources

• Petrus Canisius Vertaling — Biografie — on the initiative, the translators, the dates of the volumes and the spelling of the divine name
• De Heilige Schrift, Petrus Canisiusvertaling, 1939 — the full title, the first publication, and the digitisation this site starts from
• Versions of the Bible — Anthony Maas, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 15 (New York, 1912), on the earlier Dutch Catholic versions made from the Vulgate. It dates the Leuven Bible to 1545, which cannot be right: the Vulgate it was made from is Henten’s of 1547
• Leuvense bijbel (1548) — Nederlands-Vlaams Bijbelgenootschap, for the date of van Winghe’s Dutch Bible
• Divino afflante Spiritu (1943) — the encyclical quoted