Tuesday, November 3, 2026 · 天火 · tianmu.org

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The Douay Old Testament is the Old Testament half of the Douay–Rheims Bible, the English Bible of Catholics for more than three centuries; its New Testament half is The Rheims New Testament (1582). It was translated from the Latin Vulgate by scholars of the exiled English College, which was then at Rheims and later returned to Douai, chiefly by Gregory Martin, who completed his draft before his death in 1582, the year the college issued its New Testament at Rheims. Lack of money held the Old Testament back for nearly thirty years. It appeared at last at Douai, from the press of Laurence Kellam, in two tomes: the first (Genesis to Job) in 1609 and the second (Psalms to the Machabees) in 1610. It follows the Vulgate’s order, names and numbering, so Samuel and Kings are the four books of Kings, Chronicles is Paralipomenon, and the Psalms are numbered as in the Latin. Its Latinate English and its controversial notes, written against the Protestant Bibles of the day, are part of its history. Bishop Richard Challoner’s revision of 1749–1752 (The Douay-Rheims Bible (Challoner Revision)) later replaced it in common use.

This room gives the whole printing, book by book, in its original spelling: the translators’ preface to the reader, the arguments of the books and chapters, every verse, the marginal notes, the annotations after the chapters, the essays on the state of the Church in the six ages of the world, and the closing tables, index, Latin censure and errata. As the edition does, it sets the Prayer of Manasses and the third and fourth books of Esdras apart after the canonical books.

The text is the EEBO-TCP transcription (A11777, CC0) of the Huntington Library copy. It is an archival transcription, not a Good Works Translation. The transcribers could not read 4,165 places on the microfilm, most of them single letters; each is marked ⟨illegible⟩ and none has been guessed. Three passages printed in non-Latin letters were not transcribed and are marked ⟨non-Latin script⟩. The transcribers skipped twelve duplicated page images; no text is lost there. Where the transcription lacks the cross that divides two verses, both verse numbers head one paragraph.

Preliminary and closing leaves

The books of the Old Testament

Set apart after the canonical books

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