The Knox Bible is the ideal translation for those looking to deepen their understanding of the Holy Scriptures. It was hailed as the finest translation of the 20th Century, approved for liturgical use and was endorsed by Pope Pius XII, Archbishop Fulton Sheen and many more.

In the early 20th century, Msgr. Ronald Knox embarked on an entirely new English Bible. He wanted a Bible that did not merely translate the original but made it read as if an Englishman had written it. His translation is spiritual and literary, graceful and lyrical, making it one of the most beautiful vernacular versions of the Holy Bible.

The unique features of the Knox Bible are:

Translated from the Latin Vulgate and compared with the Greek and Hebrew texts single handedly by Ronald Knox over nine years.

Uses timeless English, which is both sacral and reverent.

Set in a single-column format with verse references placed at the side of the text in order to provide a clear and easily readable Bible.

The full Bible is now available again for the first time in over 50 years, in an edition from Baronius Press, beautifully bound in leather with gilt edges.

Included with this new edition is a paperback edition of On Englishing the Bible (5.5" x 8", 72 pages) in which Msgr. Knox describes his account of the ordeal, which manages to be both illuminating and full of his wit. Anyone wishing to know more about Knox's translation – and the problems involved in rendering the sacred Scriptures into the vernacular – will be fascinated to hear from the translator himself how he tackled this mammoth project.

History

In the high-ceilinged library of an English manor house one rainy day [in 1948], a bony, white-haired priest in an oversized clerical collar tapped away at a portable typewriter. From time to time he paused to knock the ashes out of his pipe against the fireplace or consult one of the fat books stacked on the massive antique table before him. At last he stood up, pulled the paper from his typewriter and closed his reference books with a ceremonious bang. His nine-year labour was finished. Monsignor Ronald Knox had completed his translation of the Catholic Bible.
Time Magazine 1948

The translation of the Bible by Ronald Knox was officially made at the request of the Bishops of England and Wales, although Knox had wanted to try his hand at updating the language of the Bible for some time.

It had been the desire of a succession of bishops for almost a 100 years to create a new Bible translation to replace the Douay Rheims edition. This Bible which had served English speaking Catholics since the time of the reformation had undergone several revisions, but was filled with archaic language, making it incomprehensible in a few places.

Originally, it was hoped that Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman, the most famous convert to Catholicism of the 19th Century would translate the Bible, but this project was never begun. In his book, The Idea of a University, Blessed John Henry Newman pointed out the “great difficulty in combining the two necessary qualities, fidelity to the original and purity in the adopted vernacular.”

Although the Douay translation was much loved and gave many passages of Holy Scripture that are still well-known today, it was felt that the translation was too difficult to understand. A new translation would bring the gospel message to a much wider audience.

The English bishops gave him permission to start just before World War II broke out. It was initially planned that he would report his work to a team of evaluators, but the wartime difficulty of communication made that impractical, so he worked entirely on his own. When it came out after the war, there was some predictable criticism from people who liked either the King James version or Challoner’s revision of the Douay-Rheims. Knox even wrote a small booklet to explain how he had gone about translating the Bible in order to placate the critics.

Knox’s bible also received great acclaim when it was first published. Time magazine called Knox the “man who made the great 20th century bible.”

Even the Archbishop of Canterbury of the time recommended it, and it became the preferred translation of Fulton Sheen. The Bishops were so pleased with the completed version that it was authorized for liturgical use, and the Knox translation of the Bible was used as the official version in the churches of Great Britain, Ireland and Australia for the decade leading up to Vatican II – and the first version sanctioned for liturgical use in England and Wales.

Why it is Unique

In the early twentieth century with the blessings of most of the English bishops, Msgr. Ronald Knox embarked on an entirely new English Bible. It was to be based upon the Clementine edition of the Latin Vulgate of St. Jerome, but Knox consulted the texts in Greek and Hebrew where necessary in order to ensure the accuracy of the translation.

In his On Englishing the Bible, Msgr. Knox explains how he carried out the mandate given to him by the English hierarchy. He aimed at a Bible that was understandable to modern audiences and yet rooted in Catholic tradition and “written in timeless English”. He wanted a Bible that did not merely translate the original but made it read as if an Englishman had written it.

Novelist Evelyn Waugh remarked about the translation that

It is unquestioned that for the past 300 years the Authorized Version has been the greatest single formative influence in English prose style. But that time is over …. When the Bible ceases, as it is ceasing, to be accepted as a sacred text, it will not long survive for its fine writing. It seems to me probable that in a hundred years' time the only Englishmen who know their Bibles will be Catholics. And they will know it in Msgr. Knox's version.

His three aims were: accuracy, intelligibility, and readability. He was loyal to these principles without sacrificing the rhetorical power of the original and while deliberately keeping a few of the well loved archaisms in the text. He preferred lucidity to poetry, but as one of the finest literary craftsmen of 20th century England he avoided falling into banality.

This was particularly so in his unique respect for the Hebrew Acrostics (starting successive verses with successive letters of the alphabet). Here Monsignor Knox respects the 22 letters of the Hebrew original but starts his verses with successive letters of the English alphabet, usually leaving off X, Y, and Z and one other letter, often Q.

In Lamentations 1, 2, and 4 he completely follows the English order and uses the letters A-V; and in Lamentations 3 he adheres to the tripled Hebrew verses (66 verses) and uses AAA-VVV, i.e. three A verses, then three B verses, etc. (When checking the Knox acrostic Psalms, remember that he is follows the Vulgate numbering of the Psalms which is generally one lower than the English and Hebrew numbering.)

The result is unique. The Knox Bible is firmly rooted in the text of the Clementine Vulgate, the Latin Bible that was the Catholic Church’s official bible for nearly 1,600 years; and yet was Knox was careful to cross check his translation against the Hebrew and Greek texts. In readability and scholarship it firmly belongs to the age of modern bibles.

Fr. Cormac Burke (www.cormacburke.or.ke), who has studied the Knox translation extensively says:

It is an opinion that may have particular application to the pauline epistles. Regarding these I do recall some early critic who, while conceding that Msgr. Knox had certainly made St. Paul intelligible (he was at times barely so in the old Douai-Rheims version), still doubted whether Knox's version really makes Paul say what he actually wanted to say... I am not scripture scholar enough to resolve the question; but am sure that the same doubt can be made extensive to quite a few more recent versions.

In the Old Testament, the Wisdom books are particularly expressive. No translation of the Psalms is going to please everyone. But it is worth examining Psalm 118, for instance, where Msgr. Knox stood fully up to the particular challenge its translation represents. To my mind, the result is a tour de force.

Consider also the Major Prophets. I find the first chapters of Isaiah and of Ezechiel specially remarkable. The poetic tone of the Psalms and other poetic books changes to something more resoundingly epic – as indeed befits prophecy. Prophecy is meant to surprise; it is dramatic and emphatic. And Knox's rendering of Isaiah or Ezechiel – idiosyncratic if at times it be – certainly brings out the solemn force of God's word on the lips of his prophet. It strikes the listener, and one is more inclined to stand up and take notice. As it should be. When working from scanned pages, it is difficult to spot and correct all the errors. The New Testament has been subjected to very careful correction over these years. I will be very grateful to those who point out any errors they spot in the Old Testament.

Pope Pius XII, in a note that he sent to Msgr. Knox shortly before Knox died, called it “a praiseworthy achievement … a monument of many years of patient study and toil.” Novelist and Knox’s fellow convert Evelyn Waugh predicted in the middle of the 20th century, when the literary influence of the King James Bible and its sonorous cadences were waning fast, that in a hundred years’ time the only biblically-literate Englishmen will be those who are Catholic, and that they will know it through the Knox translation. The Ven. Fulton Sheen notably favoured the Knox Bible as the source for his biblical quotes, and even though it has not been in print for a number of decades, interest in it has never ceased.

Waugh’s prediction may have seemed quixotic in the past 50 years, but today’s hunger for a measured return to beauty and reverence may mean that it will yet come to pass.

We must never forget that all authentic and living Christian spirituality is based on the Word of God proclaimed, accepted, celebrated and meditated upon in the Church.
Pope Benedict XVI, 2010

About R. Knox

Knox was perhaps the most intellectual convert since Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman.

C. S. Lewis called him "the wittiest man in Europe," and Ronald Knox was a deft apologist, an astute translator of the Bible, and the preacher for occasions great and small throughout the first half of the twentieth century in England.

Born in 1888, as the sixth child of the Anglican Bishop of Manchester, he grew up in what he called "that form of Protestant piety which the modern world half regrets, half derides as 'old-fashioned.'" By the time he was 12 he was already writing Latin poetry.

Having won almost every attainable honour at Oxford, at just 24, Knox became the Anglican chaplain of Oxford's Trinity College. While he seemed to be content with preaching, talking, and writing, his soul was not at peace.

Five years later, in 1917, Ronald Knox resigned and entered the Roman Catholic Church. "Authority played a large part in my belief," he said later. In Knox's case, his break with the Church of England also meant a permanent break with his father, who had previously regarded him as his favourite son.

Knox was ordained to the priesthood, and soon he was back at Oxford, this time as a Catholic chaplain. Father Knox for 13 years made his rooms a gathering place for the university's most glittering wits. While he was there, he began churning out acclaimed and smoothly written detective novels (six within ten years) such as ‘The Body in the Silo’ and ‘The Viaduct Murder’, which helped supplement his modest chaplaincy funds.

Towards the end of his chaplaincy at Oxford in 1939, Evelyn Waugh recounted that Knox was at a low ebb. At that point the English hierarchy commissioned Knox to single-handedly translate the New Testament. From the beginning Knox assumed he would complete the entire Bible, which led to misunderstandings with the hierarchy, which were magnified by some opposition to the translation as it progressed. To complete the arduous task, Knox accepted the offer of the young converts, Lord and Lady Aston to retreat to their tranquil country hall, Aldenham Park.

There, with hands on his trusted typewriter and pipe in mouth, he produced on average twenty-four translated verses a day. He would not emerge until nine years later, when finally in the Autumn of 1948, the final verses were completed.

Knox’s bible received great acclaim when it was first published. Time magazine called Knox the “man who made the great 20th century bible.”

Knox died in 1957 with many high honours attached to his name, having become a Fellow of both Trinity and Balliol colleges, and a Protonotary Apostolic to Pope Pius XII.

Comments

I am delighted at the republication of Mgr Ronald Knox's translation of the Bible. It was my father's favourite translation and I can remember the trouble he went to in order to replace a lost edition of the New Testament. Mgr Knox was a distinguished priest of the Diocese of Westminster and such a gifted preacher and giver of retreats. His memorable phrases are still quoted. He brought that same skill, together with considerable scholarship, to the immense task of Biblical translation. Many will welcome this new publication of his achievement.
Archbishop Vincent Nichols

Mgr. Knox's version continues to merit attention, and I welcome the publication of this new edition, as his remarkable work is likely to continue to be of interest for many years to come. I sincerely hope that many will read and profit from this new edition.
Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor

Ronald Knox’s translation of the Bible remains an exceptional achievement both of scholarship and of literary dedication. Again and again it successfully avoids conventional options and gives the scriptural text a fresh flavour, often with a brilliantly idiosyncratic turn of phrase. It most certainly deserves republication, study and use.
Archbishop Rowan Williams

The English Bible tradition, which this translation by Mgr Ronald Knox so aptly embodies, is an important part of western culture. It continues to shape the English language and literary tradition, not just in Britain but in the United States, Australia and elsewhere. This handsome edition of 'The Knox Bible' is a worthy book for private study and devotion, sure to bring about a deeper reverence and love of Sacred Scripture, and so draw readers into a deeper relationship with our Blessed Lord, the Word who 'was made flesh, and came to dwell among us' (Jn 1: 14). As the fulfillment of Blessed John Henry Newman's hope for a worthy English translation of the Bible, this translation holds a special place in the hearts of those of us, who - like Newman and Knox and countless others - have found their way to the fullness of communion, united to the Apostolic See. May it help bring others to know the Lord who is 'truth and life' (Jn 14: 6).
Mgr Keith Newton

Msgr. Knox had a profound love for Sacred Scripture, a passion was to make the Bible accessible to as many people as possible … In the Knox translation, clarity is paramount.
Dr. Scott Hahn

Praiseworthy achievement … a monument of many years of patient study and toil.
Ven. Pope. Pius XII

There has been a remarkable revival of interest in Ronald Knox in recent years, and the republication of his magnum opus is a significant event.
Fr. Ian Ker, a leading authority on John Henry Newman and direct relative of Msgr. Ronald Knox.

the outstanding feature of Msgr. Knox's biblical translation is the way he maintained the Hebrew alphabetic acrostic (succeeding verses starting with succeeding letters of the Hebrew alphabet) of parts of the Old Testament over into an English alphabetic acrostic (succeeding verses starting with succeeding letters of the English alphabet).

In an alphabetic acrostic the initial letters of lines (or verses or sections) follow the sequence of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet and the lines/verses/sections are of roughly equal length. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters and many of these acrostics have 22 verses or a multiple thereof, the acrostic sometimes being used to determine verses. The most complete alphabetic acrostics in the original language of the Hebrew Bible are Psalms 25, 34, 37, 111, 112, 119, 145; Proverbs 31:10-31 (the Praise of a Good Wife); and each of the first four chapters of the Book of Lamentations.

Psalm 119 is, of course, the supreme example of an acrostic in that it has 176 verses consisting of 22 strophes (one for each letter) each of 8 verses. All 8 verses of the first strophe start with Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The second 8 verses all start with Beth, the second letter, and so on. Even if one cannot read Hebrew (I can't), it is worthwhile looking at a Hebrew Bible (I have one in the hope of eventually learning) to see this unique example. Many English translations indicate this alphabetic feature by labeling the 8 verse strophes with the letter of the Hebrew alphabet.

It is hypothesized that alphabetic acrostics may have functioned to show a completeness or totality, we would say "from A to Z". Thus in Lamentations the utter desolation, in Ps 111 the completeness of praise, and in Ps 119 that the "Torah", i.e. the instruction, of the LORD is totally good.

Needless to say, the alphabetic structure of the original is not usually able to be carried over into English translations. But there is an existing English translation of the entire Bible which tries to do justice to the form of the Hebrew alphabetic acrostic. This is the Knox translation, an older (late 1940's-50's) Roman Catholic translation done by Monsignor Ronald Knox, a convert from Anglicanism. I have used it in the past in Bible Study groups to illustrate an acrostic.
Edward Pothier

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