The Acts
of the
Apostles
Translated out of the Latin Vulgate
at the English College of Rheims, 1582
revised by Bishop Richard Challoner, 1749–1752
What this is
The second half of a single work. It opens by addressing the same Theophilus the gospel of St Luke is written to, and takes the story from Jerusalem to Rome. It is also the one New Testament book whose chronology can be fixed to a year, by an inscription at Delphi naming the proconsul Gallio.
The translation
The Douay-Rheims: the Catholic English Bible, translated out of the Latin Vulgate at the English College of Rheims in 1582 and revised by Bishop Richard Challoner between 1749 and 1752. The Rheims New Testament was in print twenty-nine years before the King James Version, whose translators had it on the desk. The fuller history is on the title page of St Luke.
What is on the facing leaf
Challoner’s own summary of each chapter, marked as his; a map of the places that chapter names, drawn from the Mediterranean; the people in it who can be found in some source other than this book; and, where there is one, a plain statement of what is not known.
How full the notes are
Thinner here than on St Luke, which was annotated chapter by chapter. The map, the argument and the people are complete; the notes are not, and an empty heading is better than invented filler.