The Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ

according to
St Luke

Translated out of the Latin Vulgate
at the English College of Rheims, 1582
revised by Bishop Richard Challoner, 1749–1752

1Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a narration of the things that have been accomplished among us, 2According as they have delivered them unto us, who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word: 3It seemed good to me also, having diligently attained to all things from the beginning, to write to thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, 4That thou mayest know the verity of those words in which thou hast been instructed.

He begins by naming his reader.

Begin at Chapter I →

Where this translation came from

English Catholics could not study divinity at home, so in 1568 William Allen founded a college for them at Douai in Flanders. It moved to Rheims in 1578 and went back to Douai in 1593. The New Testament was printed at Rheims in 1582; the Old Testament followed at Douai in two volumes, 1609 and 1610, held up for years for want of money. The principal translator was Gregory Martin, who died in 1582, the year his New Testament appeared.

What it was translated from

Not the Greek, but the Latin Vulgate, which the Council of Trent had in 1546 declared the authentic text for public reading. The translators collated the Greek and said so. This is why the names in this gospel are the Latin ones — Capharnaum, Bethania, Cyrinus where other versions have Quirinius — and why the English leans so hard on Latin words.

Challoner’s revision

Richard Challoner (1691–1781), Vicar Apostolic of the London District, revised the whole Bible between 1749 and 1752, smoothing the Latinisms and moving the English a long way towards the King James Version. Nearly every Douay-Rheims printed since has been his, and his is the text set here. The short summary at the head of each chapter is his too, and is labelled as his wherever it appears.

It came before the King James

The Rheims New Testament of 1582 was in print twenty-nine years before the Authorised Version of 1611. The King James translators had it on the desk, and a number of its renderings passed into their text.

Who it is written to

The gospel is written to one named reader, “most excellent Theophilus”, and the Acts of the Apostles opens by addressing him again. “Most excellent” — optime, for the Greek kratistos — is the form used to a man of rank, and is how Paul is made to address the governors Felix and Festus in Acts. Beyond that nothing is known of him: not his office, not his city, not whether the name is a real one or stands for any reader who loves God, which is what it means.

What is not settled about the book

Tradition from the second century names Luke, a companion of Paul, as the author, and the gospel runs straight on into the Acts of the Apostles, addressed to the same man. When it was written is genuinely open: proposals run from the 60s to the 90s, and the argument turns largely on whether chapter 21 was written before or after Jerusalem fell in AD 70.