Here’s something splendid – a website named Original Douay Rheims, created by a student devoted to putting online the original Douay-Rheims translation of the Vulgate bible! It’s great to see ordinary people doing this on the web. The link is here:
https://originaldouayrheims.com/home
The site is in progress, but there is already a lot there.
The site owner does not give his name, and asks for people to work with him, who are happy to do so anonymously. What a wonderful thing to do.
A few words about the Douai-Reims version (DRV) may be in order.
The DRV is a translation of the Latin Vulgate bible, made around 1600 by exiled Catholics from England at the college in Douai (or Douay, as it was then spelled). They were all actually based in Reims (Rheims) at the time when they did the New Testament, hence the name. They used Coverdale’s version as a basis, but revised it to give a very literal translation of the Latin, to the extent of introducing latinate words.
Ownership of the DRV was a criminal offence for a century. But it still became widely known, thanks to a protestant refutation, that printed the whole thing in a parallel column with the text of the Great Bible, in order to “demonstrate how unreliable it is”! This was perfectly legal, and inevitably sold very well. The translators of the King James Bible were certainly aware of it, as they were of other versions, and were influenced by some of its better translation choices.
A century and a half later, between 1749 and 1777, the DRV was revised by a Bishop Challoner, who brought the text more into line with the KJV. This version is the “Douai Reims” that is most commonly encountered. This revision is the text that is commonly found online, whereas the Original Douay Rheims site has the pre-Challoner text.
Prior to the internet, few people ever saw any version of the Douai-Reims. But it is now freely accessible on sites such as Bible Gateway. Such sites – which, alas, grow more commercial every day – can display the Vulgate and the Douai in parallel columns.
Many people also suppose that the DRV is the only translation of the Vulgate. But this is not so. Apparently the Ronald Knox translation is also from the Vulgate? This Catholic Bible site allows you to have a three column view.
It is curious to notice how the same word is translated differently. Why is “psallite” not rendered the same in vv4-5?
Anyway, it’s all useful to know about, and one of the blessings of the internet.