The Douay-Rheims Bible 

Pope Saint Damasus I (c.305-384) assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Roman Council in 382 A.D. He commissioned St. Jerome (c.347-420) to translate the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible.

St. Jerome knew Latin and Greek perfectly. He was 1500 years closer to the original languages than any scholar today, making him a better judge of the exact meaning of any Greek or Hebrew word in the Scriptures. St Jerome had access to ancient Hebrew and Greek manuscripts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries which have since perished and are no longer available to scholars today. St. Jerome's translation was a careful, word-for-word rendering of the original texts into Latin.

The Vulgate Bible was used in the Church for over 1,000 years, and in 1546 was declared by the Church at the Council of Trent to be the authentic and official version of the Bible. It is considered to be free from moral and theological error.

The Douay-Rheims Bible is the first English translation of the Vulgate. The New Testament was first published by the English College at Rheims in 1582 A.D.  The Old Testament was first published by the English College at Douay in 1609 A.D.  The first King James Version was not published until 1611. 

The whole Douay-Rheims Bible was revised and diligently compared with the Latin Vulgate by Bishop Richard Challoner (1691-1781) in 1749-1752 A.D.  The notes included in the text (in italics) were written by Bishop Challoner. 

The Douay-Rheims Bible became the standard Catholic Bible in English until the mid-20th century, and it remains the preferred Bible for traditional Catholics. It is a scrupulously faithful translation into English of the Latin Vulgate Bible and it is free from the ideological tampering of many modern translations.

A number of beautifully printed and bound copies of the Douay-Rheims Bible can be bought today, and there are numerous pdf and other electronic copies of the Bible printed over the last 150 years available for download on the internet.

A good clear pdf scan of the whole Douay-Rheims Bible, a 1914 edition, can be downloaded from archive.org at this link. This Version is 1,432 pages (100.6 MB).

The New Testament from this Douay-Rheims Bible 1914 edition has been extracted as a separate pdf (24 MB) and may be downloaded directly from this website on this page.

The Holy Bible, New Testament, Douay-Rheims, 1914. Please click on this link or the image above and the PDF will open in a new window and can be downloaded.