The Bishop of London first published this book in Australia in 1943 when he was Archbishop of Brisbane, and the present English edition includes a few alterations. In the Preface he explains how the letters were freshly translated from the Greek into an entirely modern medium, and then rewritten into a freer translation with occasional explanatory phrases. The result he has called either a free translation or a close paraphrase. A careful study of his text shows that it is frequently a very close translation, although the title of paraphrase has freed the translator’s conscience from an obligation to strict adherence to the original word—or phrase—order, has permitted the insertion of phrases or even whole sentences, and has sometimes made possible a completely English idiom to replace that of the original.

Naturally the Catholic reader will make comparisons with the Catholic versions familiar to him : the Challoner-Rheims of 1749, and the new translation of Mgr Knox of 1945. He might also compare the American Revision of 1941, which is too little known in this country apart from its use in Fr Stedman’s Daily Readings and Sunday Missal, and which is in fact a new version with great merits as a literal translation (usually very close to the Greek), which is easily readable, and which is in ‘biblical’ English with many archaisms removed and without notable Americanisms. For checking according to the Greek he will of course turn to the Westminster Version of 1931.