I’ve just finished a first draft of an updating of the Preface to the original publication of the Douay-Rheims Old Testament of 1609. It’s much shorter than the Preface for the New Testament which I posted yesterday, but it’s still interesting.
I think this Preface is quite a bit more moving in some parts than the other. The faith of the authors is much clearer, and is much more to the forefront than in the New Testament Preface which focused so much more on academic matters of textual criticism and so on. Lest we forget, at the time this Preface was being written, people were dying for their faith. More specifically, they were being killed for their faith. Christians were warring with Christians, specifically as Christians, and Europe was a wreck. Many people are familiar with the perspective of the Reformers. This Preface and the New Testament Preface show us the other side of the coin.