Liturgy of the Hours Readings Translation

Dan

I apologize if this has been brought up before. It is hard to shift through the old LotH threads. 

Why does the LotH from Verbum not include the official translations of the readings? For example, here is this reading for this evening:

In the Lord’s eyes, one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years are as a day. The Lord does not delay in keeping his promise, though some consider it “delay.” Rather, he shows you generous patience, since he wants none to perish but all to come to repentance.

There is no Bible translation I know of that renders 2 Peter 3:8b-9 in that way. So without the official translation, the LotH is kind of useless for group recitation. Is using a preferred translation just a stopgap until they finish the LotH or is this all we can expect?

John W Gillis

Dan said:

There is no Bible translation I know of that renders 2 Peter 3:8b-9 in that way

That quote is taken from the 1970 NAB.

Regarding the use of user-assigned translations instead of providing the translations issued with the original work: this is not uncommon in Logos editions, but is not universal either. At least part of the reason for doing so would seem to involve the need for additional permissions to publish the Biblical texts, which could involve additional royalties (which would be passed on to the consumer, who may have already paid for a license to use the translation in a Logos edition), or even entail a denial for use. If you check out Lectionary resources, you will find they're often created with stubs for Biblical text, which are then supplied from the user's library as selected.

It's not an unreasonable approach, given that a lectionary or similar service book is primarily an order of readings and only secondarily a specific rendering of those texts - although they are of course both. Evaluated for the purpose of study, the flexible approach to translation rendering is quite useful - not to mention potentially considerably less expensive. Evaluated for the purpose of what we might call devotions, on the other hand, the original texts are much more important - and in the case of the community-based devotion which Catholic volumes are typically published for, it is admittedly essential.

I can't speak to the plans Faithlife has for the LotH resource, but I will say that I love having two different Lectionary resources available: one that supplies the actual printed texts of the USA lectionary (see: Catholic Daily Readings  (U.S. Lectionary). Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2016., logosres:catdayreadus;ref=CatholicCalendar.Adv_3_Sun_A), and one that allows me to flip the Biblical text at will so I can handily see the set of liturgical readings in various renderings (English or otherwise, including Greek/Hebrew) (see: Catholic Daily Readings. Bellingham, WA: Faithlife, 2009, logosres:cathlect;art=ad.2022.12.11.).

SineNomine

Dan said:

Why does the LotH from Verbum not include the official translations of the readings?

Probably because they didn't produce it until after the USCCB stopped licensing the NAB.