Meditations on the Psalms

By Ronald Knox A translator, comments Monsignor Ronald Knox in his On Englishing the Bible, has two methods at his disposal: the literal and the literary. In translating Sacred Scripture “for the benefit of a person who wants to be able to read the word of God for ten minutes on end without laying it aside in sheer boredom or bewilderment,” then only a literary translation will suffice. And such is the “Knox Bible,” the fruit of nine years’ solitary labor to craft a fresh translation of the sacred texts. That labor had a strong foundation in the abiding affection for and familiarity with Scripture on display in Meditations on the Psalms. In these fifty-two meditations, Knox leads his readers “from the less to the more ‘interior’ levels of the spiritual life,” treating on select Psalms from the Douay-Rheims Bible as they pertain to the Christian life in general and the interior life in particular; observances of the Church; and “Songs of Ascents” toward ultimate unity with God. Pope Ben