Here is the Kindle version. Note that my translation is public domain, so many other persons and companies have published this translation on Amazon. My version is only the one with the green mottled-pattern cover.
Then the print edition is available at Lulu.com here.
I can’t vouch for the quality of any other editions of my translation. See the online free edition here, which also has my edit of the Latin Vulgate, and several other edits of the Vulgate from rare print editions.
RLCJ
I love the Song of Songs in Color, I was reading it yesterday. Thank You for your hard work!
Thanks to you. I’m glad people are using it.
Hi Ron, I’ve got one question about the Vulgate. In Psalm 96, 5 it says “All pagan gods are demons” (or sth like that). But in every other version I’ve read it says something like “The pagan gods are nothing”. What’s the right translation? Are all pagan gods really demons?
{95:5} Quoniam omnes dii Gentium dæmonia: Dominus autem cælos fecit.
{95:5} For all the gods of the Gentiles are demons, but the Lord made the heavens.
The gods of the Gentiles are demons. This should be interpreted by Catholic Christians today in this manner. The “gods” of the unbelievers should be considered to have both figurative and literal meanings. So gods can be greed, lust, hatred, pride, other sins, whereby the individual divinizes his sinfulness. And then gods can refer to pagan gods, fallen angels (literal demons), and these types of false religions.
Sometimes pagans praying to the gods are sincere and in good conscience, obeying the light of natural law, and so they are heard by the one true God, and he answers their prayers. I was just reading, as I received this question on the blog, about the Kamikaze wind that saved Japan from an invasion by Mongol ships. The fleet was vast, and the smaller outnumbered Japanese ships had already been defeated. They nation would be invaded and conquered, surely, as nothing stood between the vast fleet and the populace. The emperor told the people to pray to the gods; he asked the sun-goddess to take his life and spare the lives of his people. And overnight a vast storm rose up and destroyed most of the fleet. Thousands of sailors, that is, soldiers intending to kill and pillage the nations, were drowned or washed ashore. The remaining ships departed and the danger to the nations passed.
They prayed to pagan gods with sincerity, which is to say that they prayed to the one true God with ignorance that He is One, and He heard them and saved them. So while there are no such pagan gods, to pray to pagan gods for sinful things means to appeal to literal demons, to pray in ignorance to pagan gods with virtue means to appeal to the true God.
Yes, but are all the pagan gods really demons or some of them are just fiction?
They are all fiction. The saying that the pagan gods are demons means that there are no “gods” that would be worshipped in Creation, apart from the one true God, except the fallen angels. So those who worship these fictional gods and goddesses, if they do so in grave sin, cannot have as their object anything but fiction or fallen angels.
It does happen, in the distant future, during the reign of the Antichrist, that Satan and the devils assist the Antichrist, not because they wish the world to worship him, but because they expect the Antichrist to die, eventually, and then they plan to turn the worship of the Antichrist into the worship of devils. And fallen angels have always been involved, to some extent, in pagan religions, seeking this same end of being worshipped.
However, it is possible for a sincere but mistaken person to adhere to a pagan religion (esp. before Christ) and thereby obtain grace from the one true God. They would not then be guilty of worshipping devils.