Romans wrote: : I’m looking to pickup this book for Christmas. Is there a preferred : translator, or are they all pretty equivalent?

I don’t know if any one translation is “preferred,” but I can give you information about 3 that I’ve looked at and compared briefly with the original Latin at some points.

First is the 19th century translation by Edward Pusey. If you have no problems with 19th century English prose, this is a good choice. It is accurate (as are all the tranlations I’ll mention) and Pusey’s prose style is good. Because this version is out of copyright, it is widely reprinted.

Another good version is the translation by John K. Ryan, SJ, published by Image Books. This has an excellent introduction and annotations. Ryan’s tranlation is meticulously accurate, sometimes at the expense of elegant and smooth English probse. Most of the time, though, this is an outstanding version, and very much worth getting if you want to read the book closely.

Henry Chadwick’s recent translation is also good. It may be more readable that Ryan’s, though it’s not as well annotated. In the the Oxford World’s Classics version I’ve seen, the biblical references are documented inline, in the printed text. You might find that that clutters the page slightly.

If I had to recommend one of the three, I’d probably choose Ryan’s version over the other two.

Warren B. Hapke

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A couple summers ago I had the good fortune to study St. Augustine’s _Confessions_ with Fr. William Harmless, S.J., who specializes in Augustinian studies. He used Henry Chadwick’s translation, published by Oxford World Classics (ISBN: 0-19-283372-3). It’s available in paperback (it was $7.95 when I bought it a few years ago). Another good translation should be Maria Boulding’s, published by New City Press. It’s available in hardcover or paperback, and it’s part of an excellent series that is translating all of Augustine’s work into English. Other volumes in this series are first-rate, and I expect Boulding’s work to be of the same quality.

Both editions should be available by order from your local bookstore or Amazon.com. After studying Augustine with Harmless, he has become my favorite of the Church Fathers.

TJ

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Augustine’s Confessions would have to be in the ‘top 10’ books every literate Christian should read…

But then I’d recommend Matthew Fox’s Original Blessing to get ‘Augustinianism’ into theological perspective. (I’m not sure about Fox’s later theology 🙂

See http://skyfamily.com/rcroucher/index9.html for my list of Recommended Reading for src’ers…