A PLEA FOR A NEW TRANSLATION OF SCRIPTURE. It is a fashion of the day, even amongst those who are well qualified by their scholarship to form an opinion on the subject, to speak of the authorised version of the Scriptures in highly laudatory terms. Not merely do they assure us that it is a good translation, but we find them applying to it such epithets as these excellent, admirable, noble, and even incomparable. But such utterances would be of more worth to us if it were quite clear in what sense the epithets thus applied to it are used. One thing is quite clear, they are not used in the sense which they commonly bear. In ordinary life we should think anyone sufficiently self-conceited who pronounced a thing to be noble, excellent, or admirable, and then immediately set himself to work at improving it. When there are so many evils encompassing us all, surely it would be somewhat Quixotic to spend time and toil in amending that which is excellent or admirable already. Perhaps of all living scholars the one who has spoken of it in most enthusiastic terms is Bishop Ellicott. He not only calls it 'our own noble version,' but thankfully acknowledges it to be the best translation in the world.'* He is fortunate indeed in being able to form such an opinion: the translations of Scripture are now so numerous, and so limited is the number of them with which any man, who has not devoted his life to the study of languages, can have more than a very superficial acquaintance, that but very few men could venture to select Commentary on Galatians, p. 114. B * the best. A very ordinary person, however, may be bold enough to remark, that if the authorised version be the best of all versions, some of them must be very poor specimens indeed. Nay! let us see what the Bishop himself really thinks of this best of all translations. A noble one it may be; but at the same time it is also incorrect, inexact, insufficient, and obscure.' Rather serious drawbacks these. And let not anyone suppose that such drawbacks are to be found only here and there. The Epistle to the Galatians was the first upon which the Bishop commented; to the commentary he added a revised translation. He tells us that in his translation he has only permitted himself to depart from the authorised version where it appeared to be incorrect, inexact, insufficient, or obscure. Now, the Epistle to the Galatians is by no means the most difficult of St. Paul's Epistles: moreover, it is but a short one, consisting of six chapters and 149 verses. How many times in those 149 verses does the reader suppose that the Bishop finds the authorised version to need correction? No less than 252; in other words, Dr. Ellicott himself considers that version, though it be the best of all, to be incorrect, inexact, insufficient, or obscure, 252 times in 149 verses. That fact alone is startling. Still more startling is it to read that 'the profound respect he entertains for the authorised version would have prevented him from attempting to revise it, if he had not seen that a few corrections, made on a fixed principle, would enable it adequately to reflect the most advanced state of modern scholarship.' If 252 corrections are needed in 149 verses, the number needed in the whole of the Epistles, not to speak of the other portions of Scripture, must be great indeed. When we find, then, a writer calling them ‘a few corrections made on a fixed principle,' we are forced to question whether he can ever ask himself the meaning of the words he writes. But setting aside all further consideration of epithets or words, which manifestly can have been but little weighed by those who use them, let us see if we cannot get an answer to this much simpler question: Is the authorised version a good translation of Scripture, and one with which we ought to rest satisfied at the present day? The question is an important one, as anyone who has a true reverence for Scripture must see. And that there may be no doubt about the meaning of the question, let us first define what is meant here by a good translation. Probably all scholars would agree that a good translation of any work must possess at least these four characteristics: it must be accurate; it must represent clearly the meaning of the original, wherever such meaning is itself clear; it must be free from any serious mistakes; it must scrupulously abstain from introducing ideas of which the original contains no trace. Some of these points may be of more importance than others, yet probably no scholar would allow that a translation could be a good one which failed on any one of these points; much less would he allow it to be good if it failed on all. 1. First, then, let us ask, whether the first of these characteristics is found in the authorised version of the Scriptures. And in order that the question may be kept in as small a compass as possible, it may be as well to take account only of the New Testament. On this first point very little need be said. Even those, who eulogise that version most, confess that it is very inaccurate, and take in hand to remove its inaccuracies. Indeed, there cannot possibly be any question about the matter. The advance which Greek scholarship has made since 1611-especially during the last seventy years-is so great that no translation which was made at that time can be other than most inaccurate, if tested by our present standard. It is not too much to say, that King James's translators were quite ignorant, and necessarily so, of all those points which are the real tests of scholarship. Their knowledge of the particles, prepositions, distinction of tenses, &c. was but very limited. As to the first point then of accuracy, all who are competent to form an opinion allow that the authorised version is quite deficient. 2. Let us go on, then, to the second point, and ask whether the authorised version represents clearly the meaning of the original, wherever that meaning is itself clear. Of course, there is no question about the greater part of it; such as the Gospels Acts of the Apostles, &c. It would be a difficult matter to translate them in such a way as not to be intelligible. The chief difficulty lies in translating intelligibly the Epistles. Now, in translating these, King James's translators seem scarcely to have made any attempt to be intelligible. Time after time they have contented themselves with giving a bald, literal translation of the Greek, regardless of the surely not unimportant matter, whether or not it could possibly convey any meaning to the English reader. There are whole chapters in the Epistles which it is quite impossible for those, who have no knowledge of Greek, to understand without the aid of a commentator. Every clergyman of the English Church must continually find himself reading a second lesson to his congregation which, as he well knows, the great mass of it can by no possibility understand. He must at times feel that it would be better to read the chapter in Greek; as then, at all events, it could not be misunderstood. And oftentimes he has the additional mortification of feeling that he could make the chapter intelligible to every thoughtful listener, if only he were at liberty to translate it afresh. Fortunate indeed must they be, who have not often heard lessons read in church in such a way as to show, that the reader himself was like the chief officer of Candace, Queen of the Æthiopians, in sore need of someone to guide him, that he might understand what he read. Nay! there are lessons which the best reader could not make intelligible. There is another and even a greater evil that arises from the same cause. Many of the thoughtful, educated, and earnest readers of Scripture have but very little knowledge indeed of the Epistles. And it is not to be wondered at, that such should be the case. Such persons desire to understand as well as read: to do this they must have recourse to some long-winded commentator. After they have gone through a course of reading which of all others is wearisome to flesh and blood; they have the painful feeling that the meaning, which they are assured they ought to gather from the passage, is certainly not the meaning that would be gathered by anyone from the writer's words, as they read them in the English version. They have also the still more painful feeling-a feeling most painful to every earnest mind-that they are not seeing the Inspired Word face to face, but only dimly, as through a glass which possibly the prejudice or ignorance of some frail mortal has dimmed. No wonder, then, that many for the most part confine their private reading of Scripture to those parts which they can hope |