Dr. Thomas once remarked, in reference to the proposed new translation (as Sister M. H. informs us):
“We shall have no better translation of the scriptures than the one now in use until the law goes forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.”
He did not mean to say there would be no new translation, but that any new translation that might be published would fail to improve upon the version issued in the days of King James. Increasing study of the revised version will confirm this view as regards the substantial features of the case. Except as to a few points, the common version is all that could be desired as a rendering into English of the ideas embodied in the Greek text.
If the revised versionists had confined their emendations to these few points, they would have given us a work that might not have struck the public mind as much of an achievement, but which would have possessed the value of combining the excellence of the common version with the improvements resulting from the removal of positive mistranslations. They have removed the mistranslations (and even this they have only done to some extent, for they have retained hell for Gehenna; ghost for spirit; devils for demons, &c.): but they have to an appreciable extent attennuated and weakened the generally robust and beautiful character of King James’ version.
Nevertheless, there are some compensations. The minds of thoughtful people will doubtless be stimulated to some extent in the direction of Bible study, and enlightened discrimination in Bible things, when they find a new translation in their hands differing in many points from the old, though presenting the same facts and doctrines. The poor and unlettered in this world, who have become rich through enlightenment in the glorious truth revealed to us in the apostolic writings, will also be helped and interested by the comparisons they will have it in their power to institute between different renderings. In some cases the new version will help them.
For example, the omission of “for us” from Heb. 9:12 will strengthen their recognition of the fact that Jesus himself obtained redemption in obtaining it for his brethren—an idea doubtless foreign to the minds of King James’ trinitarian translators, who would be unable to conceive of the Jesus of their theology, “obtaining eternal redemption.” All that Jesus did in his sacrificial character was “for” his brethren; that a basis might be established for their forgiveness unto life eternal. For this reason, it is said that “God laid upon him the iniquities of us all.” But this fact ought not to conceal from our view what it was that he did in order that this basis might be established. He “abolished death” (in himself). “Through death, he destroyed him that hath the power of death, that is, the devil.” The death that he died, he died in himself, and the work of destroying death to be accomplished by it, was accomplished in himself and in himself alone at that time. “HE obtained eternal redemption;” this has been lost sight of in popular theology. It is part of the truth that has been recovered by a faithful following of the teaching of the scriptures; and it will help its preservation that the Revisers have left out “for us” from Heb. 9:12—not but what it was “for us,” only it was for himself as well first, which the middle voice of the verb in this verse involves.
In the same direction are other two improvements,—first, in 2 Cor. 5:14: here the authorised version reads “If one died for all, then were all dead,” by which, it has been common to suppose that Paul meant that before Christ died, all were in a dead state. It is true that before Christ died, all were in a dead state: but this is not the fact that Paul states here. The idea before his mind would exclude the special recognition of this fact here. That idea is made visible in the new version, especially in connection with the context. The new version reads “One died for all; therefore all died; ” that is, the all died with and in the one, when he died, because he stood for them all in a representative sense. This gives point and force to Paul’s argument in the context, that having died with Christ, those who still live in the literal sense, are morally bound to consider themselves dead to themselves, as a man who literally died would be, and alive only as the property of him who died for them.
Paul elsewhere says that we were “crucified with him;” we are baptized into his death; we are buried with him by baptism. This is the opposite idea to substitution. Christ did not suffer instead of us, but for us, and we suffered with and in him. With the common way of reading 2 Cor. 5:14, Paul is made to teach that the death of Christ brought those who were in a dead state into a living state, which is in contradiction to his other statement, that “if Christ be not RAISED, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” The death of Christ was an element in the process of redemption, but popular theology has made it the all in all, as a suffering of the punishment due to others, and thereby excludes the apostolic and reasonable idea of community with the sufferings of Christ on the part of his people whom he represented as the wonderful work of the sacrifice which he “finished” on the earth and by which he laid the foundation for that life and joy which await all the family of God, including himself as its appointed head, and standing in whose midst he will sing praise in the day of victory.
The other case is the case of Rom. 6. where the verbs having to do with baptism and the death of Christ, are all rendered in the present tense in the common version, whereas, in the original, they are historic—expressing action accomplished in a past time. Thus Paul is made to say, “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” — which is an anachronism: for the man who is dead to sin, in the moral sense, could not live any longer therein. Paul’s question was, as now seen in the Revised Version, “How shall we who died to sin live any longer therein?” This is a pointed question, which the other is not. Paul is referring to the fact that those whom he is addressing took part in the death of Christ in being baptised, as made evident by the altered rendering of his remark on baptism. Instead of “we are buried with him by baptism,” it is, “we were buried with him by baptism unto death.” Again, instead of “our old man is crucified with him,” it is “our old man was crucified with him,” and instead of, “If we be dead with Christ,” it is “if we died with Christ”—all of which are far from being immaterial alterations. They help to elucidate Paul’s references to the death of Christ — a subject which in its popular representations, has done more than anything to stagger the efforts of reason to comprehend the highest of the ways of God.
Continuing acquaintance with the Revised version will doubtless enable most readers to endorse the verdict of the Spectator; that with all its defects, “The Revised Version will give the whole English-reading world a very much better conception of what the New Testament really is than they have ever had before.” The Record says:
“We feel that we cannot give sufficient thanks to the Revisers for their twofold work of construction and translation; and we receive this result of learning, research, and skill as the nearest approximation which the world at present possesses to the original Word of GOD.”
The faults of the version from an English point of view, are vigorously expressed by the Saturday Review thus:—
“Alterations of the diction of the Old Version, involving no gain in sense, or scarcely a perceptible one, swarm in the Revised Edition, and in almost every instance it is impossible not to feel that the original translators, however inferior to the present Revisers in precise and exhaustive scholarship, textual or general, were infinitely their superiors in the rare and precious art of writing musical and masculine English prose. We do not question the learning and ability of the Revisers; but great as is their knowledge of Greek, how many of them are known, or have any claim to be recognised, as masters of English diction? No educated man can read some of the passages they have altered without feeling a sensation of intellectual pain and imaginative loss. But to the uneducated, whose sole literature has been supplied by the Bible, and who have fastened upon the familiar words with a proportionate intensity of mental grasp, the shock will be infintely greater.” It is the language of the Bible that gives force and dignity to the oratory of Mr. Bright. All these associations and all these influences have been sacrificed at the shrine of pedantry and vanity. The Revisers of the Authorised Version will not content themselves with proving, what has not been contested, that some errors are to be found in the translation approved by the Divines of James the First’s time. They must also try to show—and they lamentably fail in the attempt—that they can improve the English style on which so many illustrious men of letters have looked ‘with mingled feelings of delight and despair.’ Had they purged the Sacred Text of the errors which had crept into it, and placed, where it was necessary, variorum readings in the margin, they would have performed a useful and acceptable work. But in their efforts to attain a dry and merely mechanical accuracy of expression, they have so ‘revised’ the noblest book in the English language as to deprive it of much of its beauty, and to destroy many of its historical associations.”
The other side is well presented by The Times thus:
“Even if the Revised Version seems to suffer in diction by comparison with the old, we have to remember that the Greek text is not itself a model of style. Where the language of the original is bald and jejune, where repetitions occur, where the diction is clumsy and inartistic, nothing is gained and a good deal is lost by giving it a more ornate dress in the English rendering. On the other hand, where the difficulties of the original arise, as they often do in the writings of St. Paul, from the obscurity of the thought and its utterance, from the wide sweep and sudden transitions of a swift and subtle mind struggling with an imperfect vehicle of expression, it is necessary to postpone everything to the paramount obligation of elucidating the thought and preserving the connection of the argument. It is here that the Authorised Version most conspicuously fails. A looseness in the rendering of particles, a carelessness in the distinction of tenses, a feeble grasp of the general drift, too often interrupt the reasoning of the writer and obscure the connection of his thoughts. This is not felt so much in the public reading of the Scriptures, where the attention is ill-sustained, and where, as must be admitted, the train of reasoning, however faithfully rendered, is sometimes beyond the capacity of the audience to follow, but it is only too palpable to the student who compares the rendering with the original. No better test of the merits of the Revised Version could be found, in fact, than the patient and continuous study of one of the Epistles of St. Paul. In the Authorised Version this part of the New Testament too often comes very near to being unintelligible. The Revised Version, though it still preserves the true cast of its predecessor so faithfully that the difference only appears on direct comparison, yet brings out the sense and drift of the original, and converts a series of detached sentences into a train of close and sustained reasoning. Thus, what has hitherto been the exclusive possession of scholars and divines—namely the true appreciation of the mind and thought of St. Paul — becomes now, for the first time, the common property of all who understand the English language and can follow a train of reasoning. This, then, is the advantage and merit of the Revised Version; it is the first and only attempt to make a translation which shall be a true copy and transcript of an original text, itself the most authentic which the scholarship of age can construct from all the materials extant. It will not, of course, supersede the study of the original text, but it will materially assist and elucidate it for all but scholars of the first rank. If it does this, as we cannot doubt it is fully entitled to do, it will amply fulfil its purpose, and will abundantly reward the devoted labours of those who have prepared it.”
The Western Daily Mercury speaks of the Revised Version as “THE BIBLE WHICH PUTS THE DEVIL IN THE LORD’S PRAYER.” Hitherto Satan had found no place in the all-comprehensive prayer which was taught to the first disciples. Now he appears there.1 In having accomplished this feat, the Members of the Revision Committee have certainly achieved distinction. It is somewhat remarkable that, in these times, when belief in a Personal Power of Evil was dying away, the old and orthodox idea should have received such strong support as is given by the new translation.
The South Bucks Free Press thinks it only to be expected that in an age like this, and in dealing with such a Book as a version of God’s Word that has been for nearly three centuries enshrined in the hearts of the whole Christian Church, opinions the most diverse will be formed of the results of these learned labours. Men with only a smattering of Greek will, no doubt, seek to air their learning by hasty and ignorant condemnation of some of the changes made. Bigots of this or that section of the Church who find some cherished theory weakened by a textual omission or destroyed by a textual addition, will loudly condemn.
Already it is praised as the “Victorian Testament,” in the revision of which “the soundest possible judgment has been exercised;” and on the other hand the revisers are condemned for “depriving the noblest Book in the English language of much of its beauty and destroying many of its historic associations.” We would, however, deprecate hasty criticism, and remembering the care and labour bestowed by the revisers, we would bespeak long and careful study and a time of partial waiting before a final judgment is pronounced on the result of labours of such surpassing difficulty.
The most consoling reflection connected with the whole subject referred to last month—the substantial identity and meaning—is well expressed by the Weekly Times, thus:—
“It is remarkable, as the Revisionists show in their Preface, that though so many new and valuable manuscripts have been discovered, and to-day there exist more ancient manuscripts of the Greek Testament than of any other ancient book, yet in the midst of all these diversities of text and readings, we need not alter a syllable of the celebrated remarks of Bentley, the Prince of English classical scholars, made 151 years ago:—‘The real text of the sacred writess does not now (since the originals have been so long lost) lie in any manuscript or edition, but is dispersed in them all. It is competently exact, indeed, in the worst manuscript now extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them. Choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings, . . . make your 30,000 (variations) as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum: all the better to a knowing and a serious reader, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or fool, and yet, with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity but that every feature of it will still be the same.”
Review of “The Early Earth” by John Whitcomb (1972)