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trustworthy review of it will hardly be feasible until a year or two of use has given men's minds a familiarity with its new features, something approaching to that which happily we possess with the translation which it seeks to improve, and of which it is intended to bring out the meaning more accurately and clearly than was done or could have been done by the Translators of 1611.

And I ought to mention that though, of course, like every one else, I have seen two or three of the many notices which have appeared in the daily and weekly newspapers of so important a work, yet I have not made use of them for the purposes of this paper, except in so far as here and there they have directed me to a passage in which an alteration has been made. My wish has been, as far as was possible, to form an independent judgment upon the work; and to weigh, if I could, impartially, the advantages and disadvantages which it presents, as compared with the Authorised Version, one against the other. On the whole I must confess to a great feeling of disappointment. For while, with many others, I felt all along that the admission of scholars of all kinds to participate in a work so peculiarly the province of the Church, and that, as the Resolutions of the Convocation of Canterbury require, without any regard to their religious beliefs, forbade any very lofty hopes, yet I must confess that the very moderate hopes which we did allow ourselves to entertain have to a great extent been disappointed.

That there are some great and signal improvements I should be the last to deny. A notable instance of these is to be found in the now at last accurately rendered quotation from the prophecy of Isaiah as to the Virgin-Birth, S. Matt. i. 23; and the analogous improvement in 1 Tim. ii. 15, though here the marginal alternative tends to do away with the improvement by again confusing the meaning. To test the character of the work the most suitable method is to compare the performance with the canons laid down for the guidance of the company of Revisers by the Convocation which commissioned them, and by themselves.

The Convocation of Canterbury—that of York declined to move in the matter-passed a series of Resolutions through both Houses early in May, 1870, of which the following are the chief points in regard to the nature of the Revision to be undertaken.

1. It is desirable that a Revision of the Authorised Version of the Holy Scriptures be undertaken.

2. We do not contemplate any new translation of the Bible or any alteration in the language, except where in the judgment of the most competent scholars such change is necessary.

3. That in such necessary changes the style of the language employed in the existing Version be closely followed.

Convocation then appointed its Committee of Revision from both Houses. This Committee met on the 20th May, and adopted eight canons for its guidance, of which the first two are material to our present purpose, the others being mainly to regulate procedure in regard to voting, and the like. These two were as follows :

1. To introduce as few alterations as possible into the Text of the Authorised Version, consistently with faithfulness.

2. To limit as far as possible the expression of such alterations to the language of the Authorised and earlier English Versions.

The Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, in introducing the result of their labours to the Upper House of the Canterbury Convocation on May 18 of this year, stated that the number of alterations made under these Canons amounts in the Gospels to an average of three in every two verses, and in the Epistles to twice that number; so it is with some surprise that one reads in the Revisers' Preface the following enthusiastic testimony to the faithfulness of that Version in which "as few alterations as possible consistently with faithfulness," were to be made. "We have had to study this great Version carefully and minutely, and line by line; and the longer we have been engaged upon it the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy,” (the italics are mine,) “and we must not fail to add the music of its cadences and the felicities of its rhythm." Such a testimony, one would have some justification for supposing, might have gone far to establish the fact that so extensive a Revision as that before us was scarcely called for, or consistent with the canons which the Revisers imposed upon themselves in accordance with the principles laid down for their guidance by the Convocation of Canterbury.

Let us, however, proceed to look at some few details which may illustrate this point, and show how far the Revisers were guided in their practice by their own Canon, that only such alterations were to be introduced as were rendered necessary by a call for increased faithfulness in this so generally accurate Version.

I propose then, in the first place, to look at the Sermon on the

Mount, and to notice the nature of the changes there made. In the three chapters, of 111 verses in the aggregate, occupied by that great Discourse, there are no less than 193 changes. Parenthetically I would here remark upon the great inconvenience for use in the pulpit or the Bible class of the relegation to the margin of the familiar divisions of chapter and verse, and to the use in the text of the not yet familiar system of paragraphs. Excellent though it is for purposes of the study such an arrangement is very unsuitable for homiletic use, as it renders the turning out of a reference so much slower a process.

Of these 193 changes the great majority are of no importance or significance whatever, some the merest pedantry, some changes positively for the worse, while of only a very few can it be said that we are in any way gainers by the alteration or reformation of our reading. For instance in the first verse of Chapter V. it does not seem that any object of importance is served by changing "when He was set" into "when He had sat down." No doubt the English is modernised in form but so the second of the Revisers' Canons is violated as well as the first. Is anything gained in the last Beatitude by the substitution of "revile" for "reproach," or is it in any shade of meaning a better rendering of ὀνειδίζειν ? In the 15th verse there is a more serious charge to be brought. First, does Avxvos mean a lamp, or may not candle be just as good a rendering? and why is Xvxvía made a "stand?" Is this an old English word at all? and ought not its connection with λuxvos to have been brought out, as it is in the Authorised Version which renders the words by "candle" and "candlestick?" It might be a cab-stand for anything that appears to the contrary in the revised edition!

Several of the new renderings are simply transpositions, and these too, transpositions by which no particular purpose of emphasis or anything else appears to be served, except that there is an approach to the order of the words in the original-an approach which is by no means an advantage in these cases; whereas in Hebrews vii. 4, in which a change was really required to mark the emphasis which rests on the word "Patriarch," the alteration (I cannot call it an emendation) which has been made completely fails to do so. For what is the difference between "the Patriarch Abraham" and "Abraham the Patriarch?" But a close attention here to the Greek order, though perhaps a slightly paraphrastic translation might have been required to bring the sentence into accord with English idiom, would have brought

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out the strong stress that is laid upon waтpiápxns by keeping it back to the end of the sentence.

What, again, shall we say of the "necessity for faithfulness" shown in such changes as the following: "A city set on a hill," for "A city that is set on a hill," chap. v. 14; "Till all things be accomplished," for "Till all be fulfilled," v. 18; "Ye shall in no wise enter," for " 'Ye shall in no case enter," v. 20; "Whiles thou art with him in the way," for "While thou art in the way with him," v. 25; "Till thou have paid the last farthing," for "Till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing," v. 26, (N.B. the grammar of this change is at least open to question ;) "The Throne of GOD," for "GOD's Throne," v. 34; "When therefore," for "Therefore when," vi. 3; "Are not ye," for "Are ye not,” vi. 26; "Cast out first," for "First cast out," vii. 5 "By their fruits ye shall know them," for " Ye shall know them by their fruits," vii. 16.

Inconsistencies there are also in the renderings of tenses for instance, “Ye have heard that it was said," where both verbs are in the aorist, ἠκούσατε and ἐρρέθη. Though in this passage on the other hand we note one of the few gains in this part of the work, Toîs apxalois being rightly translated "to" instead of "by them of old time." The same confusion about the aorist-where no English idiom calls for it—is to be found in Hebrews i. 1, 2, where the aorist participle λanoas is somewhat baldly rendered "having spoken," but the aorist indicative eλáλŋoev which follows is translated (as in the Authorised Version) by a full perfect, the next verb eOnxev being rightly rendered as an aorist. The converse error, and this time involving a serious modification of meaning, is to be found in the retention of the mistranslation in Hebrews x. 14, where the participle aquaCoμévovs, a full present, is translated by an English form which certainly expresses nothing else than a completed action, instead of one in progress.

Another grammatical inaccuracy is to be seen in the rendering of ἀπέχουσι τὸν μισθὸν αὐτῶν by the perfect they have received their reward," (vi. 2, 5, 16.) Surely the true rendering here is the full present, "They are receiving their reward," the only one they look for or care for.

To say nothing of minor alterations in the LORD's Prayer, one at least of which is pure pedantry, the change to "Deliver us from the evil one" is on many grounds to be deprecated. It cannot be

said to be called for by accuracy, inasmuch as Tоû Tоvηрoû is the genitive of τὸ πονηρόν quite as much as of ὁ πονηρός. In its degree, and mutatis mutandis, the same remark will apply to the rendering of μὴ ἀντιστῆναι τῷ πονηρῷ in v. 39. No doubt some will regard the alteration in the Paternoster as an advantage on account of its distinct enunciation of the personality of Satan, which some have doubted and others denied. But it is a very costly way of doing what is after all done without ambiguity in the Greek in many other places, while this is always open to the charge of being a possible mistranslation. The chief objection to it, however, is that it seems unnecessarily to limit the scope of the prayer. We have been accustomed to understand it and to pray it in the wide sense which the gloss of the Church Catechism puts upon it: "That He will keep us from all sin and wickedness, and from our ghostly enemy, and from everlasting death.” In future, unless our Liturgical Paternoster is to differ even more than heretofore from that which the Gospels contain as the very words which our LORD taught us, we shall have to narrow considerably the intention with which that Petition at any rate has been so familiar to us.

Turning over the pages of my revised New Testament, as I was writing these words, to compare the version of the Paternoster in S. Luke, my eye was caught by the rendering of the Voice from Heaven at the Transfiguration (S. Luke ix. 35) which runs, "This is My Son, My chosen, hear ye Him." The translation is bald, to say the best of it; and the reading adopted is of very doubtful character. For ȧyanτós which, here as in the other "Synoptists," is the reading of the Authorised Version there are the three great MSS. known as A, C, D, and a large number of other Uncial MSS. (Tischendorf says most) besides several of the ancient versions and many cursive MSS., while for the rival reading exλeλequévos there are NB and one other Uncial and three versions—thus at all events the authority of this last reading cannot be said to be so overwhelming as to necessitate a change under rule 1.

In the Pater according to S. Luke there are strange vagaries. The omission in the invocation rests apparently on the authority of a remark of Origen's and on NB and L (a codex of the Gospels of the eighth century), while the ordinary text is supported by A C D and a host of other uncials, cursives, and versions. The MS. authority for the omitted petition is even stronger, as here goes over to its side, leaving B almost alone. The "deliver us from evil" here stands in

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