LIBRAR
OF THK
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
X OK
Mrs. SARAH P. WALS WORTH.
Received October, 1894.
No.ttf
1
ON THE
AUTHORIZED VERSION
OF THE
3STEW TESTAMENT.
Works by R. C. TRENCH, D. D., Dean of Westminster.
IN UNIFORM STYLE WITH THIS VOLUME.
I.
ON THE STUDY OF WORDS.
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II.
ON THE LESSONS IN PROVERBS.
1 vul. 12mo. Price 50 cents.
III.
SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
1 vol. 12tno. Price 75 c^nts.
IV.
ON THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE,
PAST A N I> PRESENT.
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V.
POEM S.
1 vol. 12mo. Price one dollar.
VI.
CALDERON, HIS LIFE AND GENIUS,
WITH SPECIMENS OF HIS PLATS.
1 vol. 12mo. Price 75 cents.
VII.
SERMONS ON THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST.
1 vol. 12mo. Price 50 c^nts.
VIII.
ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT,
IN CONNECTION WITH RECENT PROPOSALS FOR ITS REVISION
1 vol. 12iuo. Pric" 7") cenK
PUBLISHED BY J. S. TIEDFIELT), NEW YORK.
ON THE
AUTHORIZED VERSION
OF THE
NEW TESTAMENT
IN CONNECTION WITH SOME RECENT PROPOSALS
FOR ITS REVISION
BY
RICHARD CHMNEVIX TRENCH, D. D.
1 1
DEAN OF WESTMINSTER
4UTHOR OF " SYNONYMS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT" " THE STUDY OF WORDS"-
" THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAST AND PRESENT" " THE LESSONS IN
PROVERBS" " SEBMONS" " POEMS" " CALDERON," ETC.
pV* " 0?
OTI7BRSIT
RED FIELD
34 B E E K M A N STREET, NEW YORK
1858
PREFACE.
A WORD or two, which is all that I have to say by
way of preface, will not refer so much to the book as
to the form of the book. Were the materials of this
little volume to be disposed over again, I should cer
tainly prefer to follow in their disposition that sim
pler arrangement which Professor Scholefield adopted
in his Hints for an Improved Translation of the New
Testament. He has there followed throughout the
order of the books of Scripture ; and, as these passed
in succession under his review, he has made such ob
servations as seemed to him desirable, without at
tempting any more ambitious arrangement. After I
had advanced so far as to make it almost impossible
to recede, I found continual reason to regret that I
had chosen any other plan. I am not, indeed, with
out the strongest conviction that a book, well and
happily arranged on the scheme of rather bringing
D PREFACE.
subjects to a point, and considering together matters
which have a certain unity in themselves, both ought
to be, and would be, more interesting and instructive
than one in which the same materials were disposed
in such a merely fortuitous sequence. But this ar
rangement is very difficult to attain. I can not charge
myself with having spared either thought or pains in
striving after it ; but am painfully conscious how little
has been my success, and how unsatisfactory the re
sult. Some things, indeed, already, as they escape
the confusion of MS., and assume the painful clear
ness of print, I see might be in fitter place than they
are ; but much refuses still to group itself in any sat
isfying combination. This acknowledgment is not
made with the desire to anticipate and avert the cen
sure which this fault in the composition of the book,
to speak nothing of other more serious faults, may
deserve ; but only to suggest that a better and happier
distribution, though doubtless possible, was yet not
so easy and obvious as one who had never made the
endeavor to attain it might perhaps take for granted.
WESTMINSTER, June 24, 1858.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS PAGE 9
CHAPTER II.
ON THE ENGLISH or THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 19
CHAPTER III.
ON SOME QUES IONS OF TRANSLATION 49
CHAPTER IV.
ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED 65
CHAPTER V.
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED 84
CHAPTER VI.
ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, OR PLACED IN THE
MARGIN 97
CHAPTER VII.
ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUE VERSION . . . .113
8 CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VIII.
ON SOME QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS or WORDS... PAGE 135
CHAPTER IX.
ON SOME WORDS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED.. 148
CHAPTER X.
ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT AGAINST OUR VER
SION 164
CHAPTER XL
ON THE BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION... . 173
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
IT is clear that the question, " Are we, or are we
not, to have a new translation of Scripture ?" or ra
ther since few would propose this who did not wish
to loosen from its anchors the whole religious life of
the English people " Shall we, or shall we not, have
a new revision of the Authorized Version ?" is one
which is presenting itself more and more familiarly
to the minds of men. This, indeed, is not by any
means the first time that this question has been ear
nestly discussed ; but that which differences the pres
ent agitation of the matter from preceding ones is,
that on all former occasions the subject was only de
bated among scholars and divines, and awoke no in
terest in circles beyond them. The present is appa
rently the first occasion on which it has taken the
slightest hold of the popular mind. But now indica
tions of the interest which it is awakening reach us
from every side. America is sending us the instal-
1*
10 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
ments it must be owned not very encouraging ones
of a New Version, as fast as she can. The wish
for a revision has for a considerable time been work
ing among Dissenters here ; by the voice of one of
these it has lately made itself heard in Parliament,
and by the mouth of a Regius Professor in Convoca
tion. Our Reviews, and not those only which are
specially dedicated to religious subjects, begin to deal
with the question of revision. There are, or a little
while since there were, frequent letters in the news
papers, urging, or remonstrating against, such a step
few of them, it is true, of much value, yet at the
same time showing how many minds are now occupied
with the subject.
It is manifestly a question of such immense impor
tance, the issues depending on a right solution of it
are so vast and solemn, that it may well claim a tem
perate and wise discussion. Nothing is gained on the
one hand by vague and general charges of inaccuracy
brought against our Version ; they require to be sup
ported by detailed proofs. Nothing, on the other
hand, is gained by charges and insinuations against
those who urge a revision, as though they desired to
undermine the foundations of the religious life and
faith of England ; were Socinians in disguise, or Pa
pists Socinians who hoped that, in another transla
tion, the witness to the divinity of the Son and of the
Spirit might prove less clear than in the present
Papists who desired that the authority of the English
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 11
Scripture, the only Scripture accessible to the great
body of the people, might be so shaken and rendered
so doubtful, that men would be driven to their Church,
and to its authority, as the only authority that re
mained. As little is the matter advantaged, or in
any way brought nearer to a settlement, by sentimen
tal appeals to the fact that this, which it is now pro
posed to alter, has been the Scripture of our child
hood, in which we and so many generations before us
first received the tidings of everlasting life. All this,
well as it may deserve to be considered, yet as argu
ment at all deciding the question, will sooner or later
have to be cleared away ; and the facts of the case,
apart from cries, and insinuations, and suggestions of
evil motives and appeals to the religious passions and
prejudices of the day apart, too, from feelings which
in themselves demand the highest respect will have
to be dealt with in that spirit of seriousness and ear
nestness which a matter affecting so profoundly the
whole moral and spiritual life of the English people,
not to speak of nations which are yet unborn, abun
dantly deserves.
In the pages which follow, I propose not mainly to
advocate a revision, nor mainly to dissuade one, but
to consider rather the actual worth of our present
Translation its strength, and also any weaknesses
which may affect that strength its beauty, and also
the blemishes which impair that beauty in part the
grounds on which a new revision of it may be do-
12 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
manded the inconveniences, difficulties, the dangers
it may be, which would attend such a revision ; and
thus, so far as this lies in my power, to assist others,
who may not have been able to give special attention
to this subject, to form a decision for themselves. I
will not, in so doing, pretend that rny own mind is
entirely in equilibrium on the subject. On the whole,
I am persuaded that a revision ought to come ; I am
convinced that it will come. Not, however, I would
trust, as yet ; for we are not as yet in any respect
prepared for it; the Greek and the English which
should enable us to bring this to a successful end
might, it is to be feared, be wanting alike. Nor cer
tainly do I underrate the other difficulties which would
beset such an enterprise ; they look, some of them, the
more serious to me the more I contemplate them:
and yet, believing that this mountain of difficulty will
have to be surmounted, I can only trust and believe
that it, like so many other mountains, will not on
nearer approach prove so formidable as at a distance
it appears. Only let the Church, when the due time
shall arrive, address herself to this work with earnest
prayer for the Divine guidance, her conscience bear
ing her witness that in no spirit of idle innovation,
that only out of dear love to her Lord and his truth,
and out of an allegiance to that truth which overbears
every other consideration, with an earnest longing to
present his Word, whereof she is the guardian, in nil
its sincerity to her children, she has undertaken this
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 13
hard and most perilous task, and in some way or other
every difficulty will be overcome. Whatever pains
and anxieties the work may cost her, she will feel
herself abundantly rewarded if only she is able to
offer God s Word to her children, not indeed free
from all marks of human infirmity clinging to its out
ward form for we shall have God s treasure in
earthen vessels still but with some of these blem
ishes which she now knows of removed, and altogether
approaching nearer to that which she desires to see
it namely, a work without spot or wrinkle, or any
such thing; a perfect copy of an archetype that is
perfect.
In the meantime, while the matter is still in sus
pense and debate while it occupies, as it needs must,
the anxious thoughts of many it can not misbecome
those who have been specially led by their duties or
their inclinations to a more close comparison of the
English Version with the original Greek, to offer
whatever they have to offer, be that little or much,
for the helping of others toward a just and dispas
sionate judgment, and one founded upon evidence, in
regard to the question at issue. And if they consider
that a revision ought to come, or, whether desirable
or not, that it will come, they must wish to throw in
any contribution which they have to make toward the
better accomplishment of this object. Assuming that
they have any right to mingle in the controversy at
all, they may reasonably hope, that even if much which
14 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
they bring has long ago been brought forward by
others, or must be set aside from one cause or an
other, yet that something will remain, and will sur
vive that rigid proof to which every suggestion of
change should be submitted. And in a matter of such
high concernment as this the least is much. To have
cast in even a mite into this treasury of the Lord, to
have brought one smallest stone which it is permitted
to build into the walls of his house, to have .detected
one smallest blemish that would not otherwise have
been removed, to have made in any way whatever a
single suggestion of lasting value toward the end here
in view, is something for which to be for ever thank
ful. It is in that intention, with this hope, that I
have ventured to publish these pages.
The work, indeed, which I thus undertake, can not
be regarded as a welcome one. There is often a
sense of something ungenerous, if not actually unjust,
in passing over large portions of our Version, where
all is clear, correct, lucid, happy, awaking continual
admiration by the rhythmic beauty of the periods, the
instinctive art with which the style rises and falls
with the subject, the skilful surmounting of difficulties
the most real, the diligence with which almost all
which was happiest in preceding translations has been
retained and embodied in the present ; the constant
solemnity and seriousness which, by some nameless
skill, is made to rest upon all ; in passing over all
this and much more with a few general words of rec-
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 15
ognition, and then stopping short and urging some
single blemish or inconsistency, and dwelling upon
and seeming to make much of this, which often in
itself is so little. For the flaws pointed out are fre
quently so small and so slight, that it might almost
seem as if the objector had armed his eye with a mi
croscope for the purpose of detecting that which oth
erwise would have escaped notice, and which, even
if it were faulty, might well have been suffered to
pass by, unchallenged and lost sight of in the general
beauty of the whole. The work of Momus is never,
or at least never ought to be, other than an unwel
come one.
Still less do we like the office of faultfinder, when
that whose occasional petty flaws we are pointing out,
has claims of special gratitude and reverence from us.
It seems at once an unthankfulness and almost an im
piety to dwell on errors in that to which we for our
selves owe so much ; to which the whole religious life
of our native land owes so much ; which has been the
nurse and fosterer of our national piety for hundreds
of years ; which, associated with so much that is sad
and joyful, sweet and solemn, in the heart of every
one, appeals as much to our affections as to our
reason.
But admitting all this, we may still reconcile our
selves to this course by such considerations as the fol
lowing : and first, that a passing by of the very much
which is excellent, with a dwelling on the very little
16 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
which is otherwise, lies in the necessity of the task
undertaken. What is good, what is perfect, may have,
and ought to have, its goodness freely and thankfully
acknowledged ; but it offers comparatively little mat
ter for observation. It is easy to exhaust the lan
guage of admiration, even when that admiration is
intelligently and thoughtfully rendered. We are not
tempted to pause till we meet with something which
challenges dissent, nor can we avoid being mainly
occupied with this.
Then, too, if it be urged that many of the objec
tions made are small and trivial, it can only be replied
that nothing is really small or trivial which has to do
with the Word of God, which helps or hinders the
exactest setting forth of that Word. That Word
lends an importance and a dignity to everything con
nected with it. The more deeply we are persuaded
of the inspiration of Holy Scripture, the more intol
erant we shall be of any lets and hinderances to the
arriving at a perfect understanding of that which the
mouth of God has spoken. In setting forth his Word
in another language from that in which it was first
uttered, we may justly desire such an approximation
to perfection as the instrument of language to which,
marvellous organ of mind as it is, there yet cleaves
so much of human imperfection will allow; and
this not merely in greatest things, but in smallest.
Nor yet need the occasional shortcomings of our
Translators be noted in any spirit of irreverence or
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS. 17
disparagement. Some of the errors into which they
fell were inevitable, and belonged in no proper sense
to them more than to the whole age in which they
lived as, for instance, in the matter of the Greek
article. Unless we were to demand a miracle, and
that their scholarship should have been altogether on
a different level from that of their age, this could not
have been otherwise. We may reasonably require
of such a company of men, undertaking so great a
work, that their knowledge should approve itself on
a level with the very best which their age could sup
ply ; even as it was ; but more than this it would be
absurd and unfair to demand. If other of their mis
takes might have been avoided, as is plain from the
fact that predecessors or contemporaries did avoid
them, and yet were not avoided by them, this only
shows that the marks of human weakness and infirm
ity, which cleave to every work of men, cleave also
to theirs. Let me also observe, further, that he who
may undertake in any matter to correct them does not
in this presumptuously affirm himself a better scholar
than they were. He for the most part only draws on
the accumulated stores of the knowledge of Greek
which have been laboriously got together in the two
hundred and fifty years that have elapsed since their
work was done ; he only claims to be an inheritor in
some sort of the cares specially devoted to the eluci
dation of the meaning of Holy Scripture during this
period. It would be little to the honor of these ages
18 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.
if they had made no advances herein ; little to our
honor, if we did not profit by their acquisitions. This
much premised, I shall proceed to consider our Au
thorized Version of the New Testament under certain
successive aspects, devoting a chapter to each.
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 19
t
CHAPTER II.
ON THE ENGLISH OF THE AUTHORIZED VERSION.
THE first point which I propose to consider is the
English in which our Translation is composed. This
has been very often, and very justly, the subject of
highest commendation ; and if I do not reiterate in
words of my own or of others these commendations,
it is only because they have been uttered so often and
so fully, that it has become a sort of commonplace to
repeat them ; one fears to encounter the rebuke which
befell the rhetorician of old, who, having made a long
and elaborate oration in praise of the strength of Her
cules, was asked, " Who has denied it ?" at the close.
Omitting, then, to praise in general terms what all
must praise, it may yet be worth while to consider a
very little in what those high merits, which by the
confession of all it possesses, mainly consist ; nor shall
I shrink from pointing out what appear to me its oc
casional weaknesses and blemishes, the spots upon the
frim s face, which impair its perfect beauty. When
20 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
we seek to measure the value of any style, there are
two points which claim to be considered : first, the
words themselves ; and then, secondly, the words in
their relations to one another, and as modified by
those relations ; in brief, the dictionary and the gram
mar. Now, I should not hesitate in expressing my
conviction that the dictionary of our English Version
is superior to the grammar. The first seems to me
nearly as perfect as possible, the other not altogether
faultless.
In respect of words, we recognise the true delectus
verborum on which Cicero* insists so earnestly, and
in which so much of the charm of style consists. All
the words used are of the noblest stamp, alike re
moved from vulgarity and pedantry ; they are neither
too familiar, nor on the other side not familiar enough ;
they never crawl on the ground, as little are they
stilted and far-fetched. And then how happily mixed
and tempered are the Anglo-Saxon and Latin voca
bles ! No undue preponderance of the latter makes
the language remote from the understanding of sim
ple and unlearned men. Thus, we do not find in our
Version, as in the Rheims, whose authors seem to
have put off their loyalty to the English language
with their loyalty to the English crown, odible
(Rom. i. 30), nor < impudicity (Gal. v. 19), nor
* longanimity (2 Tim. iii. 10), nor co-inquinations*
(2 Pet. ii. 13, 20), nor < comessations (Gal. v. 21),
* De Oral., 3, 37.
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 21
nor contristate (Ephes. iv. 80), nor i zealatours (Acts
xxi. 20), nor < agnition (Philem. 6), nor suasible
(Jam. iii. 17), nor domesticals (1 Tim. v. 8), nor
repropitiate (Heb. ii. 17).* And yet, while it is
thus, there is no extravagant attempt on the other
side to put under ban words of Latin or Greek deri
vation, where there are not, as very often there could
not be, sufficient equivalents for them in the homelier
portion of our language ; no affectation of excluding
these, which in their measure and degree have as
good a right to admission as the most Saxon vocable
of them all ; no attempt, like that of Sir John Cheke,
who in his version of St. Matthew in many respects
a valuable monument of English substituted ( hun-
dreder for centurion/ freshman for proselyte,
gainbirth (that is, againbirth) for regeneration,
with much else of the same kind. The fault, it must
be owned, was in the right extreme, but was a fault
and affectation no less.
One of the most effectual means by which our Trans
lators have attained their happy felicity in diction,
while it must diminish to a certain extent their claims
* Where the word itself which the Rheims translators employ is a
perfectly good one, it is yet curious and instructive to observe how
often they have drawn on the Latin portion of the language, where
we have drawn on the Saxon ; thus, they use corporal where we
have bodily (1 Tim. iv. 8), incredulity where we have unbelief
(Heb. iii. 19, and often), precursor where we have forerunner
(JHeb. vi. 20), dominator where we have Lord (Jude 4), cogita
tion where we have thought (Luke ix. 46), fraternity where we
have brotherhood (1 Pet. ii. 17).
22 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
to absolute originality, enhances in a far higher de
gree their good sense, moderation, and wisdom. I
allude to the extent to which they have availed them
selves of the work of those who went before them,
and incorporated this work into their own, everywhere
building, if possible, on the old foundations, and dis
placing nothing for the mere sake of change. It has
thus come to pass that our Version, besides having
its own felicities, is the inheritor of the felicities in
language of all the translations which went before.
Tyndale s was singularly rich in these, which is the
more remarkable, as his other writings do not surpass
in beauty or charm of language the average merit of
his contemporaries ; and though much of his work has
been removed in the successive revisions which our
Bible has undergone, very much of it still remains :
the alterations are for the most part verbal, while the
forms and moulds into which he cast the sentences
have been to a wonderful extent retained by all who
succeeded him. And even of his Xsfis very much sur
vives. To him we owe such phrases as " turned to
flight the armies of the aliens,"* " the author and fin
isher of our faith ;" to him, generally, we owe more
than to any single laborer in this field as, indeed,
may be explained partly, though not wholly, from the
fact that he was the first to thrust in his sickle into
this harvest. Still, while King James s Translators
* It may be said that this is obvious ; yet not so. The Rheims does
not get nearer to it than " turned away the camp of foreigners."
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 23
were thus indebted to those who went before them in
the same sacred office, to Tyndale above all, for innu
merable turns of successful translation, which they
have not failed to adopt and to make their own, it
must not be supposed that very many of these were
not of their own introduction. A multitude of phrases
which, even more than the rest of Scripture, have be
come, on account of their beauty and fitness, " house
hold words" and fixed utterances of the religious life
of the English people, we owe to them, and they first
appear in the Version of 1611 ; such, for instance, as
"the Captain of our salvation" (Heb. ii. 10), " the
sin which doth so easily beset us" (Heb. xii. 1), " the
Prince of life" (Acts iii. 15).
But in passing, as I now propose to do, from gen
erals to particulars, it is needful to make one prelimi
nary observation. He who passes judgment on the
English of our Version, he, above all, who finds fault
with it, should be fairly acquainted with the English
of that age in which this Version appeared. Else he
may be very unjust to that which he is judging, and
charge it with inexactness of rendering, where indeed
it was perfectly exact according to the English of the
time, and has only ceased to be so now through sub
sequent changes or modifications in the meaning of
words. Few, I am persuaded, who have studied our
Translation, and tried how far it will bear a strict
comparison with the original which it undertakes to
represent, but have at times been tempted to make
24 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
hasty judgments here, and to pass sentences of con
demnation which they have afterward, on better knowl
edge, seen reason to recall. Certainly, in many places
where I once thought our Translators had been want
ing in precision of rendering, I now perceive that,
according to the English of their own day, their Ver
sion is exempt from the faintest shadow of blame. It
is quite true that their rendering has become in a
certain measure inexact for us, but this from circum
stances quite beyond their control namely, through
those mutations of language which never cease, and
which cause words innumerable to drift imperceptibly
away from those meanings which once they owned.
In many cases, no doubt, our Authorized Version, by
its recognised authority, by an influence working si
lently, but not the less profoundly felt, has given fixity
to the meaning of words, which otherwise they would
not have possessed, has kept them in their places ;
but the currents at work in language have been some
times so strong as to overbear even this influence.
The most notable examples of the kind which occur
to me are the following :
Matt. vi. 25. " Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink. 1 " This
" take no thought" is certainly an inadequate transla
tion in our present English of M jmspi^vare. The words
seem to exclude and to condemn that just, forward-
looking care which belongs to man, and differences
him from the beasts which live only in the present;
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 25
and " most English critics have lamented the inadver
tence of our Authorized Version, which, in bidding us
6 take no thought for the necessaries of life, prescribes
to us what is impracticable in itself, and would be a
breach of Christian duty even were it possible."* But
there is no inadvertence here. When our Transla
tion was made, " take no thought" was a perfectly
correct rendering of M (xspiju-vars. < Thought was then
constantly used as equivalent to anxiety or solicitous
care ; as let witness this passage from Bacon :f " Har
ris, an alderman in London, was put in trouble, and
died with thought and anxiety before his business
came to an end ;" or still better, this f?om one of the
Somers Tracts (its date is of the reign of Elizabeth) :
" In five hundred years only two queens have died
in childbirth. Queen Catherine Parr died rather of
thought. ^ A better example even than either of
these is that occurring in Shakespeare s Julius Ccesar\\
("take thought and die for Caesar") , where " to take
thought" is to take a matter so seriously to heart that
death ensues.
Luke xiii. 7. "Why cumber eth it the ground?"
Cumbereth seems here too weak and too negative a
rendering of xarapysT, which is a word implying active,
positive mischief ; and so no doubt it is in the present
acceptation of " to cumber ;" which means no more
* SCRIVENEE, Notes on the New Testament, vol. i., p. 162; and cf.
Alford, in loco.
t History of Henry VII. J Vol. i., p. 172. || Act. ii., sc. 1.
2 ^ %
KJVI7B!
26 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
than " to burden." But it was not so always. " To
cumber" meant once to vex, annoy, injure, trouble ;
Spenser speaks of " cumbrous gnats." It follows that
when Bishop Andrews quotes the present passage,*
" Why troub/et/t it the ground ?" (I do not know from
whence he derived this troubleth, which is not in
any of our translations), and when Coverdale renders
it, " Why hindereth it the ground ?" they seem, but
are not really, more accurate than our own Transla
tors were. The employment by these last of c cum
ber, at Luke x. 40 (the only other place in the Au
thorized Version where the word occurs), is itself
decisive of the* sense they ascribed to it. nspisovcw-o
(literally u was distracted") is there rendered by
them, " was cumbered."!
Acts xvii. 23. Devotions. This was a perfectly
correct rendering of rfs-Sarffxa-ra at the time our Trans
lation was made, although as much can scarcely be
affirmed of it now. Devotions is now abstract, and
means the mental offerings of the devout worshipper ;
it was once concrete, and meant the outward objects
* Works, vol. ii., p. 40.
t I have no doubt that most readers of that magnificent passage in
Julius Ccesar, where Antony prophesies over the dead body of Caesar
the ills of which that murder shall be the cause, give to cumber* a
wrong sense in the following lines :
"Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy."
They understand, shall load with corpses of the slain, or, as we say,
encumber so at least I understood it long. A good, even a grand
sense, but it is not Shakespeare s. He means, shall trouble or mis
chief.
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 27
to which these were rendered, as temples, altars, im
ages, shrines, and the like ; Heiligthiimer De Wette
has very happily rendered it ; cf. 2 Thess. ii. 4, the
only other passage in the New Testament where the
word occurs, and where we have rendered iravra
Xsyo fjisvov 0ov TJ tfe ^atfjuta, " all that is called God or
that is worshipped" It is such not the devotions
of the Athenians worshipping, but the objects which
the Athenians devoutly worshipped which St. Paul
affirms that he beheld/ or, as it would be better,
" accurately considered" (avaJewpwv) : yet the follow
ing passage in Sidney s Arcadia will bear out our
Translators, and justify their use of devotions/ as
accurate in their time, though no longer accurate in
ours : " Danietas began to look big, to march up and
down, swearing by no mean devotions that the walls
should not keep the coward from him."
Acts xix. 37. "Ye have brought hither these
men, who are neither robbers of churches, nor blas
phemers of your goddess." I long counted this " rob
bers of churches," as a rendering of IspotfjXou?, if not
positively incorrect, yet a slovenly and indefensible
transfer of Christian language to heathen objects.
But it is not so. Church is in constant use in early
English for heathen and Jewish temples as well as
for Christian places of worship. I might quote a
large array of proofs, but two will suffice. In the
lirst, which is from Holland s Pliny* the term is ap-
* Vol. ii., p. 502.
28 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
plied to a heathen temple : " This is that Latona
which you see in the Church of Concordia in Rome ;"
while in the second, from Sir John Cheke s transla
tion of St. Matthew, it is a name given to the temple
at Jerusalem : " And lo the veil of the Church was
torn into two parts from the top downwards" (Matt.
xxvii. 51).
Acts xxi. 15. "After three days we took up our
carriages and went up to Jerusalem." A critic of
the early part of this century makes himself merry
with these words, and their inaccurate rendering of
the original : " It is not probable that the Cilician
tent-maker was either so rich or so lazy." And a
more modern objector to the truthfulness of the Acts
asks, " How could they have taken up their carriages,
when there is no road for wheels, nothing but a
mountain-track, between Csesarea and Jerusalem ?"
But carriage is a constant word in the English of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries* for baggage,
being that which men carry, and not, as now, that
which carries them. Nor can there be any doubt
that it is employed by our Translators here, as also
in one or two other passages where it occurs, in this
sense (Judg. xviii. 21 ; 1 Sam. xvii. 22) ; and while
so understood, the words " took up our carriages" are
a very sufficient rendering of the fai<fxsvoutaii.svQi of the
original. The Geneva has it correctly, though some
what quaintly, " trussed up our fardels."
* See NORTH S Plutarch, passim.
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 29
Ephes. ir. 3. "Endeavoring to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace." Passages like
this, in which the verb endeavor occurs, will some
times seem to have been carelessly and loosely trans
lated ; when, indeed, they were rendered with perfect
accuracy according to the English of that day. " En
deavor," it has been well said, " once denoted all
possible tension, the highest energy that could be
directed to an object. With us it means the last,
feeble, hopeless attempt of a person who knows that
he can not accomplish his aim, but makes a conscience
of going through some formalities for the purpose of
showing that the failure is not his fault."* More
than one passage suffers from this change in the force
of 4 endeavor ; as 2 Pet. i. 15, and this from the Ephe-
sians still more. If we attach to * endeavor its pres
ent meaning, we may too easily persuade ourselves
that the Apostle does no more than bid us to attempt
to preserve this unity, and that he quite recognises
the possibility of our being defeated in the attempt.
He does no such thing ; he assumes success. 2tfou<5a-
ov- means " giving all diligence," and 4 endeavoring
meant no less two centuries and a half ago.
1 Tim. v. 4. "If any widow have children or
nepheivs" But why, it has been asked, are ex/ova,
or descendants, translated nephews here ? and why
should nephews be specially charged with this duty
of supporting their relatives ? The answer is that
* Lincoln s Jnn Sermons, by F. D. MAURICE, p. 156.
30 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
( nephews (= < nepotes ) was the constant word for
grandchildren and other lineal descendants, as wit
ness the following passages ; this from Hooker : " With
what intent they [the apocryphal books] were first
published, those words of the nephew of Jesus do
plainly signify: * After that my grandfather Jesus
had given himself to the reading of the Law and of
the Prophets, he purposed also to write something
pertaining to learning and wisdom ; "* and this from
Holland : " The warts, black moles, spots, and freck
les of fathers, not appearing at all upon their own
children s skin, begin afterward to put forth and show
themselves in their nephews, to wit, the children of
their sons and daughters."! There is no doubt that
1 nephews is so used here, as also at Judg. xii. 14.
Words which, like this, have imperceptibly shifted
their meaning, are peculiarly liable to mislead ; though
by no fault of the Translators. This one has misled
a scholar so accurate as the late Professor Blunt ;
who, in his Church of the First Three Centuries,
p. 27, has urged the circumstance that in the apos
tolic times the duties of piety extended so far, that
i children only, but even nephews, were expected to
support their aged relations. Words of this character
differ from words which have become wholly obsolete.
These are like rocks which stand out from the sea ;
we are warned of their presence, and there is little
danger of our making shipwreck upon them. But
* Ecclesiastical Polity, b. v., c. xx. t Plutarch s Morals, p. 555
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 81
words like those which have been just cited, as famil
iar now as when our Version was made, but employed
in quite different meanings from those which they then
possessed, are like hidden rocks, which give no notice
of their presence, and on which we may be ship
wrecked, if I may so say, without so much as being
aware of it. It would be manifestly desirable that
these unnoticed obstacles to our seizing the exact
sense of Scripture, obstacles which no carelessness of
our Translators, but which Time in its onward course,
has placed in our way, should, in case of any revision,
be removed. " Res fugiunt, vocabula manent"
this is the law of things in their relation to words,
and it renders necessary at certain intervals a read
justment of the two.
In thus changing that which by the silent changes
of time has become liable to mislead, we should only
be working in the spirit, and according to the evident
intention, which in their time guided the Translators
of 1611. They evidently contemplated, as part of
their task, the removing from their revision of such
words as in the lapse of years had become to their
contemporaries unintelligible or misleading. For in
stance, to depart no longer meant to separate ; and
just as at a later day, in 1661, " till death us depart"
was changed in the Marriage Service for that which
now stands there, " till death us do part" so in
their revision separate was substituted for depart
(" depart us from the love of God") at Rom. viii. 39.
32 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
At Matt, xxiii. 25, we have another example of the
same. The words stood there up to the time of the
Geneva version, " Ye make clean the outer side of the
cup and of the platter ; but within they are full of
bribery and excess." Bribery, however, about their
time was losing, or had lost, its meaning of rapine or
extortion was, therefore, no longer a fit rendering
of apifayy ; the bribour or briber was not equiva
lent to the robber : they, therefore, did wisely and
well in exchanging bribery for extortion here.
They dealt in the same spirit with < noisome at 1 Tim.
vi. 9. In the earlier versions of the English Church,
and up to their revision, it stood, " They that will be
rich fall into temptation and snares, and into many
foolish and noisome (/3xa/3e p a) lusts." Noisome,
that is, when those translations were made, was sim
ply equivalent to noxious or hurtful ;* but in the be
ginning of the seventeenth century it was acquiring a
new meaning, the same which it now retains, namely,
that of exciting disgust rather than that of doing act
ual hurt or harm. Thus, a tiger would have been
noisome in old English, a skunk or a polecat would
be noisome in modern. Here was reason enough
for the change which they made.
Indeed, our only complaint against them in this
matter is, that they did not carry out this side of
* " He [the superstitious person] is persuaded that they be gods
indeed, but such as be noisome, hurtful, and doing mischief unto
men." HOLLAND, Plutarch s Morals, p. 260.
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 33
their revision consistently and to the full. For in
stance, in respect of this very word, they have suffered
it to remain in some other passages, from which, also,
it should have disappeared. Three or four of these
occur in the Old Testament, as Job xxxi. 40 ; Ps.
xci. 3 ; Ezek. xiv. 21 ; only one in the New, Rev.
xvi. 2 ; where xaxov s\ms is certainly not " a noisome
sore" in our sense of * noisome, that is, offensive or
disgusting, but an evil, or, as the Rheims has it, " a
cruel sore." It is the same with c by-and-by. This,
when they wrote, was ceasing to mean immediately.
The inveterate procrastination of men had caused it
to designate a remoter term ; even as presently does
not any longer mean, at this present, but, in a little
while ; and " to intend anything" is not now, to do it,
but to mean to do it. They did well, therefore, that
in many cases, as at Mark ii. 12, they did not leave
by-and-by as a rendering of eMsug and svMg ; but they
would have done still better if they had removed it in
every case. In four places (Matt. xiii. 21 ; Mark vi. 25 ;
Luke xvii. 7 ; xxi. 9) they have suffered it to remain.
Again, to grudge was ceasing in their time to
have the sense of, to murmur openly, and was already
signifying to repine inwardly ; a grudge was no
longer an open utterance of discontent and displeasure
at the dealings of another,* but a secret resentment
* " Yea, without grudging Christ suffered the cruel Jews to crown
Him with most sharp thorns, and to strike him with a reed." Ex
amination of William Thorpe, in Fox s Book of Martyrs.
2*
34 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
thereupon entertained. It was only proper, therefore,
that they should replace to grudge by l to murmur,
and a grudge by a * murmuring, in such passages as
Mark xiv. 5 ; Acts vi. 1. On two occasions, however,
they have suffered 4 grudge to stand, where it no longer
conveys to us with accuracy the meaning of the origi
nal, and even in their time must have failed to do so.
These are 1 Pet. iv. 9, where they render avsv yoyyutffxwv
" without grudging ;" and Jam. v. 9, where W <frsva%ers
is rendered " Grudge not." These renderings were
inherited from their predecessors, but the retention
of them was an oversight.
On another occasion, our Translators have failed to
carry out to the full the substitution of a more appro
priate phrase for one which, indeed, in the present
instance, could have been at no time worthy of praise,
or other than more or less misleading ; I allude to
Acts xii. 4 : " Intending after Easter to bring him
forth to the people." They plainly felt that Easter,
which had designated first a heathen, and then a Chris
tian festival, was not happily used to set forth a Jew
ish feast, even though that might occupy the same
place in the Jewish calendar which Easter occupied
in the Christian ; and they therefore removed < Easter
from places out of number, where in the earlier ver
sion it had stood as the rendering of n.- c^a, substitu
ting passover in its room. With all this they have
suffered Easter to remain in this single passage
sometimes, I am sure, to the perplexity of the English
ON THE LNGLTSII OF OUR VERSION. 35
reader. Jewry in like manner, which has been re
placed by c Judasa almost everywhere, has yet been
allowed, I must needs believe by the same oversight,
twice to remain (Luke xxiii. 5 ; John vii. 1).
In dealing with obsolete words, the case is not by
any means so plain. And yet it does not seem diffi
cult to lay down a rule here ; the difficulties would
mainly attend its application. The rule would seem
to me to be this : Where words have become perfectly
unintelligible to the great body of those for whom the
translation is made, the toiCJ~ a i of the Church, they
ought clearly to be exchanged for others ; for the
Bible works not as a charm, but as reaching the heart
and conscience through the intelligent faculties of its
hearers and readers. Thus it is with ; taches, i ouches,
boiled, ear (arare), daysman, in the Old Testa
ment, words dark even to scholars, where their schol
arship is rather in Latin and Greek than in early
English. Of these, however, there is hardly one in
the New Testament. There is, indeed, in it no incon
siderable amount of archaism, but standing on a quite
different footing ; words which, while they are felt
by our people to be old and unusual, are yet, if I do
not deceive myself, perfectly understood by them, by
wise and simple, educated and uneducated alike.
These, shedding round the sacred volume the rever
ence of age, removing it from the ignoble associations
which will often cleave to the language of the day,
should on no account be touched, but rather thank-
36 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
fully accepted and carefully preserved. For, indeed,
it is good that the phraseology of Scripture should
not be exactly that of our common life ; should be re
moved from the vulgarities, and even the familiarities,
of this ; just as there is a sense of fitness which dic
tates that the architecture of a church should be dif
ferent from that of a house.
It might seem superfluous to urge this ; yet it is far
from being so. It is well-nigh incredible what words
it has been sometimes proposed to dismiss from our
Version, on the ground that they " are now almost or
entirely obsolete." Symonds thinks ; clean escaped"
(2 Pet. ii. 18) " a very low expression ;" and, on the
plea of obsoleteness, Wemyss proposed to get rid of
straightway, haply, twain, athirst, wax,
lack, ensample, jeopardy, garner, passion,
with a multitude of other words not a whit more
apart from our ordinary use. Purver, whose New
and Literal Translation of the Old and New Testa
ment appeared in 1764, has an enormous list of ex
pressions that are " clownish, barbarous, base, hard,
technical, misapplied, or new coined ;" and among
these are beguile, boisterous, lineage, perse
verance, potentate, remit, seducers, shorn,
swerved, vigilant, unloose, unction, vocation.
For each of these (many hundreds in number) he pro
poses to substitute some other.
This retaining of the old diction in all places where
a higher interest, that, namely, of being understood
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 37
by all, did not imperatively require the substitution
of another phrase, would be most needful, not merely
for the reverence which attaches to it, and for the
avoiding every unnecessary disturbance in the minds
of the people, but for the shunning of another and not
a trivial harm. Were the substitution of new for old
carried out to any large extent, this most injurious
consequence would follow, that our Translation would
be no longer of a piece, not any more one web and
woof, but in part English of the seventeenth century,
in part English of the nineteenth. Now, granting that
nineteenth-century English is as good as seventeenth,
of which there may be very serious doubts, still they
are not the same ; the differences between them are
considerable : some of these we can explain, others
we must be content only to feel. But even those who
could not explain any part of them would yet be con
scious of them, would be pained by a sense of incon
gruity, of new patches on an old garment, and the
one failing to agree with the other. Now, all will
admit that it is of vast importance that the Bible of
the nation should be a book capable of being read
with delight I mean quite apart from its higher
claim as God s Word to be read with devoutest rev
erence and honor. It can be so read now. But the
sense of pleasure in it, I mean merely as the first
English classic, would be greatly impaired by any
alterations which seriously affected the homogeneous-
ness of its style. And this, it must be remembered,
38 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
is a danger altogether new, one which did not at all
beset the former revisions. From Tyndale s first edi
tion of his New Testament in 1526 to the Authorized
Version there elapsed in all but eighty-five years, and
this period was divided into four or five briefer por
tions by Cranmer s, Coverdale s, the Geneva, the Bish
ops Bible, which were published in the interval be
tween one date and the other. But from the date of
King James s Translation (1611) to the present day
nearly two hundred and fifty years have elapsed ; and
more than this time, it is to be hoped, will have elapsed
before any steps are actually taken in this matter.
When we argue for the facilities of revision now from
the facilities of revision on previous occasions, we
must not forget that the long period of time which
has elapsed since our last revision, so very much
longer than lay between any of the preceding, has in
many ways immensely complicated the problem, has
made many precautions necessary now which would
have been superfluous then.*
* It is an eminent merit in the Revision of the Authorized Version
by Five Clergymen, of which the Gospel of St. John and the Epistle to
the Romans have already appeared, that they have not merely urged
by precept, but shown by proof, that it is possible to revise our Ver
sion, and at the same time to preserve unimpaired the character of
the English in which it is composed. Nor is it only on this account
that we may accept this work as by far the most hopeful contribution
which we have yet had to the solution of a great and difficult problem ;
but also as showing that where reverent hands touch that building,
which some would have wholly pulled down that it might be wholly
built up again, these find only the need of here and there replacing a
stone which had been incautiously built into the wall, or which, trust
worthy material once, has now yielded to the lapse and injury of time,
ON THE ENGLISH 0V OUR VERSION. 39
Certainly, too, when we read what manner of stuff
is offered to us in exchange for the language of our
Authorized Version, we learn to prize it more highly
than ever. Indeed, we hardly know the immeasura
ble worth of its religious diction till we set this side
by side with what oftentimes is proffered in its room.
Thus, not to speak of some suggested changes which
would be positively offensive, we should scarcely be
gainers in perspicuity or accuracy, if for James i. 8,
which now stands, " A double-minded man is unstable
in all his ways," we were to read, " A man unsteady
in his opinions is unconstant in all his actions" (We-
myss). Neither would the gain be very evident, if,
" I have a baptism to be baptized with" (Luke xii. 50)
gave place to, " I have an immersion to undergo."
" Wrath to come" we may well be contented to re
tain, though we are offered " impending vengeance"
in its place. " In chambering and wantonness" would
not be improved, even though we were to substitute
for it " in unchaste and immodest gratifications." Dr.
Campbell s work " On the Four Gospels" contains dis
sertations which have their value ; yet the advantage
would not be great of superseding Mark vi. 19, 20, as
it now stands, by the following : " This roused Hero-
while they leave the building itself in its main features and framework
untouched. Differing as the Revisers occasionally do even among
themselves, they will not wonder that others sometimes differ from
the conclusions at which they have arrived ; but there can, I think,
be no difference upon this point, namely, that their work deserves the
most grateful recognition of the Church.
40 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
dias resentment, who would have killed John ; but
could not, because Herod respected him, and, know
ing him to be a just and holy man, protected him, and
did many things recommended by him, and heard him
with pleasure." I have only seen quoted in a news
paper, and, therefore, it may possibly be a jest, that
in the American Bible Union s Improved Version such
improvements as the following occur : " That in the
name of Jesus, every knee should bend of heavenlies,
and of earthlies, and of infernals" (Phil. ii. 4) ; " Ye
have put on the young man" (Col. iii. 10). Of Har-
wood s Literal Translation of the New Testament
(London, 1768) and the follies of it, not far from
blasphemous, it is unnecessary to give any example.
When we consider, not the words of our Version
one by one, but the words in combination, as they are
linked to one another, and by their position influence
and modify one another ; in short, the accidence and
the syntax, this, being good, is yet not so good as the
selection of the words themselves. There are, un
doubtedly, inaccuracies and negligences here. Bishop
Lowth long ago pointed out several faults in the gram
matical construction of sentences ;* and although it
must be confessed that now and then he is hypercriti
cal, and that his objections will not stand, yet others
which he has not pressed would be found to supply
the place of those which must therefore be withdrawn.
* In his Short Introduction to English Grammar.
ON THE ENGLISH OP OUR VERSION. 41
But here, too, and before entering on this matter,
there is room for the same observation which was
made in respect of the words of our Translation.
Many charges have here also been lightly, some igno-
rantly, made. Our Translators now and then appear
ungrammatical, because they give us, as they needs
must, the grammar of their own day, and not the
grammar of ours. It is curious to find Bishop New-
come* taking them to task for using his or her,
where they ought to have used its ; as in such pas
sages as the following : " But if the salt have lost his
savor, wherewith shall it be salted ?" (Matt. v. 13.)
" Charity doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not
her own." (1 Cor. xiii. 5 ; cf. Rev. xxii. 2.) " This
sometimes," he says, " introduces strange confusion."
But this confusion, as he calls it, when they wrote was
inevitable, or at least could only be avoided by cir
cumlocutions, as by the use of thereof. Nor, more
over, did this usage present itself as any confusion of
masculine and neuter, or of personal and impersonal,
at the time when our Translators wrote ; for then that
very serviceable, but often very inharmonious, little
word, 4 its, as a genitive of * it, had not appeared, or
had only just appeared, timidly and rarely, in the
language,! an( * his was quite as much a neuter as a
masculine.
* Historical View of the English Biblical Translations. Dublin, 1 792,
p. 289.
1 1 have elsewhere entered on this matter somewhat more fully
(English Past and Present, 3d ed., p. 124 sqq.), and have there ob-
42 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUH VERSION.
Others have in other points found fault with the
grammar of our Version, where, in like manner, they
" have condemned the guiltless," their objections fre
quently serving only to reveal their own unacquaint-
ance with the history and past evolution of their na
tive tongue an unacquairitance excusable enough in
others, yet hardly in those who set themselves up as
critics and judges in so serious and solemn a matter
as is here brought into judgment. This ignorance is,
indeed, sometimes surprising. Thus. Wemyss* com
plains of a fals,e concord at Rev. xviii. 17 : " For in
one hour so great riches is come to nought." He did
not know that riches is properly no plural at all,
and the final s in it no sign of a plural, but belong
ing to the word, in its French form, richesse, and
that riches has only become a plural, as alms and
eaves are becoming such, through our forgetfulness
of this fact. When Wiclif wants a plural, he adds
another s, and writes richessis (Roru. ii. 4 ; Jam.
v. 2). It is true that at the time when our Version
served that its nowhere occurs in our Authorized Version. Lev.
xx. 5 ("of its own accord") has been since urged as invalidating my
assertion ; but does not do so really : for reference to the first, or in
deed to any of the early editions, will show that in them the passage
stood " of it own accord." Nor is it* here a misprint for its ; for
we have exactly the same "by it own accord" in the Geneva Version,
Acts xii. 10 ; and in other English books of the beginning of the sev
enteenth century, which never employ its. There is a fuller treat
ment of this word and the first appearance of it, in Mr. Craik s very
valuable work, On the English of Shakespeare, p. 91, and I should
desire what I have written on the matter to be read with the correc
tions which he supplies.
* Biblical Gleanings, p. 212.
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 43
was made, ( riches was already commonly regarded
and dealt with as a plural ; it is there generally so
used, and therefore it would have been better if, for
consistency s sake, they had so used it here ; but there
is no grammatical error in the case, any more than
when Shakespeare writes, " The riches of the ship is
come to shore." The same objector finds fault with
" asked an alms" (Acts iii. 3), and suggests, " asked
some alms" in its room, evidently on the same as
sumption that alms is a plural. Neither can he
tolerate our rendering of 1 Tim. v. 23 : " Use a little
wine for thine often infirmities ;" but complains of
4 often, an adverb, here used as though it were an
adjective, while, indeed, the adjectival use of * oft,
often, surviving still in 0/iJtimes, o/itewtimes, is
the primary, the adverbial merely secondary.
But all frivolous, ungrounded objections set aside,
there will still remain a certain number of passages
where the grammatical construction is capable of im
provement. In general the very smallest alteration
will set everything right. These are some :
Heb.v. 8. " Though He were a Son, yet learned
He obedience by the things which He suffered." If
the Apostle had been putting a possible hypothetical
case, this would be correct ; for example, " Though
He slay me, yet will I trust in Him" (Job xiii. 15),
is without fault. But here, on the contrary, he is
assuming a certain conceded fact, that Christ was a
Son, and though He was such, yet in this way of suf-
44 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
fering He learned obedience. Though is here a
concessive, conditional particle, the Latin etsi or
etiamsi as followed by an indicative, and should
have itself been followed by such in our Version. It
ought to be, " Though He was a Son," &c.
John ix. 31. "If any man be a worshipper of
God, and doeth his will, him He heareth." As in the
passage just noted, we have a subjunctive instead of
an indicative, an actual objective fact dealt with as
though it were only a possible subjective conception,
so here we have just the converse, an indicative in
stead of a subjunctive. It is true that in modern
English the subjunctive is so rapidly disappearing,
that " If any man doeth his will" might very well
pass. Still it was an error when our Translators
wrote ; and there is, at any rate, an inconcinnity in
allowing the indicative 6 doeth, in the second clause
of the sentence, to follow the subjunctive be in the
first, both equally depending upon if; one would
gladly, therefore, see a return to "do his will, 1 which
stood in Tyndale s version.
Matt. xvi. 15. " Whom say ye that I am ?" The
English is faulty here. It ought plainly to be, " Who
say ye that I am ?" as is evident if only ; who be put
last : " Ye say that I am who ?" The Latin idiom,
" Quern me esse dicitis ?" probably led our Transla
tors, and all who went before them, astray. Yet the
cases are not in the least parallel. If the English
idiom had allowed the question to assume this shape,
ON THE ENGLISH OP OUR VEKSION. 45
" Whom say ye me to be ?" then the Latin form would
have been a true parallel, and also a safe guide ; the
accusative whom? not, indeed, as governed by i say,
but as corresponding to the accusative me? being
then the only correct case, as the nominative who,
to answer to the nominative i I, is the only correct
one in the passage as it now stands. The mistake
repeats itself on several occasions : thus, at Matt,
xvi. 13 ; Mark viii. 27, 29 ; Luke ix. 18, 20 ; Acts
xiii. 25.
Heb. ix. 5. " And over it the Cherubims of glory."
But Cherubim being already plural, it is excess of
expression to add another, an English plural, to the
Hebrew, which our Translators on this one occasion
of the word s occurrence in the New Testament, and
constantly in the Old. have done. " Cherubi^s of
glory," as it is in the Geneva and Rheims versions, is
intelligible and quite unobjectionable. The Hebrew
singular is then dealt with as a naturalized English
word, forming an English plural ; just as there would
be nothing to object to automatons or c terminuses,
which ultimately, no doubt, will be the plurals of
automaton and terminus ; but there would be much
to i autornatas or terminis, or to * erratas, though,
strangely enough, we find this in Jeremy Taylor, as
we do synonymas in Mede. It might be free to use
either geniuses or 4 genii as the plural of genius
(we do, in fact, employ both, though in different
senses), but not geniis ; and it is exactly this sort
of error into which our Translators have here fallen.
46 ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION.
Rev. xxi. 12. " And had a wall great and high."
The verb < had is here without a nominative. All
that is necessary is to return to Wiclif s translation :
" And it had a wall great and high."
Again, we much regret the frequent use of adjec
tives ending in ly, as though they were adverbs.
This termination, being that of so great a number of
our adverbs, easily lends itself to the mistake, and at
the same time often serves to conceal it. Thus, our
Translators at 1 Cor. xiii. 5 say of charity, that it
" doth not behave itself unseemly" Now this, at first
hearing, does not sound to many as an error, because
the final ly of the adjective unseemly causes it to
pass with them as though it were an adverb. But
substitute another equivalent adjective ; say, " doth
not behave itself improper" or " doth not behave
itself unbefitting" and the violation of the laws of
grammar makes itself felt at once. Compare Tit. ii.
12 : " soberly, righteously, and godly in this present
world." It ought to be c godlily here, as unseem-
lily in the other passage ; or if this repetition of the
final c ly is unpleasing to the ear, as indeed it is, then
some other word should be sought. The error recurs
in 2 Tim. iii. 12 ; Jude 15 ; and is not unfrequent in
the Prayer Book. Thus, we find it in the thirty-sixth
Article : " We decree all such to be rightly, orderly,
and lawfully consecrated."*
* It is carious to note how frequent the errors are arising from
the same cause. Thus, I remember meeting in Fox s Book of Mar-
ON THE ENGLISH OF OUR VERSION. 47
Should a revision of our Version ever be attempted,
it seems to me that the same principle should rule in
dealing with archaic forms as I have sought to lay
down in respect of archaic words. Nothing but ne
cessity should provoke alteration. Thus, there can
be no question that our old English prseterites, clave,
drave, sware, < brake, strake, should stand. They
are as good English now as they were two centuries
and a half ago : they create no perplexity in the minds
of any ; while at the same time they profitably differ
ence the language of Scripture from the language of
common and every-day life. But it is otherwise, as
it seems to me, with archaisms which are in positive
opposition to the present usage of the English tongue.
Thus, his and her should be replaced by < its, at
such passages as Matt. v. 13 ; Mark ix. 50 ; Luke xiv.
34 ; Rev. xxii. 2 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 5 ; which might be done
almost without exciting the least observation ; so also
6 which by who, wherever a person and not a thing
is referred to. This, too, might be easily done, for
tt/rs (I have not the exact reference) the words, "if this be perpend."
Here it is clear that Fox was for the moment deceived by the termi
nation of perpend/ so like the usual termination of the past parti
ciple; and did not observe that he ought to have written, "if this be
perpended." In our own day Tennyson treats eaves as if the final
s were the sign of the plural, which being dismissed, one might
have eave for a singular; and he writes the "cottage eave." But
eaves ( efese in the Anglo-Saxon) is itself the singular. With the
same momentary inadvertence Lord Macaulay deals with the final s
in Cyclops as though it were the plural sign, and speaks in one of
the late volumes of his history of a Cyclop ; and pages might be
filled with mistakes which have thdr origin in similar causes.
48 ON THE ENGLISH OP OUR VERSION.
our Translators have no certain law here ; for instance,
in the last chapter of the Romans, which occurs seven
times, referring to a person or persons, who exactly
as often. The only temptation to retain this use of
which would be to mark by its aid the distinction
between oV-n^ and fe, so hard to seize in English. At
the same time a retention with this view would itself
involve many changes, seeing that our Translators did
not turn < which to this special service, but for <fc and
o 0Vi employed who and ( which quite promiscuously.
But upon this part of my subject that which has been
said must suffice.
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 49
CHAPTER III.
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
How many questions at once present themselves,
many among them of an almost insuperable difficulty
in their solution, so soon as it is attempted to transfer
any great work from one language into another ! Let
it be only some high and original work of human ge
nius, the Divina Commedia, for instance, and how
many problems, at first sight seeming insoluble, and
which only genius can solve, even it being often con
tent to do so imperfectly, to evade rather than to
solve them, at once offer themselves to the translator !*
The loftier and deeper, the more original a poem or
other composition may be, the more novel and unusual
the sphere in which it moves, by so much the more
these difficulties will multiply. They can therefore
nowhere be so many and so great as in the rendering
* Only to few translators, and to them only on rare occasions, is it
given to deserve the magnificent praise which Jerome gives to Hilary,
and to his translations from the Greek (Ep., 33) : " Quasi captivos
scnsus in suam Hngnam inctoris jure transposuit ."
3
50 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
of that Book which is sole of its kind ; which reaches
far higher heights and far deeper depths than any
other ; which has words of God and not of man for
its substance ; while the importance of success or fail
ure, with the far-reaching issues which will follow on
the one or the other, sinks in each other case into ab
solute insignificance as compared with their impor
tance here.
Thus, the missionary translator, if he be at all aware
of the awful implement which he is wielding, of the
tremendous crisis in a people s spiritual life which has
arrived, when their language is first made the vehicle
of revealed truths, will often tremble at the work he
has in hand ; tremble lest he should be permanently
lowering or confusing the whole religious life of a
people, by choosing a meaner and letting go a nobler
word for the setting forth of some leading truth of
redemption. Even those who are wholly ignorant of
Chinese can yet perceive how vast the spiritual inter
ests which are at stake in China, how much will be
won, or how much lost, for the whole spiritual life of
that people, it may be for ages to come, according as
the right or the wrong word is selected by the trans
lators of the Scriptures into Chinese for expressing the
true and the living God.* As many of us as are igno
rant of the language can be no judges in the contro
versy whicli on this matter is being carried on, but
* See the Kev. S. C. Malan s Who is God in China, Shin or Shang-
tef
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 51
we can all feel how enormous the interests which are
at stake.
And even where the issues are not so vast and
awful as in this case, how much may turn on having
or not having the appropriate word ! Very often
there is none such ; and some common, some profane
word has to be seized, and set apart, and sanctified,
and gradually to be impregnated with a higher and ho
lier meaning than any which, before its adoption into
this sacred service, it knew. Sometimes, when the trans
fer is being made into a language which has already
received a high development, the embarrassment will
not be this, but the opposite to this. Two, or it may
be more, words will present themselves each inade
quate, yet each with its own advantages, so that it
shall be exceedingly difficult for the most skilful mas
ter of language to determine which ought to be pre
ferred. Thus, it was not indifferent whether Ao yof
should be rendered in ecclesiastical Latin ; Sermo or
< Yerbum. The fact that < Yerbum has from the be
ginning been the predominant rendering, and that
1 Yerbum is a neuter impersonal, possessing no such
mysterious duplicity of meaning as Ao yos, which is at
once the Word and the Reason, has, I do not hesi
tate to affirm, modified the whole development of Latin
theology in respect of the personal " Word of God."
I do not, indeed, believe that the advantages which
in Yerbum are lost, would have been secured by the
choosing of Sermo rather ; any gains from this would
52 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
have been accompanied by more than countervailing
losses. I can not, therefore, doubt that the Latin
Church did wisely and well in preferring * Verbum
to i Sermo ; indeed, it ultimately quite disallowed the
latter ; but still the doubts and hesitation which ex
isted for some time upon this point* illustrate well the
difficulty of which I am speaking.
Or take another question, not altogether unlike
this. Was the old poenitentia, or the resipiscen-
tia, which some of the Reformers sought to introduce
in its room, the better rendering of jmsravoin ? should
fAsravosrTe be rendered poenitete or resipiscite ?f
The Roman Catholic theologians found great fault
with Beza, that instead of the poenitentia, hallowed
by long ecclesiastical usage, and having acquired a
certain prescriptive right by its long employment in
the Vulgate, he, in his translation of Scripture, sub
stituted i resipiscentia. Now Beza, and those who
stood with him in this controversy, were assuredly
right in replying, that while a serious displeasure on
the sinner s part at his past life is an important ele
ment in all true peTuvoia or repentance, still poeniten
tia is at fault, in that it brings out nothing but this,
leaves the changed mind for the time to come, which
is the central idea of the original word, altogether
unexpressed and untouched ; that, moreover, resipi-
* See Petavius, De Trin., vi., 1. 4.
t See Fred. Spanheim s Dub. Evangelica, pars 3 a , dub. vii. ; Camp
bell, On the Four Gospels, vol. i., p. 292, sqq.
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 53
scentia was no such novelty, Lactantius having al
ready shown the way in a rendering with which now
so much fault was found. Taking his ground rigidly
on etymology, Beza was quite right ; but it was also
true, which he did not take account of, that fxeravoia,
even before it had been assumed into scriptural usage,
and much more after, had acquired a superadded
sense of regret for the past, or hadiwist (had-I-wist),
as our ancestors called it ; which, if pcenitentia
seemed to embody too exclusively, his resipiscentia,
making at least as serious an omission, hardly embod
ied at all. On the whole, I can not but think that it
would have been better to leave pcenitentia undis
turbed, while yet how much on either side there was
here to be urged !
It may be worth while to consider a little in what
ways our own Translators have sought to overcome
some of these difficulties of translation, which have
met them, as they have met all others, so to speak,
on the threshold of their work. Of course, wherever
they acquiesced in preceding solutions of these diffi
culties, they adopted and made them their own ; and
we have a right to deal with them as responsible for
such.
Let us take, first, a question which in all transla
tion is constantly recurring this, namely : In what
manner ought technical words of the one language,
which have no exact equivalents in the other, to be
rendered ; measures, for instance, of wet and dry, as
54 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
the fiaros and xopo? of Luke xvi. 6, 7 ; the pei-pii-fa of
John ii. 6 ; coins, such as the <5^pa^fxov of Matt. xvii.
24 ; the rfrar*^ of Matt. xvii. 27 ; the tya^ of Luke
xv. 8 ; titles of honor and authority which have long
since ceased to be, and to which, at best, only remote
resemblances now exist, as the /^a^are^ and vswxopo^
of Acts xix. 35 ; the A<r<ap^aj of the same chapter,
ver. 31 ; the AvMifaros of Acts xiii. 7 ?
The ways in which such words may be dealt with
reduce themselves to four, and our Translators, by
turns, have recourse to them all. The first, which is
only possible when the etymology of the word is clear
and transparent, is to seize this, and to produce a new
technical word which shall utter over again in the
language of the translation what the original word
uttered to its own. This course was chosen when
they rendered /Aps.os irayos, " Mars-hill" (Acts xvii.
22), AidoV^uTov, < the Pavement (John xix. 13) ; when
Sir John Cheke rendered IxcM-oVa^o^, * hundreder
(Matt. viii. 5), tfsXTjvjaJo/xgvo^, mooned (Matt. iv. 24).
But the number of words which allow of this repro
duction is comparatively small. Of many the etymol
ogy is lost ; many others do not admit the formation
of a corresponding word in another language. This
scheme, therefore, whatever advantages it may possess,
can of necessity be very sparingly applied.
Another method, then, is to choose some generic
word, such as must needs exist in both languages, the
genus of which the word to be rendered is the species,
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 55
and, without attempting any more accurate designa
tion, to employ this. Our Translators have frequently
taken this course ; they have done so, rendering /3<x<r<>,
xo pocr, x c ""f, alike by < measure (Luke xvi. 6,7; Rev.
vi. 6), with no endeavors to mark the capacity of the
measure ; fya;^ by " piece of silver" (Luke xv. 8),
tfTa.Tfy by " piece of money" (Matt. xvii. 27), fatfaaros
by deputy (Acts xiii. 8), cVfaT^oj by magistrates
(Acts xvi. 2li), fxayoi by "wise men" (Matt. ii. 1).
A manifest disadvantage which attends this course is
the want of a close correspondence between the origi
nal and the copy, a certain vagueness which is given
to the latter, with the obliteration of strongly-marked
lines.
Or, thirdly, they may seek out some special word
in the language into which the translation is being
made, which shall be more or less an approximative
equivalent for that in whose place it stands. We
have two not very happy illustrations of this scheme
in c town-clerk, as the rendering of /pa^a-re^ (Acts
xix. 35), Easter as that of iToufya (Acts xii. 4).
The turning of "Agrees into < Diana (Acts xix. 24),
of Epfi% into Mercurius (Acts xiv. 12), are, in fact,
other examples of the same, although our Translators
themselves, no doubt, were not aware of it, seeing
that in their time the essential distinction between
the Greek and the Italian mythologies, and the fact
that the names of the deities in the former were only
adapted with more or less fitness to the deities of the
56 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
latter, was unknown even to scholars. This method
of translating has its own serious drawback, that, al
though it often gives a distinct and vigorous, yet it
runs the danger of conveying a more or less false,
impression. Except by a very singular felicity, and
one which will not often occur, the word selected,
while it conveys some truth, must also convey some
error bound up with the truth. Thus, xofyav-r^ is not
a 4 farthing (Mark xii. 42), nor ^vapov a penny
(Matt. xx. 2), nor psrpr.rrs a firkin (John ii. 6) ;
not, I mean, our farthing, or penny, or firkin. So,
too, if u piece of money" is a vague translation of
fya^rj (Luke xv. 8), Wiclif s bezant and Tyndale s
4 grote involve absolute error. Add to this the dan
ger that the tone and coloring of one time and age
may thus be substituted for that of another, of the
modern world for the ancient, as when Holland, in
his translation of Livy, constantly renders " Pontifex
Maximus" by < Archbishop, and it will be seen that
the inconveniences attending this course are not small.
There remains only one other way possible : To
take the actual word of the original, and to transplant
it unchanged, or at most with a slight change in the
termination, into the other tongue, in the trust that
time and use will, little by little, cause the strange
ness of it to disappear, and that its meaning will grad
ually be acquired even by the unlearned reader. We
have done this in respect of many Hebrew words in
the Old Testament, as < Urim, Thummirn, c epliod,
ON SOME QUESTIONS OP TRANSLATION. 57
4 shekel, cherub, i seraphim, cor, bath, ephah ;
and with some Greek in the New, as tetrarch, < prose
lyte, Paradise, pentecost, < Messias ; or, by adopting
these words from preceding translations have acqui
esced in the fitness of this course. The disadvantage
of it evidently is, that in many cases the adopted
word continues always an exotic for the mass of the
people : it never tells its own story to them, nor be
comes, so to speak, transparent with its own meaning.
It is impossible to adhere rigidly and constantly to
any one of these devices for representing the things
of one condition of society by the words of another ;
they must all in their turn be appealed to, even as
they all will be found barely sufficient. Our Trans
lators have employed them all. Their inclination, as
compared with others, is perhaps toward the second,
the least ambitious, but at the same time the safest,
of these courses. Once or twice they have chosen it
when one of the other ways appears manifestly pref
erable, as in their rendering of dvtLVaros by < deputy
(Acts xiii. 7, 8, 12), proconsul being ready made to
their hands, with Wiclif s authority for its use.
There is another question, doubtless a perplexing
one, which our Translators had to solve ; I confess
that I much regret the solution at which they have
arrived. It was this : how should they deal with the
Hebrew proper names of the Old Testament, which
had gradually assumed a form somewhat different from
their original on the lips of Greek-speaking Jews, and
58 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
which appeared in these their later Hellenistic forms
in the New Testament ? Should they bring them back
to their original shapes ? or suffer them to stand in
their later deflections ? Thus, meeting HXiac in the
Greek text, should they render it Elias or Elijah ?
I am persuaded that for the purpose of keeping vivid
and strong the relations between the Old and New
Testament in the minds of the great body of English
hearers and readers of Scripture, they should have
recurred to the Old Testament names ; which are not
merely the Hebrew, but also the English names, and
which, therefore, had their right to a place in the
English text ; that HXi aj, for instance, should have
been translated into that which is not merely its He
brew, but also its English equivalent, Elijah, and so
with the others. Let us just seek to realize to our
selves the difference in the amount of awakened atten
tion among a country congregation, which Matt. xvii.
10 would create, if it were read thus, " And his dis
ciples asked him, saying, Why then say the Scribes
that Elijah must first come ?" as compared with what
it now is likely to create. As it is, we have a double
nomenclature, and as respects the unlearned members
of the Church, a sufficiently perplexing one, for a
large number of the kings and prophets, and other
personages, of the earlier Covenant. Not to speak of
4 Elijah and Elias, we have Elisha and Eliseus,
Hosea and Osee, Isaiah and Esaias, < Uzziah
and Ozias, Hezekiah and Ezechias, Korah and
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 59
* Core (commonly pronounced as a monosyllable in
our National Schools), Rahab and Rachab, and
(most unfortunate of all) Joshua and i Jesus.
It is, indeed, hardly possible to exaggerate the con
fusion of which the < Jesus of Heb. iv. 8 must be the
occasion to the great body of unlearned English read
ers and hearers, not to speak of a slight perplexity
arising from the same cause at Acts vii. 45. The
fourth chapter of the Hebrews is anyhow hard enough ;
it is only with strained attention that we follow the
Apostle s argument. But when to its own difficulty
is added for many the confusion arising from the fact
that Jesus is here used, not of Him whose name is
above every name, but of the son of Nun, known ev
erywhere in the Old Testament by the name of Josh
ua, the perplexity to many becomes hopeless. It is
in vain that our Translators have added in the mar
gin, " that is Joshua ;" for all practical purposes of
avoiding misconception the note, in most of our Bibles
omitted, is useless. In putting Jesus here they have
departed from all our preceding Versions, and from
many foreign. Even if they had counted that the
letter of their obligation as Translators, which yet I
can not think, bound them to this, one would willingly
have here seen a breach of the letter, that so they
might better keep the spirit.
There is another difficulty, entailing, however, no
such serious consequences, even if the best way of
meeting it is not chosen : how, namely, to deal with
60 ON SOME QUESTIONS OP TRANSLATION.
Greek and Latin proper names? to make them in
their terminations English, or to leave them as we
find them ? Our Translators in this matter adhere to
no constant rule. It is not merely that some proper
names drop their classical terminations, as Paul,
and 4 Saul, and Urban, * while others, as * Sylvanus,
which by the same rule should be Sylvan, and Mer-
curius, retain it. This inconsistency is prevalent in
all books which have to do with classical antiquity.
There is almost no Roman history in which i Pompey
and i Antony do not stand side by side with i Augus
tus and Tiberius. Merivale s, who always writes
4 Pompeius and Antonius, is almost the only excep
tion which I know. If this were all, there would be
little to find fault with in an irregularity almost, if
not quite, universal, and scarcely to be avoided with
out so much violence done to usage as to make it
doubtful whether the gain exceeded the loss.f But
in our Version the same name occurs now with a Latin
ending, now with an English ; as though it were now
Pompeius and now Pompey, now Antonius and now
4 Antony, in the same volume, or even the same page,
of some Roman history. Consistency in such details
is avowedly difficult ; and the difficulty of attaining it
* So it ought to be printed in our modern Bibles, not Urbane/
which is now deceptive, though it was not so according to the orthog
raphy of 1611; it suggests a trisyllable, and the termination of a
female name. It is Oip/?ai/oV in the original.
t See an article with the title, Orthographic Mutineers, in the Mis
cellaneous Essays of De Quincey.
ON SOME QUESTIONS OP TRANSLATION. 61
must have been much enhanced by the many hands
that were engaged in our Version. But it is strange
that not in different parts of the New Testament only,
which proceeded from different hands, we have now
< Marcus (Col. iv. 10 ; Philem. 24 ; 1 Pet. v. 13), and
now < Mark (Acts xii. 12, 25 ; 2 Tim. iv. 11) ; now
Jeremias (Matt. xvi. 14), and now < Jeremy (Matt,
ii. 17) ; now * Apollos (Acts xviii. 24 ; xix. 1), now
6 Apollo * (1 Cor. iii. 22 ; iv. 6) ; now " Simon, son of
Jona" (John i. 42), and now " Simon, son of Jonas"
(John xxi. 15, 16, 17) ; now Timotheus (Acts xvi.
1), and now Timothy (Heb. xiii. 21) ; but in the
same chapter we have T^Msos rendered first c Timothy*
(2 Cor. i. 1), and then Timotheus (ib., ver. 19).
In like manner the inhabitants of Crete (Kp^c) are
now Cretes (Acts ii. 11), which can not be right,
and now < Cretians (Tit. i. 12).
There are other inconsistencies in the manner of
dealing with proper names. Thus, lApeios Uayos is
4 Areopagus at Acts xvii. 19, while three verses fur
ther on the same is rendered Mars-hill. In which
of these ways it ought to have been translated may
very fairly be a question ; but one way or other, once
chosen, should have been adhered to. Then, again,
if our Translators gave, as they properly did, the Latin
termination to the names of cities, Ephesws, Mile-
* This latter form, which was manifestly inconvenient, as confound
ing the name of an eminent Christian teacher with that of a heathen
deity, has been tacitly removed from later editions of our Bible, but
existed in all the earlier.
62 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
tws, * not Ephesos, Miletos, they should have done
this throughout, and written Assws (Acts xx. 13, 14),
and Pergamws (Rev. i. 11 ; ii. 12), not Assos and
i Pergamos. In regard of this last, it would have
been better still if they had employed the form Per-
gamtttfi ; for while no doubt there are examples of
the feminine Us^ya^os in Greek authors,! they are
excessively rare, and the city s name is almost always
written TLe^ya^ov in Greek, and Pergamum in Latin. J
It is the carrying of one rule through which one
desires in these matters, and this is not seldom ex
actly what we miss. Thus, seeing that in the enu
meration of the precious stones which constitute the
foundations of the New Jerusalem (Rev. xxi. 19, 20),
all with the exception of two, which are capable of
receiving an English termination, do receive it, beryl*
and not beryllus, chrysolite || and not chrysolithus,
4 jacinth and not jacinthus, we might fairly ask that
these should not be exceptionally treated. It should
therefore be chrysoprase, and not i chrysoprasus.
* A singular mistake, the use of Miletum at 2 Tim. iv. 20, has
been often noted. This is one of the errors into which our Transla
tors would probably not have fallen themselves, but have inherited it
from the Versions preceding, all which have it. Yet it is strange that
they did not correct it here, seeing that it, or a similar error, Mileton/
had at Acts xx. 15, 17, been by them discovered and removed, and
the city s name rightly given, Miletus.
t Ptol., v. 2, cf. Lobeck s Phrynichus, p. 422.
J Xenophon, Anab., vii. 8, 8 ; Strabo, xiii. 4 ; Pliny, H. N. t xxxv.
46.
|| Mis-spelt chrysolite/ and the etymology obscured, in all our
modern editions, but correctly given in the exemplar edition of 1611.
ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION. 63
2a<Jio is somewhat more difficult to deal with ; but
the word is as much an adjective here as rfap&voj at
Rev. iv. 3, x/dos, which is there expressed, being here
understood (we have " Sardius lapis" in Tertullian),
and it would have been better to translate " a sardine
stone" here as has been done there ; tfap&ov, not tfap&os,
is the Greek name of this stone, and sarda the Latin,
which last Holland has naturalized in English, and
written < sard. The choice lay between " sardine
stone" and i sard ; unless, indeed, they had boldly
ventured upon i ruby. 4 Sardius, which they have
employed, as it seems to me, is anyhow incorrect,
though the Vulgate may be quoted in its favor.
Hammond affirms, and I must needs consider with
reason, that " Tres Tabernas" should have been left in
its Latin form (Acts xxviii. 15), and not rendered
" The Three Taverns." It is a proper name, just as
much as "Appii Forum," which occurs in the same
verse, and which rightly we have not resolved into
" The Market of Appius." Had we left " Tres Ta-
bernae" untouched (I observe De Wette does so), we
should then have only dealt as the sacred historian
himself has dealt with it, who has merely written it in
Greek letters, not turned into equivalent Greek words.
As little should we have turned it into English.
Sometimes our Translators have carried too far, as
I can not but think, the turning of qualitative geni
tives into adjectives. Oftentimes it is prudently done,
and with a due recognition of the Hebrew idiom which
64 ON SOME QUESTIONS OF TRANSLATION.
has moulded the Greek phrase with which they have
to deal. Thus, " forgetful hearer" is unquestionably
better than " hearer of forgetfulness" (Jam. i. 25) ;
" his natural face" than " face of his nature," or " of
his generation" fib.); " unjust steward" than " stew
ard of injustice" (Luke xvi. 8). Yet at other times
they have done this without necessity, and occasion
ally with manifest loss. " Son of his love," which
the Rheims version has, would have been better than
"beloved son"* (Col. i. 13), and certainly "the
body of our vileness," or " of our humiliation," bet
ter than " our vile body ;" " the body of his glory"
than " his glorious body" (Phil. iii. 21). " The un
certainty of riches" would be better than " uncer
tain riches" (1 Tim. vi. 17), " children of the curse",
than " cursed children" (2 Pet. ii. 14). " The glo
rious liberty of the children of God" (Rom. viii. 21),
not merely comes short of, but expresses something
very different from, " the liberty of the glory of the
children of God" (see Alford, in loco). Doubtless
the accumulated genitives are here awkward to deal
with ; it was probably to avoid them that the transla
tion assumed its present shape ; but still, when higher
interests are at stake, such awkwardness must be en
dured, and elsewhere our Translators have not shrunk
from it, as at Rev. xvi. 19 : u The cup of the wine of
the fierceness of his wrath."
* Augustine (De Trin., xv. 19) lays a dogmatic stress on the geni
tive (" Filius caritatls ejus nullus est alius, quam qui de substantid Ejns
est yenitus"), but this may be questioned.
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 65
CHAPTER IV.
ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
LET me here, before entering on this subject, make
one remark, which, having an especial reference to
the subject-matter of this and the following chapter,
more or less bears upon all. It has been already ob
served that the advantages doubtless were great, of
coming, as our Translators did, in the rear of other
translators, of inheriting from those who went before
them so large a stock of work well done, of successful
renderings, of phrases consecrated already by long
usage in the Church. It was a signal gain that they
had not, in the fabric which they were constructing,
to make a new framework throughout, but needed only
here and there to insert new materials where the old
from any cause were faulty or out of date ; that of
them it was not demanded that they should make a
translation where none existed before ; nor yet that
they should bring a good translation out of a bad or
an indifferent one ; but only a best, and that not out
66 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
of one, but out of many good ones, preceding. None
who have ever engaged in the work of translating but
will freely acknowledge that in this their gain was
most real ; and they well understood how to turn these
advantages to account.
Yet vast as these doubtless were, they were not
without certain accompanying drawbacks. He who
revises, especially when he comes to the task of revis
ion with a confidence, here abundantly justified, in the
general excellency of that which he is revising, is in
constant danger of allowing his vigilance to sleep, and
of thus passing over errors, which he would not him
self have originated, had he been thrown altogether
on his own resources. I can not but think that in
this way the watchfulness of our Translators, or revi
sers rather, has been sometimes remitted ; and that
errors and inaccuracies, which they would not them
selves have introduced, they have yet passed by and
allowed. A large proportion of the errors in our
Translation are thus an inheritance from former ver
sions. This is not, indeed, any excuse, for they who
passed them by became responsible for them ; but is
merely mentioned as accounting for the existence of
many. With this much of introduction, I will pass
on to the proper subject of this chapter.
Our Translators sometimes create distinctions such
as have no counterparts in their original, by using
two or more words to render at different places, or it
may be at the same place, a single word in the Greek
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 67
text. I would not by any means affirm that such va
rieties of rendering are not sometimes, nay frequently,
inevitable. It manifestly would not be possible to
represent constantly one word in one language by one
in another. If this has ever been proposed as an in
flexible rule, it must have been on the assumption that
words in one language cover exactly the same spaces
of meaning which other words do in another, that they
have exactly the same many-sidedness, the same elas
ticity, the same power of being applied, it may be,
now in a good sense, now in a bad. But nothing is
further from the case. Words are enclosures from
the great outfield of meanings ; but different languages
have enclosed on different schemes, and words in
different languages which are precisely co-extensive
with one another, are much rarer than we incuriously
assume.
It is easy to illustrate this, the superior elasticity
of a word in one language to that of one which is in
part its equivalent in another. Thus, we have no
word in English which at once means heavenly mes
sengers and earthly, with only the context determin
ing which is intended. There was no choice, there
fore, but to render c/ y^sXoi by messengers at Luke
vii. 24 ; ix. 52 ; Jam. ii. 25 ; however it was translated
angels in each other passage of the New Testament
where it occurs. Again, no word in English has the
power which pa-yog has in Greek, of being used at will
in an honorable sense or a dishonorable. There was
68 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED
no help, therefore, but to render fxa^oi by wise men, *
or some such honorable designation, Matt. ii. 1 ; and
M-a^of by i sorcerer/ Acts xiii. 6.
Thus, again, it would have been difficult to repre
sent nap<xxX?j<ro, applied now to the Holy Spirit (John
xiv. 16, 26), and now to Christ (1 John i. 21), by any
single word. * Paraclete would alone have been pos
sible ; and such uniformity of rendering, if indeed it
could be called rendering at all, would have been
dearly purchased by the loss of Comforter and Ad
vocate both of them Latin words, it is true, but
much nearer to the heart and understanding of Eng
lishmen than the Greek Paraclete could ever have
become.f
So, too, it would have been unadvisable to render
xypis as the compellation of one person by another, al
ways Sir, or always Lord. The word has a wider
range than either of these two ; it is only the two to
gether which cover an equal extent. Sir, in many
cases, would not be respectful enough ; Lord in some
* Milton, indeed, speaks of these wise men as the "star-led wiz
ards," and wizard is the word which Sir John Cheke employs in his
translation of St. Matthew; but the word is scarcely honorable enough
for the n&yoi of this place, nor opprobrious enough for the ^d-yof of the
Acts.
t We should not forget, in measuring the fitness of Comforter/
that the fundamental idea of Comforter/ according to its etymology
and its early use, is that of Strengthener/ and not Consoler/ even
as the Trafxi-cAr/ros is one who, being summoned to the side of the ac
cused or imperilled man (advocatus), stands by to aid and to encour
age. See the admirable note in Hare s Mission of the Comforter, pp.
521-527.
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 69
would be too respectful (John xx. 15). Our Trans
lators have prudently employed both; and in most
cases have shown a fine tact in their selection of one
or the other. My only doubt is, whether, in the con
versation of our Lord with the Samaritan woman (John
iv.), they should not have changed the * Sir, which is
perfectly in its place at ver. 11, where she is barely
respectful to her unknown interrogator, into Lord
at ver. 15, or, if not there, yet certainly at ver. 19.
The Rheims version, beginning, as we do, with < Sir,
already has exchanged this for 4 Lord at ver. 15 ; and
thus delicately indicates the growing reverence of the
woman for the mysterious stranger whom she has met
beside Jacob s well.
We do not, then, make a general complaint against
our Translators that they have varied their words
where the original does not vary ; oftentimes this va
riation was inevitable ; or, if not inevitable, yet was
certainly the more excellent way ; but that they have
done this where it was wholly gratuitous, and where
sometimes the force, vigor, and precision of the origi
nal have consequently suffered not a little. It is true
that the adoption of this course was not on their parts
altogether of oversight ; and it will be only fair to
hear what they, in an " Address to the Reader," now
seldom or never reprinted, but, on many accounts,
well worthy of being so,* say upon this matter ; and
* Their "pedantic and uncouth preface" Symonds calls it. There
would certainly be pedantry in any one now writing with such rich-
70 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
how they defend what they have done. "Another
thing," they say, " we think good to admonish thee
of (gentle reader), that we have not tied ourselves to
an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words,
as some peradventure would wish that we had done,
because they observe, that some learned men some
where have been as exact as they could that way.
Truly, that we might not vary from the sense of that
which we had translated before, if the word signified
the same in both places (for there be some words be
not of the same sense everywhere), we were especially
careful, and made a conscience according to our duty.
But that we should express the same notion in the
same particular word ; as, for example, if we translate
the Hebrew or Greek word once by purpose, never to
call it intent; if one where journeying, never travel
ling ; if one where think, never suppose ; if one where
pain, never ache ; if one where joy, never gladness,
&c., thus to mince the matter, we thought to savor
more of curiosity than wisdom, and that rather it
would breed scorn in the atheist, than bring profit to
ness and fullness of learned allusion, a pedantry from which our com
paratively scanty stores of classical and ecclesiastical learning would
effectually preserve most among us. But this preface is, on many
grounds, a most interesting study, as giving at considerable length,
and in various aspects, the view of our Translators themselves in
regard of the work which they had undertaken ; and uncouth as this
objector calls it, every true knower of our language will acknowledge
it a masterpiece of English. Certainly it would not be easy to find a
more beautiful or affecting piece of writing than the twenty or thirty
lines with which the fourth paragraph, " On the praise of the Holy
Scriptures," concludes.
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 71
the godly reader. For is the kingdom of God become
words or syllables ? why should we be in bondage to
them, if we may be free, use one precisely when we
may use another no less fit, as commodiously ? We
might also be charged (by scoffers) with some unequal
dealing toward a great number of good English words.
For as it is written of a certain great philosopher,
that he should say, that those logs were happy that
were made images to be worshipped ; for their fellows,
as good as they, lay for blocks behind the fire : so if
we should say, as it were, unto certain words, ; Stand
up higher, have a place in the Bible always, and to
others of like quality, Get ye hence, be banished for
ever, we might be taxed peradventure with St. James s
words, namely, To be partial in our selves and judges
of evil thoughts. "
This is their explanation to me, I confess, an in
sufficient one, whatever ingenuity may be ascribed to
it ; and for these reasons. It is clearly the office of
translators to put the reader of the translation, as
nearly as may be, on the same vantage-ground as the
reader of the original ; to give him, so far as this is
attainable, the same assistances for understanding his
author s meaning. Now, every exact and laborious
student of his Greek Testament knows that there is
almost no such help in some passage of difficulty, doc
trinal or other, as to turn to his Greek Concordance,
to search out every other passage in which the word
or words wherein the difficulty seems chiefly to reside,
72 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
occur, and closely to observe their usage there. It is
manifestly desirable that the reader of the English
Bible should have, as nearly as possible, the same re
source. But if, where there is one and the same word
in the original, there are two, three, half a dozen, in
the version, he is in the main deprived of it. Thus,
he hears the doctrine of the atonement discussed ; he
would fain turn to all the passages where i atonement
occurs ; he finds only one (Rom. v. 11), and of course
is unaware that in other passages where he meets < rec
onciling, and < reconciliation (Rom. xi. 15 ; 2 Cor.
v. 18, 19), it is the same word in the original. In
words like this, which are, so to speak, sedes doctrince ,
one regrets, above all, variation and uncertainty in
rendering.
Thus, it will sometimes happen, that when St. Paul
is pursuing a close train of reasoning, and one which
demands severest attention, the difficulties of his ar
gument, not small in themselves, are aggravated by
the use of different words where he has used the
same ; the word being sometimes the very key of the
whole ; as, for instance, in the fourth chapter of the
Romans. Aoylfy^ai occurs eleven times in this chap
ter. We may say that it is the key- word to St. Paul s
argument throughout, being every where employed most
strictly in the same sense, and that a technical and
theological. But our Translators have no fixed rule
of rendering it. Twice they render it count (ver.
3, 5) ; six times < impute (ver. 6, 8, 11, 22, 23, 24) ;
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 73
and three times < reckon (ver. 4, 9, 10) ; while at
Gal. iii. 6, they introduce a fourth rendering, ac
count. Let the student read this chapter, employing
everywhere ; reckon, or, which would be better, ev
erywhere impute, and observe how much of clearness
and precision St. Paul s argument would in this way
acquire.
In other places no doctrine is in danger of being
obscured, but still the change is uncalled for and in
jurious. Take, for instance, Rev. iv. 4 : " And round
about the throne (fyo vou) were four-and-twenty seats"
(fyovoi). It is easy to see the motive of this variation ;
and yet if the inspired Apostle was visited with no
misgivings lest the creature should seem to be en
croaching on the dignity of the Creator, and it is clear
that he was not on the contrary, he has, in the most
marked manner, brought the throne of God and the
thrones of the elders together certainly the Trans
lators need not have been more careful than he had
been, nor made the elders to sit on seats, and only
God on a throne. This august company of the four-
and-twenty elders represents the Church of the Old
and the New Testament, each in its twelve heads ;
but how much is lost by turning their i thrones into
4 seats ; for example, the connection of this Scripture
with Matt. xix. 28 ; and with all the .promises that
Christ s servants should not merely see his glory, but
share it, that they should be tfJvfyovoi with Him (Rev.
iii. 21), this little change obscuring the truth that
4
74 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
they are here set before us as cfu(x/3aa jXjovTscr (1 Cor.
iv. 8 ; 2 Tim. ii. 12), as kings reigning with Him !
This truth is saved, indeed, by the mention of the
golden crowns on their heads, but is implied also in
their sitting, as they do in the Greek but not in the
English, on seats of equal dignity with his, on thrones/
The same scruple which dictated this change makes
itself felt through the whole translation of the Apoca
lypse, and to a manifest loss. In that book is set
forth, as nowhere else in Scripture, the hellish parody
of the heavenly kingdom ; the conflict between the true
King of the earth and the usurping king ; the loss,
therefore, is evident, when for " Satan s throne" is
substituted " Satan s seat" (ii. 13) ; for " the throne
of the beast," " the seat of the beast" (xvi. 10).
A great master of language will often implicitly
refer in some word which he uses to the same word,
or, it may be, to another of the same group or family,
which he or some one else has just used before ; and
where there is evidently intended such an allusion, it
should, wherever this is possible, be reproduced in
the translation. There are two examples of this in
St. Paul s discourse at Athens, both of which have
been effaced in our Version. Of those who encoun
tered Paul in the market at Athens, some said, " He
seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods" (Acts
xvii. 18). They use the word xa.Ta^s\e g ; and he,
remembering and taking up this word, retorts it upon
them : " Whom, therefore, ye ignorantly worship, Him
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 75
set I forth (xara^s XXw) unto you" (ver. 23). He has
their charge present in his mind, and this is his an
swer to their charge. It would more plainly appear
such to the English reader, if the Translators, having
used " setter forth" before, had thus returned upon
the word, instead of substituting, as they have done,
declare for it. The Rheims version, which has
4 preacher and preach, after the Vulgate annuntia-
tor and * annuntio, has been careful to retain and
indicate the connection.
But the finer and more delicate turns of the divine
rhetoric of St. Paul are more seriously affected by
another oversight in the same verse. We make him
there say, "As I passed by, and beheld your devo
tions, I found an altar with this inscription, To the
Unknown God (d^vwovw s). Whom, therefore, ye
ignorantly (a/voouv-rsc:) worship, Him declare I unto
you." But if anything is clear, it is that St. Paul in
ayvooGvrss intends to take up the preceding dyvutfru ;
the chime of the words, and also, probably, the fact
of their etymological connection, leading him to this.
He has spoken of their altar to an " Unknown God,"
and he proceeds, " whom, therefore, ye worship un
knowing, Him declare I unto you." Ignorantly has
the further objection that it conveys more of rebuke
than St. Paul, who is sparing his hearers to the utter
most, intended.
In other passages also the point of a sentence lies
in the recurrence and repetition of the same word,
76 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
which yet they have failed to repeat ; as in these which
follow :
1 Cor. iii. 17. "If any man defile (<pdspsi) the
temple of God, him shall God destroy (<pdspsr)." It
is the fearful law of retaliation which is here pro
claimed. He who ruins shall himself be ruined in
turn. It shall be done to him, as he has done to the
temple of God. Undoubtedly it is hard to get the
right word, which will suit in both places. Corrupt*
is the first which suggests itself; yet it would not do
to say " If any man corrupt the temple of God, him
shall God corrupt" The difficulty which our Trans
lators felt, it is evident that the Vulgate felt the same,
which, in like manner, has changed its word : " Si
quis autem templum Dei violaverit, disperdet ilium
Deus." Yet why should not the verse be rendered,
" If any man destroy the temple of God, him shall
God destroy" ?
Matt. xxi. 41. A difficulty of exactly the same
kind exists here ; where yet the xaxoucr xaxw? of the
original ought, in some way or other, to have been
preserved ; as in this way it might very sufficiently
be : " He will miserably destroy those miserable men."
Neither would it have been hard at 2 Thess. i. 6,
to retain the play upon words, and to have rendered
roif 0Xi/3outfiv ufjwfc dxr^iv, " affliction to them that afflict
you," instead of " tribulation to them that trouble
you," there being no connection in English between
the words tribulation and c trouble, though some-
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 77
thing of a likeness in sound : while yet the very pur
pose of the passage is to show that what wicked men
have measured to others shall be measured to them
again.
Let me indicate other examples of the same kind,
where the loss is manifest. Thus, if at Gal. iii. 22,
oWxXgitfgv is translated hath concluded, tfu/xXsio^svoj
in the next verse, which takes it up, should not be
rendered shut up. The Vulgate has well, couclu-
sit and conclusi. Let the reader substitute hath
shut up for 4 hath concluded in ver. 22, and then
read the passage. He will be at once aware of the
gain. In like manner, let him take Rom. vii. 7, and
read " I had not known lust (gVidujxi av) except the law
had said, Thou shalt not lust (QJX s^Av^sis) ;" or
Phil. ii. 13 : " It is God which worketh (o svspywv) in
you both to will and to work (TO svspysr v ) ;" and the
passages will come out with a strength and clearness
which they have not now. So, too, if at 2 Thess. ii. 6,
TO xa-r^ov is rendered " what withholdeth" 6 xars^wv in
the verse following should not be " he who letleth."
While, undoubtedly, there is significance in the imper
sonal TO xa-rs ^ov exchanged for the personal 6 xa-rs ^wv,
there can be no doubt that they refer to one and the
same person or institution ; but this is obscured by
the change of the word. So, too, I would have gladly
seen the connection between Xtico/xsvoj and XgVgrai at
Jam. i. 4, 5, reproduced in our Version. Lacking
and < lack, which our previous versions had, would
78 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
have done it. The " patience and comfort of the
Scriptures" (Rom. xv. 4) is derived from " the God
of patience and comfort" (ver. 5) ; this St. Paul would
teach, who uses both times -TrapaxX^ic; : but there is a
slight obscuration of the connection between the < com
fort and the Author of the comfort in our Version,
which, on the second occasion, has for comfort need
lessly substituted consolation.
How many readers have read in the English the
third chapter of St. John, and missed the remarkable
connection between our Lord s words at ver. 11, and
the Baptist s taking up of those words at ver. 32 ;
and this because ftaprupia is translated witness on the
former occasion, and < testimony on the latter!
Why, again, we may ask, should v{3pis */ ^ia be
" hurt and damage" at Acts xxvii. 10 ; and " harm
and loss," at their recurrence, ver. 21 ? Both ren
derings are good, and it would not much import which
had been selected ; but whichever had been employed
on the first occasion ought also to have been employed
on the second. St. Paul, repeating in the midst of
the danger the very words which he had used when
counselling his fellow-voyagers how they might avoid
that danger, would remind them, that so he might
obtain a readier hearing now, of that neglected warn
ing of his, which the sequel had only justified too well.
These are less important, and might well be passed
by, if anything could be counted unimportant which
helps or hinders ever so little the more exact setting
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 79
forth of the Word of God. Thus, in the parable of
the Laborers in the Vineyard (Matt. xx. 1), fa&rftforqc
is householder, ver. 1 ; it should scarcely be " good
man of the house" at ver. 11.* As little should the
"governor of the feast" of John ii. 8, be " the ruler
of the feast" in the very next verse ; or the " goodly
apparel," of Jam. ii. 2, be the " gay clothing" of the
verse following, the words of the original in each case
remaining unchanged.
Again, it would have been clearly desirable that
where in two or even three Gospels exactly the same
words, recording the same event or the same conver
sation, occur in the original, the identity should have
been expressed by the use of exactly the same words
in the English. This continually is not the case.
Thus, Matt. xxvi. 41, and Mark xiv. 38, exactly cor
respond in the Greek, while in the translation the
words appear in St. Matthew : " Watch and pray, that
ye enter not into temptation ; the spirit indeed is wil
ling, but the flesh is weak ;" in St. Mark : " Watch
ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation ; the spirit
truly is ready, but the flesh is weak." So, too, in a
quotation from the Old Testament, where two or more
sacred writers cite it in identical words, this fact
* Scholefield (Hints, p. 8) further objects to this last rendering as
having " a quaintness in it not calculated to recommend it." But it
had nothing of the kind at the time our Translation was made. Com
pare Spenser, Fairy Queen, iv. 5, 34 :
" There entering in, they found the goodman self
Full busily upon his work ybent."
80 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
ought to be reproduced in the version. It is not so
in respect of the important quotation from Gen. xv. 6 ;
but on the three occasions that it is quoted (Rom. iv.
3 ; Gal. iii. 6 ; Jam. ii. 23) it appears with variations,
slight, indeed, and not in the least affecting the sense,
but yet which would better have been avoided. Again,
the phrase orf/j^ sju5ia^ occurring twice in the New
Testament, has so fixed, and, I may say, so technical
a significance, referring as it does to a continually-
recurring phrase of the Old Testament, that it should
not be rendered on one occasion, " a sweet-smelling
savor" (Eph. v. 2), on the other, " an odor of a sweet
smell" (Phil. iv. 18).
Sometimes interesting and important relations be
tween different parts of Scripture would come out
more strongly, if what is precisely similar in the ori
ginal had reappeared as precisely similar in the trans
lation. The Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Co-
lossians profess to have been sent from Rome to the
East by the same messenger (cf. Eph. vi. 21,22;
Col. iv, 7, 8) ; they were written, therefore, we may
confidently conclude, about the same time. When
we come to examine their internal structure, this ex
actly bears out what under such circumstances we
should expect in letters proceeding from the pen of
St. Paul great differences, but at the same time re
markable points of contact and resemblance, both in
the thoughts and in the words which are the garment
of the thoughts. Paley has urged this as an internal
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 81
evidence for the truth of those statements which these
Epistles make about themselves. This internal evi
dence doubtless exists even now for the English read
er ; but it would press itself on his attention much
more strongly, if the exact resemblances in the origi
nals had been represented by exact resemblances in
the copies. This oftentimes has not been the case.
Striking coincidences in language between one Epistle
and the other, which exist in the Greek, do not exist
in the English. For example, svs p/sia is c working,
Eph. i. 19 ; it is < operation, Col. ii. 12 ; ra.ifem<ppotfvvn
is * lowliness, Eph. iv. 2 ; " humbleness of mind," Col.
iii. 12 ; tf^a/Si/Sa^o /jisvov is < compacted, Eph. iv. 16 ;
4 knit together, Col. ii. 19, with much more of the
same kind ; as is accurately brought out by the late
Professor Blunt,* who draws one of the chief motives
why the Clergy should study the Scriptures in the
original languages, from the shortcomings which exist
in the translations of them.
It may be interesting, before leaving this branch
of the subject, to take a few words, and to note the
variety of rendering to which they are submitted in
our Version. I have not taken them altogether at
random, yet some of these are by no means the most
remarkable instances in their kind. They will, how
ever, sufficiently illustrate the matter in hand.
, l to reject (Mark vi. 26) ; < to despise (Luke
* Duties of the Parish Priest, p. 71. The whole section (pp. 47-
76) is eminently instructive.
4*
82 UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED.
x. 16) ; to bring to nothing (1 Cor. i. 19) ; to frus
trate (Gal. ii. 21) ; to disannul (Gal. iii. 15) ; to
cast off (1 Tim. v. 12).
AvaflVcwo w, to turn upside down (Actsxvii. 6);
to make an uproar (Acts xxi. 38) ; to trouble
(Gal. v. 12).
AiroxaXu^c, 4 revelation (Rom. ii. 5) ; manifesta
tion (Rom. viii. 19) ; coming (1 Cor. i. 7) ; 4 ap
pearing (1 Pet. i. 7).
AS\SU%U, to entice (Jam. i. 14) ; * to beguile (2
Pet. ii. 14) ; to allure (2 Pet. ii. 18).
Zo>, darkness (2 Pet. ii. 4) ; mist (2 Pet. ii.
17); blackness (Jude 13).
KarapT-Ew, to cumber (Luke xiii. 7) ; to make with
out effect (Rom. iii. 3) ; to make void (Rom. iii. 31) ;
* to make of none effect (Rom. iv. 14) ; to destroy
(Rom. vi. 6) ; to loose (Rom. vii. 2) ; to deliver
(Rom. vii. 6) ; to bring to nought (1 Cor. i. 8) ; to
do away (1 Cor. xiii. 10) ; to put away (1 Cor. xiii.
11) ; to put down (1 Cor. xv. 24) ; to abolish (2,
Cor. iii. 13). Add to these, xarapylojiai, to come to
nought (1 Cor. ii. 6) ; to fail (1 Cor. xiii. 8) ; to
vanish away (ibid.) ; to become of none effect (Gal.
v. 4) ; to cease (Gal. v. 11) ; and we have here sev
enteen different renderings of this word, occurring in
all twenty-seven times in the New Testament.
Ka<ra<r. w, to mend (Matt. iv. 21) ; to perfect
(Matt. xxi. 16) ; to fit (Rom. ix. 22) ; to perfectly
join together (1 Cor. i. 10) ; to restore (Gal. vi.
UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED. 83
1) ; to prepare (Heb. x. 5) ; to frame (Heb. xi. 3) ;
to make perfect (Heb. xiii. 21).
Kau^aofxa<, i to make boast (Rom. ii. 17) ; to re
joice (Rom. v. 2) ; < to glory (Rom. v. 3) ; to joy
(Rom. v. 11) ; < to boast (2 Cor. vii. 14).
Kparg w, 4 to take (Matt. ix. 25) ; < to lay hold on
(Matt. xii. 11) ; < to lay hands on (Matt, xviii. 28) ;
4 to hold fast (Matt. xxvi. 48) ; to hold (Matt,
xxviii. 9) ; to keep (Mark ix. 10) ; to retain (John
xx. 23) ; < to obtain (Acts xxvii. 13).
napaxa-Xsw, < to comfort (Matt. ii. 18) ; to beseech
(Matt. viii. 5) ; < to desire (Matt, xviii. 32) ; to pray
(Matt. xxvi. 53) ; to entreat (Luke xv. 28) ; < to ex
hort (Acts ii. 40) ; < to call for (Acts xxviii. 20).
Let me once more observe, in leaving this part of
the subject, that I would not for an instant imply that
in all these places one and the same English word
could have been employed, but only that the variety
might have been much smaller than it is.
84 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
CHAPTER Y.
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
IF it is impossible, as was sho wn at the beginning
of the last chapter, in every case to render one word
in the original by one word and no more in the trans
lation, equally impossible is it to render in every case
different words in the original by different words in
the translation. It will continually happen that one
language possesses, and fixes in words, distinctions
of which another takes no note. The more subtile-
thoughted a people are, the finer and more numerous
the differences will be which they will thus have seized,
and to which they will have given permanence in
words. What can an English translator do to ex
press the distinction, oftentimes very significant, be
tween dvYjg and av^wffog? the honor which lies often
in the first (Acts xiii. 16 ; xvii. 22), the slight which
is intended to be conveyed in the second (Matt. xxvi.
72) ? At this point the Latin language, with 4 vir
and 4 homo, is a match for the Greek, but not so our
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 85
own. In like manner, the differences, oftentimes in
structive, occasionally important, between Ispo v and
vaoV, ftios and wr;, ciXXos and srspocr, vs oc; and xaivccr, dXr,/)^
and ctXTj^voV, 9Xsw and dyavau, mostly disappear, and
there seems no help but that they must disappear, in
any English translation of the Greek Testament. Such
facts remind us that language, divine gift to man as
it is, yet working itself out through human faculties
and powers, has cleaving to it a thousand marks of
weakness, and infirmity, and limitation.
To take an example of this, the obliteration of dis
tinctions, which is quite unavoidable, or which could
only have been avoided at the cost of greater losses
in some other direction, and to deal with it somewhat
more in detail the distinction between "AiSyg, the
under-world, the receptacle of the departed, and
ys ewa, the place of torment, quite disappears in our
Version. They are both translated hell, qb^s being
so rendered ten times, and ys swa twelve ; the only at
tempt to give a.or)s a word of its own, being at 1 Cor.
xv. 55, where it is translated grave/ The confusion
of which this is the occasion is serious ; though how
it could have been avoided, or how it would be pos
sible now to get rid of it, I do not in the least per
ceive. It would not be possible to render adr lS , wher
ever it occurs, by grave, thus leaving hell as the
rendering of ys swa only ; for see Matt. xi. 23 ; xvi.
18, the first two places of its occurrence, where this
plainly would not suit. On the other hand, the popu-
86 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
lar sense links the name of hell so closely with the
place of torment, that it would not answer to keep
4 hell for gi<fri, and to look out for some other render
ing of ye swa, to say nothing of the difficulty or impos
sibility of finding one ; for certainly gehenna, whicli
I have seen proposed, would not do. The French
have, indeed, adopted the word, though it is only
4 gene to them ; and Milton has once used it in poetry ;
but it can not in any sense be said to be an English
word. It is much to be regretted that hades has
never been thoroughly naturalized among us. The
language wants the word, and in it the true solution
of the difficulty might have been found.
Yet freely granting all which this example illus
trates, it is evident that the forces and capacities of a
language should be stretched to the uttermost, the
riches of its synonyms thoroughly searched out ; and
not till this is done, not till its resources prove plainly
inadequate to the task, ought translators to acquiesce
in the disappearance from their copy, of distinctions
which existed in the original from which that copy
was made, or to count that, notwithstanding this dis
appearance, they have done all that lay in them to
do. More assuredly might have been here accom
plished than has by our Translators been attempted,
as I will endeavor by a few examples to prove.
Thus, one must always regret, and the regret has
been often expressed, that in the Apocalypse our
Translators should have rendered d^/cv and wov by
ON SOME KEAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 87
the same word, beast.* Both play important parts
in the book ; both belong to its higher symbolism ;
but to portions the most different. The wa or " liv
ing creatures," which stand before the throne, in which
dwells the fullness of all creaturely life, as it gives
praise and glory to God (iv. 6, 7, 8, 9 ; v. 6 ; vi. t ;
and often) form part of the heavenly symbolism ; the
di a, the first beast and the second, which rise up, one
from the bottomless pit (xi. 7), the other from the
sea (xiii. 1), of which the one makes war upon the
two Witnesses, the other opens his mouth in blasphe
mies, these form part of the hellish symbolism. To
confound these and those under a common designa
tion, to call those ; beasts and these beasts, would
be an oversight, even granting the name to be suita
ble to both ; it is a more serious one, when the word
used, bringing out, as this must, the predominance of
the lower animal life, is applied to glorious creatures
in the very court and presence of Heaven. The error
is common to all the translations. That the Rheims
should not have escaped it is strange ; for the Vulgate
renders wa by * animalia ( animantia would have
been still better), and only ^PJ OV by bestia. If a
had always been rendered " living creatures, this
would have had the additional advantage of setting
these symbols of the Apocalypse, even for the English
reader, in an unmistakable connection with Ezek. i.
5, 13, 14, and often ; where " living creature" is the
rendering in our English Version of J~pn> as ?^ cv is i fl
the ^
88 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
In like manner, in the parable of the Marriage of
the King s Son (Matt. xxii. 1-14), the <$ouXo who sum
mon the bidden guests (ver. 3, 4), and the iaxovoi who
in the end expel the unworthy intruder (ver. 13),
should not have been confounded under the common
name of i servants. A real and important distinction
between the several actors in the parable is in this
way obliterated. The oiJXoi are men, the ambassadors
of Christ, those that invite their fellow-men to the
blessings of the kingdom of heaven ; but the &axovoi
are angels, those that " stand by" (Luke xix. 24),
ready to fulfil the Divine judgments, and whom we
ever find the executors of these judgments in the day
of Christ s appearing. They are as distinct from one
another as the " servants of the householder," who in
like manner are men, and the i reapers, who are an
gels, in the parable of the Tares (Matt. xiii. 27, 30).
In the Vulgate the distinction which we have lost is
preserved ; the (JouXo are 4 servi, the toaxovoi ministri ;
and all our early translations in like manner rendered
the words severally by 4 servants and ministers ;
the Rheims by c servants and * waiters.
There is a very real distinction between AWT IO, and
aifsitsia. It is often urged by our elder divines ; I re
member more than one passage in Jackson s works
where it is so ; but it is not constantly observed by
our Translators. Ain<r<rla is, I believe, always and
rightly rendered, unbelief, while cwreMsia is in most
cases rendered, and rightly, disobedience ; but on
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 89
two occasions (Heb. iv. 6, 11) it also is translated
1 unbelief. In like manner, d*Htre~v is properly " to
refuse belief" dxeidsn "to refuse obedience;" but
ditsiQeTv is often in our Translation allowed to run into
the sense of dirtfrsTv, as at John. iii. 36 ; Acts xiv. 2 ;
xix. 9 ; Rom. xi. 30 (the right translation in the
margin) ; and yet, as I have said, the distinction is
real ; dirt^sia or disobedience is the consequence of
dflritfria or unbelief; they are not identical with one
another.
Again, there was no possible reason why rfotpo g- and
<ppo vi^o<r should not have been kept asunder, and the
real distinction which exists between them in the
original maintained also in our Version. We possess
4 wise for rfopocr, and prudent for <ppo vifxo . It is true
that tfjvsTo c; has taken possession of c prudent, but
might have better been rendered by understanding.
Our Translators have thrown away their advantage,
rendering, I believe in every case, both tfospo s and
vppovifxos by < wise, although in no single instance are
the words interchangeable. The <ppovi,ao$ is one who
dexterously adapts his means to his ends (Luke xvi.
8), the word expressing nothing in respect of the
ends themselves, whether they are worthy or not;
the tfo?oV is one whose means and ends are alike wor
thy. God is tfo<p6ff (Jude 25) ; wicked men may be
(pmiacj, while tfoqioi, except in the tfo<pfa TOU xoV/xou, they
could never be. How much would have been gained
at Luke xvi. 8, if (pewi^us had been rendered, not
90 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
wisely, but prudently ; how much needless offence
would have been avoided !
The standing word which St. Paul uses to express
the forgiveness of sins is a<ps<ri afxa^nuv ; but on one
remarkable occasion he changes his word, and instead
of apstfjg- employs xu.ge<fi (Rom. iii. 25). Our Transla
tors take no note of the very noticeable substitution,
but render va.gs<tw a^r^-nwv, or rather here ajxaTy]/ji<a<rwv,
"remission of sins," as everywhere else they have
rendered the more usual phrase. But it was not for
nothing that St. Paul used here quite another word.
He is speaking of quite a different thing ; he is speaking,
not of the * remission of sins, or the letting of them
quite go, but of the pretermission (Va^rf^ from
wa^nifii), the passing of them by on the part of God
for a while, the temporary dissimulation upon his part,
which found place under the Old Covenant, in consid
eration of the sacrifice which was one day to be.
The passage is further obscured by the fact that our
Translators have rendered 8d <rr,v *a.gs<fn as though it
had been Sd T"^ leagfaeus "for the remission," that
is, with a view to the remission, while the proper ren
dering of SIOL, with an accusative, would, of course,
have been " because of the remission," or rather " the
pretermission," or, as Hammond proposes, " because
of the passing- by, of past sins." What the Apostle
would say is this : " There needed a signal manifesta
tion of the righteousness of God on account of the
long pretermission, or passing by, of sins in his infi-
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 91
nite forbearance, with no adequate expression of his
righteous wrath against them, during all those ages
which preceded the revelation of Christ : which mani
festation of his righteousness at length found place,
when He set forth no other and no less than his own
Son to be the propitiatory sacrifice for sin." But the
passage, as we have it now, can not be said to yield
this meaning.
There are two occasions on which a multitude is
miraculously fed by our Lord ; and it is not a little
remarkable that on the first occasion in every narra
tive, and there are four records of the miracle, the
word xo <p<vo is used of the baskets in which the frag
ments which remain are gathered up (Matt. xiv. 20 ;
Mark vi. 43 ; Luke ix. 17 ; John vi. 13) ; while on
occasion of the second miracle, in the two records
which are all that we have of it, ovupi s is used (Matt,
xv. 37 ; Mark viii. 8) ; and in proof that this is not
accidental see Matt. xvi. 9, 10 ; Mark viii. 19, 20.
The fact is a slight, yet not unimportant, testimony
to the entire distinctness of the two miracles, and that
we have not here, as some of the modern assailants
of the historical accuracy of the Gospels assure us,
two confused traditions of one and the same event.
What the exact distinction between xo<pivos and ovupfe
is, may be hard to determine, and it may not be very
easy to suggest what second word should have marked
this distinction ; yet I can not but think that where,
not merely the Evangelists in their narrative, but the
92 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
Lord in his allusion to the event, so distinctly marks
a difference, we should have attempted to mark it
also, as the Vulgate by cophini and < spartae has
done.
Again, our Translators obliterate, for the most part,
the distinction between ifaTs sou and uio^ sou, as ap
plied to Christ. There are five passages in the New
Testament in which the title *<$ sou is given to the
Son of God. In the first of these (Matt. xii. 18) they
have rendered # by servant ; and they would have
done well if they had abode by this in the other four.
These all occur in the Acts, and in. every one of them
the notion of servant is abandoned, and son (Acts
iii. 13, 26), or child (Acts iv. 27, 30), introduced.
I am persuaded that in this they were in error.
UaTs sou might be rendered " servant of God," and I
am persuaded that it ought. It might be, for it needs
not to say iraTg is continually used like the Latin puer
in the sense of servant, and in the LXX. vaTs sou as
the u servant of God." David calls himself so no
less than seven time^m 2 Sam. vii. ; cf. Luke i. 69 ;
Acts iv. 25; Job i. 8; Ps. xix. 12, 14. But not
merely it might have been thus rendered ; it also
should have been, as these reasons convince me:
Every student of prophecy must have noticed how
much there is in Isaiah prophesying of Christ under
the aspect of " the servant of the Lord ;" " Israel my
servant? " my servant whom I uphold" (Isai. xlii.
1-7 ; xlix. 1-12 ; Iii. 13 ; liii. 12). 1 say, prophesy-
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 93
ing of Christ ; for I dismiss, as a baseless dream of
those who a priori are determined that there are, and
therefore shall be, no prophecies in Scripture, the no
tion that " the servant of Jehovah" in Isaiah is Israel
according to the flesh, or Isaiah himself, or the body
of the prophets collectively considered, or any other
except Christ Himself. But it is quite certain, from
the inner harmonies of the Old Testament and the
New, that wherever there is a large group of prophe
cies in the Old, there is some allusion to them in the
New. Unless, however, we render *a7s sou by " ser
vant of God" in the place where that phrase occurs
in the New, there will be no allusion throughout it all
to that group of prophecies which designate the Mes
siah as the servant of Jehovah, who learned obedience
by the things which He suffered. I can not doubt,
and, as far as I know, this is the conclusion of all who
have considered the subject, that ir&Ts sou should be
rendered " servant of God," as often as in the New
Testament it is used of Christ. His sonship will re
main sufficiently declared in innumerable other pas
sages.
Something of precision and beauty is lost at John
x. 16, by rendering cu X>j and 4roi>vij both by i fold :
"And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold
(av>%) ; these also I must bring, and they shall hear
my voice ; and there shall be one fold (Vo/fAVT]), and
one shepherd." It is remarkable that in the Vulgate
there is the same obliteration of the distinction be-
94 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
tween the two words, ovile standing for both. Sub
stitute 4 flock for fold on the second occasion of its
occurring (this was Tyndale s rendering, which we
should not have forsaken), and it will be at once felt
how much the verse will gain. The Jew and the
Gentile are the two folds, which Christ, the Good
Shepherd, will gather into a single flock.
As a further example, take John xvii. 12 : " While
I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy
name. Those that Thou gavest me I have kept, and
none of them is lost." It is not a great matter, yet
who would not gather from this i kept recurring twice
in this verse, that there must be also in the original
some word of the like recurrence ? Yet it is not so ;
the first kept is ST^OUV, and the second spjXafa : nor
are r^Iv and (puXatftfeiv here such mere synonyms, that
the distinction between them may be effaced without
loss. The first is servare, or better, c conservare,
the second custodire ; and the first, the keeping or
preserving, is the consequence of the second, the
guarding. What the Lord would say is : "I so guard
ed, so protected (Jpfaafa), those whom Thou hast
given me, that I kept and preserved them (this the
TTjp^tfjf) unto the present day." Thus Lampe : "r^v
est generalius, vitaeque nova3 finalem conservationem
potest exprimere ; puXarfrfeiv vero specialius mediorum
prsestationem, per quae finis ille obtinetur." He
quotes excellently to the point, Prov. xix. 6 : 6$
ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED. 95
Before leaving this branch of the subject, I will
give one or two examples more of the way in which
a single word in the English does duty for many in
the Greek. Thus, take the words thought and
think. The Biblical psychology is anyhow a sub
ject encumbered with most serious perplexities. He
finds it so, and often sees his way but obscurely, who
has all the helps which the most accurate observation
nnd comparison of the terms actually used by the sa
cred writers will afford. Of course, none but the
student of the original document can have these helps
in their fullness ; at the same time it scarcely needed
that 4 thought should be employed as the rendering
alike of vdjur)<rcr (Matt. ix. 4), tfiaXo/io /xos (Matt. xv.
19), (Wrifxa (Luke xi. 17), e^ voia (Acts viii. 22),
XoyitffAo s (Rom. ii. 15), and vo^a (2 Cor. x. 5) ; or that
the verb " to think" should in the passages which fol
low be the one English representative of a still wider
circle of words, of Soxsu (Matt. iii. 9), vofxu (Matt,
v. 17), evdujjigojAai (Matt. ix. 4), &aXoyi ofxa (Luke xii.
17), &evdufAV al (Acts x. 19), uirovoe w (Acts xiii. 25),
jjyg ofAai (Acts XXVi. 2), XPJ VOJ (Acts XXVI. 8), <pov^J
(Rom. xii. 3), Xoy/^ofxai (2 Cor. iii. 5), vos w (Ephes.
iii. 20), o7ojAai (Jam. i. 7).
One example more. The verb " to trouble" is a
very favorite one with our Translators. There are
no less than ten Greek words or phrases which it is
employed by them to render ; these, namely : xoVou$
raps ^w (Matt. XX vi. 10),cfx:X\6j (Markv.
96 ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED.
(Luke i. 29), <rup/3aw (Luke x. 41), wapevo^Xg w (Acts
xv. 19), <5ou/3sV a (Acts xx. 10), Tapatftfw (Gal. i. 7),
ctvaflVarow (Gal. V. 12), 6\i}3u (2 Thess. i. 6), evo^oj
(Heb. xii. 15). If we add to these sxraparfo &j, "ex
ceedingly to trouble" (Acts xvi. 20), fyos ofxai, " to be
troubled" (Matt. xxiv. 6), the word will do duty for
no fewer than twelve Greek words. Now, the Eng
lish language may not be so rich in synonyms as the
Greek ; but with vex, harass, ; disturb, distress,
4 afflict, disquiet, unsettle, * burden, terrify ; al
most every one of which would in one of the above
places or other seem to me more appropriate than the
word actually employed, I can not admit that the pov
erty or limited resources of our language left no choice
here, but to efface all the distinctions between these
words, as by the employment of trouble for them all
has, in these cases at least, been done.
ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN. 97
CHAPTER VI.
ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, OR PLACED
IN THE MARGIN.
OCCASIONALLY, but rarely, our Translators dismiss
a better rendering, which was in one or more of the
earlier versions, and replace it with a worse. It may
be said of their Version, in regard of those which went
before, that it occupies very much the place which
the Vulgate did in regard of the Latin versions pre
ceding. In the whole, an immense improvement,
while yet in some minor details they are more ac
curate than it. This is so in the passages which
follow.
Matt, xxviii. 14. "And if this come to the gov
ernor^ s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you."
The Geneva version, but that alone among the previ
ous ones, had given the passage rightly : " And if this
come before the governor (xa; sav axoutfdij TOUTO fa} rou
^f,ao voff), we will pacify him, and save you harmless."
The words of the original have reference to a judicial
5
08 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN,
hearing of the matter before the governor (" si res
apud ilium judicem agatur," Erasmus), and not to the
possibility of its reaching his ears by hearsay, but this
our Translation fails to express. In -n-s tfofisv, I may
observe, lies a euphemism by no means rare in Hel
lenistic Greek (see Krebs, Obss. e Josepho, in loco) :
" We will take effectual means to persuade him ;" as,
knowing the covetous, greedy character of the man,
they were able confidently to promise.
Mark xi. 17. " Is it not written, My house shall
be called, of all nations, the house of prayer ? but ye
have made it a den of thieves." In Tyndale s ver
sion, in Cranmer s, and the Geneva : " My house shall
be called the house of prayer unto all nations; but
ye," &c., and rightly. There is no difficulty what
ever in giving -rratfj <roTg sAvsffi, a dative rather than an
ablative sense ; while thus the passage is brought into
exact agreement with that in Isaiah, to which Christ,
in his " it is written," refers, namely, Isai. Ivi. 7 ;
and, moreover, the point of his words is preserved,
which the present translation misses. Our Lord s in
dignation was aroused in part at the profanation of
the holy precincts of his Father s house ; but in part,
also, by the fact that, the scene of this profanation
being the Court of the Gentiles, the Jews have thus
managed to testify their contempt for them, and for
their share in the blessings of the Covenant. Those
parts of the temple which were exclusively their own,
the Court of the Priests, and the Court of Israelites,
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 99
they had kept clear of these buyers and sellers ; but
that part assigned to the Gentile worshippers, the
tff/Soxe voi TOV FC V, they were little concerned about the
profanation to which it was exposed, perhaps pleased
with it rather. In a righteous indignation Christ
quotes the words of the prophet, which they had done
all that in them lay to defeat : " My house shall be
called the house of prayer unto all nations :" all which
intention on his part in the citation of the prophecy
our Version fails to preserve. Mede* .ascribes to the
influence of Beza this alteration, which is certainly
one for the worse.
Ephes. iv. 18. " Because of the blindness of their
hearts." The Geneva version had given this -rightly,
" because of the hardness of their heart ;" which bet
ter rendering our Translators forsake, being content
to place it in the margin. But there can be no doubt
that flrupwtfis is from the substantive -Trwpo?, a porous
kind of stone, and from crwpow, to become callous, hard,
or stony (Mark vi. 52 ; John xii. 40 ; Rom. xi. 7 ; 2
Cor. iii. 14) ; not from tugis, blind. How much bet
ter, too, this agrees with what follows " who being
past feeling" (that is, having, through their hardness
or callousness of heart, arrived at a condition of mis
erable lUflutffcjtfi a), "have given themselves over to
work all uncleanness with greediness." I may ob
serve that at Rom. xi. 7, they have in like manner
put blinded in the text, and < hardened, the correct
Works, p. 45.
100 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN,
rendering of faupMytfav, in the margin ; while at 2 Cor.
iii. 16, where they translate dXX J Iflrwpwflrj *a vo^ara.
auTwv, " but their minds were blinded" the correcter is
not even offered as an alternative rendering. Wiclif
and the Rheims, which both depend on the Vulgate
(" sed obtusi sunt sensus eorum"), are here the only
correct versions.
1 Thess. v. 22. "Abstain from all appearance of
evil." An injurious translation of the words, d^o
flravrofT iiSwg -rovi-ipou airs-xetf&e, and a going back from the
right translation, "Abstain from all kind of evil,"
which the Geneva version had. It is from the reality
of evil, and sTSos here means this (see a good note in
Hammond), not from the appearance, which God s
Word elsewhere commands us to abstain ; nor does it
here command anything else. Indeed, there are times
when, so far from abstaining from all appearance of
evil, it will be a part of Christian courage not to ab
stain from such. It was an " appearance of evil" in
the eyes of the Pharisees, when our Lord healed on
the Sabbath, or showed himself a friend of publicans
and sinners ; but Christ did not therefore abstain from
this or from that. How many " appearances of evil,"
which he might have abstained from, yet did not, must
St. Paul s own conversation have presented in the
eyes of the zealots for the ceremonial law ! I was
once inclined to think that our Translators used i ap
pearance here as we might now use form, and that
we therefore had here an obsolete, not an inaccurate,
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 101
rendering ; but I can find no authority for this use of
the word.
Heb. xi. 13. " These all died in faith ; not having
received the promises ; but having seen them afar off,
and were persuaded of them, and embraced them."
But with all respect be it said, this " embracing the
promises" was the very thing which the worthies of
the Old Testament did not do ; and which the sacred
writer is urging throughout that they did not do, who
only saw them from afar, as things distant and not
near. Our present rendering is an unfortunate going
back from Tyndale s and Cranmer s " saluted them,"
from Wiclif s " greeted them." The beautiful image
of mariners homeward-bound, who recognise from afar
the promontories and well-known features of a beloved
land, and greet or salute these from a distance, is
lost to us. Estius : " Chrysostoinus dictum putat ex
metaphora navigantium qui ex longinquo prospiciunt
civitates desideratas, quas antequam ingrediantur et
inhabitant, salutatione praeveniunt." Cf. Virgil, Mn.,
iii. 524 :
" Italiam laeto socii clamore salutant."
In other respects our Version is unsatisfactory. The
words, " and were persuaded of them," have no right
to a place in the text ; while the " afar off" (ffo ^wdev)
belongs not to the seeing alone, but to the saluting as
well. How beautifully the verse would read thus
amended ! " These all died in faith ; not having re
ceived the promises, but having seen and saluted them
102 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN,
from afar." We have exactly such a salutation from
afar in the words of the dying Jacob : " I have waited
for thy salvation, Lord" (Gen. xlix. 18).
1 Pet. i. 17. " And if ye call on the Father, who
without respect of persons judgeth according to every
man s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in
fear." Here, too, it must be confessed, that we have
left a better, and chosen a worse, rendering. The
Geneva had it, a And if ye call Him Father, who
without respect of persons," <fec. ; and this, and this
only, is the meaning which the words of the original,
xcu si Ilars pa srtixaXsttf&s rov cUrpotf* oXij*T xp/vovra, x.r.X.,
will bear.
It must not be supposed from what has been here
adduced that our Translators did not exercise a very
careful revision of the translations preceding. In ev
ery page of their work there is evidence that they did
so. Very often our Authorized Version is the first
that has seized the true meaning of a passage. It
would be easy for me to bring forward many passages
in proof, only that my task is here, passing over the
hundred excellencies, to fasten rather on the single
fault ; and I must therefore content myself with one
or two illustrations of this. Thus, at Heb. iv. 1, none
of the preceding versions, neither our own, nor the
Rheims, had correctly given xa<raXsiflrofAvjg sirayyeXlas :
they all translate it " forsaking the promise," or some
thing similar, instead of, as we have rightly done, " a
promise being left us." Again, at Acts xii. 19, the
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 103
technical meaning of a-ra^vai, that it signifies to be
led away to execution, is wholly missed by Tyndale
(" he examined the keepers and commanded to de
part" ), by Crannaer, and the Rheims ; it is only par
tially seized by the Geneva version, but perfectly by
our Translators. Far more important than this is the
clear recognition of the personality of the Word in
the prologue of St. John by our Translators : " All
things were made by Him;" u In Him was life" (John
i. 3, 4) ; while in all our preceding versions it is read,
" All things were made by it" and so on. Our Ver
sion is the first which gives tfuvaXi^ofxevos (Acts i. 4)
rightly.
Improvements are also very frequent in single words
and phrases, even where those which were displaced
were not absolutely incorrect. Thus, how much bet
ter " earnest expectation" (Rom. viii. 19) than " fer
vent desire," as a rendering of a-s-oxGpa&&gt;x;a ; tattlers
instead of triflers, as a rendering of pXuapoj (1 Tim.
v. 13 ; indeed, the latter could hardly be said to be
correct.* " Whited sepulchres" is an improvement
upon "painted sepulchres" (-r^o- X c>.ov tvo,-, Matt,
xxiii. 27), which all our preceding versions had.
" Without distraction" (1 Cor. vii. 35) is a far better
rendering of Its^i - ..<;?*.$ than "without separation."
It was slovenly to introduce Candy, the modern
* Unless, indeed, trifler once meant " utterer of trifles," and thus
tattler; which may perha,)? be, as I observe in the fragment of a
Nominate published by Wright, National Antiquities, vol. i., p. 216,
nugigerulus given as the Latin equivalent of trifler.
104 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN,
name of Crete, which all the Anglican versions before
our own had done at Acts xxvii. 7, 12, 21 ; but which
in ours is removed. " Profane person" is a singularly
successful rendering of (3s n o- (Heb. xii. 16), while
yet none of our preceding versions had lighted upon
it ; at the same time it is possible that we ourselves
o\ve it to the Rheims, where it first appears.
But, further, our Translators sometimes put a bet
ter rendering in the margin, and retain a worse in the
text. It may perhaps be urged that here at least they
offer the better to the reader s choice. But practi
cally this can not be said to be the case. FOP, in the
first place, the proportion of our Bibles is very small
which are printed with these marginal variations, as
compared with those in which they are suppressed.
They are thus brought under the notice of very few
among the readers of Scripture, not to say that by
these they are very rarely referred to. How many,
for instance, among these even know of the existence
of a variation so important as that at John iii. 3 ?
And even if they do refer, they commonly attach com
paratively little authority, to them. They acquiesce
for the most part, and naturally acquiesce, in the ver
dict of the Translators about them ; who, by placing
them in the margin, and not in the text, evidently
declare that they consider them the less probable ren
derings. Then, too, of course, they are never heard
in the public services of the Church, which must al-
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 105
ways be a chief source of the popular knowledge of
Scripture. It is impossible, then, to attach to a right
interpretation in the margin any serious value, as re
dressing an erroneous or imperfect one in the text.
Marginal variations are quite without influence as
modifying the view which the body of English readers
take of any passages in the English Bible ; and this
leads me to observe that the suggestion which has
been sometimes made of a large addition to these, as
a middle way and compromise between leaving our
Version as it is, and introducing actual changes into
its text, does not seem to me to contain any real so
lution of our difficulties, not to say that it would be
attended with many and most serious objections.
But to return. The following are passages in which
I can not doubt that we have placed the better ren
dering in the margin, the worse in the text :
Matt. v. 21. " Ye have heard that it was said by
them of old time." This rendering of s^rfa ~s ax a
is grammatically defensible, while yet there can be no
reasonable doubt that " to them of old time," which was
in all the preceding versions, but which our Transla
tors have dismissed to the margin, ought to resume its
place in the text.
Matt. ix. 36. "They fainted and were scattered
abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." But " scat
tered abroad" does not exactly express ^Jiju^voi, any
more than does the zerstreut of Luther s version.
It is not their dispersion one from another, but their
106 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN,
prostration in themselves, which is intended. The
^|ifXjUL-svo are the prostrati, temere projecti ; those
that have cast themselves along for very weariness,
unable to travel any farther. The Vulgate had it
rightly, jacentes, which Wiclif follows, "lying
down." Our present rendering dates as far back as
Tyndale, and was retained in the subsequent versions ;
while the correct translation is relegated to the mar
gin.
Matt. x. 16. "Be ye therefore wise as serpents,
and harmless as doves." Wiclif, following the Vul
gate, had "simple as doves." 4 Simple our Transla
tors have dismissed to the margin ; they ought to have
kept it in the text, as rightly they have done at Rom.
xvi. 19. The rendering of dxs ^aios by 6 harmless here
and at Phil. ii. 15, grows out of wrong etymology, as
though it were from d and XSPO.$, one who had no horn
with which to push or otherwise hurt. Thus, Bengel,
who falls in with this error, glosses here : " Sine
cornu, ungula, dente, aculeo." But this " without
horn" would be dx^aros; while the true derivation of
dxfyaios, it needs hardly be said, is from d and xs^avvufw,
unmingled, sincere, and thus single, guileless, simple,
without all folds. How much finer the antithesis in
this way becomes ! " Be ye therefore wise ( prudent
would be better) as serpents, and simple as doves"
having care, that is, that this prudence of yours do
not degenerate into artifice and guile ; letting the
columbine simplicity go hand in hand with the ser-
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 107
pentine prudence. The exact parallel will then be
1 Cor. xiv. 20.
Mark vi. 20. " For Herod feared John, knowing
that he was a just man and an holy, and observed him."
This may be after Erasmus, who renders xcu tfuvsrrjpai
auro v, " et magni eum faciebat ;" so, too, Grotius and
others. Now, it is undoubtedly true that tfuvrqpgiv TO,
6. f xoia (Polybius, iv. 60, 10) would be rightly trans
lated " to observe things righteous ;" but here it is
not things, but a person, and no such rendering is
admissible. Translate rather, as in our margin, " kept
him or saved him," that is, from the malice of Hero-
dias ; she laid plots for the Baptist s life, but up to
this time Herod tfuvcrrpn, sheltered or preserved, him
(" custodiebat eum," the Vulgate rightly), so that her
malice could not reach him. See Hammond, in loco.
It will at once be evident in how much stricter logical
sequence the statement of the Evangelist will follow,
if this rendering of the passage is admitted.
Mark vii. 4. Tables. This can not be correct :
our Translators have put beds in the margin, against
which rendering of *>uvojv nothing can be urged, ex
cept that the context points clearly here to these in a
special aspect, namely, to the benches or couches
on which the Jews reclined at their meals.
Luke xvii. 21. " The kingdom of heaven is ivithin
you." Doubtless, the words sv-oj CJAOJV may mean this ;
but how could the Lord address this language to the
Pharisees ? A very different kingdom from the king-
108
dom of heaven was within them, not to say that this
whole language of the kingdom of heaven being within
men, rather than men being within the kingdom of
heaven, is, as one has justly observed, modern. Tho
marginal reading, " among you," should have been
the textual. " He in whom the whole kingdom of
heaven is shut up as in a germ, and from whom it will
unfold itself, stands in your midst.
Col. ii. 18. " Let no man beguile you of your re
ward" It is evident that this xara/3pa/3su$V ujxag 1
seriously perplexed our early translators, and indeed
others besides them. Thus, in the earlier Italic we
find, " vos superet ;" in the Vulgate, " vos decipiat ;"
Tyndale translates, " make you shoot at a wrong
mark ;" the Geneva, " bear rule over you ;" while our
Translators have proposed as an alternative reading to
that which they admit into the text, "judge against
you." The objection to this rendering, which marks
more insight into the true character of the word than
any which went before, is that it is too obscure, and
does not sufficiently tell its own story. The meaning
of jSpa/SeJsiv is, to adjudge a reward ; of xara/Spa^s&iv,
out of a hostile mind (this is implied in the xam), to
adjudge it away from a person, with a subaudition
that this is the person to whom it is justly due. Je
rome (ad Alg-as. Qu. 10) does not quite seize the
meaning ; for he regards the xara/3pa$suwv as the com
petitor who unjustly bears away, not tlje judge who
unjustly ascribes, the reward : otherwise his ezplana :
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. 109
tion is good : " Nemo adversum vos braviura accipiat :
hoc enim Gragce dicitur xCTpcu6ru, quum quis in
certamine positus, iniquitate agonothetae, vel insidiis
magistrorum, fipapsw et palmam sibi debitam perdit."
It is impossible for any English word to express the
fullness of allusion contained in the original Greek ;
while long circumlocutions, which should turn the
version in fact into a commentary, are clearly inad
missible. If "judge against you" is too obscure, and
too little of an English idiom, and "judge away the
reward from you" would underlie the second at least
of these objections, the substitution of deprive for
i beguile (which last has certainly no claim to stand),
might, in case of a revision, be desirable.
1 Thess. iv. 6. " Let no man go beyond or defraud
his brother in any matter." But TU here is not =r$
= T/VJ, which would alone justify the rendering of h
ru flrpayjjicwi, " in any matter." A more correct trans
lation is in the margin, namely, " in the matter," that
is, " in this matter," being the matter with which the
Apostle at the moment has to do. The difference
may not seem very important, but, indeed, the whole
sense of the passage turns on this word ; and, as we
translate in one way or the other, we determine for
ourselves whether it is a warning against overreach
ing our neighbor, and a too shrewd dealing with him
in the business transactions of life, strangely finding
place in the midst of warnings against uncleanness
and a libertine freedom in the relation of the sexes ;
110 ON SOME BETTEK RENDERINGS FORSAKEN,
or whether an unbroken warning against this is con
tained through all these verses (3-9). I can not
doubt that the latter is the correct view, that TO
flrpayjxa is an euphemism, and that our marginal ver
sion is the right one ; the Apostle warning his Thes-
salonian converts that none, in a worse -rrXsovsfi a than
that which makes one man covet his neighbor s goods,
overstep the limits and fences by which God has
hedged round and separated from him his brother s
wife. See Bengel, in loco. Accepting this view of
the passage, overreach, which the margin suggests
instead of * defraud, as the rendering of *Xsovgxrv,
would also be an undoubted improvement.
1 Tim. vi. 5. " Supposing that gain is godliness."
It is difficult to connect any meaning whatever with
this language. But Coverdale, and he alone of our
translators, deals with these words, vofugoms -jropj^ov
SM/CU <rr iV sutfs /itaav, rightly "which think that godli
ness is lucre" that is, a means of gain. The want of
a thorough mastery of the Greek article and its use,
left it possible here to go back from a right rendering
once attained.
Heb. v. 2. "Who can have compassion on the
ignorant, and on them that are out of the way, for
that he himself also is compassed with infirmity."
But is, it may fairly be asked, " who can have com
passion," the happiest rendering of fwrpiwrofoiv Juva/xsvos ?
and ought furpfMrafaft to be thus taken as entirely sy
nonymous with tfu/xiraforv ? The words fwrpioflradeiv,
OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN. Ill
, belong to the terminology of the later schools
of Greek philosophy, and were formed to express that
moderate amount of emotion (the iierplus -ra^iv) which
the Peripatetics and others acknowledged as becom
ing a wise and good man, contrasted with the d^a^sja,
or absolute indolency, which the Stoics required. It
seems to me that the Apostle would say that the high
priest taken from among men, out of a sense of his
own weakness and infirmity was in a condition to
estimate mildly and moderately, and not transported
with indignation, the sins and errors of his brethren ;
and it is this view of the passage which is correctly
expressed in the margin : " who can reasonably bear
ivith the ignorant," &c.
Heb. ix. 23. " It was therefore necessary that the
patterns of things in the heavens should be purified
with these, but the heavenly things themselves with
better sacrifices than these." The employment of
* patterns introduces some confusion here, and is not
justified by the use of the word in the time of our
Translators, any more than in our own. It is, of
course, quite true that MSer/pa. may mean, and, in
deed, often does mean, * pattern or exemplar (John
xiii. 15). But here, as at viii. 5 (M&ttyp* xa< <rxj a),
it can only mean the copy drawn from this exemplar.
The heavenly things are themselves " the patterns" or
archetypes, the Urbilden ; the earthly, the Levitical
tabernacle, with its priests and sacrifices, are the
copies, the similitudes, the Abbilden, which, as such,
112 ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN.
are partakers not of a real but a typical purification.
This is, indeed, the very point which the Apostle is
urging, and his whole antithesis is confused by calling
the earthly things themselves " the patterns." The
earlier translators, Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Gene
va, had similitudes, which was correct, though it
seems to me that * copies would be preferable.*
2 Pet. iii. 12. "Hasting unto the coming of the
day of God." The Vulgate had in like manner ren
dered the <ftrso5oyT T^V wapoutfiav, " properantes in ad-
ventum ;" and this use of <f*sudsw may be abundantly
justified, although " hasting toward the coming" seems
to me to express more accurately what our Transla
tors probably intended, and what the word allows.
This will then be pretty nearly De Wette s ersehn-
end. Yet the marginal version, " hasting the com
ing" (accelerantes adventum," Erasmus), seems bet
ter. The faithful, that is, shall seek to cause the day
of the Lord to come the more quickly by helping to
fulfil those conditions, without which it can not come
that day being no day inexorably fixed, but one,
the arrival of which it is free to the Church to help
and hasten on by faith and by prayer, and through a
more rapid accomplishing of the number of the elect.
* It is familiarly known to all students of English that pattern is
originally only another spelling of patron (the client imitates his
patron; the copy takes after its pattern), however they may have now
separated off into two words. But it is interesting to notice the word
when as yet this separation of one into two had not uttered itself in
different orthography. We do this Heb. viii. 5 (Geneva Version) :
" which priesteu serve unto the patrone and shadow of heavenly things."
ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUR VERSION. 113
CHAPTER VII.
ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUR VERSION.
I HAVE already spoken of the English Grammar of
our Translators ; but the Greek Grammar is also oc
casionally at fault. The most recurring blemishes
which have been noted here, are these : 1. A failing
to give due heed to the presence or absence of the
article ; they omit it sometimes, when it is present in
their original, and when, according to the rules of
the language, it ought to be preserved in the transla
tion ; they insert it, when it is absent there, and has
no claim to have found admission from them. 2. A
certain laxity in the rendering of prepositions ; for
example, HV is rendered as if it was els, and vice versa ;
the different forces of &*, as it governs a genitive or
an accusative, are disregarded, with other inaccura
cies of the same kind. 3. Tenses are not always ac
curately discriminated ; aorists are dealt with as per
fects, perfects as aorists ; the force of the imperfect
is not always given. Moods, too, and voices, are oc-
114 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
casionally confounded. 4. Other grammatical lapses,
which can not be included in any of these divisions,
are noticeable. These, however, are the most seri
ous and most recurring. I will give examples of
them all.
I. In regard of the Greek article, our Translators
err in both excess and defect, but oftenest in the lat
ter. They omit it, arid sometimes not without serious
loss, in passages where it ought to find place. Such
a passage is Rev. xvii. 14 : " These are they which
came out of great tribulation." Rather, " out of the
great tribulation" (ex r~i$ 6\i^sus r ys fxeyaX^f). The
leaving out of the article, so emphatically repeated,
causes us to miss the connection between this passage
and Matt. xxiv. 22, 29 ; Dan. xii. 1. It is the char
acter of the Apocalypse, the crowning book of the
Canon, that it abounds with allusions to preceding
Scriptures ; and, numerous as are those that appear
on the surface, those which lie a little below the sur
face are more numerous still. Thus, there can be
no doubt that allusion is here to " the great tribula
tion" (the same phrase, 6\Qig ^/cxX?]) of the last days,
the birth-pangs of the new creation, which our Lord
in his prophecy from the Mount had foretold.
Heb. xi. 10. "He looked for a city which hath
foundations." Not so ; the language is singularly
emphatic. " He looked for the city which hath the
foundations" (T ^V roCs dsfxsX/oug t ^outfav iroXiv), that is,
the well-known and of ten-all uded-to foundations in
IN OUR VERSION. 115
other words, he looked for the New Jerusalem, of
which it had been already said, " Her foundations
are in the hoi} 7 mountains" (Ps. Ixxxvii. 1 ; cf. Isai.
xxviii. 16) ; even as in the Apocalypse great things
are spoken of these glorious foundations of the Heav
enly City (Rev. xxi. 14, 19, 20). Let me here ob
serve that those expositors seem to me to be wholly
astray who make the Apostle to say that Abraham
looked forward to a period when the nomad life which
he was now leading should cease, and his descendants
be established in a well-ordered city, the earthly Je
rusalem. He may, indeed, have looked on to that as
a pledge of better things to come ; but never to that
as " the City having the foundations ;" nor do I sup
pose for an instant that our Translators at all intended
.this ; but still, if they had reproduced the force of the
article, they would, in giving the passage its true
emphasis, have rendered such a misapprehension on
the part of their readers well-nigh impossible.
John iii. 10. u Art thou a teacher of Israel, and
knowest not these things ?" Middleton may perhaps
make too much of o o^itfxaXocr here, as though it singled
out Nicodemus from among all the Jewish doctors as
the one supereminent. Yet it is equally incorrect to
deny it all force. It is, as Erasmus gives it, " ille
magister ;" " Art thou that teacher, that famed teacher
of Israel, and yet art ignorant of these things ?" and
the question loses an emphasis, which I can not but
believe, with Winer and many more, it was intended
116 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
to have, by the obliteration in our Version of the
force of the article.
In other passages it is plain that a more complete
mastery of the use of the article would have modified
the rendering of a passage which our Translators have
given. It would have done so, I am persuaded, at
1 Tim. vi. 2 : "And they that have believing masters,
let them not despise them, because they are brethren,
but rather do them service, because they are faithful
and beloved, partakers of the benefit" (on ^oW sltfi
xa/ dycwrigTo;, oi T/;C; Sjgpystfjag dv-TjXajx/3av6|uivoj). It is
clear that for them " partakers of the benefit" is but
a further unfolding of " faithful and beloved," the
benefit being the grace and gift of eternal life, com
mon to master and slave alike. But so the article in
this last clause has not its rights, and the only correct
translation of the passage will make irrfrot xai dycMrijro/
the predicate, and oi 7% susgyscriag dvriXajub/3avojxsvoi the
subject. St. Paul reminds the slaves that they shall
serve believing masters the more cheerfully out of the
consideration that they do not bestow their service
on unconverted, unthankful lords, but rather that
they who are " partakers of the benefit," that is, the
benefit of their service, they to whom this service
is rendered, are brethren in Christ. The Vulgate
lightly: " quia fideles suut et dilecti, qui beneficii
participes sunt." It needs only to insert the words
u who are" before partakers, to make our Version
correct.
IN OUR VERSION. 117
But more important than in any of these passages,
as rendering serious doctrinal misunderstandings pos
sible, is the neglect of the article at Rom. v. 15, 17.
In place of any observations of my own, I will here
quote Bentley s criticism on our Version. Having
found fault with the rendering of o< iroXXoi, Rom. xii. 5,
he proceeds : " This will enable us to clear up another
place of much greater consequence, Rom. v .; where
after the Apostle had said, ver. 12, that by one man
sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so
death passed upon ail men (sl$ ira,v<ra.$ dvdpw-Trous), for
that all have sinned, in the rendition of this sentence,
ver. 15, he says, for if through the offence of one
(<rou Iv6s) many (o tfoXXoi) be dead (so our Transla
tors), much more the grace of God by one man (rou
vo c;) Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many (sl$ <rouf
TroXXo^c). Now, who would not wish that they had
kept the articles in the version which they saw in the
original ? If through the offence of the one 1 (that
is, Adam) the many have died, much more the grace
of God by the one man hath abounded unto the many. 9
By this accurate version some hurtful mistakes about
partial redemption and absolute reprobation had been
happily prevented. Our English readers had then
seen, what several of the Fathers saw and testified,
that oi -7ro\Xoi, the many, in an antithesis to the one,
are equivalent to #avre, all, in ver. 12, and compre
hend the whole multitude, the entire species of man
kind, exclusive only of the one. So, again, ver. 18
118 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
and 19 of the same chapter, our Translators have
repeated the like mistake ; where, when the Apostle
had said that as the ofience of one was upon all men
(sis ifwraLs avcJpwwous) to condemnation, so the righ
teousness of one was upon all men to justification ;
for, adds he, as by the one man s (Vou g V oV) disobedi
ence the many (oJ ToXX&i) were made sinners ; so by
the obedience of the one (Vou Ivcs) the many (oi -roXXo, )
shall be made righteous. By this version the reader
is admonished and guided to remark that the many,
in ver. 19, are the same as xavres, all, in the 18th.
But our Translators, when they render it, many were
made sinners, many were made righteous, what do
they do less than lead and draw their unwary readers
into error ?"*
By far the most frequent fault with our Translators
is the omission of the article in the translation when
it stands in the original ; yet sometimes they fall into
the converse error, and insert an article in the Eng
lish where it does not stand in the Greek ; and this,
too, it may be, not without injury to the sense and
intention of the sacred writer. It is so at Rom. ii. 14,
where we make St. Paul to say, " For when the Gen~
tiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things
contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a
law unto themselves." One might conclude from this,
that the Apostle regarded such a fulfilling of the law
on the part of the Gentiles, as ordinary and normal.
* A Sermon upon Popery. Works, vol. iii., p. 245; cf. p. 129.
IN OUR VERSION. 119
Yet it is not r i ^vr, but ttv>n, and the passage must be
rendered, "For when Gentiles, which have not the
law," <fec., the Apostle having in these words his eye
on the small election of heathendom, the exceptions,
and not the rule.
St. Paul has been sometimes charged with exag
geration in declaring that " the love of money is the
root of all evil" (1 Tim vi. 10) ; and there have been
attempts to mitigate the strength of the assertion, as
that when he said " all evil," he only meant " much
evil." The help, however, does not lie here ; but in
more strictly observing what he does say. " The love
of money," he declares, "is" not "the root," but
"a root, of all evil." He does not affirm that this
is the bitter root from which all evil springs, but a
bitter root from which all evil may spring ; there is
no sin of which it may not be, as of which it has not
been, the impulsive motive.
But perhaps at another place, Acts xxvi. 2, the
insertion of the article in the English, where there is
no article in the Greek, works still more injuriously.
St. Paul would by no means have affirmed or admit
ted that " the Jews" accused him ; all true Jews, all
who held fast the promises made to the Fathers, and
now fulfilled in Christ, were on his side. He is ac
cused " of Jews" unfaithful members of the house of
Abraham, by no means " of the Jews." The force
of ver. 7 is still more seriously impaired. In that
verse St. Paul puts before Agrippa, a Jewish prose-
120 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
lyte, and therefore capable of understanding him, the
monstrous, self-contradicting absurdity, that for cher
ishing and asserting the Messias-hope of his nation,
he should now be accused not of heathens, that
would have been nothing strange but " of Jews"
when that hope was indeed the central treasure of the
whole Jewish nation. Before leaving this point, I
may observe that " a Hebrew of Hebrews" (Phil. iii.
5), one, namely, of pure Hebrew blood and language
( E/3paib eg E/3pa~wv) ? while it is more accurate, would
tell also its own story much better than " a Hebrew
of the Hebrews," as we have it now.
II. Our Translators do not always seize the precise
force of the prepositions. They have not done so in
the passages which follow :
John iv. 6. "Jesus therefore being wearied with
his journey, sat thus on the well." It should be ra
ther, "by the w r ell" (S-TT/ vy -^773), in its immediate
neighborhood. On two other occasions, namely, Mark
xiii. 29 ; John v. 2, they have rightly gone back from
the more rigorous rendering of sir I with a dative, to
which they have here adhered : cf. Exod. ii. 15,
LXX.*
Heb. vi. 7. " Herbs meet for them by whom it is
dressed." The Translators give in the margin as an
alternative, "for whom" But it is no mere alterna
tive; of Si 1 o\js (not <V iiv), it is the only rendering
* Yet it ought to be said that Winer (Gramm., 52, c.) is on the
side of our Version as it stands.
IN OUR VERSION. 121
which can be admitted. The rendering which has
been preferred, besides being faulty in grammar, dis
turbs the spiritual image which underlies the passage.
The heart of man is here the earth ; man is the dres
ser ; but the spiritual culture goes forward, not that
the earth may bring forth that which is meet for him,
the dresser by whom, but for God, the owner of the
soil, for whom, it is dressed. The plural oV <rJ<r, instead
of <v ov, need not trouble us, nor remove us from this,
the only right interpretation. The earlier Latin ver
sion had it rightly ; see Tertullian, De Pudic., c. 20 :
" Terra enim quae peperit herbam aptam his,
propter quos et colitur," &c. ; but the Vulgate, " a
quibus" anticipates our mistake, in which we only
follow the English translations preceding.
Luke xxiii. 42. "And he said unto Him, Lord,
remember me when Thou comest into thy kingdom"
But how could Christ come into his kingdom, when
He is Himself the centre of the kingdom, and brings
the kingdom with Him ? The passage will gain im
mensely when, leaving that strange and utterly un
warranted assumption that e/V, a preposition of motion,
is convertible with sv, a preposition of rest ; and thus
that sv <ryj f3a.<fi\sia, which stands here, is the same as
sis *"n v jSarfiXsiav, we translate, " Lord, remember me
when Thou comest in thy kingdom" that is, " with
all thy glorious kingdom about Thee," as is so sub
limely set forth, Rev. xix. 14 ; cf. Jude 14 ; 2 Thess.
i. 7 ; Matt. xxv. 31 (=v ^ &&gt;r?]). It is the stranger
6 -
122 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
that our Translators should have fallen into this er
ror, seeing that they have translated spx^svov sv ry
pouffreiq, aikoj (Matt. xvi. 28) quite correctly, u com
ing in his kingdom" The Vulgate has " in regno
tuo" there, although it shares the error of our Trans
lation, and has " in regnum tuum" here. The exe-
getical tact of Maldonatus overcomes on this, as on
many other occasions, his respect for his authentic
Vulgate, and he comments thus : " Itaque non est
sensus, Cum veneris ad regnandum, sed, Cum veneris
jam regnans, cum veneris non ad acquirendum reg
num, sed regno jam acquisito, quemadmodum venturus
ad judicium est." The same faulty rendering of v,
and assumption that it may have the force of els, oc
curs, Gal. i. 6 ; and indeed this, or the converse, in
too many other passages as well.*
2 Cor. xi. 3. " But I fear lest .... your minds
should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in
Christ" (ct-Tro <r?j aflrXorijTog 1 r^s sis TOV Xpitfrdv). Here,
again, the injurious supposition that sis and ev may be
confounded, has been at work, and to serious loss in
the bringing out of the meaning of the passage. The
AflrXortjs here is the simple, undivided affection, the sin
gleness of heart, of the Bride, the Church, sis Xpirfro v,
toward Christ. It is not their " simplicity in Christ"
or Christian simplicity, which the Apostle fears lest
* See Winer s Gramm., 54, 4, where he enters at length into the
question whether EJJ is ever used for iv, or iv for ci$, in the New Tes
lament. He denies both.
IN OUR VERSION. 123
they may through addiction to worldly wisdom forfeit
and let go ; but, still moving in the images of espousals
and marriage, that they may not bring a simple, undi
vided heart to Christ. If after <WXoVr,To$ we should
also read xai *% ayvorrjros, which seems probable, it
will then be clearer still what St. Paul s intention was.
2 Pet. i. 5-7. " Add to your faith virtue, and to
virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and
to temperance patience, and to patience godliness,"
&C. (sifi Xop q yytfa-TS ev <rji fforn ujxwv <n}v dp-rjv, x. r. X.)
Tyndale had rendered the passage : " In your faith
minister virtue, and in your virtue knowledge," &c.,
and all translations up to the Authorized had followed
him. Henry More (On Godliness, b. 8, c. 3) has
well expressed the objection to the present version :
" Grotius would have ev to be redundant here ; so that
his suffrage is for the English translation. But, for
my own part, I think that sv is so far from being re
dundant that it is essential to the sentence, and inter
posed that we might understand a greater mystery
than the mere adding of so many virtues one to an
other, which would be all that could be expressly
signified if sv were left out. But the preposition here
signifying causality, there is more than a mere enu
meration of those divine graces. For there is also
implied how naturally they rise one out of another,
and that they have a causal dependence one of anoth
er." See this same thought beautifully carried out
in detail by Bengel, in loco.
124 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
III. Our Translators do not always give the true
force of tenses, moods, and voices.
Oftentimes the present tense is used in the New
Testament, especially by St. John in the Apocalypse,
to express the eternal Now of Him for whom there
can be no past and no future. It must be consid
ered a fault, when this is let go, and exchanged for a
past tense in our Version. Take, for instance, Rev.
iv. 5 : " Out of the throne proceeded lightnings, and
thunderings, and voices." But it is much more than
this ; not merely at that one moment when St. John
beheld, but evermore out of his throne proceed (sx-rro-
^OVTCU) these symbols of the presence and of the ter
rible majesty of God. Throughout this chapter, and
at chapter i. 14-16, there is often a needless, and
sometimes an absolutely incorrect, turning of the pres
ent of eternity into the past of time.
Elsewhere a past is turned without cause into a
present. It is so at Acts xxviii. 4 : " No doubt this
man is a murderer, whom, though he hath escaped
the sea, yet Vengeance suffereth not to live." A fine
turn in the words of these -barbarous islanders has
been missed in our Version, and in all the English
versions except the Geneva. The /3ap/3apo, the na
tives, as I think the word might have been fairly
translated, who must have best known the qualities
of the vipers on the island, are so confident of the
deadly character of that one which has fastened itself
on Paul s hand, that they regard and speak of him as
IN OUR VERSION. 125
one already dead, and in this sense use a past tense ;
he is one whom " Vengeance suffered not (oux s/Wev)
to live. Bengel : " Non sivit; jam nullum putant
esse Paulum ;" De Wette : " nicht habt leben lassen."
Let me observe here, by-the-way, that our modern
editions of the Bible should not have dropped the
capital Y with which Vengeance was spelt in the
exemplar edition of 1611. These islanders, in their
simple but most truthful moral instincts, did not con
template Vengeance or Ai xrj in the abstract ; but
personified her as a goddess ; and our Translators,
who are by no means prodigal of their capitals, in
their manner of spelling the word, did their best to
mark and reproduce this personification of the divine
Justice, although the carelessness of printers has since
let it go.
Elsewhere there is confusion between the uses of
the present and the perfect. There is such, for ex
ample, at Luke xviii. 12 : "I give tithes of all that
I possess." But oVa x-rw^ai is not " all that I possess"
but " all that I acquire" (" qua3 mihi acquiro, quae
mihi redeunt"). The Vulgate which has possideo,
shares, perhaps suggested, our error. In the perfect
xexr^aj the word first obtains the force of " I possess,"
or, in other words, " I have acquired"* The Phari
see would boast himself to be, so to say, another
Jacob, such another as he who had said, " Of all that
Thou sh ill give, me, I will surely give the tenth unto
* See Winer s Gramm., $ 41, 4.
126 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
Thee" (Gen. xxviii. 22; cf. xiv. 20), a careful per
former of that precept of the law, which said, " Thou
shalt truly tithe all the increase of thy seed, that the
field bringeth forth year by year" (Deut. xiv. 22) ;
but change acquire into possess, and how much of
this we lose !
We must associate with this passage another, name
ly, Luke xxi. 19 : " In your patience possess ye your
souls;" for the same correction ought there to find
place. It is rather, " In your patience make ye your
souls your own" that is, " In and by your patience
or endurance acquire your souls as indeed your own"
(" salvas obtinete"). Thus Winer: " Durch Aus-
dauer erwerbt euch eure Seelen ; sie werden dann
erst euer wahres, unverlierbares Eigenthum werden."
It is noticeable that orir Translators have corrected
the < possess of all the preceding versions at Matt.
x. 9, exchanged this for the more accurate provide
(XT^C^), or, as it is in the margin, get; which
makes it strange that they should have allowed it in
these other places to stand.
Imperfects lose their proper force, and are dealt
with as aorists and perfects. The vividness of the
narration often suffers from the substitution of the
pure historic for what may be called the descriptive
tense ; as, for example, at Luke xiv. 7 : " He put
forth a parable to those that were bidden when He
marked how they chose out the chief rooms." Read,
" how they were choosing out (s^Xfyovro) the chief
IN OUR VERSION. 127
rooms" the sacred historian placing the Lord s ut
terance of the parable in the midst of the events
which he is describing. So Acts iii. 1 : " Now Peter
and John went up together into the temple." Read,
"were going up" (avs/Saivov). Again, Mark ii. 18:
" And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used
to fast" Read, "were fasting-" (?<rav v^ove^ovrscr),
namely, at that very time ; which gives a special
vigor to their remonstrances ; they were keeping a
fast while the Lord s disciples were celebrating a
festival. The incomplete, imperfect sense, which so
often belongs to this tense, and from which it derives
its name, they often fail to give ; the commencement
of a work which is not brought to a conclusion, the
consent and co-operation of another party, which was
necessary for its completion, having been withheld ;
in such cases the will is taken for the deed.* Thus,
Luke i. 59: "And they called him Zacharias." It
is not so, for Elizabeth would not allow this name to
be given him ; but with the true force of the incom
plete, imperfect tense, " they were calling (sxaXouv)
him Zacharias." Once more, Luke v. 6 : " And their
net brake." Had this been so, they would scarcely
have secured the fish at all. Rather, " was in the
act of breaking," or " was -at the point to break"
(Jis^ijyvuTo) . Other passages where they do not give
the force of the imperfect, but deal with it as though
it had been a perfect or an aorist, are John iii. 22 ;
* See Jelf s Kiihner s Gramm., 398, 2.
128 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
iv. 47 ; vi. 21 ; Luke xxiv. 82 ; Matt. xiii. 34 ; Acts
xi. 20.
Aorists are rendered as if they were perfects ; and
perfects as if they were aorists. Thus, we have an
example of the first, Luke i. 19, where d-ffsj-^w is
translated as though it were cU-sV-aXuaj, " I am sent,"
instead of " I was sent." Gabriel contemplates his
mission, not at the moment of its present fulfilment,
but from that of his first sending forth from the pres
ence of God. Another example of the same occurs
at 2 Pet. i. 14 : " Knowing that shortly I must put
off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ
hath shewed me." By this "hath shewed me," we
lose altogether the special allusion to an historic mo
ment in the Apostle s life, to John xxi. 18, 19, which
would at once come out, if sfyx^ffe JULOI had been ren
dered, " shewed me." Doubtless there are passages
which would make difficult the universal application
of the rule that perfects should be translated as per
fects, and aorists as aorists ; thus, Luke xiv. 18, 19,
where one might hesitate in rendering ^yo patfa " I
bought" instead of " I have bought" and some at
least in the long line of aorists, J&gatfa, sVsXg/wtfa, eya-
vspwrfa, i Xa/Sov (ver. 4, 6, 8), in the high-priestly prayer,
John xvii. Still, on these passages no conclusion can
be grounded that the writers of the New Testament
did not always observe the distinction.*
Again, the force of the aorist is missed, though in
* See Winer, Gramm., 41, 5.
IN OUR VERSION. 129
another way, at Mark xvi. 2, where dvars/Xavro^ rou
TjXi ou is translated, " at the rising of the sun." It can
only be, " when the sun was risen." Did the anxiety
to avoid a slight seeming discrepancy between this
statement and that of two other Evangelists (Matt,
xxviii. 1 ; Mark xvi. 2) modify the translation here ?
Examples, on the other hand, of perfects turned
into aorists are frequent. Thus, at Luke xiii. 2 :
" Suppose ye that these Galileans were sinners above
all the Galileans, because they syffered such things ?"
Rather, " because they have suffered (Vsiro viWiv) such
things." Our Lord contemplates the memorable ca
tastrophe by which they perished, not as something
belonging merely to the historic past ; but as a fact
reaching into the present ; still vividly presenting
itself to the mind s eye of his hearers.
One other example must suffice. In that great doc
trinal passage, Col. i. 13-22, St. Paul declares, ver.
16, that " by Christ were all things created" The
aorist sxr. tf^ has its right force given to it here ; but
the Apostle in a most remarkable way, when in the
last clause of the verse he resumes the doctrine of the
whole, changes the aorist sxr/<rd>j for the perfect gxnovai.
And why ? Because he is no longer looking at the
one historic act of creation, but at the permanent re
sults flowing on into all time and eternity therefrom.
Our Translators have not followed him here, but, as
it no change had been made, they render this clause
also : "All things were created by Him, and for Him ;"
6*
130 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
but read rather: "All things have been created by
Him, and for Him."*
Imperfects and aorists are turned without necessity
into pluperfects. It is admitted by all that an aorist,
under certain conditions, may have this sense of a past
behind another past ;f nor, according to some, can
this force be altogether denied to the imperfect ; but
a pluperfect force is given in our Version to these
tenses, where certainly no sort of necessity requires
it. Thus, for the words, " because He had done these
things on the sabbath" (John v. 16), read, "because
He did (e^o/si) these things on the sabbath." And,
again, in the same chapter read, " for Jesus conveyed
Himself away" (iggveurfsv) ; that is, so soon as this dis
cussion between the Jews and the healed man arose,
not, "had conveyed Himself away" previously, as our
Version would imply.
Neither do our Translators always give its right
force to a middle verb. They fail to do so at Phil,
ii. 15 : " among whom ye shine as lights in the world."
To justify these words, " ye shine" which are shared
by all the Versions of the English Hexapla, St. Paul
ought to have written <paiWe, and not (paivstf&e, as he
has written. *aivsiv, indeed, is to shine (John i. 5 ;
* The fact that we almost all learn our grammar from the Latin,
and that in the Latin the perfect indicative does its own duty and that
of the aorist as well, renders us very unobservant of inaccuracies in
this particular kind till we have been specially trained to observe
them.
t What these conditions are, see Winer s Grnmm., 41, 5.
IN OUR VERSION. 131
2 Pet. i. 19 ; Rev. i. 16) ; but <paiW0a to appear (Matt.
xxiii. 27 ; 1 Pet. iv. 18 ; Jam. iv. 14). It is worthy
of note that while the Vulgate, having lucetis, shares
and anticipates our error, the earlier Italic Version
was free from it ; as is evident from the verse as quoted
by Augustine (Enarr. in Psalm., cxlvi. 4) : " In qui-
bus apparetis tanquam luminaria in mundo."
Sometimes the force of a passive is lost. Thus is
it at 2 Cor. v. 10 : " For we must all appear before
the judgment-seat of Christ." The words contain a
yet more solemn and awful announcement than this :
" For we must all be made manifest" (vavras r^3.s
9 a v s p u & ri v a for) , " exhibited as what we indeed are,
displayed in our true colors, the secrets of our hearts
disclosed, and we, so to speak, turned inside out"
(for the word means as much as this) " before the
judgment-seat of Christ." There is often reason to
think that the exposition of Chrysostom exercised
considerable influence on our Translators. Here it
might have done so with benefit ; for, commenting on
these words (in Cor. Horn., 10), he says: "ou /ap
flrapatfTrjvai r^ag atfXoj 6sT, dXXa xai (pavspwdrjvcu,"
showing that he would not have been satisfied with
what our Translators have here done.
With one or two miscellaneous observations I will
conclude this chapter. It would be very impertinent
to suppose that our Translators, who numbered in
their company many of the first scholars of their time,
were not perfectly at home in the use of *a % c, and
132 ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR
familiar with the very simple modifications of its
meaning as employed with or without an article ; and
yet it must be owned that they do not always observe
its rules. One example may suffice.
Acts x. 12. " Wherein were all manner of four-
footed beasts of the earth." But-*avra rd rsrpa*o(Ja
can not possibly have the meaning ascribed to it here.
Translate rather: " Wherein were all the four-footed
beasts of the earth" " omnia animalia," as the Vul
gate rightly has it. Here, probably, as Winer ob
serves, they were tempted to forsake the more accu
rate rendering from an unwillingness to ascribe some
thing which seemed to them like exaggeration to the
sacred historian : how, they said to themselves, could
" all the four-footed beasts of the earth" be contained
in that sheet ? For, indeed, this shrinking from a
meaning which an accurate translation would render
up, is a very frequent occasion of mistranslation, and
also of warped exegesis. It is much better, however,
that the translator should go forward on his task
without regard to such considerations as these. The
Word of God can take care of, and vindicate itself,
and does not need to be thus taken under man s pro
tection.
It is remarkable how little careful our Translators
are to note the difference between the verb of being-
and that of becoming ; between dpi and ^s /ova. It
would not be easy to find the pas? age in the New Tes
tament where these are confounded, but they confound
IN OUR VERSION. 133
them frequently, and often to our loss. Thus, at Heb.
v. 11, the Apostle complains of the difficulty of un
folding some hard truths to those whom he addresses,
" seeing ye are dull of hearing." But the rebuke is
sharper than this " seeing ye have become dull of
hearing" (sirs/ vwdpo/ ys^o vars roug axca??). This would
imply that it was not so once, in the former days,
when they first were enlightened (x. 32) ; but that
now they had gone back from that liveliness of spirit
ual apprehension which once they had (see Chrysos-
tom). The Vulgate has it rightly : " Quoniam imbe-
cilles facti estis ad audiendum ;" being followed by
the Rheims : " Because ye are become weak to hear ;"
so, too, De Wette : "Da ihr trage von Verstande
geworden seid" At Matt. xxiv. 32, there is the
same loss of the true force of the word. Not the
being tender of the branch of the fig-tree, but the
becoming tender, is the sign of the nearness of sum
mer.
In other points our Translators are without fault,
where yet the modern copies by careless reproduction
of their work involve them in apparent error, which
indeed is none of theirs, but that of the too care
less guardians of their text. They have their own
burden to bear ; they ought not to be made to bear
the burden of others. But they do so at Matt. xii.
23. Correcting all our previous translations, they
rendered the words, p-fa ovrtg sVnv 6 u^ Aa/3"#, with
perfect accuracy : " Is this the Son of David ?" fully
134 ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUR VERSION.
understanding that, according to the different idiomi
of the Greek and English, the negative particle of the
original was not to reappear in the English ; cf. Acts
vii. 42 ; John viii. 22. I am unable to say when the
reading, which appears in all our modern Bibles, " Is
not this the Son of David ?" first crept in ; it is already
in Hammond, 1659 ; but it is little creditable to those
who should have kept their text inviolate, that they
have not exercised a stricter vigilance over it. It is
curious that, having escaped error here, our Transla
tors should yet have fallen into it in the exactly simi
lar phrase at John iv. 29, pvn ouVfc tfriv 6 XpirfroV;
where they do render, " Is not this the Christ ?" but
should have rendered, "Is this the Christ?" The
Samaritan woman in her joy, as speaking of a thing
too good to be true, which she will suggest, but dare
not absolutely affirm, asks of her fellow-countrymen,
" Is this the Christ ? can this be He whom we have
looked for so long ?" expecting in reply not a nega
tive but an affirmative answer.
QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 135
CHAPTER VIII.
ON SOME QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS OF WORDS.
THERE are a certain number of passages in which
no one can charge our Translators with error, the
version they have given being entirely defensible, and
numbering among its defenders some, it may be many,
well worthy to be heard ; while yet another version
on the whole will commend itself as preferable to that
which they have adopted. Let me adduce a few pas
sages where, to me at least, it seems there is a greater
probability, in some a far greater, in favor of some
other translation rather than of that which they have
admitted.
Matt. vi. 27 (cf. Luke xii. 25). "Which of you
by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature ?"
Erasmus was, I believe, the first who suggested the
rendering of jXixfa not by < stature, but by " length
of life ;" and this his suggestion has since found ac
ceptance with a large number of interpreters ; with
Hammond, Wolf, Olshausen, Meyer, and others. While
136 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE
the present translation may be abundantly justified,
yet this certainly appears far preferable to me, and
for the following reasons : a. In that natural rhetoric
of which our Lord was the great master, He would
have adduced some very small measure, and reminded
his hearers that they could not add even this to their
stature ; He would not have adduced a cubit, which
is about a foot and a half; but He would have de
manded, " Which of you with all your carking and
caring can add an inch or a hair s breadth to his
stature ?" /3. Men do not practically take thought
about adding to their stature ; it is not an object of
desire to one in a thousand to be taller than God has
made him ; this could scarcely therefore be cited as
one of the vain solicitudes of men. On the other
hand, everything exactly fits when we understand our
Lord to be asking this question about length of life.
The cubit, which is much when compared with a man s
stature, is infinitesimally small, and therefore most
appropriate, when compared to his length of life, that
life being contemplated as a course, or <Jpo/xo, , which
he may attempt, but ineffectually, to prolong. And
then, further, this the prolonging of life is something
which men do seek ; striving, by various precautions,
by solicitous care, to lengthen the period of their
mortal existence ; to which yet they can not add a
cubit, no, not a hand s breadth, more than God has
apportioned to it.
Luke ii. 49. " Wist ye not that I must be about
RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 137
my Father s business ?" But sv rug TO? Harpls will as
well mean, " in my Father s house :" and if the words
will mean this as well, they will surely mean it bet
ter. We shall thus have a more direct answer on
the part of the Child Jesus to the implied rebuke of
his blessed Mother s words, " Behold thy father and
1 have sought Thee sorrowing ;" to which he answers,
"How is it that ye sought Me?" that is, in any
other place ? " Wist ye not that I must be in my
Father s house ? here in the temple ; and here without
lengthened seeking ye might have found me at once."
There was a certain misconception in respect of his
person and character, which had led them to look
for Him in other places of resort rather than in the
temple.
John xii. 6. "He was a thief, and had the bag,
and bare what was put therein." I can not but think
that it was St. John s intention to say not merely that
Judas " bare," but that he " bare away" purloined,
or pilfered, what was put into the common purse. It
has the appearance of a tautology to say that he " had
the bag, and bare what was put therein;" unless,
indeed, the latter words are introduced to explain
the opportunity which he enjoyed of playing the thief ;
hardly, as it appears to me, a sufficient explanation.
On the other hand, the use of /3a<jvasiv, not in the
sense of portare, but of 4 auferre, is frequent ; it is
so used by Josephus, Antt.^ xiv. 7. 1, and in the New
Testament, John xx. 15 ; and such, I am persuaded, is
138 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE
the use of it here. We note that already in Augus
tine s time the question had arisen which was the right
way to deal with the words ; for, commenting on the
4 portabat which he found in his Italic, as it has kept
its place in the Vulgate, he asks : " Portabat an ex-
portabat ? Sed ministerio portabat, furto exportabat."
Here he might seem to leave his own view of the pas
sage undecided; not so, however, at Ep., 108. 3:
" Ipsi [Apostoli] de illo scripserunt quod fur erat, et
omnia qua3 mittebantur de dominicis loculis aufere-
bat" After all is said, there will probably always
remain upholders of one translation and upholders of
the other ; yet to my mind the probabilities are much
in favor of that version which I observe that the
" Five Clergymen" have also adopted.
Rom. i. 26, 27. I speak with hesitation, yet in
cline strongly to think that in this awful passage
where St. Paul dares to touch on two of the worst
enormities of the heathen world, and with purest lips
to speak, and that with all necessary plainness, of the
impurest things, we should have done well, if we had
followed even to the utmost where he would lead
us. For men and women, as often as the words
occur in these verses, I should wish to see substituted
4 males and females ; &&lt;iwss and fl^Xgiai are through
out the words which St. Paul employs. It is true
that something must be indulged to the delicacy of
modern Christian ears ; our Translators have evidently
so considered in rendering more than one passage in
RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 139
the Old Testament ; but, reading these verses over
with this substitution, while they gain in emphasis,
while they represent more exactly the terrible charge
which St. Paul brings against the cultivated world
of heathendom, they do not seem to me to acquire
any such painful explicitness as they ought not
to have, hardly more of this than they possessed
before.
2 Cor. ii. 14. "Now thanks be unto God which
always causeth us to triumph in Christ." Here, too,
our Translators may be right, and, if they are wrong,
it is in good company. I must needs think that for
" causeth us to triumph" we should read, " leadeth
us in triumph ;" and that the Yulgate, when it ren
dered Qpa^fisCuv fyas, " qui triumphat nos," and Jerome
(which is the same thing), " qui triumphat de nobis,"
though even he has failed to bring out his meaning
with clearness, were right. pja^/3sJsjv occurs but on
one other occasion in the New Testament (Col. ii. 5).
No one there doubts that it means, to lead in triumph,
to make a show of, as vanquished and subdued ; and
it is hard to withdraw this meaning from it here, being
as it also is the only meaning of the word in classical
Greek; thus Plutarch, T/ies. et Rom.,iv.: fiatffceTs
sfyjafji/Ssurfs xcu yjygfxo vas : he led kings and captains in
triumph ; and see other examples in Wetstein. But,
it may be asked, what will St. Paul mean by the dec
laration, " who everywhere leadeth us in triumph in
Christ" ? The meaning is, indeed, a very grand one.
140 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE
St. Paul did not feel it inconsistent with the pro-
foundest humility, to regard himself as a signal trophy
and token of God s victorious power in Christ. Lying
with his face upon the ground, he had anticipated,
though in another sense, the words of another fighter
against God, " Yicisti, Galilsee ;" and now his Al
mighty Conqueror was leading him about through all
the cities of the Greek and Roman world, an illustri
ous testimony of his power at once to subdue and to
save. The foe of Christ was now, as he gloried in
naming himself, the servant of Christ ; and this, his
mighty transformation, God was making manifest to
the glory of his name in every place. The attempt
of some to combine the meanings of being led in tri
umph, which they feel that the word demands, and
triumphing or being made to triumph, which it seems
to them the sense demands, is in my judgment an at
tempt to reconcile irreconcileable images ; as, for
instance, when Stanley says, " The sense of conquest
and degradation is lost in the more general sense of
making us to share this triumph. But in the lit
eral triumph who so pitiable, so abject, so forlorn, as
the captive chief*or king, the Jugurtha or Vercingeto-
rix, doomed often, as soon as he had graced the show,
to a speedy and miserable death ? But it is not with
God as with man : for while to be led in triumph of
men is the most miserable, to be led in triumph of
God as the willing trophy of his power, is the most
glorious and blessed lot which could fall to any ; and
RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 141
it is this, I am persuaded, which the Apostle claims
for his own.
2 Cor. ii. IT. "For we are not as many, which
corrupt the Word of God." Doubtless there is much
to be said in favor of this version of xa*>]Xso ovT^ TOV
Xoyov TOU esou. KatfijXs. siv is often to adulterate; vodtu-
nv, as Chrysostorn expounds it, to mingle false with
true, as the xcLirn\o$, or petty huckster, would frequently
do. Still, the matter is by no means so clear in favor
of this meaning of xcMr>]Xgi5gjv, and against the other,
" to make a traffic of," as some in later times would
have it ; and the words e% siXixpivsfas, which Meyer con
ceives decisive, seems to me rather an argument the
other way. What so natural as that St. Paul should
put back the charge of making a traffic with the Word
of God ; above all, seeing how earnestly elsewhere in
this Epistle he clears himself from similar charges
(xii. 14, 17) ? I believe when Tyndale rendered
xa-rrjXs. sjv here, " to chop and change with," he was
on the right track ; and many will remember the re
markable passage in Bentley s Sermon upon Popery,
which is so strong in this view, that, long as it is, I
can not forbear to quote it : " Our English Transla
tors have not been very happy in their version of this
passage. We are not, says the Apostle, xa^XsJovrgs
rov Xo /ov rou sou, which our Translators have rendered,
* We do not corrupt or (as in the margin) deal de
ceitfully with the Word of God. They were led to
this by the parallel place, c. iv. of this Epistle, ver. 2,
142 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE
6 not walking in craftiness, wtis $o\avvr TOV Xoyov TOU
sou, nor handling the word of God deceitfully ;
they took wxifrfalwres and foXovvrsf in the same ade
quate notion, as the vulgar Latin had done before
them, which expresses both by the same word, adul-
terantes verbum Dei ; and so, likewise, Hesychius
makes them synonyms, IxxoMnfXffunv, floXouv. AoXouv, in
deed, is fitly rendered adulterare ; so <5oXoGv TOV ^putfov,
TOV oi vov, to adulterate gold or wine, by mixing worse
ingredients with the metal or liquor. And our Trans
lators had done well if they had rendered the latter
passage, not adulterating, not sophisticating the Word.
But xa"jXsuovfl-6 in our text has a complex idea and a
wider signification ; xa-r/jX^siv always comprehends
c>oXouv ; but oX i7v never extends to xa^X^ sjv, which,
besides the sense of adulterating, has an additional
notion of unjust lucre, gain, profit, advantage. This
is plain from the word xa^Xr^, a calling always infa
mous for avarice and knavery : perfidus hie caupo,
says the poet, as a general character. Thence xa^-
Xsusiv, by an easy and natural metaphor, was diverted
to other expressions where cheating and lucre were
signified : xa-r/jXsuejv rov X6yov, says the Apostle here,
and the ancient Greeks, xa^XsJeiv <ra.$ J/xacr, T/^V s/p^vrjv,
*w tfo<piav, TO, f*a^fxara, to corrupt and sell justice, to
barter a negotiation of peace, to prostitute learning
and philosophy for gain. Cheating, we see, and adul
terating, is part of the notion of xa^XsJeiv, but the
principal essential of it is sordid lucre. So cauponari
RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 143
in the famous passage of Ennius, where Pyrrhus re
fuses the offer of a ransom for his captives, and restores
them gratis :
Non mi aurum posco, nee mi pretium dederitis,
Non cauponanti bellum, sed belligeranti.
And so the Fathers expound this place. ... So that,
in short, what St. Paul says, xa^Xg. ovrgs TOV Xoyov,
might be expressed in one classic word X^^wropw,
or Xo/o^Jw-ai, where the idea of gain and profit is the
chief part of the signification. Wherefore, to do jus
tice to our text, we must not stop lamely with our
Translators, corrupters of the word of God ; but
add to it as its plenary notion, i corrupters of the
word of God for filthy lucre. "*
Col. ii. 8. " Beware lest any man spoil you through
philosophy and vain deceit/ This translation may
very well hold its place : rfuXayw^siv does mean to rob
or spoil : this, however, is its secondary meaning ; its
first, and that which agrees with its etymology (tfiJXov
and ayw), would be, to lead away the spoil, " prsedam
abigere ;" and certainly the warning would be more
emphatic if we understood it as a warning lest they
themselves should become the spoil or booty of these
false teachers : " Beware lest any man make a booty
of you, lead you away as his spoil, through philosophy
and vain deceit." Bengel : " tfuXa/w/wv, qui non so-
luin de vobiSj sed vos ipsos spolium faciat."
Col. ii. 23. "Which things have indeed a shew
Work s, vol. iii., p. 242.
144 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE
of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglect
ing of the body, not in any honor to the satisfying
of the flesh" The first part of this verse, itself not
very easy, appears to me to be excellently rendered
in our Version. Perhaps, if the thing were to do
over again, instead of " a she w of wisdom," " a repib-
tation of wisdom" would more exactly express Xo /ov
<fo$ias : and there may be a question whether neglect
ing is quite strong enough for acedia; whether * pun
ishing or not sparing, which are both suggested in
the margin, would not either of them have been well
introduced into the text. But in the latter part of
the verse, where its chief difficulties reside, our Trans
lators leave us in a certain doubt as to what their
exact view of the passage was. About the Geneva
Version I have no doubt. Its authors, evidently un
der the leading of Beza, have seized the right mean
ing : " [Yet] are of no value, [but appertain to those
things] wherewith the flesh is crammed." At the
same time, their version is too paraphrastic ; the
words which I have enclosed within brackets having
no corresponding words in the original. Did our
Translators mean the same thing ? I am inclined to
think not ; else they would have placed a comma after
4 honor ; but that rather they, in agreement with many
of the best Interpreters of their time, understood the
verse thus : " Which things have a shew of wisdom,
&c., but are not in any true honor, as things serving
to the satisfying of the just needs of the body."
RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 145
Against this it may be urged that g\r t ^\r l has a con
stant sense of filling overmuch, of stuffing (Isai. i. 14 ;
Ps. cv. 16 ; Ezek. xvi. 48) ; and followed by tfapxoV
could scarcely have any other sense ; it being impos
sible that <roLg here can be used in an honorable inten
tion as equivalent to tfoj/jia, but only in the constant
Pauline sense of the flesh and mind of the flesh. Some
rendering which should express what the Geneva Ver
sion expresses, but in happier and conciser terms, is,
I believe, here to be desired. "A golden sentence,"
as he calls it, which Bengel quotes from the Commen
tary of Hilary the Deacon on this passage, " Sagina
carnalis sensus traditio humana est," shows that this
interpretation of it was not unknown in antiquity.
1 Tim. vi. 8. "Having food and raiment, let us
be therewith content." Would it not be better to
translate, " Having food and covering, let us be there
with content" ? It is possible that St. Paul had only
raiment in his eye ; and <rxsVa<j>a is sometimes used
in this more limited sense (Plato, Polit., 279 d) ; but
seeing that it may very well include, and does very
often include, habitation, this more general word,
which it would have been still free for those who
liked to understand as raiment alone, appears to
me preferable. The Vulgate, which translates, " Ha-
lientes alimenta et quibus tegamur" and De Wette,
Bedeckung, give the same extent to the word.
Jam. iii. 5. " Behold how great a matter a little
fire kindleth !" This may be right. Our Translators
7
146 ON SOME QUESTIONABLE
have the high authority of St. Jerome on their side,
who renders (in Esai., 66) : " Parvus ignis quam
grandem succendit m&teriam;" and compare Ecclus.
xxviii. 10 ; yet certainly it is much more in the spirit
and temper of this grand imaginative passage to take
uXrjv here as wood or forest : " Behold how great
a forest a little spark kindleth !" So the Vulgate
long ago : " Ecce quantus ignis quam magnam silvam
incendit !" and De Wette : " Siehe, ein kleines Feuer,
welch einen grossen Wald ziindet es an !" It need
hardly be observed how frequently in ancient classi
cal poetry the image of the little spark setting the
great forest in a blaze recurs in Homer, 21., xi. 155 ;
in Pindar, Pyth., iii. 66, and elsewhere ; nor yet how
much better this of the wrapping of some vast forest
in a flame by the falling of a single spark sets out
that which was in St. James s mind, namely, of a far-
spreading mischief springing from a smallest cause,
than does the vague sense which in our Version is
attached to the word. Our Translators have placed
4 wood in the margin.
Rev. iii. 2. " Strengthen the things which remain,
that are ready to die." The better Commentators are
now pretty well agreed that ^a Xo^a, thus rendered
" the things which remain," should be taken rather
as = TOU Xoiirojs, and that the Angel of the Sardian
Church is not bidden, as we generally understand it,
to strengthen the graces that remain in his own heart,
but the few and feeble believers that remain in the
RENDERINGS OF WORDS. 147
Church over which he presides ; the allusion being
probably to Ezek. xxxiv. 2. Yitringa : " Commendat
vigilantiam, qua sibi a morte caverent, et alios ab
interitu imminente vindicarent." The use of the neu
ter, singular and plural, where not things but persons
are intended, is too frequent in the New Testament, to
cause any difficulty here (Winer, Gramm., 27,4).
148 ON SOME WORDS
CHAPTER IX.
ON SOME WORDS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED.
OUR Translators occasionally fail in part or alto
gether to give the true force of a word or phrase. In
some cases it is evident they have assumed a wrong
etymology. These are examples :
Matt. viii. 20. " The birds of the air have nests. 19
It stood thus in the versions preceding ; the Vulgate
in like manner has nidos ; some of the earlier Latin
versions, however, instead of nidos had diversoria,
and Augustine, using one of these, has tabernacula, *
and these, with their equivalent English, are on all
accounts the preferable renderings. For, in the first
place, birds do not retire to their nests, except at
one brief period of the year; and then, secondly,
xa<ra(rxT]vwo i will not bear that meaning; or at all
events has so much naturally the more general mean
ing of shelters, habitations ( Wohnungen, De Wette),
that one must needs agree with Grotius, who here
* Qucest. xvii. in Matt., qu, 5.
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 149
remarks : " Quin vox haec ad arborum ramos perti-
neat, dubitaturum non puto qui loca infra, xiii. 32,
Marc. iv. 32, et Luc. xiii. 19, inspexerit." He might
have added to these, Ps. civ. 12 : Dan. iv. 18, LXX.
Matt. x. 4 ; cf. Mark iii. 18. " Simon the Canaan-
tie" I have often asked myself in perplexity what
our Translators meant by this < Canaanite ; which
they are the first to use ; although Cranmer s " Simon
of Canaan" and probably Tyndale s " Simon of Ca-
nan" come to the same thing. Take * Canaanite in
its obvious sense, and in that which everywhere else
in the Scripture it possesses (Gen. xii. 6 ; Exod. xxv.
28; Zech. xiv. 21, and continually), and the word
would imply that one of the Twelve, of those that
should sit on the twelve thrones judging the tribes of
Israel, was himself not of the seed of Abraham, but
of that accursed stock which the children of Israel,
going back from God s commandment, had failed ut
terly to extirpate on their entrance into the Promised
Land ; and which, having thus been permitted to live,
had gradually been absorbed into the nation. This,
of course, could not be ; to say nothing of the word
in the original being KavavjV^, and not Xavavaibs, as
would have been necessary to justify the rendering of
the Authorized Version. There can be no doubt that
KavaviVris here is = ?jXwrfo, Luke vi. 15 ; Acts i. 13 ;
and expresses the fact that Simon had been, before
he joined himself to the Lord, one of those stormy
zealots who, professing to follow the example of Phin-
150 ON SOME WORDS
eas (Num. xxv. 9), took the vindication of God s out
raged law into their own hands. There is, indeed,
another explanation sometimes given of the word ;
but the manner in which our Translators have spelt
4 Canaanite will hardly allow one to suppose that by
it they meant, " of Cana," the village in Galilee.
This is Jerome s view, and I suppose Beza s ( Ca-
naanites ), and De Wette s ( Der Kananit ) ; yet
Kava would Surely yield, not KavaviV^, but KavVij$, as
"A/3<fypa, Aft&visgiriris. I confess myself wholly at a loss
to understand the intention of our Translators. The
same difficulty attends the " Simon Chananceus" of
the Vulgate.
Matt. xiv. 8. "And she, being before instructed
of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist s head
in a charger." A meaning is given here to 7rpo/3i/3a-
(ffefta. which the word will not bear. I do not think
that the Yulgate exercised much influence on our
Translators ; yet the pra3monita of it may have led
the way to this error. Ilgopifia%ew is to urge on, or
push forward, to make to advance, or sometimes, in
transitively, to advance ; the wpo not being of time,
but of place ; thus, flrpo,@/@asiv <ngv Tra-rpMa, to set for
ward the might of one s country (Polyb., ix. 10, 4) ;
and it is sometimes used literally, sometimes figura
tively. On the one other occasion when it occurs in
the New Testament, it is used literally ; ^pos^/^atfav
AXeavJpov (Acts xix. 33), "they pushed forward,"
not, " they drew out, Alexander ;" here figuratively
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 151
and morally. We may conceive the unhappy girl
with all her vanity and levity, yet shrinking from the
petition of blood, which her mother would put into
her lips, and needing to be urged on, or pushed for
ward, before she could be induced to make it ; and
this- is implied in the word. I should translate, " And
she, being- urged on by her mother."
Matt. xiv. 13. "They followed Him on foot out
of the cities." mj might very well mean " on foot ;"
yet it does not mean so here ; but rather, " by land."
There could be no question that the multitude who fol
lowed Jesus would in the main proceed " on foot," and
not in chariots or on horses, and it is not this which
the Evangelist desires to state. The contrast which
he would draw is between the Lord who reached the
desert place by ship (see the earlier part of the verse),
and the multitude who found their way thither by
land. Compare the use of irs^guejv at Acts xx. 13, by
the Rheims rightly translated, " to journey by land ;"
but in our Translation, not with the same precision,
" to go afoot."
Mark xi. 4. "A place where two ways met."
"Af*<po&&gt; (d/jupi and e&fc) is rather, a way round, a
crooked lane.
Mark xii. 26. "Have ye not read in the book of
Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him ?" But
fat TTJS /3<xTou, as all acknowledge now, is not, " in the
bush," as indicating the place from which God spake
to Moses, but means, " in that portion of Scripture
152 ON SOME WORDS
which goes by the name of The Bush" the Jews
being wont to designate different portions of Scripture
by the most memorable thing or fact recorded in them ;
thus, one portion was called y (3 foot;. How, indeed,
to tell this story in the English Version is not easy to
determine, without forsaking the translator s sphere,
and entering on that of the commentator. I may ob
serve that sv TTXia (Rom. xi. 2) is a quotation of the
same kind. It can never mean, " of Elias," as in our
Translation ; but is rather, " in the history of Elias,"
in that portion of Scripture which tells of him ; so De
Wette : " in der Geschichte des Elia."
Acts xiv. 13. " We also are men of like passions
with you." This fact would not have disproved in
the eyes of these Lycaonians the right of Paul and
Silas to be considered gods. The heathen were only
too ready to ascribe to their gods like passions, re
venge, lust, envy, with their own. O^aota&sTc; i-^Tv
means rather, " subject to like conditions," that is, of
pain, sickness, old age, death, "with yourselves."
Translate, " We also are men who suffer like things
with yourselves." The Vulgate, " Et nos mortales
sumus," is on the right track ; and Tyndale, " We
are mortal men like unto you." The only other pas
sage in the New Testament in which o^oio^rad^ occurs
(Jam. v. 17), will need to be slightly modified in the
same sense.
Acts xvii. 22. "I perceive that in all things ye
are too superstitious" This, as Luther s " allzu aber-
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 153
glaiibisch," is a rendering very much to be regretted.
Whatever severe things St. Paul might be obliged to
say to his hearers, yet it was not his way to begin by
insulting, and in this way alienating them from him
self, and from the truth of which he was the bearer.
Rather, if there was anything in them which he could
praise, he would praise that, and only afterward con
demn that which demanded condemnation. So is it
here ; he affirmed, and no doubt they took it for praise,
that by his own observation he had gathered they
were us fort&upaffrfrtfttwr, as men greatly addicted to
the worship of deities, " very religious," I should
render it, giving to i religious its true sense, and not
the mischievous sense which it has now acquired. So
Beza, religiosiores ; and De Wette, " sehr gottes-
fiirchtig." This was the praise which all antiquity
gave to the Athenians, and which Paul does not with
hold, using at the same time with the finest tact and
skill a middle word, capable of a good sense, and
capable of a bad a word originally of honorable
meaning, but which had already slipped in part into
a dishonorable sense ; thus finely insinuating that this
service of theifs might easily slip, or have slipped
already, into excess, or might be rendered to wrong
objects. Still, these words are to be taken, not as a
holding up to them of their sin, but as a captatio be-
nevolentice, and it must be confessed they are coarsely
rendered in our Version.
Acts xxv. 5. " Let them therefore, said he, which
r
154 ON SOME WORDS.
among you are able, go down." But oi 5uva<roi is not
" those which are able," but " those which are in au
thority," as the Vulgate rightly, " qui potentes sunt :"
see Losner, Obss. in N. T., in loc.
Rom. ii. 22. "Thou that abhorrest idols, dost
thou commit sacrilege ?" This is too general, and
fails to bring out with sufficient distinctness the charge
which the Apostle, in this lepotfuXsr^, is making against
the Jew. The charge is this : " Thou professest to
abhor idols, and yet art so mastered by thy covetous-
ness, that, if opportunity offers, thou wilt not scruple
thyself to lay hands on these gold and silver abomi
nations, and to make them thy own" (see Chrysostom,
in loco). Read, " Thou that abhorrest idols, dost
thou rob temples ?"
Rom. xi. 8. "According as it is written, God
hath given them the spirit of slumber" Our Trans
lators must have derived xarawfc from vurfTa^siv, as
indeed many others have done, before they could have
given it this meaning. Yet they plainly have their
misgiving in respect of the correctness of this etymol
ogy, for they propose remorse in the margin, evi
dently on the correcter hypothesis that the word is
not from vurfra^giv, but vjrftfeiv. Still, even if they had
put remorse, as the compunction of the soul (the
Yulgate has compunctio ), into the text, though they
would have been etymologically right, they would not
have seized the exact force of xaravufis, at least in
Hellenistic Greek ; as is plain from the service which
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 155
it does in the Septuagint, and from the Hebrew words
which it is there made to render. This is no place
for entering at length into all (and it is much) which
has been written on this word. Sufficient to say that
it is properly the stupor or stupefaction, the astonish
ment, bringing astonishment back to its stronger and
earlier meaning, the stunnedness ( Betaubung, De
Wette) consequent on a wound or blow, vjctfsiv, as I
need hardly observe, being to strike as well as to
pierce. Torpor, only that this so easily suggests the
wrong etymology, and runs into the notion of deep
sleep, would not be a bad rendering of it. Stupor,
which the " Five Clergymen" have adopted, is perhaps
better. Hammond, whose marginal emendations of
the Authorized Version are often exceedingly valuable,
and deserve more attention than they have received,
being about the most valuable part of his book on the
New Testament, has suggested senselessness ; but
this is not one of his happiest emendations.
Gal. i. 18. " I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter."
icTTopsJv is not merely to see, but properly, to inquire,
to investigate, to interrogate, to arrive by personal
knowledge, ocular or other, at the actual knowledge
of past events : and then, secondarily, to set down the
results of these investigations, just as Icvopia is, first,
this investigation, and then, in a secondary sense, the
result of it duly set down, or, as we say, history.
Here, indeed, it is a person, and not things, which
is the object of this closer knowledge. " I went up
156 ON SOME WORDS
to Jerusalem," says Paul, " to acquaint myself with
Peter" (" accuratius cognoscere ; itaque plus inest
quam in verbo ideTv :" Winer).
Gal. v. 20. 4 Seditions. It is at first perplexing
to find this as the rendering of A^oa-rao iai, which is
evidently a word of wider reach ; but Archdeacon
Hare has admirably accounted for its appearance in
this place.* I will quote his words : " When our
Version is inaccurate or inadequate, this does not
arise, as it does throughout in the Rhemish Version,
from a coincidence with the Vulgate ; yet its inade
quate rendering s often seem to have arisen from an
imperfect apprehension of some Latin substitute for
the word in the Greek text from taking some pecu
liar sense of the Latin word different from that in
which it was used to represent the Greek original.
Let me illustrate this by a single instance. Among
the works of the flesh St. Paul (Gal. v. 20) numbers
&Xoo <ra<j jaj, which we render seditions. But sedi
tions in our old, as well as our modern language, are
only one form of the divisions implied by (Jixoovatfiaj,
and assuredly not the form which would present itself
foremost to the Apostle s mind when writing to the
Galatians. At first, too, one is puzzled to understand
how the word seditions came to suggest itself in the
place, instead of the more general term divisions,
which is the plain correspondent to c^ti-aiiai, and is
so used in Rom. xvi. 17, and in 1 Cor. iii. 3. Here
* Mission of the Comforter, p. 391.
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 157
the thought occurs that the Latin word * seditio,
though in its ordinary acceptation equivalent to its
English derivative, yet primarily and etymologically
answers very closely to Sr^o^a^la ; and one is natu
rally led to conjecture that our Translators must have
followed some Latin version, in which the word sedi-
tiones was used, not without an affectation of archaic
elegance. Now, the Yulgate has dissensiones, but
in Erasmus, whose style was marked by that charac
teristic, we find the very word seditiones. Hence
Tyndale, whom we know, from his controversial wri
tings, to have made use of Erasmus version, took his
4 sedition, not minding that the sense in which Eras
mus had used the Latin word was alien to the Eng
lish; and from Tyndale it has come down, with a
mere change of number, into our present Version ;
while Wiclif and the Rhemish render the Vulgate by
4 dissensions.
Ephes. iv. 29. "Let no corrupt communication
proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to
the use of edifying" But to justify these last words,
to which Beza s " ad aedificationis usum" may have led
the way, we should have found, not tfpos o<Wo^r,v T%
Xpa<r, but tfo or els xp s iav r ~ f & &&$<% No one will
affirm that we have such an hypallage here. There
is much more in the words than such a translation,
even were it allowable, would educe from them. It
is not very easy to give, without circumlocution, a
satisfactory English rendering ; but the meaning is
158 ON SOME WORDS
abundantly clear. " Let such discourse," St. Paul
would say, " proceed from your mouths as is fitted to
the present need or occasion ; do not deal in vague,
flat, unmeaning generalities, which would suit a thou
sand other cases equally well, and probably, therefore,
equally ill ; let your words be what the words of wise
men will always be, nails fastened in a sure place,
words suiting the present time and the present per
son, being for the edifying of the occasion." " Edi
fication of the need," Ellicott has it ; and De Wette,
" zur Erbauung nach Bediirfniss." An admonition of
a similar character is couched in the slSevai vug 5sT hi
kxatfry cwroxpi vgrfdai of the parallel passage in the Co-
lossians (iv. 6). Each man must have his own an
swer, that which meets his difficulties, his perplexities.
There must not be one unfeeling, unsympathizing an
swer for all.
Col. i. 15. "Who is the image of the invisible
God, the first-born of every creature. 91 This is one
of the very few renderings in our Version, I know not
whether the only one, which obscures a great doctri
nal truth, and, indeed, worse than this, seems to play
into the hands of Arian error. For does it not legiti
mately follow on this " first-born of every creature,"
or " of all creation," that He of whom this is predi
cated must be Himself also a creature, although the
first in the creation of God ? But in the phrase
acx xn rfswf, we are not to regard warf^
as a partitive genitive, so that Christ is in-
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 159
eluded in the " every creature," though distinguished
as being the first-born among them, but rather as a
genitive of comparison, depending on, and governed
by, the *pwro (see John i. 15, 30) which lies in
flrpwToToxo^. I am not quite satisfied with " born be
fore every creature," or " brought forth before every
creature ;" because there lies in the original words
a comparison between the begetting of the Son and
the creation of the creature, and not merely an
opposition ; He is placed at the head of a series,
though essentially differing from all that followed, in
the fact that He was born and they only created ; the
great distinction between the yswav (or rfxreiv, as it is
here) and the x<nsv, which came so prominently for
ward in the Arian controversy, being here already
marked. Still, I could have no question as between
it and the " first-born of every creature" of our Ver
sion, which obviously suggests an erroneous meaning,
though it may be just capable of receiving a right one.
It was nothing unnatural that Waterland, who in the
beginning of the last century fought the great battle
of the English Church against the Arianism which
claimed a right to exist in the very bosom of that
Church, should have been very ill-content to find a
most important testimony to the truth for which he
was contending, foregone and renounced, so far at
least as the English Translation reached nay, more
than this, the verse not merely taken away from him,
but, in appearance at least, made over to his adver-
160 ON SOME WORDS
saries. In several places he complains of this, as in
the following passage : " In respect of the words,
first-born of every creature comes not up to the force
or meaning of the original. It should have been "born
(or begotten) before the whole creation, as is mani
fest from the context, which gives the reason why He
is said to be wpwroVoxos ntiustfe xriVswf. It is because He
is < before all things, and because by Him were all
things created. So that this very passage, which, as
it stands in our Translation, may seem to suppose the
Son one of the creatures, does, when rightly under
stood, clearly exempt Him from the number of crea
tures. He was before all created being, and conse
quently was Himself uncreated, existing with the
Father from all eternity."*
Heb. xi. 29. "Which the Egyptians assaying to
do, were drowned" Did our Translators prefer the
reading xcw-s*ov*-itf0i)<rav ? This is not very probable,
the authority for it being so small. If they did not,
and if they read, as is most likely, xarsiro dTjfl av, they
should have rendered it by some word of wider reach ;
as, for instance, " were swallowed up," or " were en
gulfed" (" devorati sunt," Vulgate ; " verschlungen
wurden," Bleek). " Swallowed up," besides being a
better rendering, would more accurately set forth the
historic fact. The pursuing armies of the Egyptians
sunk in the sands quite as much as they were over
whelmed by the waves of the Red Sea, as is expressly
* Serm. 2, Christ s Divinity proved from Creation.
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 161
declared in the hymn of triumph which Moses com
posed on the occasion: xarfnfv cturwJf yr, 9 Exod. xv.
12 ; cf. Diodorus Siculus, i. 32 : vie 1 a^ou xa<ratfjWai.
Jam. i. 26. "If any man among you seem to be
religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth
his own heart, this man s religion is vain." This
verse, as it here stands, must, I am persuaded, have
perplexed many. How can a man " seem to be reli
gious," that is, present himself to others as such,
when his religious pretensions are belied and refuted
by the indulgence in an unbridled tongue ? But the
perplexity has been introduced by our Translators,
who have here failed to play the part of accurate
synonymists, and to draw the line sharply and dis
tinctly between the verbs SoxsTv and <pai vstfdai. AoxsTv
expresses the subjective mental opinion of anything
which men form, their fo f-a about it, which may be
right (Acts xv. 28 ; 1 Cor. iv. 9), or which may be
wrong (Matt. vi. 7 ; Mark vi. 49 ; Acts xxvii. 13) ;
(paiWdai, the objective external appearance which it
presents, quite independent of men s conception about
it. Thus, when Xenophon writes, s<paWo fyvia iWwv
(Anab., i. 6, 1), he would affirm that horses had
been actually there, and left their tracks. Had he
employed the alternative word, it would have implied
that Cyrus and his company took for tracks of horses
what might have been, or what also very possibly
might not have been, such at all. "Aoxslv cernitur in
cppinione, quse falsa esse potest et vana. Sed c
162 ON SOME WORDS
plerumque est in re extra mentem ; quamvis nemo
opinatur." Apply this distinction to the passage be
fore us ; keep in mind that <W7 V , and not yalvsadai, is
the word used, and all is plain : " If any man among
you think himself religious (" se putat religiosum
esse," Vulgate), and bridleth not his tongue/ &c.
It is his own subjective estimate of his spiritual con
dition which the word implies, an estimate which the
following words declare to be entirely erroneous.
Let me observe here that the same rendering of SmsTv,
Gal. ii. 6, 9, gives a color to St. Paul s words which
they are very far from having ; as though there was
a certain covert irony upon his part in regard of the
pretensions of the three great Apostles whom he met
at Jerusalem (" who seemed to be something" " who
seemed to be pillars") ; whereas he does express, not
what they seemed or appeared, but what they by oth
ers were, and were rightly, held- to be. The Geneva
is here, as so often, correct ; correct also in making
SQXQWTSS in both these verses a present, and not an
imperfect, participle.
Jude 12. "Trees whose fruit with ere th." But
ybvoieupivos has here a meaning ascribed to it, which it
nowhere possesses, as though it were = utetfixctpieog,
the <p0vo xaflros of Pindar (Pyth., iv. 265) ; or the
frugiperdus of Pliny. The <pdivoVwov is the late au
tumn, the autumn far spent, which succeeds the o^wpa,
or the autumn contemplated as the time of the ripened
fruits of the earth ; and whicli has its name, tfa ro
WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED. 163
(pdivetfdcu rr t v otfwpav, from the waning away of the au
tumn and the autumn fruits, themselves also often
called the o^wpa ; and <p4ivo*wpivoV is always used in the
sense of belonging to the late autumn. The Latin
language has no word which distinguishes the later
autumn from the earlier, and, therefore, the " arbores
autumnales" of the Vulgate is a correct translation,
and one as accurate as the language would allow,
unless, indeed, it had been rendered " arbores senes-
centis autumni" or by some such phrase ; as De Wette
in his German translation has it, < spa^herbstliche.
We, I think, could scarcely get beyond " autumnal
trees/ or " trees of autumn" as the Rheims version
gives it. These deceivers are likened by the Apostle
to trees as they show in late autumn, when foliage
and fruit alike are gone. Bengel : " Arbor tali spe
cie qualis est autumno extreme, sine foliis et pomis."
The <pdiv(wrwpiva, axaptfa, will then, in fact, mutually com
plete one another : " without leaves, without fruit."
Tyndale, who throws together bsvSpa <p6wrwp*?a axap<rra,
and renders the whole phrase thus, " trees without
fruit at gathering time" was feeling after, though he
has not grasped, the right translation.
164 ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT
CHAPTER X.
ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT AGAINST OUR
VERSION.
SOME charges have been, and are still, not unfre-
quently made against our Version, which I am per
suaded are unjust. There is one which so nearly
touches the honor and good faith of its authors, that
it can hardly be passed over. They are accused, as
is familiar to many, with snatching at unfair advan
tages, slurring over statements of Scripture which
seemed to make for an adversary, giving to others a
turn which the truth would not warrant, and compel
ling them to bear a testimony in their own favor which
these passages did not properly contain. They have
been charged with this from two quarters. Thus, the
Roman Catholics oftentimes complain that they have
made passages of Scripture to tell against Roman
doctrine, which, fairly translated, would yield no such
testimony against it ; while they have weakened or
destroyed the witness of other passages, which, in a
AGAINST OUR VERSION. 165
more honest version, would be found on the side of
Rome, in the points at issue between her and the
Reformed Church. The charge, a most grave and
serious one indeed, of such deceitful handling of the
Word of God, does not seem to me to have any foun
dation whatever. It was, of course, free to our Trans
lators, and only natural, that in a passage like Heb.
xiii. 4, they should incline to that interpretation, and
adopt that rendering, which justified the abolition in
the Reformed Church of the compulsory celibate of
the clergy. The rendering of sv tu<fi, " in all," that
is, " inter omnes" (a masculine and not a neuter), was
open to them ; it was the interpretation of the words
adopted by many of the ancient Fathers ; grammati
cally, it can be perfectly justified ; it is accepted to
the present day by many who are not in the least
drawn to it by doctrinal, but purely by philological
interests, and it is very idle to complain of them that
they preferred it.
It would be quite impossible to go through the sev
eral passages on which this charge is grounded ; such
a course would carry me too far from the main pur
pose of these pages. I may, however, just mention
one or two. The first is one where this charge has
been sometimes allowed by writers of our own com
munion. Thus, Professor Stanley is inclined to as
cribe to " theological fear or partiality" the render
ing of 1 Cor. xi. 27, where, in St. Paul s statement,
" Whosoever shall eat this bread or drink this cup of
166 ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT
the Lord unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and
blood of the Lord," they have substituted and for
or. I have no suspicion that they did this " in or
der to avoid the inference that the Eucharist might
be received under one kind." In the first place, there
is authority for i and ; I do not think sufficient au
thority, but so much that an eminent scholar, like
Fritzsche, with no theological leaning on one side or
the other, even now prefers it. . Moreover, such an
inference from these words is so extravagantly absurd,
so refuted by several other statements in this very
chapter, that I can not see how they should have
cared to exclude it ; even had they been willing to
sacrifice truth and honesty, they were under no tempt
ation to do so. They probably accepted xaf as the
right reading.
Gal. v. 6. " Faith which worketh by love." It
was for a long time a favorite charge of the Koman-
ists, even in the face of their own Vulgate, which has
rightly, " fides quae per caritatem operatur" that we
had given to Jvepyou/j^vij an active sense, when it ought
to have a passive, and that we had done so in the fear
lest there should be found here any support for their
doctrine of the " fides formata," as that which justi
fies. They would have had the words translated,
" faith which is wrought on, that is, animated, stirred
up, by love." Other unfriendly critics have repeated
the charge. There is no need, however, to refute it,
as the later Roman Catholic expositors Windisch-
AGAINST OUR VERSION. 167
man, for instance, in his valuable Commentary on this
Epistle have acknowledged the accuracy of our
translation, have accepted it as the true one ; and
thus implicitly allowed the injustice of this charge.
Indeed, it is not too much to say, that if, in the
heat of earlier controversy, any shadow of unfair ad
vantage might seem to have been taken by the first
Protestant translators after the Reformation, those of
King James s Bible were careful to forego and re
nounce everything of the kind. Thus, it was a com
plaint, and, as I must needs regard it, not an unrea
sonable one, on the part of Romish assailants of our
earlier versions,* that they rendered sWuXov image,
and not idol ; and e/wXoXarpy] " worshipper of im
ages" and not " worshipper of idols" or idolater ;
that they thus confounded the honor paid in the Ro
man Church to images with the idol-worship of hea
thenism. They urged that however Protestants might
reprobate and condemn the first, yet it was confes
sedly an entirely different thing from the last ; while
yet our Translators went out of their way, and de
parted from the more natural rendering of si dwXov, for
the purpose of including both under a common re
proach ; that by such renderings as this, " How agreeth
the temple of God with images ?" (2 Cor. vi. 16), they .
suggested and helped forward the destruction of these
in all the churches through the land. The complaint
was a just one, and our Translators seem to have so
* See WARD S Errata of the Protestant Bible, Dublin, 1810, p. 63.
168 ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT
regarded it. They have nowhere employed the offen
sive rendering, but always used idolater and i idol.
Thus, compare 1 Cor. x. 7 ; 1 John v. 21, in our Ver
sion, with the same in the earlier Protestant versions ;
in the latter passage, indeed, the Geneva had antici
pated this correction.
Then, too, it has been sometimes said, I was inclined
at one time to think with some reason, that other the
ological leanings, Calvinistic as against Arminian,
were occasionally to be traced in our Translation,
modifying consciously or unconsciously the rendering
of some passages in it. These charges, I am now per
suaded, are entirely without foundation. They mainly,
though not exclusively, rest on the rendering of the
two following places : Acts ii. 47 : Heb. x. 38. But
what in each of these passages there is, or what some
have considered there is, to find fault with, is capable
of much easier explanation. It may be worth while
to consider these passages.
Acts ii. 47. Our Translators make St. Luke to
say, " The Lord added to the Church daily such as
should be saved." It is urged against them that in
the original it is not roue; ovdrjtfcji/.s vous, which would
alone have justified this rendering ; but TOUS tfwfofwvtus.
The explanation, however, is sufficiently easy of their
slight departing from an accurate rendering, without
ascribing to them, or those who went before them in
this translation, any dogmatic bias. They were per
plexed with a language which spoke of those as already
AGAINST OUR VERSION. 169
saved, who only became saved through being thus
added to the Church of the living God. They proba
bly did not clearly perceive that by this language
the sacred historian meant to say that in this act of
adherence to the Church, and to Christ its Head,
these converts were saved, delivered from the wrath
to come ; " those that did escape," Hammond renders
it. They had no wish, except to avoid a fancied dif
ficulty ; and I do not believe that the thought of pre
destination in the least entered into their minds, how
ever others may have since employed the words as a
support for the doctrine. Indeed, it is well worthy
of note that the Rhemish version gives precisely the
same future meaning to <rot$ rfwof/,s vous, and renders,
" they that should be saved."
Heb. x. 38. "Now the just shall live by faith;
but if any man draw back, my soul shall have no
pleasure in him." Here, too, it has been often as
serted, last of all by Professor Blunt, that the doctri
nal tendencies of the Translators exercised an unwar
rantable influence on the translation. No unpreju
diced person, it has been said, can read the verse in
the original, and not acknowledge that the person
whose drawing back is supposed possible in the sec
ond clause of the verse is * the just of the first clause.
So Tyndale had translated it : " But the just shall
live by faith ; and if he withdraw himself," &c. Cov-
erdale and Cranmcr in the same way. But this verse,
so rendered, would have contradicted the doctrine of
8
170 ON SOME CHARGES UNJUSTLY BROUGHT
final perseverance ; and therefore, it is said, in the
Geneva version i any was substituted for he, and
any man, in our Version. No objection to the en
tire good faith of our Translators is oftener urged
than this. Now, I certainly think myself that Shews
is the nominative to u^orfrsiX^Taf, and that the passage
does contradict the doctrine of final perseverance in
its high Calvinistic or necessitarian shape. But to
the present day, the other view of the passage, that
namely of our Translation, which would disengage an
av6puifos or a rls from Slxouost and make it the nomina
tive to uflrorfTsiXrjTai, is maintained by scholars such as
De Wette and Winer, who are certainly as remote as
well can be from any Calvinistic leanings.
Leaving these passages which involve doctrine, I
may just mention one other which has no such signifi
cance. In this, fault may be justly found, and has
been found, with the words as they stand in our Ver
sion ; while yet I am convinced, though it is impossible
to bring this to absolute proof, that the incorrectness
is with the printers, and not with the Translators. I
allude to Matt, xxiii. 24. " Which strain at a gnat"
has been often objected to there. Long ago Bishop
Lowth complained, " The impropriety of the preposi
tion has wholly destroyed the meaning of the phrase."
I can not doubt, as I have expressed elsewhere, that
we have here a misprint, which, having been passed
ovei in the first edition of 1611, has held its ground
ever since ; nor yet that our Translators intended,
AGAINST OUR VERSION. 171
" which strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel ;" this
being at once intelligible, and a correct rendering of
the original ; while our Version, as at present it stands,
is neither; or only intelligible on the supposition, no
doubt the supposition of most English readers, that
" strain at " means, swallow with difficulty, men hardly
and with effort swallowing the little insect, but gulp
ing down meanwhile, unconcerned, the huge animal.
It need scarcely be said that this is very far from tho
meaning of the original words, oi DXiWs TOV xwvwra,
by Meyer rendered well, " percolando removentes
muscam ;" and by the Vulgate also not ill, " excolantes
culicein ;" for which use of SivXi%e;v, as to cleanse by
passing through a strainer, see Plutarch, Symp.,\i. 7.
1. It was the custom of the more accurate and stri tor
Jews to strain their wine, vinegar, and other pofr i les,
through linen or gauze, lest unawares they should
drink do\\n some little unclean insect therein, and
thus transgress Lev. xi. 20, 23, 41, 42 just as the
Buddhists do now in Ceylon and Hindostan and to
this custom of theirs the Lord refers. A recent trav
eller in North Africa writes in an unpublished com
munication which he has been good enough to make
to me : " In a ride from Tangier to Tetuan I observed
that a Moorish soldier who accompanied me, when he
drank, always unfolded the end of his turban and
placed it over the mouth of his bota, drinking through
the muslin, to strain out the gnats, whose larva? swarm
in the water of that country." The further fact that
172 UNJUST CHARGES AGAINST OUR VERSION.
our present Version rests to so great an extent on the
three preceding, Tyndale s, Cranrner s, and the Ge
neva, and that all these have " strain out" is addi
tional evidence in confirmation of that about which
for myself I feel no doubt, namely, that we have here
an uncorrectcd error of the press. There was no such
faultless accuracy in the first edition, as should make
us unwilling to suppose this ; on the contrary, more
than one mistake was subsequently discovered and
removed. Thus, it stood in the exemplar edition of
1011, at 1 Cor. iv. 9 : " God hath set forth us the
apostles last, as it were approved to death ;" yet ap
proved was afterward changed for the w r ord no doubt
intended, appointed. In another passage, I mean
1 Cor. xii. 28, the misprint, " helps in governments,"
after having retained its place in several successive
editions, was afterward in like manner removed, and
the present corrector reading, " helps, governments"
ojtfsig) ? substituted in its room.
BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 173
CHAPTER XI.
ON THE BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION.
I HAVE thus endeavored to make as just an estimate
as I could of the merits, and, where such exist, of the
defects, of our Authorized Version. In pointing out
some of these last, I trust I have nowhere spoken a
word inconsistent with the truest reverence for its
authors, the profoundest gratitude to them for the
treasure with which they have enriched the English
Church. Such word I certainly have not intended to
utter ; and I can truly say that if a close and minute
examination of parts of their work reveals flaws which
one had not suspected before, it also discovers a more
than counterbalancing amount of merits, of which one
had not hitherto been aware.
A few words in conclusion. They shall be first,
on the difficulties and dangers which manifestly beset
a revision ; and, secondly, on the manner in which
these might be best overcome.
Among these difficulties, I will not more than touch
174 ON THE BEST MEANS Of
on that of the formation of a Greek text which the
revised Version should seek to represent ; and yet it
is a difficulty of the most serious character. Let it
once be recognised that any change is to take place,
and it will be manifestly impossible to rest content
with the text which our Translators used. Take
cases, for instance, where every critical edition of
later times, and on overwhelming evidence, has pre
ferred some other readings to theirs. And yet these
cases of overwhelming evidence will not by any means
be the hardest. It might not be so difficult to deal
with them ; but how determine where the authorities
are at all nearly balanced ? But, satisfying myself
with merely indicating this difficulty which presents
itself at the very outset, I pass on to others.
We must never leave out of sight that for a great
multitude of readers the English Version is not the
translation of an inspired Book, but is itself the in
spired Book. And so far, of course, as it is a per
fectly adequate counterpart of the original, this is
true ; since the inspiration is not limited to those
Hebrew or Greek words in which the Divine message
was first communicated to men, but lives on in what
ever words are a faithful and full representation of
these ; nay, in words which fall short of this, to the
extent of their adequacy. There, and there only,
where any divergence exists between the original and
the copy, the copy is less inspired than the original ;
indeed, is not, to the extent of that divergence, in-
CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 175
spired at all. But these distinctions are exactly of a
kind which the body of Christian people will not draw.
The English Bible is to them all which the Hebrew
Old Testament, which the Greek New Testament, is
to the devout scholar. It receives from them the
same undoubting affiance. They have never realized
the fact that the Divine utterance was not made at
the first in those very English words which they read
in their cottages, and hear in their church. Who will
not own that the little which this faith of theirs in the
English Bible has in excess is nearly or quite harm
less ? On the other hand, the harm would be incal
culable, of any serious disturbance of this faith, sup
posing, as might only too easily happen, very much
else to be disturbed with it.
Neither can I count it an indifferent matter that a
chief bond, indeed the chiefest, that binds the English
Dissenters to us, and us to them, would thus be snapped
asunder. Out of the fact that Nonconformity had not
for the most part fixed itself ito actual and formal
separation from the Church till some time after our
Authorized Version was made, it has followed that
when the Nonconformists parted from us, they carried
with them this Translation, and continued to use and
to cherish it, regarding it as much their own as ours.
The Roman Catholics and the Unitarians are, I be
lieve, the only bodies who have counted it necessary
to make versions of their own. With the exception
of these, the Authorized Version is common ground for
176 ON THE BEST MEANS OF
all in England who call themselves Christians, is alike
the heritage of all. But even if English Dissenters
acknowledged the necessity of a revision, which I con
clude from many indications that they do, it is idle
to expect that they would accept such at our hands.
Two things then might happen. Either they would
adhere to the old Authorized Version, which is not,
indeed, very probable ; or they would carry out a
revision, it might be two or three, of their own. In
cither case the ground of a common Scripture, of an
English Bible which they and we hold equally sacred,
would be taken from us ; the separation and division,
which are now the sorrow, and perplexity, and shame
of England, would become more marked, more deeply
fixed than ever. Then, further, while of course it
would be comparatively easy to invite our brethren
of the Episcopal Church in America to take share in
our revision, yet many causes might hinder their ac
ceptance of this invitation, or their acquiescence in
the work as we found.it expedient to do it. Thus,
the issue might only too easily be, that we should lose
in respect of them also the common ground of one
and the same Scripture, which we now possess. Such
a loss, either in regard of the English Dissenters, or
American Churchmen, would not by a slight one, nor
one deserving to be regarded with indifference.
Another most serious consideration presents itself,
Will one revision satisfy ? If conducted with moder
ation, it will probably leave much untouched, about
CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 177
which it will still be possible to raise a ques-tion. Is
it not inevitable that after a longer or shorter period
another revision, and on that another, will be called
for ? Will not in this way all sense of stability pass
away from our English Scripture ? And to look at a
mere material fact The Bibles in the hands of our
people, in what agreement with one another will they
be ? It is idle to expect that the great body of our
population will keep pace with successive changes,
and provide themselves with the latest revision. In
ability to meet the expense, or unwillingness to do
so, or a love of the old to which they have grown
accustomed, a foregone conclusion that the cbanges
are for the worse, or that they are immaterial, lack
of interest in the subject, will all combine to hinder
this. The inconveniences, and much more than in
conveniences, of such a state of things, assuredly will
not be slight. This prospect, indeed, so little alarms
the author of an article in the Edinburgh Review,
" On the State of the English Bible," that he proposes
the institution of a permanent Commission, which bhall
be always altering, always embodying in a new and
improved edition the latest allowed results of Biblical
criticism. It was startling enough to read somewhere
else a proposal that the Authorized Yerson should be
revised once in every fifty years ; but this proposal,
if one could suppose there was the slightest chance
that it would be acceded to, is most alarming of all.
These are the main arguments, as it seems to mo,
8*
178 ON THE BEST MEANS OF
against a revision of our Version. None will deny
their weight. Indeed, there are times when the whole
matter presents itself as so full of difficulty and doubt
ful hazard, that one could be well content to resign
all gains that would accrue from this revision, and
only ask that all things might remain as they were.
But this, I am persuaded, is impossible ; however we
may be disposed to let the question alone, it will not
let us alone. It has been too effectually stirred ever
again to go to sleep ; and the difficulties, be they few
or many, will have one day to be encountered. The
time will come when the inconveniences of remaining
where we are will be so manifestly greater than the
inconveniences of action, that this last will become
inevitable. There will be danger in both courses, for
that word of the Latin moralist is a profoundly true
one, " Nunquam periclum sine periclo vincitur ;" but
the lesser danger will have to be chosen ; and that
will be in the course which I desire, not that we
should now take, but should prepare ourselves for
hereafter taking, should regard as one toward which
we are inevitably approaching.
In respect of the actual steps which it will be then
advisable to take, I can not think that even when the
matter is seriously undertaken, there should be for a
considerable time any interference with the English
text. Let come together, and if possible not of self-
will, but with some authorization, royal or ecclesias
tical, or both, such a body of scholars and divines as
CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 179
would deserve and would obtain the confidence of the
whole Church. Fortunately, no points at issue among
ourselves threaten to come into discussion or debate ;
so that the unhappy divisions of our time would not
here add any additional embarrassment to a matter
embarrassed enough already. Nay, of such immense
importance would it be to carry with us, in whatever
might be done, the whole Christian people of Eng
land, that it would be desirable to invite all scholars,
all who represented any important portion of the
Biblical scholarship in the land, to assist with their
suggestions here, even though they might not belong
to the Church. Of course, they would be asked as
scholars, not as Dissenters. But it were a matter so
deeply to be regretted, that these should revise, and
we should revise, thus parting company in the one
thing which now holds us strongly together, while it
would be so hopeless, indeed so unreasonable, to ex
pect that they should accept our revision, having
themselves had no voice in it, that we ought not to
stand on any punctilios here, but should be prepared
rather to sacrifice everything non-essential for the
averting of such a catastrophe. Setting aside, then,
the so-called Baptists, who of course could not be
invited, seeing that they demand, not a translation of
the Scripture, but an interpretation, and that in their
own sense, there are no matters of doctrine or even
of discipline likely to come into debate, which should
render it impossible for such Dissenters as accept our
180 ON THE BEST MEANS OP
doctrinal articles to take a share in this work as
regarded not from its ecclesiastical, but its scholarly
point of view. All points likely to come under dis
cussion would be points of pure scholarship, or would
only involve that universal Christianity common to
them and us ; or if more than this, they would be
points about which there is equally a difference of
opinion within the Church as in the bodies without it,
for instance, as between Arminian and Calvinist, which
difference would not be avoided by their absence.
Let, then, such a body as this, inspiring confidence
at once by their piety, their learning, and their pru
dence, draw out such a list of emendations as were
lifted beyond all doubt in the eye of every one whose
voice had any right to be heard on the matter ; avoid
ing all luxury of emendation, abstaining from all which
was not of primary necessity, from much in which they
might have fitly allowed themselves, if they had not
been building on foundations already laid, and which
could not without great inconvenience be disturbed
using the same moderation here which Jerome used
in his revision of the Latin. Let them very briefly,
but with just as much learned explanation as should
be needful, justify these emendations, where they were
not self-evident. Let them, if this should be their
conviction, express their sense of the desirableness
that these should at some future day be introduced
into the received text, as bringing it into more per
fect accord and harmony with the original Scripture.
CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 181
Having done this, let them leave these emendations to
ripen in the public mind, gradually to commend them
selves to all students of God s holy Word. Suppo
sing the emendations such as ought to, and would, do
this, there would probably ere long be a general de
sire for their admission into the text ; and in due time
this admission might follow. All abrupt change would
thus be avoided all forcing of alterations on those
not as yet prepared to receive them. That which at
length came in would excite no surprise, no perplex
ity, or at most very little, having already in the minds
of many displaced that of which it now at length took
openly the room.
It is quite true that " no man having drunk old
wine, straightway desireth new ; for he saith, The old
is better ;" but it is on that word 4 straightway that
the emphasis, in this saying of our Lord, must be laid.
In those spiritual things to which we transfer this*
saying, a man may, and will, if he is wise, after a
while desire the new. It may have a certain unwel
come harshness and austerity at the first ; the man
may have to overcome that custom which is as a sec
ond nature, before he heartily affects it. But still,
just as our ancestors grew gradually in love with our
present Translation, Churchmen weaning themselves
from the Bishops Bible, and Puritans from the Ge
neva just as one and the other of these versions fell
quite out of use, though living on, the latter espe
cially, for some time after they had been formally
182 ON THE BEST MEANS OF
superseded by the present Version, Churchmen and
Puritans finally agreeing in the decision, not that the
old was better, but the new so will it be here.
What amount of difficulty those who lived in the
reign of James the First found in reconciling them
selves to the change, it is hard to say. We have
curiously little on the subject in the contemporary,
religious literature, the very absence of such notices
seeming to imply that the difficulty was not very
great ; but in one respect it ought to be much less
now, inasmuch as, careful as our then Translators
were not to change wantonly for mere change s sake,
still the alterations which they made were consider
able, many times more than would be necessary or
desirable now.
And even if it were never thought good that this
final step should be taken, that these emendations
should be transferred to the text, what an invaluable
help to students of Scripture such a volume might
prove ! With a little management, its more learned
portions might be so separated off in notes as to leave
the chief part of it accessible even to the English
reader, who might thus be put in possession, though
in a somewhat roundabout and less effectual way, of
all which a revision would have given him. If, too,
he had been shaken by rumors of the inaccuracy of
his English Bible, he might here see, on the warrant
of those best qualified to judge, how very little way
this inaccuracy reached, in what comparatively un-
CARRYING OUT A REVISION. 183
essential matters it moved. Granting that nothing
else should come of it, such a volume might prove an
effectual check to wanton and mischievous agitations,
if such there have been, or hereafter shall be, in this
matter.
In another way it might be found that the very un-
settlement of men s minds, consequent upon the stir
ring of this question, might not be itself without a
compensating gain. That very unscttlement in regard
of the words in which God s message has hitherto
been conveyed to them, might it not prove for some
a motive to a more accurate considering of the mes
sage itself, a happy breaking of that crust of formality
which by long habit so easily overgrows our reading
of the Scripture ? It would not be, I think, for most
of us unprofitable to discover that the words in which
the truth has been hitherto conveyed to us, are ex
changeable for other, in some places, it may be, for
better words. The shock, unpleasant as it might
prove at the first, might yet be a startling of many
from a dull, lethargic, unprofitable reading of God s
Word ; while in the rousing of the energies of the
mind to defend the old, or, before admitting, thor
oughly to prove the new, more insight into it might
be gained, with more grasp of its deeper meaning,
than years of lazy familiarity would have given. For,
indeed, according to a profound proverb, " What is
ever seen is never seen ;" and a daily familiarity with
Scripture, full as it is of unutterable blessings, carries
184 BEST MEANS OF CARRYING OUT A REVISION.
its dangers with it, dangers which the course that is
here urged might effect much to remove.
This much I have thought it desirable to say on
this momentous subject. I am not so sanguine as to
believe that, with all these precautions, great and se
rious, it might be unexpected, difficulties would not
attend the undertaking. There would need no little
wisdom and prudence to bring it to a successful end.
Still it might be humbly hoped, that by Him who is
ever with his Church this prudence and this wisdom
would be granted. And, lastly, let me observe that
when we make much of the inconveniences which must
attend any such step, we ought never to leave out of
sight their transitory character, as contrasted with
the permanent character of the gain. How large an
amount of inconvenience men have willingly encoun
tered with only some worldly object in view, where
they have felt that the inconvenience would be only
temporary, the gain enduring as in the rectification
of the coinage, the readjustment of the calendar ! And
here, too, serious as the inconvenience might be at
the first, and for a time, still it would every day be
growing slighter : it would be but for a few years at
the longest ; while the gain, always supposing the
work to be well and wisely done, would be for ever ;
it would be riches and strength for the English
Church to the end of time.
INDEX OF PRINCIPAL TEXTS CONSIDEEED.
INDEX OF PRINCIPAL TEXTS CONSIDERED,
MATT. v. 21 PAGE 105
" vi. 27 135
" viii. 20 148
" ix. 36 105
" x. 4 148
" x . 16 106
" xii. 23 133
" xiv. 8 150
xiv. 13 151
" xvi. 15 44
" xx. 1, 11 79
" xxi. 41 76
" xxii. 1-15 88
" xxiii. 24 170
" xxiii. 25 32
" xxviii. 14 97
MARK ii. 18 .....127
" in. 18 149
" vi. 20 107
" vii. 4 107
" xi. 4 151
" xi. 17 98
" xii. 26 151
" xvi. 2 129
LUKE i. 19 128
" i. 59 127
" ii. 49 136
" v.6 127
" xii. 25 135
" xiii. 2 129
" xiii. 7 25
" xiv. 7 126
" xvii. 21 107
" xviii. 12.. ..125
LUKE xxi. 19 PAGE 126
" xxiii. 42 121
JOHN ii. 8, 9 79
" iii. 10 115
" iii. 11,32 78
" iv. 6 120
" iv. 29 134
" v. 16 130
" ix. 31 44
" x. 16 93
" xii. 6 137
" xvii. 12 94
ACTS ii. 47 168
" iii. 1 127
" iii. 13, 26 92
" iv. 27, 30 92
" vii. 45 59
" x. 12 132
" xii. 4 34
" xii. 19 102
" xiv. 13 152
" xvii. 22 152
" xvii. 23 26
" xix. 37 27
" xxi. 15 28
" xxv. 5 153
" xxvi. 2, 7 119
" xxvii. 10, 21 78
" xxviii. 4 124
" xxviii. 15 63
ROM. i. 26, 27 138
" ii. 14 118
" ii. 22 154
186 INDEX OF PRINCIPAL TEXTS CONSIDERED.
ROM. iii. 25
. . PAGE 90
1 TIM
vi 5
PAGE 110
" v. 15, 17
117
vi. 8
145
" viii. 21
64
vi. 9 . . .
. . . . 32
" xi. 8 . .
154
vi 10
119
" xi. 2
152
" xv. 4
78
HEB
iv 1
102
iv 8
59
1 COR. iii. 17
76
tt
v. 2
110
" iv. 9 . .
172
n
v 8
43
" xi. 27
165
tt
v. 11
... 1 33
ti
vi. 7
1
2 COR. ii. 14
139
tt
ix 5
45
" ii. 17
141
( (
ix 9 3
.111
" v. 10 .
131
(<
x 38
169
" xi.3
122
(f
xi 10
114
ft
xi. 13 . .
101
GAL. i. 18
1 55
u
xi 29
. . 1 60
" ii. 6, 9. .
162
,,
xii 16
. 104
" iii. 22
((
xiii 4
165
" v. 6
166
" v. 20
156
J\.M.
i. 4 f>
77
i 26
101
EniES. iv. 3
29
u
iii 5
.145
" iv. 18
99
<(
v 9
34
" iv. 29
157
1 PFT
i 17
10
PHIL ii. 15
1 , 30
iv. 9
34
COL. i. 13
" i 15
64
158
2 PET.
i. 5-7
j 14
123
128
" i 16
129
, (
iii 12
112
" ii. 8
143
" ii. 18
108
JUDE 1
2 ....
162
" ii. 23
. .143
REV
iii ^
146
1 THESS iv 6
109
(t
iv 4
73
Y 02
100
1C
iv 5
124
tt
iv. 6-9 ...
87
2 THESS. ii. 6
77
( (
xvi. 2 ...
33
((
xvii 14
114
1 TIM. v 4
29
((
xxi 12
46
" vi. 2..
..116
(i
xxi. 19. 20.
. 62
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
187
INDEX OF GREEK WORDS.
PAGE 85
PAGE 82
&uAo3ot
..151
107
88
91
88
125
103
68
55
51
93
137
67
152
yitvva.
85
peravoia
52
152
88
92
Si%o<TTaaia. . .
156
6>KEM
161
1 4.9
68
90
JoijAoc
QQ
151
1 ^4-
93
i on
150
158
99
lv
121
63
55
105
63
86
145
135
89
91
86
143
107
139
94
154
146
irropcw
155
149
fa * 1WM
Ill
161
141
i\ ^
103
. . 108
162
154
..160
89
. 94
188
INDEX OF OTHER WORDS.
INDEX OF OTHER WOEDS.
ALMS PAGE 43
Apollo, Apollos 61
BEAST 87
Bribery 32
By-and-by 33
CANAANITE 149
Carriage 28
Cherubim 45
Church 27
Chrysolite 62
Chrysoprasus 62
Comforter 68
Cretes, Cretians 61
Cumber 25
DEPART 31
Devotion 26
Diana 55
EASTER 34
Elias, Elijah 58
Endeavor.. .... 29
GOODMAN ,
Grudge . . ,
IDOL .
Image.
Its . .
, 79
, 33
,167
167
, 41
JESUS
Jewry .
Joshua PAGE 59
MILETUS 61
Mercurius 55
NEPHEW 29
Noisome 32
OFTEN.. . 43
PERGAMOS
PoBnitentia .
Pattern . . .
62
, 52
111
RELIGIOUS
Kesipiscentia
lliches
1 53
52
, . 42
SARDINE STONE 63
Sardius 63
Sedition 156
Sermo 51
THOUGHT 24
Timotheus, Timothy 61
Three Taverns 63
Trouble 95
URBANE 60
VERIJUM.. . 51
59 WHICH 47
35 I Wizard 68
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Wit and Wisdom of the Rev. SYDNEY SMITH. Being Selec
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Siriai and Palestine, in connection with their History, by
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