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A FRESH: REVISION

OF THE

ENGLISH NEW TESTAMENT

BY THE LATE

JOSEPH BARBER LIGHTFOOT, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.,

LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM

REPRINTED WITH AN ADDITIONAL APPENDIX ON THE | LAST PETITION OF THE -LORD’S PRAYER

PUBLISHED BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE LIGHTFOOT FUND

London

MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK

[801

All Rights reserved

5 -

First Edition 1871

Second Edition 1872 Third Edition 1891

a Ξ : a Ε Β Ε Ε ιὰ Ξ ἕ

AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS.

BS ΣΕ L323 137/

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

URING the last summer, immediately before

the Company appointed for the Revision of the English New Testament held its first sitting, 1 was invited to read a paper on the subject before a Clerical meeting. Finding that I had already written _ more than I could venture to read even to a very patient and considerate audience, and receiving a request from my hearers at the conclusion that the paper should be printed, I determined to revise the whole and make additions to it before publication. The result is the present volume. Owing to various. interruptions its appearance has been delayed much longer than I had anticipated. .

This statement of facts was perhaps needed to justify the appearance of a book, which as occupying well-known ground cannot urge the plea of novelty, which has many imperfections in form, and which

466

vi PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

makes no pretensions to completeness. At all events it appeared necessary to be thus explicit, in order to show that I alone am responsible for any expressions of opinion contained in this volume, and that they do not (except accidentally) represent the views of the Company of which Iam amember. In preparing the original paper for the press, I have been careful not to go beyond verbal alterations, where I was dis- cussing the prospects of the new Revision or the principles which in my opinion ought to guide it. On the other hand, I have not scrupled to develope these principles freely, and to add fresh illustrations from time to time: but in most cases this has been done without any knowledge of the opinion of the majority of the Company ; and in the comparatively few instances where this opinion has become known to me, I have expressed my own individual judg- ment, which might or might not accord therewith.

I ought to add also that I am quite prepared to find on consultation with others, that-some of the suggestions offered here are open to objections which I had overlooked, and which might render them im- practicable in a Version intended for popular use, whatever value they may have from a scholar’s point of view.

The hopeful anticipations, which I had ventured to express before the commencement of the work,

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. Vil

have been more than realized hitherto in its progress, On this point I have not heard a dissentient voice among members of the Company. I believe that all who have taken part regularly in the work will thankfully acknowledge the earnestness, moderation, truthfulness, and reverence, which have marked the deliberations of the Company, and which seem to justify the most sanguine auguries.

This feeling contrasts strangely with the outcry which has been raised against the work by those who have had no opportunity of witnessing its actual progress, who have been disturbed by rumours of its results either wholly false or only partially true, and who necessarily judging on @ priori grounds have been ready to condemn it unheard. This panic was perhaps not unnatural, and might have been antici- pated. Meanwhile however other dangers from an unforeseen quarter have threatened the progress of the Revision; but these are now happily averted. And, so far as present appearances can be trusted, the momentary peril has resulted in permanent good; for the Company has been taught by the danger which threatened it to feel its own strength and co- herence; and there is every prospect that the work will be brought happily and successfully to a con- clusion.

Great misunderstanding seems to prevail as to the

Vili PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION,

ultimate reception of the work. The alarm which has been expressed in some quarters can only be explained by a vague confusion of thought, as though the Houses of Convocation, while solemnly pledged to the furtherance of the work on definite conditions, were also pledged to its ultimate recep- tion whether good or bad. If the distinction had been kept in view, it is difficult to believe that there would have been even a momentary desire to repu- diate the obligations of a definite contract. The Houses of Convocation are as free, as the different bodies of Nonconformists represented in the Com- panies, to reject the Revised Version, when it appears, if it is not satisfactory. I do not suppose that any member of either Company would think of claiming any other consideration for the work, when completed, than that it shall be judged by its intrinsic merits; but on the other hand they have a right to demand that it shall be laid before the Church and the people of England in its integrity, and that a verdict shall be pronounced upon it as a whole.

I cannot close these remarks without expressing my deep thankfulness that I have been allowed to take part in this work of Revision. I have spent many happy and profitable hours over it, and made many friends who otherwise would probably have remained unknown to me. Even though the work >

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. ix

should be terminated abruptly to-morrow, I for one should not consider it lost labour.

In choosing my examples I have generally avoided dwelling on passages which have been fully discussed by others; but it was not possible to put the case fairly before the public without venturing from time to time on preoccupied ground, though in such in- stances I have endeavoured to tread as lightly as possible.

The discussion in the Appendix’ perhaps needs some apology. Though it has apparently no very direct bearing on the main subject of the volume, yet the investigation was undertaken in the first instance with a view to my work as a reviser; and hoping that the results might contribute towards permanently fixing the. meaning of an expression, which occurs in the most familiar and most sacred of all forms of. words, and which nevertheless has been and still is variously interpreted, I gladly seized this opportunity of placing them on record.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

April 3, 1871.

1 Appendix I. in the Third Edition [1891]. L. R. a

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

HIS second edition is in all essential respects a

reprint of the first. A few errors have been corrected, and one or two unimportant additions made, but the new matter altogether would not occupy more than a page.

The reception accorded to this book has taken me by surprise, and the early call for a new edition would have prevented me from making any great changes, even if I had felt any desire to do so. To my critics, whether public or private, I can only return my very sincere thanks for their generous welcome of a work of whose imperfections the author himself must be only too conscious.

From this expression of gratitude I see no reason to except the critique of Mr Earle’ in a letter addressed to the editor of the Guardian ; but I am sure that he will pardon me if, while thankfully acknowledging the friendly tone of his letter, I venture entirely to dissent from a principle of translation to which he has lent the authority of his name.

In fact he has attacked the very position in my work, which I confidently held, and still hold, to be impregnable. I had laid it down as a rule (subject of course to special exceptions) that, where the same word occurs in the same

1 Now Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, ΧΙ

context in the original, it should be rendered by the same equivalent in the Version (p. 36 sq.); or, as Mr Earle ex- presses it, that ‘a verbal repetition in English should be employed to represent a verbal repetition in the Greek.’ Mr Earle (I will employ his own words) would reverse this, and say that in many of my details he would practically come to my conclusion, but that the principle itself, with all the speciousness of its appearance, is essentially unsound. This position he endeavours to establish by arguments, which I feel bound to meet, for I consider the principle which he assails to be essential to a thoroughly good translation.

If, notwithstanding our opposite points of view, we had arrived at the same results, or, in other words, if Mr Earle’s exceptions to his principle of variety were coextensive or nearly coextensive with my own applications of my principle of uniformity, I should have felt any discussion of his views to be superfluous ; for then, so far as regards any practical issues, the difference between us would have been reduced to a mere battle of words. But when I find that Mr Earle defends such a rendering as Matt. xviii. 33, ‘Shouldest not thou also have had compassion (ἐλεῆσαι) on thy fellow- servant, even as I had fity (ἡλέησα) on thee?’, I feel that the difference between us is irreconcilable. Indeed I had vainly thought that my illustrations (with one or two doubtful exceptions) would carry conviction in themselves; and I confess myself a little surprised to find their cogency questioned by an English scholar of Mr Earle’s eminence.

But, lest I should be misunderstood, let me say at the outset that I entirely agree with Mr Earle in deprecating

ΧΙΙ PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

the mode of procedure which would substitute ‘the fidelity of a lexicon’ for ‘the faithfulness of a translation.’ I am

well aware that this is a real danger to careful minds trained in habits of minute verbal criticism, and I always have raised and shall raise my voice against any changes which

propose to sacrifice forcible English idiom to exact con-

formity of expression. For instance, it would be mere

pedantry to substitute ‘Do not ye rather excel them ?’ for ‘Are not ye much better than they ?’ in Matt. vi. 26 (οὐχ ὑμεῖς

μᾶλλον διαφέρετε αὐτῶν) ; or ‘The hour hath approached,’

for ‘The hour is at hand,’ in Matt. xxvi. 45 (ἤγγικεν ἡ wpa).

But the point at issue seems to me to be wholly different.

“I cannot for a moment regard this as a question of English

idiom ; and my objection to the variety of rendering which. Mr Earle advocates is that it does depart from ‘the faithful-

ness of a translation’ and substitutes, not indeed the fidelity of a lexicon, but the caprice of a translator.

Mr Earle says ‘The stronghold of the Greek (I do not speak of Plato and Demosthenes, but of the New Testa- ment) is in the words: the stronghold of the English language is in its phraseology and variability.’ This is not the distinction which I should myself give between the characteristics of the two languages. Even in its later stages the wealth of particles, the power of inflexion and composition, and the manifold possibilities of order, still constitute the peculiar superiority of the Greek over the English. But it matters little whether I am right or wrong here, for the objections to Mr Earle’s practical inferences are equally strong in either case. He first of all alleges examples where synonyms are coupled in English, and more

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ΧΙ

especially in rendering from another language, as for instance in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius’ De Con- solatione Philosophiae, where claritudo is rendered ‘renoun and clernesse of linage,’ and cemsor ‘domesman or juge’; and he then urges that as this method of double rendering was ‘manifestly inadmissible in translating scripture,’ ‘the translators fell upon a device by which they allowed some play to the natural bent of the English language; and ‘where a Greek word occurs repeatedly in a context, they rather leaned to a variation of the rendering.’

Now it is one thing to give a double rendering to a single word at any one occurrence ; and another to give it two different renderings at two different occurrences in the same context. The two principles have nothing in common. In the former case the translation will at the worst be clumsy ; in the latter it must in many cases be absolutely misleading. For by splitting up the sense of the word and giving one-half to one part of the sentence and the remain- ing half to the other, a disconnexion, perhaps even a con- trast, is introduced, which has no place in the original. If therefore the English on any occasion furnishes no exact and coextensive equivalent for a given Greek word as used in a given context (and this difficulty must occur again and again in translation from any language to another), it will generally be the less evil of the two to select the word which comes nearest in meaning to the original and to retain this throughout.

But the examples of capricious varieties which I had chosen to illustrate this vicious principle of translation, and which Mr Earle is prepared to defend, cannot in most cases

L. R. b

XIV PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

plead this justification, that a single English word does not adequately represent the Greek. It would require far more minute scholarship than I possess to discern any difference in meaning between υἱὸς and ‘son.’ Yet Mr Earle stands forward as the champion of the rendering in Matt. xx. 20, ‘Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children (υἱῶν

with her sons (υἱῶν). The particular rendering is compara- tively unimportant in itself; but as illustrating the capricious license of our translators it is highly significant. It introduces a variety for no reason at all: and this variety is incorrect in itself; for ‘the mother of Zebedee’s children’ is a wider expression than ‘the mother of Zebedee’s sons,’ by which the Evangelist intends only to describe her as the mother of James and John with whom the narrative is concerned, and which neither implies nor suggests the existence of other brothers and sisters.

Again, Mr Earle is satisfied and more than satisfied with the rendering of Matt. xviii. 33, ‘Shouldest not thou also have had compassion (ἐλεῆσαι) on thy fellow-servant, even as I had pity (ἠλέησα) on thee?’ ‘If,’ he asks, ‘ we compare our ‘‘compassion—pity” with the one Greek word, what loss is there in the variation? Is there not a gain in breadth?’ I answer, a very serious loss; and I do not allow that breadth (or, as I prefer to call it, looseness) is any gain, where exact correspondence in the two clauses is essential to the main idea of the passage. What would be said, if I were to suggest such translations as ‘ Blessed are the pitiful (ἐλεήμονες), for they shall obtain mercy (ἐλεηθή- σονται) in Matt. v. 7, or ‘If ye forgive (ἀφῆτε) not men their ¢respasses (παραπτώματα), neither will your heavenly

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XV

Father remit (ἀφῆσει) your transgressions (παραπτώματαλ)᾽ in Matt. vi. 15, or ‘Be ye therefore faultless (τέλειοι) as your Father which is in heaven is Zerfect (τέλειος) in Matt. v. 48? I do not doubt that if these passages had been so translated in our Authorised Version, the variations would have found admirers: but, as it is, who will question the vast superiority of the existing renderings, where the repetition of the English word corresponds to the repeti- tion of the Greek? In all these passages the thought is one and the same; that the ideal of human conduct is the exact copying of the Divine. In the other examples quoted our translators have preserved this thought unimpaired by repeating the same word, but in Matt. xviii. 33 it is marred by the double rendering ‘compassion, pity’: while the idea of ‘7e/low-feeling’, which is implied in ‘compassion’ and in which the chief fault lies, has no place in the original ἐλεεῖν.

Again, Mr Earle defends the double rendering of διαιρέσεις in 1 Cor. xii. 4, ‘There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are differences of adminis- trations, but the same Lord; and there are diversities of operations, but it is the same God etc.,’ and seems even to regret the abandonment of Tyndale’s triple rendering, diversities, differences, divers manners. What again, I ask, would be said, if I were to propose to translate 2 Cor. xi. 26 ‘In perils of waters, in dangers from robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in dangers from the heathen, in hazards in the city, in hazards in the wilderness, etc.,’ thus gaining breadth by varying the rendering of κινδύνοις ἢ Happily conservative feeling in this instance is enlisted on

ὦ 2

XVi PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

the right side, and it may be presumed that no change will be desired. But, so far as I can see, the two cases are exactly analogous ; the effect of the sentence in each case depending on the maintenance of the same word, which arrests the ear and produces its effect by repetition, like the tolling of a bell or the stroke on an anvil. Indeed I must conclude that my mind is differently constituted from Mr Earle’s, when I find him defending the translation of James ii. 2, 3 ‘If there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring in goodly apparel (ἐν ἐσθῆτι λαμπρᾷ) and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment (ἐσθῆτι), and ye have respect unto him that weareth the gay clothing (τὴν ἐσθῆτα τὴν λαμπράν) etc.’ Not only do I regard the variation here as highly artificial (a sufficient condemnation in itself), but it seems to me to dissipate the force of the passage, and therefore I am prepared to submit to the ‘cruel impoverish- ment’ by which the English would be made to conform to the simplicity of the Greek. Nor again am I able to see why in Rev. xvii. 6 ἐθαύμασα θαῦμα μέγα, ‘1 wondered with great admiration’ is to be preferred to the natural rendering ‘I wondered with great wonder, as in 1 Thess. iii. 9 ἐπὶ πάσῃ τῇ χαρᾷ 7) χαίρομεν Sv ὑμᾶς is translated ‘for all the joy wherewith we joy for your sakes’, and not ‘for all the gladness.’ In this passage from the Revelation the words immediately following (ver. 7) run in the English Version, ‘And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel (ἐθαύμασας) ?’, where by the introduction of a third rendering a still further injury is inflicted on the compactness of the passage.

So far with regard to the sense. But Mr Earle urges

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XVII

that the sound must be consulted; that the ear, for in- stance, requires the variations compassion, pity, in Matt. XViil. 33, and wonder, admiration (he omits to notice marvel) in Rev. xvii. 6, 7; that generally there is this ‘ broad modulatory distinction between the ancient tongues and the great modern languages of Western Europe that the former could tolerate reverberation to a degree which is in- - tolerable to the latter ;’ and that ‘ perhaps there is not one of them that is more sensitive in this respect than the English.’ In reply to this, I will ask my readers whether there is anything unpleasant to the ear in the frequent repetition of ‘perils’ in the passage already quoted, 2 Cor. xi. 26, or of ‘blessed’ in the beatitudes, Matt. v. 3—11. But this last reference suggests an application of the experimental test on a larger scale. I should find it difficult (and I venture to hope that Mr Earle will agree with me here) to point to any three continuous chapters in the New Testament, which are at once so vigorously and faithfully rendered, and in which the rhythm and sound so entirely satisfy the ear, as those which make up the Sermon on the Mount. Indeed this portion of our Authorised Version deserves to be regarded as a very model of successful translation. What then are the facts? In the original the reverberation is sustained through- out, beginning with the beatitudes and ending with the closing parable, so that there are not many verses without an instance, while some contain two or three. Happily in our Authorised Version this characteristic is taithfully re- produced. The temptation to capricious.variety to which our translators elsewhere give way is here foregone ; and indeed the whole number of the repetitions in the English is slightly

XViii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

greater than in the Greek: for though either from inadver- tence or from the exigencies of translation one is dropped here and there (e.g. λάμπει, λαμψάτω, giveth light, shine, v. 15, 16; bring, offer, προσφέρῃς, πρόσφερε, V. 23, 24; ἀπολύσῃ, ἀπολελυμένην, put away, divorced, V. 31, 323 ἐπιόρκήσεις, ὅρκους, forswear, oaths, V. 333; ἀφανίζουσι, φα- νῶσι, disfigure, appear, vi. 16; θησαυρίζετε, θησαυρούς, Jay up, treasures, Vi. 193 περιεβάλετο, περιβαλώμεθα, arrayed, clothed, vi. 29, 313 μέτρῳ, μετρεῖτε, measure, mete, (Ὁ) Vil. 2; φκοδόμησεν, οἰκίαν, built, house, vil. 24) yet on the other hand the balance is more than redressed by the same ren- dering of different words in other parts (e.g. Zight, xaiovow, λάμπει, φῶς, v. 14—16 ; fulfil, πληρῶσαι, γένηται, ν. τὴ, 18; righteousness repeated, though δικαιοσύνη occurs only once in the original, v. 20; whosoever, was ¢, ὃς av, V. 22; divorce- ment, divorced, ἀποστάσιον, ἀπολελυμένην, V. 31, 32 3 forswear, — SWEAT, ἐπιορκήσεις, ὀμόσαι, V. 33, 34; reward, μισθόν, ἀπο- — δώσει, Vi. 2, 4, 5, 6, τό, 183; streets, ῥύμαις, πλατειῶν, Vi. 2, 5 ; day, daily, σήμερον, ἐπιούσιον, vi. 11; “ight, λύχνος, φωτεινόν, φῶς, vi. 22, 23; raiment, arrayed, ἐνδύματος, περιεβάλετο, Vi. 28, 29; clothe, clothed, ἀμφιέννυσιν, περιβαλώμεθα, Vi. 30, 31; good, ἀγαθόν, καλούς, vii. 17, 18; deat, προσέπεσαν, προσέ- κοψαν, vii. 25, 27). If my readers are of opinion that the general method adopted by our translators in the Sermon on the Mount is faulty, and that these three chapters would have gained by greater breadth and variety, I have nothing © more to say; but, if they are satisfied with this method, then they have conceded everything for which I am arguing’.

1 I confess myself quite unable to follow Mr Earle’s logic, when he criticises what I had said of the Rheims Version. My words are (p. 49),

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ΧΙΧ

But Mr Earle proceeds: ‘ There is no end to the curio- sities of scholarship and the perilous minutiz that such a principle may lead to, if it is persevered in’; and by way of illustration he adds, ‘Dr Lightfoot seems to ignore what I should have regarded as an obvious fact, that it is hardly possible in modern English to make a play upon words compatible with elevation of style. It was compatible with solemnity in Hebrew and also in the Hebrew-tinctured Greek of the New Testament; but in English it is not. Explain it as you may, the fact is palpable. Does it not tax all our esteem for Shakspeare to put up with many a passage of which in any other author we should not hesitate to say that it was deformed and debased by a jingle of word- sounds δ᾽

To this I answer fearlessly that I certainly do desire to see the play of words retained in the English Version, wherever it can be done without forcing the English. I be- ‘Of all the English Versions the Rhemish alone has paid attention to this point, and so far compares advantageously with the rest, to which in most other respects it is confessedly inferior.’ On this he remarks ; ‘It is certainly unfortunate for our author’s position that by his own showing the version which has kept to his principle should nevertheless be confessedly inferior in most other respects, including, as I apprehend, the highest respects that can affect our judgment of a version of Holy Scripture. To put this admission with the clearness due to its importance; the Rheims Version is the best, in that it has observed our author’s principle: but as a rendering of Scripture it is the worst.’ Why unfortunate? Does experience suggest that the man or the book that is right on five points out of six, must be right on the sixth point also? Does it not rather lead us to expect some ele- ment of right in the most wrong and some element of wrong in the most right ? =

ΧΧ PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

lieve that our translators acted rightly when they rendered χρώμενοι, καταχρώμενοι, by use, abuse in τ Cor. vil. 31; I believe that they were only wrong in translating xatarou7, περιτομή, concision, circumcision, in Phil. ili. 2, 3, because the former is hardly a recognised English word and would not be generally understood. I freely confess that in many cases, perhaps in most cases, the thing cannot be done; but I am sorry for it’. I cannot for a moment acquiesce in

1 On my suggestion that in 2 Thess. iii. 11 the play on ἐργαζομένους, περιεργαζομένους, might be preserved by the words business, busy-bodies, Mr Earle remarks ; ‘As a matter of history the word dusiness has no radical connection with dusy: it is merely a disguised form of the French desognes. This is however a secondary matter, because if the word-play be desirable as a matter of English taste, these words would answer the purpose just as well as if their affinity were quite esta- blished.’ Without hazarding any opinion on a question on which Mr Earle is so much more competent to speak than myself, I would ven- ture to remark: (1) That the direct derivation of dusiness from busy is maintained by no less an authority than Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Gram- matik, 11. p. 237 sq.3 (2) That other authorities maintain (whether rightly or wrongly I do not venture to say) the radical connexion of the Teutonic words dusy (Engl.), desig (Dutch), with the Romance words desogne, bisogna; and (3) That this very play of words occurs in the earliest English translations of the Scriptures, the Wycliffite Ver- - sions, in 1 Cor. vii. 32, “1 wole you for to be withoute disynesse (ἀμερίμ- vous, Vulg. sine sollicittudine). Sothli he that is withoute wyf is dysy (μεριμνᾷ, Vulg. sollicitus est) what thingis ben of the Lord.’

Mr Earle remarks that in 2 Thess. iii. rr ‘Even the Rheims Version keeps clear of this (the play of words): it has ‘‘ working nothing, but curiously meddling.”’ The fact is that after its wont it has translated the Vulgate ‘Nihil operantes sed curiose agentes,’ in which this cha- racteristic of the original has disappeared.

This paronomasia is not confined to S. Paul but occurs also in Ari-

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. XXi

Mr Earle’s opinion, that it is incompatible with ‘solemnity,’ with ‘elevation of style.’ Above all I repudiate the notion, which seems to underlie whole paragraphs of Mr Earle’s critique, that it is the business of a translator, when he is dealing with the Bible, to zmrvove the style of his author, having before my eyes the warning examples of the past, and believing that all such attempts will end in discom- fiture’. Is it not one great merit of our English Version,

stides 11. p. 418 ταῦτα εἴργασται μέν...περιείργασται δὲ μηδαμῶς, just as

‘the Apostle’s φρονεῖν, σωφρονεῖν (Rom. xii. 3) has a parallel in a passage quoted by Stobzeus as from Charondas Fioril. xliv. 40 προσποιείσθω δὲ ἕκαστος τῶν πολιτῶν σωφρονεῖν μᾶλλον ἢ φρονεῖν.

1 The anxiety to impart dignity to the language of the Apostles and Evangelists reaches a climax in A Liberal Translation of the New Testament, being an attempt to translate the Sacred Writings with the same Freedom, Spirit and Elegance with which other English Transla- tions from the Greek Classics have lately been executed: by E. Harwood, London, 1768. In this strange production the following is a sample of S. Luke’s narrative (xi. 40), ‘Absurd and preposterous conduct! Did not the Great Being, who made the external form, create the internal intel- lectual powers—and will He not be more solicitous for the purity of the mind than for the showy elegance of the body?’ and this again of S. John’s (iii. 32), ‘ But though this exalted personage freely publishes and solemnly attests those heavenly doctrines, etc.’ The parable of the prodigal son in the former begins (xv. 11), ‘A gentleman of ‘splendid family and opulent fortune had two sons.’ Even Dr Johnson himself, the great master of grandiloquent English, could not tolerate this book. ‘Returning through the house,’ we are told, ‘he stepped into a small study or book-room. The first book he laid his hands upon was Harwood’s Liberal Translation of the New Testament. The pas- sage which first caught his eye was that sublime apostrophe in S. John upon the raising of Lazarus ¥esus wept, which Harwood had conceitedly rendered And Fesus, the Saviour of the world, burst into a flood of tears.

XXli PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

regarded as a literary work, that it has naturalised in our language the magnificent Hebraisms of the original? But the case before us is even stronger than this. The pavonomasia is a characteristic of S. Paul’s style, and should be repro- duced (so far as the genius of the English language permits) like any other characteristic. That it is admissible, the example of Shakespeare which Mr Earle adduces, and that of Tennyson, whose ‘name and fame’ he himself has already quoted and who abounds in similar examples of alliteration and assonance, not to mention other standard writers whether of the Elizabethan or of the Victorian era, are sufficient evidence. I am not concerned to defend Shakespeare’s literary reputation, which may be left to itself; and I have certainly no wish to maintain that he was entirely free from the affectations of his age: but I am unfeignedly surprised to find plays on words condemned wholesale, as incom- patible with elevation of style. Under certain circum- stances, paronomasia, alliteration, and the like, are not only very natural, but, as indicating intensity of feeling, may produce even a tragic effect. With the appreciation of a

He contemptuously threw the book aside, exclaiming “ Puppy!”? (Ap- pendix to Boswell’s 2775 of Fohnson, in Croker’s edition, London, 1866, p- 836). Johnson’s biographer, Boswell, speaks of it as ‘a fantastical ‘translation of the New Testament in modern phrase’ (p. 506). See also Mr Matthew Arnold’s opinion (quoted below p. 210 sq.) ona very similar attempt at a revised version by Franklin. I am quite sure that Mr Earle’s suffrage would be on the same side; but, when he asks that the distinctive features of the sacred writers may be sacrificed to ‘ elevation of style’ and pleads that the language may be made more ‘ full-bodied? to suit ‘the public taste’ than it is in the original, is he not leading us, though by a different road, to the edge of the very same precipice?

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. ΧΧΙΠ

great genius Shakespeare himself has explained and justi- fied their use under such circumstances. When John of Gaunt, in his last illness, is visited by Richard, and in reply to the king’s enquiry keeps harping on his name,

Old Gaunt indeed and gaunt in being old, the king asks,

Can sick men play so nicely with their names? The old man’s answer is, No; misery makes sport to mock itself.

The very intensity of his grief seeks relief in this way’.

Again, who will question the propriety of the play on words in Queen Elizabeth’s outburst of anger against Glou- cester after the murder of her children ?

Cousins, indeed; and by their uncle cozen’d Of comfort, kingdom, kindred, freedom, life.

The very fierceness of her wrath seeks expression in the iteration of the same sounds.

And in cases where no intensity of passion exists, there may be some other determining motive. Thus we find a tendency in all languages to repetition of sound, where a didactic purpose is served. Of this motive the fondness for rhyme, alliteration, and the like, in the familiar proverbs of all languages, affords ample illustration, as in Waste not, want not, Forewarned, forearmed, Man proposes, God disposes, Compendia dispendia, παθήματα μαθήματα. To this cate- gory we may assign S. Paul’s μὴ ὑπερφρονεῖν παρ᾽ ὃ δεῖ

1 Similarly Cicero, speaking of the Sicilians playing on the name

of Verres, says (Verr. Act, ii. 1. 46) ‘etiam rzdiculi inveniebantur ex dolore.’

χχὶν PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

φρονεῖν, ἀλλὰ φρονεῖν εἰς τὸ σωφρονεῖν (Rom. xii. 3). In- deed it would not be difficult to show that in every instance the Apostle had some reason for employing this figure, and that he did not use it as a mere rhetorical plaything. We may find ourselves unable in any individual case to reproduce the same effect in English, and thus may be forced to abandon the attempt in despair; but not the less earnestly shall we protest against the principle that the genius of our language requires us to abstain from the attempt under any circumstances, and that a form of speech, which is natural in itself and common to all languages, must be sacrificed to some fancied ideal of an elevated style.

TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, S. John’s Day, 1871.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

O this edition has been added a reprint (p. 269 sq.)

of three articles which appeared in the Guardian newspaper on the last petition of the Lord’s Prayer. Their appearance here in their existing form seems to require a few words of explanation. The articles were called forth by a pamphlet published by the late Canon Cook’, criticizing the translation of this petition which had been adopted in the Revised Version. The Bishop intended to rewrite the articles entirely, adding further evidence in support of the rendering which he maintains to be correct. Thus recast, the articles were to have been published together with the dissertation on ἐπιούσιος (p. 217 sq.), and dissertations (never written) upon other points of critical interest in the Lord’s Prayer. This design he did

1 Deliver us from Evil. A Protest against the Change in the Last Petition of the Lord’s Prayer adopted in the Revised Version. A Letter to the Bishop of London. John Murray, 1881. Canon Cook published a reply to these articles entitled Deliver us from Evil. A Second Letter to the Lord Bishop of London. John Murray, 1882.

ΧΧΥῚ ΡΒΕΕΕΑΓΕ TO THE THIRD EDITION.

not live to carry out. In response therefore to numerous requests to make these articles available for reference, the Trustees have decided to include them in this volume; and it only remains for them to express their sincere regret that it has thus become necessary to perpetuate them in a form which their author never intended to be more than

temporary.

May 25, 1891.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

PAGE I. 5. JEROME’S REVISION OF THE LATIN BIBLE . I

II. AUTHORISED VERSION OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE . 10

III. LESSONS SUGGESTED BY THESE HISTORICAL PARALLELS . ‘ : ; P : ᾿ econ!

IV. NECESSITY FOR A FRESH REVISION OF THE AUTHORISED VERSION ‘ : Σ : « (39 § 1. False Readings. . . Ξ ‘ . δ, ΠῚ § 2. Artificial distinctions created . . . 36 § 3. Real distinctions obliterated -. . . 66 aes OF τον. ὃ ne ee BQ § 5. Faults of Lexicography . iets - 148

§ 6. Treatment of Proper Names, Official Titles, etc. ‘ ; : : : - 163

§ 7. Archaisms, Defects in the English, Errors of the Press, etc. . ; ὁ ° - 189

V. PROSPECTS OF THE NEW REVISION. ὦ ᾿ « 207 APPENDIX on the words ἐπιούσιος, περιούσιος . ° « 299 APPENDIX on the last clause in the Lord’s Prayer . 269

INDICES . . . : . . : - - . 325

ΠΥ eee Se Nd, ΨΥ + == -

A FRESH REVISION

OF THE

ENGLISH NEW TESTAMENT.

i

ORE than two centuries had elapsed since the

first Latin Version of the Scriptures was made, when the variations and errors of the Latin Bible began to attract the attention of students and to call for revision. It happened providentially, that at the very moment when the need was felt, the right man was forthcoming. In the first fifteen centuries of her existence the Western Church produced no Biblical

ΟΠ scholar who could compare with S. Jerome in com-

petence for so great a task. At the suggestion of his ecclesiastical superior, Damasus bishop of Rome, he undertook this work, for which many years of self- denying labour had eminently fitted him.

L. R. I

to

5, JEROME'S REVISION.

It is no part of my design to give a detailed ac- count of this undertaking. I wish only to remark that when Jerome applied himself to his task, he foresaw that he should expose himself to violent at- tacks, and that this anticipation was not disappointed by the result. ‘Who,’ he asks in his preface to the Gospels, the first portion of the work which he com- pleted, ‘Who, whether learned or unlearned, when he takes up the volume, and finds that what he reads differs from the flavour he has once tasted, will not immediately raise his voice and pronounce me guilty of forgery and sacrilege, for daring to add, to change, to correct anything in the ancient books’?’

Again and again he defends himself against his antagonists. His temper, naturally irritable, was pro- voked beyond measure by these undeserved attacks, and betrayed him into language which I shall not attempt to defend. Thus writing to Marcella? he mentions certain ‘poor creatures (homunculos) who studiously calumniate him for attempting to correct some passages in the Gospels against the autho- rity of the ancients and the opinion of the whole world.’ ‘I could afford to despise them,’ he says, ‘if I stood upon my rights, for a lyre is played in vain to an ass,’ ‘If they do not like the water from the

1 Op. X. 660 (ed. Vallarsi). 2 List. 28 (1. p. 133).

x a ἮΝ

ITS ASSAILANTS. 3

purest fountain-head, let them drink of the muddy streams. And after more to the same effect, he

returns again at the close of the letter to these ‘two-

legged donkeys (bipedes asellos), exclaiming, ‘ Let them read, Rejoicing in hope, serving the time, let us read, Rejoicing in hope, serving the Lord’; \et them

consider that an accusation ought under no circum-

stances to be received against an elder; let ws read, Against an elder receive not an accusation but before

two or three witnesses; them that sin rebuke®. Let

them be satisfied with, /¢ zs a human saying, and worthy of all acceptation: \et us err with the Greeks, that is with the Apostle who spoke in Greek, 72 zs a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation®’ And elsewhere, referring to these same detractors, he writes with a severity which was not undeserved ; ‘Let them read first and despise afterward, lest they appear to condemn works of which they know nothing, not from deliberate judgment, but from the prejudice of hatred*’ ‘Thus much I say in reply to my tra- ducers, who snap at me like dogs, maligning me in public and reading mein a corner, at once my ac-

1 The reading καιρῷ for κυρίῳ, Rom. xii. 11.

3 The omission of the clause εἰ μὴ ἐπὶ δύο ἢ τριῶν μαρτύρων, 1 Tim. v. 10.

8 The reading ἀνθρώπινος for πιστός, τ Tim. iii. 1.

4 Op. IX. 684.

4 5, JEROME'S REVISION.

cusers and my defenders, seeing that they approve in others what they disapprove in me?’

If these attacks had been confined to personal, enemies like Rufinus’*, who were only retaliating upon Jerome the harsh treatment which they had received at his hands, his complaints would not have excited much sympathy. But even friends looked coldly or suspiciously on his noble work. His admirer, the great Augustine himself, wrote to deprecate an under- taking which might be followed by such serious re- sults. He illustrated his fears by reference to the well-known incident to which Jerome’s version of the Book of Jonah had given occasion, as a sample of ‘the consequences that might be expected to ensue. A certain bishop had nearly lost his flock by ven- turing to substitute Jerome’s rendering ‘hedera’ for ‘cucurbita, and could only win them back again by reinstating the old version which he had abandoned. They would not tolerate a change in an expression ‘which had been fixed by time in the feclings and memory of all and had been repeated through so many ages in succession ὅν

Of the changes which Jerome introduccd into the

1 Of. 1X. 1408. ! * See Hieron. Of. 11. 660, where Rufinus exclaims, ‘Istud com- missum dic quomodo emendabitur? immo, nefas quomodo expiabitur ??

with more to the same effect. 8 Hieron, Zfist. 104 (1. 636 sq.).

ITS ASSAILANTS. 5

text of the New Testament, the passage quoted above affords sufficient illustration. In the Old Testament a more arduous task awaited him. The Latin Version which his labours were destined to supersede had been made from the Septuagint. He himself undertook to revise the text in conformity with the original Hebrew. It will appear strange to our own age that this was the chief ground of accusation against him. All the Greek and Latin Churches, it was urged, had hitherto used one and the same Bible; but this bond of union would be dissolved by a new version made from a different text. Thus the utmost confusion would ensue. More- ἢ over, what injury might not be done to the faith of the weaker brethren by casting doubt on the state of the sacred text? What wounds might not be inflicted on the pious sentiments of the believer by laying sacrilegious hands on language hallowed by long time and association ?

But, independently of the dangerous consequences which might be expected, no words were too strong to condemn the arrogance and presumption of one who thus ventured to set aside the sacred text as it had been used by all branches and in all ages of the Church from the beginning. To this cruel taunt Jerome replied nobly: ‘I do not condemn, I do not blame the Seventy, but I confidently prefer the

6 5, JEROME'S REVISION.

Apostles to them 411. ‘I beseech you, reader, do not regard my labours as throwing blame on the ancients. Each man offers what he can for the tabernacle of God*. Some gold and silver and precious stones: others fine linen and purple and scarlet and blue: I shall hold myself happy if I have offered skins and goats’ hair. And yet the Apostle considers that the more despised members are more necessary (1 Cor. xii. 22) *’

Moreover there was a very exaggerated estimate of the amount of change which his revision would introduce. Thus Augustine, when endeavouring to deter him, speaks of his new ¢vanslation ; Jerome in reply tacitly corrects his illustrious correspondent, and calls the work a revision*. And throughout he holds the same guarded language: he protests that he has no desire to introduce change for the mere sake of change, and that only such alterations will be made as strict fidelity to the original demands, His object is solely to place the Hebraica veritas before his readers in the vernacular tongue, and to this object he is stedfast.

In executing this great work, Jerome was in con-

+ Op. 3x. 6. 3 Exod. xxv. 2 sq. 3 Op. 1X. 460.

* See Hieron. Zfzst. 104, 1. 637, for Augustine’s letter (‘ Evangelium ex Graeco interpretatus es’), and Zfist. 112, I. 753, for Jerome’s reply

(‘in Novi Testamenti emendatione’). See Dr Westcott in Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Vulgate, 11. p. 1696.

-HIS PERSEVERANCE, 7

stant communication with Jewish rabbis, who were his Hebrew teachers and to whom he was much indebted in many ways. How great a gain this assistance was to his revision, and how largely after ages have profited by the knowledge thus brought to bear on the sacred text, I need hardly say. We may suspect (though no direct notice on this point is preserved) that with his contemporaries this fact was prominent among the counts of the indictment against him. At least it is certain that they set their faces against his substitution of the Hebrew text for the Septuagint version, on the ground that the former had been tampered with by the malignity and obduracy of the Jews. But, if this suspicion wrongs them, and they did not object to his availing himself of such extraneous aid, then they evinced greater liberality than has always been shown by the opponents of revision in later ages.

Happily Jerome felt strong in the power of truth, and could resist alike the importunity of friends and the assaults of foes. His sole object was to place before the Latin-speaking Churches the most faithful representation of the actual words of the sacred text ; and the consciousness of this great purpose nerved him with a strength beyond himself. The character of this father will not kindle any deep affection or respect. We are repelled by his coarseness and want

8 S. JEROME'S REVISION.

’ of refinement, by his asperity of temper, by his vanity and self-assertion. We look in vain for that transparent simplicity which is the true foundation of the highest saintliness. But in this instance the nobler instincts of the Biblical scholar triumphed over the baser passions of the man; and in his lifelong devotion to this one object of placing the Bible in its integrity before the Western Church, his character rises to true sublimity. ‘I beseech you, he writes, ‘pour out your prayers to the Lord for me, that so long as I am in this poor body I may write something acceptable to you, useful to the Church, and worthy of after ages. Indeed I am not moved overmuch by the judgments of living men: they err on the one side or on the other, through affection or through hatred’’ ‘My voice,’ he says elsewhere, ‘shall never be silent, Christ helping me. Though my tongue be cut off, it shall still stammer. Let those read who will; let those who will not, reject®’ And, inspired with a true scholar’s sense of the dignity of con- scientious work for its own sake irrespective of any striking results, after mentioning the pains which it has cost him to unravel the entanglement of names in the Books of Chronicles he recalls a famous word of encouragement addressed of old by Antigenidas the flute-player to his pupil Ismenias, whose skill had

1 Op. IX. 1364. 2 Op. IX. 1526.

ITS GRADUAL RECEPTION. 9

failed to catch the popular fancy: ‘Play to me and to the Muses. So Jerome describes his own set purpose; ‘Like Ismenias I play to myself and to mine, if the ears of the rest are deaf’

Thus far I have dwelt on the opposition which Jerome encountered on all hands, and the dauntless resolution with which he accomplished his task. Let me now say a few words on the subsequent fate of his revision, for this also is an instructive page in history’. When completed, it received no authoritative sanction. His patron, pope Damasus, at whose instigation he had undertaken the task, was dead. The successors of Damasus showed no favour to Jerome or to his work. The Old Latin still continued to be read in churches; it was still quoted in the writings of divines. Even Augustine, who after the completion of the task seems to have overcome his misgivings and speaks in praise of Jerome’s work, remains constant to the older Version. But first one writer, and then another, begins to adopt the revised trans- lation of Jerome. Still its recognition depends on the caprice or the judgment of individual men. Even the bishops of Rome had not yet discovered that

1 Op. 1X. 1408, ‘Mihimet ipsi et meis juxta Ismeniam canens, si aures surdae sunt ceterorum.’

2 The history of the gradual reception of Jerome’s Revision is traced in Kaulen’s Geschichte der Vulgata, p. 190 sq. (Mainz, 1868).

ΙΟ 5. JEROME’S REVISION.

it was ‘authentic.’ One pope will use the Hie- ronymian Revision; a second will retain the Old Latin ; while a third will use either indifferently, and a fourth will quote from the one in the Old Testa- ment and from the other in the New’. As late as two centuries after Jerome’s time, Gregory the Great can still write that he intends to avail himself of either indifferently, as his purpose may require, since ‘the Apostolic See, over which by the grace of God he presides, uses both’. Thus slowly, but surely, Jerome’s revision won its way, till at length, some centuries after its author’s death, it drove its elder rival out of the field, and became the one recognised version of the Bible throughout the Latin Churches,

Τί, I cannot forbear to call attention in passing to the close parallel which these facts present to the history

of the so-called Authorised Version. This too, like Jerome’s revision, was undertaken amidst many mis-

1 These statements may be verified by the quotations in Kaulen’s work,

2 Greg. Magn. Mor. in Job., Epist. ad fin. ‘Novam translationem dissero; sed cum probationis causa exigit, nunc novam, nunc veterem per testimonia assumo; ut, quia sedes Apostolica cui Deo auctore praesideo utraque utitur, mei quoque labor studii ex utraque fulciatur’ (Op. 1. p. 6, Venet. 1768).

THE AUTHORISED VERSION, II

givings, and, when it appeared, was received with coldness or criticized with severity. When the pro- posal for a revision was first brought forward, ‘my Lord of London’ is reported to have said that ‘if every man’s humour should be followed, there would be no end of translating.” The translators themselves, when they issue their work to the public, deprecate the adverse criticism which doubtless they saw very good reason to apprehend. Such a work as theirs, they say in the opening paragraph of the preface to the reader, ‘is welcomed with suspicion instead of love and with emulation instead of thanks,...and if there be any hole left for cavil to enter (and cavil, if it do not find a hole, will make one), it is sure to be misconstrued and in danger to be condemned. This will easily be granted by as many as know story or have any experience. For, was there ever any- thing projected, that savoured any way of newness or renewing, but the same endured many a storm of gainsaying or opposition?’ and again; ‘ Whosoever attempteth anything for the public (especially if it pertain to religion and to the opening and clearing of the Word of God) the same setteth himself upon a stage to be glouted upon by every evil eye, yea, he casteth himself headlong upon pikes, to be gored by every sharp tongue. For he that meddleth with men’s religion in any part, meddleth with their

͵

12 THE AUTHORISED VERSION.

custom, nay with their freehold: and though they find no’ content in that which they have, yet they cannot abide to hear of altering,’

The parallel moreover extends to the circumstances of its reception. It seems now to be an established fact (so far as any fact in history which involves a com- prehensive negative can be regarded as established) that the Revised Version never received any final authorisation either from the ecclesiastical or from the civil powers: that it was not sanctioned either by the Houses of Parliament, or by the Houses of Convoca- tion, or by the King in Council. The Bishops’ Bible still continued to be read in churches; the Geneva Bible was still the familiar volume of the fireside and the closet’. Several years after the appearance of the Revised Version, Bishop Andrewes, though himself one of the revisers, still continues to quote from an older Bible. Yet notwithstanding all adverse circum-

1 The printing of the Bishops’ Bible was stopped as “soon as the new revision was determined upon. The last edition of the former was published in 1606. The Revised Version states on its title-page (1611) that it is ‘Appointed to be read in Churches,’ but we are not told by whom or how it was appointed. As the copies of the Bishops’ Bible used in the churches were worn out, they would probably be replaced by the Revised Version; but this seems to have been the only advantage which was accorded to it. On the other hand, the Geneva Bible continued to be printed by the King’s Printer some years after the appearance of the Revised Version, and was still marked ‘Cum privilegio Regiae majestatis.’

ITS RECEPTION. 13

stances it overpowered both its rivals by the force of superior merit. It was found to be, as one had said long before of Jerome’s revision, ‘et verborum tena- cior et perspicuitate sententiae clarior’’; and this was the secret of its success. ‘Thus, writes Dr Westcott, ‘at the very time when the monarchy and the Church were, as it seemed, finally overthrown, the English people by their silent and unanimous acceptance of the new Bible gave a spontaneous testimony to the principles of order and catholicity of which both were an embodiment.’ ‘A revision, which embodied the ripe fruits of nearly a century of labour, and appealed to the religious instinct of a great Christian people, gained by its own internal character a vital authority which could never have been sccured by any edict of sovereign rulers’,

But the parallel may be carried a step further. In both these cases alike, as we have seen, God’s law of progressive improvement, which in animal and vegetable life has been called the principle of natural selection, was vindicated here, so that the inferior gradually disappeared before the superior in the same kind: but in both cases also the remnants of an earlier Bible held and still hold their ground, as a testimony to the past. As in parts of the Latin

1 Isidor. Hispal. Etym. vi. 4; comp. de Of: Leel. i. 12. 2 History of the English Bible, pp. 158, 160.

14 THE AUTHORISED VERSION.

Service-books the Vulgate has not even yet displaced the Old Latin, which is still retained either in its pristine or in its partially amended form; so also in our own Bock of Common Prayer an older Version still maintains its place in the Psalter and in the occasional sentences, as if to keep before our eyes the progressive history of our.English Bible.

ΠΙ.

All history is a type, ἃ parable. The hopes and the misgivings, the failures and the successes, of the past reproduce themselves in the present; and it appeared to me that at this crisis, when a revision of our English Bible is imminent, we might with advantage study the history of that revised transla- tion, which alone among Biblical Versions can bear comparison with our own in its circulation and in- fluence.

And, first of all, in the gloomy forebodings which have ushered in this scheme for a new revision, we seem to hear the very echo of those: warning voices, which happily fell dead on the ear of the resolute Jerome. The alarming consequences, which some anticipate from any attempt to meddle with our time-honoured Version, have their exact counterpart in the apprehensions by which his contemporaries

HISTORICAL PARALLELS. 15

sought to deter him. The danger of estranging diverse Churches and congregations at present united in the acceptance of a common Bible, and the danger of perplexing the faith of individual believers by suggesting to them variations of text and uncer- tainties of interpretation—these are now, as they were then, the twin perils by which it is sought to scare the advocates of revision.

Moreover there is the like exaggerated estimate of the amount of change which any body of revisers would probably introduce. To this we can only give the same answer as Jerome. Not translation, but revision, is the object of all who have promoted this new movement. There is no intention of snapping the thread of history by the introduction of a new version. Our English Bible owes its unrivalled merits to the principle of revision; and this principle it is proposed once more to invoke. ‘To whom ever,’ say the authors of our Received Version, ‘was it imputed for a failing (by such as were wise) to go over that which he had done and to amend it where he saw cause?’ ‘Truly, good Christian reader, we never thought from the beginning that we should need to make a new translation, nor yet to make a bad one a good one...but to make a good one better...that hath been our endeavour, that our mark,’

Nor again will the eminence of antagonists deter

16 HISTORICAL PARALLELS.

the promoters of this movement, if they feel that they have truth on their side. Augustine was a greater theologian, as well as a better man, than Jerome. But in this matter he was treading on alien ground: he had not earned the right to speak. On the other hand, a life-long devotion to the study of the Biblical text in the original languages had filled Jerome with the sense alike of the importance of the work and of the responsibility of his position. He could not be deterred by the fears of any adversaries, however good and however able. He felt the iron hand of a strong necessity laid upon him, and he could not choose but — open out to others the stores of Scriptural wealth which he himself had been permitted to amass. And again, we may take courage from the results which followed from his design, dauntlessly and persistently carried out. None of the perilous con- sequences, which friend and foe alike had foreboded, did really ensue. There was indeed a long interval of transition, during which the rival versions contended for supremacy ; but no weakening of individual faith, no alienation of Churches, can be traced to this source. The great schism of the Church, the severance of East and West, was due to human passion and prejudice, to fraud and self-will and ambition. History does not mention any relaxation of the bonds of union as the consequence of Jerome’s work. On the contrary,

HISTORICAL PARALLELS. 17

the Vulgate has been a tower of strength to the Latin Churches, as Jerome foresaw that it would be. He laboured for conscience sake, more than content if his work proved acceptable to one or two intimate friends ; he sought not the praise of men; his own generation viewed his labours with suspicion or hatred; and he has been rewarded with the universal grati- tude of after ages.

Nor is it uninstructive to observe that the very point on which his contemporaries laid the greatest stress in their charges against him, has come to be regarded by ourselves as his most signal merit. To him we owe it, that in the Western Churches the Hebrew original, and not the Septuagint Version, is the basis of the people’s Bible; and that a broad and indelible line has been drawn once for all between the Canon of the Old Testament as known to the Hebrew nation, and the later accretions which had gathered about it in the Greek and Latin Bibles. Thus we are reaping the fruits of his courage and fidelity. We are the proper heirs of his labours. The Articles of the Church of England still continue to quote S. Jerome’s authority for the distinction between the Canonical and Apocryphal books, which the Council of Trent did its best to obscure.

But there is yet another lesson to be learned from the history of Jerome’s revision. The circumstances

L. R. 2

18 HISTORICAL PARALLELS.

of its reception are full of instruction and encourage- ment. It owed nothing, as we have seen, to official sanction; it won its way by sterling merit. Now let us suppose that the revision, which we are about to undertake, is successfully accomplished. How are _ we to deal with it? If the work commends itself

at once to all or to a large majority as superior to the present Version, then let it by all means be substituted by some formal authorisation. But this is quite too much to expect. Though S. Jerome’s revision was incomparably better than the Old Latin, though the superiority of our received English Version to its predecessors is allowed on all hands, no such instantaneous welcome was accorded to either. They had to run the gauntlet of adverse criticism; they fought their way to acceptance inch by inch. I suppose that no one who takes part in this new revision is so sanguine as to hope that his work will be more tenderly treated. This being so, it does not seem to be necessary, and it is perhaps not even advisable, that the new Revised Version, if successfully completed, should at once authori- tatively displace the old. Only let it not be prohibited. Give it a fair field, and a few years will decide the question of superiority. I do not myself consider it a great evil, that for a time two concurrent Versions should be in use. This at least seems a

A REVISION NEEDED. 19

simple practical solution, unless indeed there should be such an immediate convergence of opinion in favour of the revised Version, as past experience does not encourage us to expect.

IV.

But let it be granted that the spectres, which a timid apprehension calls into being, are scared away by the light of history and experience, and that the dangerous consequences of revision are shown to be imaginary; we have still to ask, whether there is suffi- cient reason for undertaking such a work, or (in other words) whether the defects of the existing Version are such as to call for systematic amendment? Here again we are met by the same objection, of which our translators were obliged to take notice: ‘ Many men’s mouths,’ they write, ‘have been open a good while (and yet are not stopped) with speeches about the translation so long in hand...and ask what may be the reason, what the necessity of the employment: Hath the Church been deceived, say they, all this while? Hath her sweet bread been mingled with leaven, her silver with dross, her wine with water, her milk with lime?’ |

In addressing myself to this question, I cannot attempt to give an exhaustive answer, Materials for

2—Z

20 A REVISION NEEDED.

such an answer will be found scattered up and down biblical commentaries and other exegetical works’. In Archbishop Trench’s instructive volume Ox the Authorized Version of the New Testament, published a few years ago, they are gathered into a focus; and quite recently, in anticipation of the impending re- vision, Bishop Ellicott has stated the case concisely, giving examples of different classes of errors which call for correction. For a fuller justification of the advocates of revision I would refer to these and simi- lar works, confining myself to a few more prominent points, in which our Version falls behind the know- ledge of the age, and offering some examples in illustration of each. While doing so, I shall be led necessarily to dwell almost exclusively on the defects of our English Bible, and to ignore its merits. But I trust it will be unnecessary for me on this account to deprecate adverse criticism. No misapprehension is more serious or more unjust than the assumption that those who advocate revision are blind to the — excellence of the existing Version. It is the very sense of this excellence which prompts the desire to make an admirable instrument more perfect. On~ the other hand, they cannot shut their eyes to the

+ For the literature of the subject, see Professor Plumptre’s interest- ing article in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, s.v. Version, Authorized, p- 1679.

FALSE READINGS. 2I

fact that the assiduous labours of scholars and divines during two centuries and a half have not been fruit- less, and they are naturally anxious to pour into the treasury of the temple these accumulated gains of many generations.

8.1.

And first of all let us boldly face the fact that the most important changes, in which a revision may result, will be due to the variations of reading in the Greek text. It was not.the fault, it was the misfor- tune, of the scholars from Tyndale downward, to whom we owe our English Bible, that the only text accessible to them was faulty and corrupt. I need not take up time in recapitulating the history of the received text, which will be known to all. It is suf- ficient to state that all textual critics are substantially agreed on this point, though they may differ among themselves as to the exact amount of change which it will be necessary to introduce.

No doubt, when the subject of various readings is mentioned, grave apprehensions will arise in the minds of some persons. But this is just the case where more light is wanted to allay the fears which a vague imagination excites. The recent language of alarmists on this point seems incredible to those

22 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

who have paid any attention to the subject. I can only state my own conviction that a study of the history and condition of the Greek text solves far more difficulties than it creates. More especially it brings out the fact of the very early and wide diffu- sion of the New Testament writings with a clearness and a cogency which is irresistible, and thus bears most important testimony to their genuineness and integrity. Even the variations themselves have the highest value in this respect. Thus for instance when we find that soon after the middle of the second century divergent readings of a striking kind occur in S. John’s Gospel, as for instance μονογενὴς Θεὸς and ὁ μονογενὴς υἱός (i. 18), we are led to the con- clusion that the text has already a history and that the Gospel therefore cannot have been very recent. This evidential value of textual criticism moreover shows itself in other ways. I will select one instance, which has always appeared to me very instructive as illustrating the results of this study—apparently so revolutionary in its methods, and yet really so con- servative in its ends.

The Epistle to the Ephesians, after having been received by churches and individuals alike (so far as we know) without a single exception from the earliest times, as the unquestioned work of the Apostle whose name it bears, has been challenged in our

FALSE READINGS. 23

own generation. Now there is one formidable argu- ment, and one only, against its genuineness. It is urged with irresistible force that S. Paul could not have written in this strain to a Church in which he had resided for some three years and with which he lived on the closest and most affectionate terms. So far as regards reference to persons or incidents, this is quite the most colourless of all S. Paul’s Epistles ; whereas we should expect to find it more full and definite in its allusions than any other, except per- haps the letters to Corinth. To this objection no satisfactory answer can be given without the aid of textual criticism. But from textual criticism we learn that an intelligent and well-informed though hereti- cal writer of the second century called it an Epistle to the Laodiceans; that in the opening verse the words ‘in Ephesus’ are wanting in the two oldest extant Greek MSS; that the most learned of the Greek fathers in the middle of the third century— himself a textual critic—had not the words in his copy or copies; and that another learned Greek father in the middle of the fourth century declares them to be absent from the oldest manuscripts—not to mention other subsidiary notices tending in the same direction. Putting these facts together, we get a complete answer to the objection. The Epistle is found to be a circular letter, addressed probably to

24 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

the Churches of Proconsular Asia, of which Ephesus was one and Laodicea another. From Ephesus, as the metropolis, it derived its usual title, because the largest number of copies in circulation would be de- rived from the autograph sent thither; but here and there a copy was extant in early times addressed to some other Church (as Laodicea, for instance); and Ὁ still more commonly copies existed taken from some MS in which the blank for the name of the Church had not been filled up. This circular character of the letter fully explains the absence of personal οὐ. historical allusions. Thus textual criticism in this instance removes our difficulty; but its services do not end here. It furnishes a body of circumstantial evidence which, I venture to think, must ultimately carry irresistible conviction as to the authorship of the letter, though for the present some are found to hesitate. For these facts supplied by textual criticism connect themselves with the mention of the letter which the Colossians are charged to get from Lao- dicea (Col. iv. 16), and this mention again combines with the strong resemblances of matter and diction, ἡ so as to bind these two epistles inseparably together: while again the Epistle to the Colossians is linked not less indissolubly with the letter to Philemon by the references to person and place and circumstance. Thus the three Epistles form a compact whole, to

FALSE READINGS. 25

resist the assaults of adverse criticism. A striking amount of undesigned coincidence is gathered to- gether from the most diverse quarters, converging unmistakably to one result. And the point to be observed is, that many of these coincident elements are not found in the Epistles themselves, but in the external history of the text, a circumstance which gives them a far higher evidential value. For even if it were possible to imagine a forger in an uncritical age at once able to devise a series of artifices so _ subtle and so complex, as on the supposition of the spuriousness of one or all of these letters we are obliged to assume, and willing to defeat his own purpose by tangling a skein which it would require the critical education of the nineteenth century to unravel; yet there would remain the still greater improbability that a man in such a position could have exercised an effective control over external circumstances—the diffusion and the subsequent history of his forgeries—such as this hypothesis would suppose.

This instance will illustrate my meaning, when I alluded to the conservative action of textual criti- cism ; for such I conceive to be its general tendency. But in fact the consideration of consequences ought not to weigh with us, in a matter where duty is so obvious. It must be our single aim to place the

26 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

Bible in its integrity before the people of Christ; and, so long as we sincerely follow the truth, we can afford to leave the consequences in God’s hands: and I cannot too strongly urge the truism (for truism it is) that the higher value we set on the Bible as being or as containing the Word of God, the greater (if we are faithful to our trust) will be our care to ascertain the exact expressions of the original by the aid of all the critical resources at our command. We have seen that S. Jerome’s courage was chiefly tried in the substitution of a purer text, and that his fidelity herein has been recognised as his greatest claim to the gratitude of after ages. The work, which our new revisers will be required to execute, is far less revolutionary than his. Where his task required him to substitute a wholly new text in the Old Testa- ment, they will only be required to cancel or to change a word or expression, or in rare cases a verse, here and there in the New. Where he was faithful in great things, we may trust that they will not be faithless in small.

The question therefore is not one of policy, but of truth. Yet still it is well to face the probable results ; because apprehension is especially alive on this point, and because only by boldly confronting the spectres of a vague alarm can we hope to lay them.

FALSE READINGS. : 27

Let us then first of all set it down as an unmixed gain that we shall rid ourselves of an alliance which is a constant source of weakness and perplexity to us. No more serious damage can be done to a true cause, than by summoning in its defence a witness who is justly suspected or manifestly perjured. Yet this is exactly the attitude which the verse relating to the Heavenly witnesses (1 John v. 7) bears towards the great doctrine which it proclaims, so long as it retains a place in the Bible which we put into the hands of the people. Shortly after the question of revision was first mooted, an article on the subject appeared in a popular daily paper, in which the writer, taking occasion to refer to this verse, com- mitted himself to two statements respecting it: γε, that the passage in question had done much towards promoting the belief in the doctrine which it puts forward ; and secondly that the interpolator knew well what he was about and used very efficient means to gain his end. Now both these statements were evi- dently made in good faith by the writer and would, I suppose, be accepted as true by a very large number of his readers. But those, who have given any special attention to the subject, know that neither will bear examination. The first contradicts the plain facts of history; the second militates against the most probable inferences of criticism. As regards

28 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

the first point, it seems unquestionable that the doctrine was formally defined and firmly established some time before the interpolation appeared. A study of history shows that the Church arrived at the Catholic statement of. the doctrine of the Trinity, partly because it was indicated in other passages of the New Testament (e.g. Matt. xxviii. 19, 2 Cor. xiii. 14), and partly because it was the only statement which, recognising the fact of the Incarnation of the Divine Word, was found at once to satisfy the in- stincts of a devout belief and the requirements of a true philosophy; and that the text in question had not, and could not have, anything to do with its establishment. Indeed the very fact that it is no- where quoted by the great controversial writers of the fourth and fifth centuries has been truly regarded as the strongest evidence against its genuineness. And in more recent times, when the doctrine began to be challenged, the text was challenged also; so that at this stage the doctrine did not gain, but lose, by the advocacy of a witness whose questionable character threw discredit upon it. Again, the second statement equally breaks down when investigated. Textual criticism shows that the clause containing the Three Heavenly Witnesses was not in the first instance a deliberate forgery, but a comparatively innocent gloss, which put a directly theological in-

FALSE READINGS. 29

terpretation on the three genuine witnesses of S. John —the spirit and the water and the blood—a gloss which is given substantially by S. Augustine and was indicated before by Origen and Cyprian, and which first thrust itself into the text in some Latin MSS, ' where it betrays its origin, not only by its varieties of form, but also by the fact that it occurs sometimes before and sometimes after the mention of the three genuine witnesses which it was intended to explain. Thus both these statements alike break down, and we see no ground for placing this memorable verse in the same category with such fictions as the False Decretals, whether we regard its origin or its results ; for unlike them it was not a deliberate forgery, and unlike them also it did not create a dogma. I only quote this criticism to show how much prejudice may be raised against the truth by the retention of inter- polations like this; nor can we hold ourselves free from blame, if such statements are made and ac- cepted, so long as we take no steps to eject from our Bibles an intrusive passage, against which external and internal evidence alike have pronounced a deci- sive verdict. In this instance our later English Bibles have retrograded from the more truthful position of Ὁ the earlier. In Tyndale’s, Coverdale’s, and the Great Bibles the spurious words are placed in brackets and

printed in a different type, and thus attention is

20 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

directed to their suspicious character. In Luther’s German Translation (in its original form), as also in the Zurich Latin Bible of 1543, they were omitted. In the Geneva Testament first, so far as I am aware, and in the Bishops’ Bible after it, the example was set, which the translators of our Authorised Version unhappily followed, of dispensing with these marks of doubtful genuineness and printing the passage uniformly with the context.

In other doctrinal passages where important various readings occur, the solution will not be so simple; but in doubtful cases the margin may use- fully be employed. Altogether the instances in which doctrine is directly or indirectly involved are very few; and, though individual texts might be altered, the balance of doctrinal statement would probably not be disturbed by the total result, a change in one direction being compensated by a change in the other. Thus for instance, if the reading ‘God was manifest in the flesh’ should have to give place. to ‘Who was manifest in the flesh’ in 1 Tim. iii. 16, and retire to the margin, yet on the other hand the ‘Only-begotten God’ would seem to have equal or superior claims to ‘the Only-begotten Son’ in John i. 18, and must either supersede it or claim a place side by side with it.

The passages, which touch Christian sentiment or

FALSE READINGS. 31

history or morals, and which are affected by textual differences, though less rare than the former, are still ' very few. Of these the pericope of the woman taken in adultery holds the first place in importance. In this case a deference to the most ancient authorities, as well as a consideration of internal evidence, might seem to involve immediate loss. The best solution would probably be to place the passage in brackets, for the purpose of showing, not indeed that it contains an untrue narrative (for, whencesoever it comes, it seems‘to bear on its face the highest credentials of authentic history), but that evidence external and internal is against its being regarded as an integral portion of the original Gospel of S. John. The close of S. Mark’s Gospel should possibly be treated in the same way. If I might venture a conjecture, I should say that both the one and the other were due to that knot of early disciples who gathered about S. John in Asia Minor and must have preserved more than one true tradition of the Lord’s life and of the earliest days of the Church, of which some at least had them- selves been eye-witnesses’*.

Again in S. Luke’s Gospel it might be right

1 The account of the woman taken in adultery is known to have been related by Papias, a disciple of this school, early in the second century, who also speaks of the Gospel of S. Mark. Euseb. #. £. iii. 39.

22 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

to take account of certain remarkable omissions in some texts, and probably in these cases a marginal note would be the best solution. Such for instance are the words addressed to James and John, ix. 55, ‘Ye know not of what spirit ye are, or the agony in the garden, xxii. 43, 44, or the solemn words on the Cross, xxiii. 34. It seems impossible to believe that these incidents are other than authentic; and as the text of S. Luke’s Gospel is perhaps exceptional in this respect (for the omissions in S. John’s Gospel are of a different kind), the solution will suggest itself, that the Evangelist himself may have issued two separate editions. This conjecture will be con- firmed by observing that in the second treatise of S. Luke similar traces of two editions are seen where the passages omitted in many texts, though not im- portant in themselves (4. g. xxviii. 16, 29), bear equal evidence of authenticity, and are entirely free from suspicion on the ground that they were inserted to serve any purpose devotional or doctrinal. On the other hand some passages, where the ex- ternal testimony is equivocal or adverse, are open to | suspicion, because the origin of or the motive for the insertions or alterations lies on the surface. Thus in S. Luke ii. 33 ‘His father’ is altered into ‘ Joseph,’ and ten verses later ‘Joseph and His mother’ is substituted for ‘His parents, evidently because the

FALSE READINGS. 33

transcriber was alarmed lest the doctrine of the Incarnation might be imperilled by such language— an alarm not entertained by the Evangelist himself, whose own narrative directly precluded any false inference, and who therefore could use the popular language without fear of misapprehension. And again the mention of ‘fasting’ in connexion with praying in not less than four passages (Matt. xvii. 21, Mark ix. 29, Acts x. 30, I Cor. vii. 5), in all of which it is rejected by one or more of the best editors, shows an ascetic bias; though indeed there is ample sanction elsewhere in the New Testament for the practice which it was thus sought to enforce more strongly. Again, allowance must be made for the influence of Uturgical usage in such passages as the doxology to the Lord’s prayer, Matt. vi. 13; and a similar explanation may be given of the insertion of the eunuch’s confession of faith pre- paratory to baptism, Acts viii. 37. And again, when a historical difficulty is avoided by a various reading, this should be taken into account, as in Mark i. 1, where indeed the substitution of ἐν τῷ "Hoaig τῷ προφήτῃ for the common reading ἐν τοῖς προφήταις would introduce a difficulty the same in kind but less in magnitude than already exists in the received text of Matt. xxvii.9. Or lastly, the desire to bring out the presence of a supernatural agency L. R. 3

34 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

may have had its influence in procuring the insertion of the words describing the descent of the angel in John v. 3, 4. On the other hand, in some cases these considerations of internal probability favour the exist- ing text, where external evidence taken alone might lead to a different result, as in 1 Cor. xv. 51, where the received reading πάντες ov κοιμηθησόμεθα, πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα, is so recommended against πάντες κοιμηθησόμεθα, ov πάντες δὲ ἀλλαγησόμεθα.

I believe that I have not only indicated (so far as my space allows) the really important classes of various readings, but given the most prominent illus- trations in each instance. The whole number of such readings indeed is small, and only a very few remain after the examples already brought forward. On the other hand, variations of a subordinate kind are more numerous. These occur more frequently in the Gospels than elsewhere, arising out of the attempt to supplement one Evangelical narrative by the insertion of a word or a clause fronr another, or to bring the one into literal conformity with the other by substitution or correction; but no considerations of moment are involved in the rectification of such passages. It is very rarely indeed that a various reading of this class rises to the interest of Matt. xix. 17 τί pe ἐρωτᾷς περὶ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ (compared with Mark x. 18, Luke xviii. 19); and for the most part

FALSE READINGS. | 35

they are wholly unimportant as regards any doctrinal or practical bearing.

The same motive which operates so Sowedully in the Gospels will also influence, though in a far less degree, the text of those Epistles which are closely allied to each other, as for instance the Romans and Galatians, or the Ephesians and Colos- sians, and will be felt moreover in isolated parallel passages elsewhere; but for the most part the cor- ruptions in the Epistles are due to the carelessness of scribes, or to their officiousness exercised on the grammar or the style. The restoration of the best supported reading is in almost every instance a gain, either as establishing a more satisfactory con- nexion of sentences, or as substituting a more forcible expression for a less forcible (¢.g. παραβολευσάμενος for παραβουλευσάμενος, Phil. ii. 30), or in other ways giving point to the expression and bringing out a better and clearer sense (¢,g. Rom. iv. 19 κατενόησεν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σῶμα...εἰς δὲ τὴν ἐπαγγελίαν τοῦ Θεοῦ ov διεκρίθη, for οὐ κατενόησεν x. τ. λ., where the point is that Abraham did fully recognise his own condition and xotwithstanding was not staggered; or 2 Cor. i. 20 ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ val, διὸ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ τὸ ἀμὴν κ. τ. X., where vai denotes the fulfilment of the promise on the part of God, and ἀμὴν the recognition and thanks- giving on the part of the Church, a distinction which

3—2

36 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

is obliterated by the received reading ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ val καὶ ἐν αὐτῷ τὸ ἀμήν; or 2 Cor. xii. I καυχᾶσθαι δεῖ, οὐ συμφέρον μέν, ἐλεύσομαι δὲ κ. τ. X., Where the com- mon text καυχᾶσθαι δὴ οὐ συμφέρει μοι, ἐλεύσομαι yap x. τ. Δ. is feeble in comparison). It is this very fact, that the reading of the older authorities almost always exhibits some improvement in the sense (even though the change may be unimportant in itself) which gives us the strongest assurance of their trust- worthiness as against the superior numbers of the more recent copies.

Altogether it may be safely affirmed that the permanent value of the new revision will depend in a great degree on the courage and fidelity with which it deals with questions of readings. If the signs of the times may be trusted, the course which is most truthful will also be most politic. To be con- servative, it will be necessary to be adequate: for no revision which fails to deal fairly with these textual problems, can be lasting. Here also the example of S. Jerome is full of encouragement.

§ 2.

From errors in the Greek text which our transla- tors used, we may pass on to faults of actual trans- lation. And here I will commence with one class

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 37

which is not unimportant in itself, and which claims to be considered first, because the translators have dwelt at some length on the matter and attempted to justify their mode of proceeding. I refer to the vari- ous renderings of the same word or words, by which artificial distinctions are introduced in the translation, which have no place in the original. This is perhaps the only point in which they proceed deliberately on a wrong principle. ‘We have not tied ourselves,’ they say in the preface. ‘to an uniformity of phrasing or to an identity of words.’ They plead that such a course would savour ‘more of curiosity than wis- dom,’ and they allege the quaint reason, that they might ‘be charged (by scoffers) with some unequal dealing towards a great number of English words, if they adopted one to the exclusion of another, as a rendering of the same Greek equivalent. Now, if they had restricted themselves within proper limits in the use of this liberty, no fault could have been found with this vindication. But, when the transla- tion of the same word is capriciously varied in the same paragraph, and even in the same verse, a false effect is inevitably produced, and the connexion will in some cases be severed, or the reader more or less seriously misled in other ways. To what extent they have thus attempted to improve upon the original by introducing variety, the following examples, though

38 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

they might be multiplied many times, will suffice to show.

Why, for instance, should we read in Matt. xviii. 33 ‘Shouldest not thou also have had compassion (ἐλεῆσαι) on thy fellow servant, even as I had pity (ἠλέησα) on thee?’; or in xx. 20 ‘Then came to him the mother of Zebedee’s children (υἱῶν) with her sons (vidv)’; or in xxv. 32 ‘He shall separate (ἀφοριεῖ) them one from another, as a shepherd divideth (ἀφορίζει) his sheep from the goats’? Why in S. John xvi. I, 4, 6, should ταῦτα λελάληκα ὑμῖν be rendered in three different ways in the same paragraph; ‘ These things have I spoken unto you,’ ‘These things have I told you, ‘I have said these things unto you’; or S. Thomas be made to say, ‘Put my finger,’ and ‘ Zirust my hand,’ in the same verse, though the same Greek word βάλω stands for both (xx. 25)? Why again in the Acts (xxvi. 24, 25) should Festus cry, ‘ Paul, thou art beside thyself’ | (μαίνῃ, lade), and S. Paul reply, ‘I am not mad, most noble Festus’ (οὐ μαίνομαι, κράτιστε Φῆστε)" Why in the Epistle to the Romans (x. 15) should οἱ πόδες τῶν εὐαγγελιζομένων εἰρήνην, τῶν εὐαγγελιξομένων τὰ ἀγαθά be translated ‘the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things’? Why in the same epistle (xv. 4, 5) should we read, ‘That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures (διὰ τῆς ὑπομονῆς καὶ τῆς παρακλήσεως

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 39

τῶν γραφῶν) might have hope, and in the next sen- tence, ‘Now the God of patience and consolation (6 Θεὸς τῆς ὑπομονῆς Kal τῆς παρακλήσεως) grant you to be likeminded,’ though the words are identical in the two clauses, and the repetition is obviously intended by S. Paul? And why again in the salutations at the end of this epistle, as also of others, should ἀσπά- σασθε be translated now ‘salute’ and now ‘greet, the two renderings being interchanged capriciously and without any law? Again in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, iii. 17, the same word φθείρειν is dif- ferently translated, ‘If any man defile (φθείρει) the temple of God, him shall God destroy (φθερεῖ), though the force of the passage depends on the identity of the sin and the punishment. And in a later passage (x. 16 sq.) κοινωνοὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίου is translated ‘par- takers of the altar,’ and two verses below κοινωνοὶ τῶν δαιμονίων ‘have fellowship with devils, while (to com- plete the confusion) in a preceding and a succeeding verse the rendering ‘be fartakers’ is assigned to peré- χεῖν, and in the same paragraph κοινωνία τοῦ αἵματος, τοῦ σώματος, is translated ‘ communion of the blood, of the body.’ The exigencies of the English might de- mand some slight variation of rendering here, but this utter confusion is certainly not required ; and yet this passage is only a sample of what occurs in number- less other places. Again in the same epistle (xii.

40 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

4 sq.) it is not easy to see why διαιρέσεις χαρισμάτων, διαιρέσεις διακονιῶν, διαιρέσεις ἐνεργημάτων, are trans- lated respectively ‘diversities of gifts, ‘differences of administration, ‘dzversities of operations, while in the same passage ἐνεργήματα is rendered first ‘opera- tions’ and then ‘working’ Each time I read the marvellous episode on charity in the xiiith chapter, I feel with increased force the inimitable delicacy and beauty and sublimity of the rendering, till I begin to doubt whether the English language is not a better vehicle than even the Greek for so lofty a theme; yet even here I find some blemishes of this kind. Thus in the 8th verse the same English word ‘ fail’ is given as a rendering for both ἐκπίπτειν and καταργεῖσθαι, while conversely the same Greek word καταργεῖσθαι is translated first by ‘faz?’ and then by ‘vanish away, and two verses afterwards, where it occurs again, by a third expression ‘be done away. This word xatapyeiv is translated with the same latitude later on also (xv. 24, 26), ‘When he shall have put down (καταργήσῃ) all rule and all authority and power,’ and immediately afterwards, ‘The last enemy that shall be destroyed (καταργεῖται) is death. Let me add another instance from this epistle, for it is perhaps the most character- istic of all. In xv. 27, 28 the word ὑποτάσσειν occurs six times in the same sense within two verses; in the first three places it is rendered ‘fut under} in

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 41

the fourth ‘de subdued, in the fifth ‘de subject, while in the last place the translators return again to their first rendering ‘put under’ Nay, even the simple word λογία when it occurs in successive verses (Xvi. I, 2) has a different rendering, first ‘collection’ and then ‘ gathering.

The Second Epistle to the Corinthians is espe- cially remarkable for the recurrence through whole sentences or paragraphs, of the same word or words, which thus strike the key-note to the passage. This fact is systematically disregarded by our translators who, impressed. with the desire of producing what they seem to have regarded as an agreeable variety, failed to see that in such cases monotony is force. Thus in the Ist chapter the words παρακαλεῖν, παρά- κλησις, and θλίβειν, θλίψις, occur again and again. In the rendering of the first our translators are divided between ‘comfort’ and ‘consolation, and of the second between ‘¢ribulation, ‘trouble, and ‘affliction, Again in the opening of the second chapter, where the tone is given to the paragraph by the frequent repetition of λύπη, λυπεῖν, we have three distinct renderings, ‘heaviness, ‘sorrow, ‘grief. Again in the third chapter several instances of this fault occur. In the first verse this passion for variety is curiously illustrated. They render συστατικῶν ἐπιστολῶν πρὸς ὑμᾶς 7 ἐξ ὑμῶν συστατικῶν by ‘ Epistles of commenda-

42 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

tion to you, or /etters of commendation from you,’ where even in supplying a word (which were better left out altogether) they make a change, though in the original the adjectives refer to the same substan- tive. In this same chapter again they hover between ‘sufficient’ and ‘able’ as a rendering of ἱκανός, ixavodr, ixavorns (vv. 5, 6), while later on they interchange ‘abolish’ and ‘done away’ for καταργεῖσθαι (vv. 7, 13, 14), and fail to preserve the connexion of avaxexaduppévo (ver. 18) with κάλυμμα (ver. 13 sq.) and ἀνακαλυπτό- μενον (ver. 14), and of κεκαλυμμένον (iv. 3) with all three. Again in the fifth chapter ἐνδημεῖν is ren- dered in the same context “20 be at home’ and ‘to be present’ (vv. 6, 8,9), where the former rendering more- over in ver. 6 obscures the direct opposition to ἐκδη- μεῖν, this last word being rendered throughout ‘zo de absent’; and a little later (ver. 10) τοὺς πάντας ἡμᾶς φανερωθῆναι x. τ. Δ. is translated ‘We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ,’ where, indepen- dently of the fatal objection that ‘appear’ gives a wrong sense (for the context lays stress on the manz- JSestation of men’s true characters at the great day), this rendering is still further faulty, as severing the connexion with what follows immediately (ver. 11), ‘We are made manifest (πεφανερώμεθα) unto God, and I trust also are made manifest (πεφανερῶσθαι) in your consciences.’ Again in vii. 7 ‘consolation’ and ‘comfort’

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 43

are once more interchanged for παρακαλεῖν, παράκλη- σις; in viii. 10, 11, 12, τὸ θέλειν is translated “20 be for- ward and ‘to will, and προθυμία ‘readiness’ and ‘a will- ing mind’ in successive verses ; in ix. 2, 3, 4, 5, ‘ready’ and ‘prepared’ are both employed in rendering παρ- εσκεύασται, παρεσκευασμένοι, ἀπαρασκευάστους, while conversely the single expression ‘de ready’ is made to represent both παρεσκεύασται and ἑτοίμην εἶναι; in X. 13, 15, 16, κανών, after being twice translated ‘ vale} is varied in the third passage by ‘/ize’; in xi. 16, 17, 18 the rendering of καυχᾶσθαι, καύχησις is di- versified by ‘doast’ and ‘glory’; and in xii. 2, 3 οὐκ οἶδα, 6 Θεὸς οἶδεν, is twice translated ‘I cannot tell, God knoweth,; while elsewhere in these same verses οἶδα is rendered ‘I £uew, and οὐκ οἶδα, ‘1 cannot tell’? This repugnance to repeating the same word for οἶδα has a parallel in John xvi. 30, where viv οἴδαμεν ὅτι οἶδας πάντα is given ‘Now are we sure that thou knowest all things.’ ,

Nor is there any improvement in the later books, as the following instances, taken almost at random from a very large number which might have been adduced, will show: Phil. ii. 13 ‘It is God which worketh (évep- γῶν) in you both to will and 20 do (évepyeiv)’; Phil. iii, 3 sq. ‘And have no confidence (ov πεποιθότες) in the flesh; Though I might also Lave confidence (ἔχων πεποίθησιν) in the flesh. If any other man thinketh that he hath

44 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

whereof he might trust (δοκεῖ πεποιθέναι) in the flesh, I more...as touching the law (κατὰ νόμον), a Pharisee ; concerning zeal (κατὰ ζῆλος), persecuting the Church ; touching the righteousness (κατὰ δικαιοσύνην) which is in the law, blameless’: 1 Thess. ii. 4 ‘As we were δὲ lowed (δεδοκιμάσμεθα) of God...not as pleasing men, but God, which ¢rzeth (δοκιμάξοντι) our hearts’: 2 Thess. i. 6 “Το recompense ¢ribulation to them that trouble you’ (ἀνταποδοῦναι τοῖς θλίβουσιν ὑμᾶς θλίψιν) : Heb. viii. 13 ‘He hath made the first old (πεπαλαίωκεν τὴν πρώτην) ; now that which decayeth (παλαιούμενον) and waxeth old (ynpackov) is ready to vanish away’: James ii, 2, 3 ‘If there come (εἰσέλθη) unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, zz goodly apparel (ἐν ἐσθῆτι λαμπρᾷ), and there come 77: (εἰσέλθῃ) also a poor man in vile raiment (ἐσθῆτι); and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing (τὴν ἐσθῆτα τὴν λαμ- mpav) etc.: 2 Pet. ii. 1, 3 ‘Who privily shall bring in damnable heresies (αἱρέσεις am@delas)...and bring upon themselves swift destruction (ἀπώλειαν)... απ their damnation (ἀπώλεια) slumbereth not’: 1 John v. 9, 10 ‘This is the wztness (μαρτυρία) of God which he hath testified (μεμαρτύρηκεν) of his Son...He believeth not the record (μαρτυρίαν) that God gave (μεμαρτύρηκεν) of his Son’: Rev. i. 15 ‘ His voice (φωνή) as the sound (φωνή) of many waters’: iii. 17 ‘I am rich (πλούσιος) and increased with goods (πεπλούτηκα)᾽ : xvii. 6, 7

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 45

‘And when I saw her, I wondered (ἐθαύμασα) with great admiration (θαῦμα); and the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? (€@avpacas)’: xviii. 2 ‘And 216 hold (φυλακή) of every foul spirit, and ὦ cage (φυλακή) of every. unclean and hateful bird.’

In the instances hitherto given the variation of rendering is comparatively unimportant, but for this very reason they serve well to illustrate the wrong principle on which our translators proceeded. In such cases no more serious consequences may result than a loss of point and force. But elsewhere the injury done to the understanding of the passage is graver. Thus when the English reader finds in S. Matthew xxv. 46 ‘These shall go away into ever- lasting (αἰώνιον) punishment, but the righteous into life eternal (αἰώνιον), he is led to speculate on the difference of meaning between ‘everlasting’ and ‘eternal,’ if he happens to have any slight acquaint- ance with modern controversy, and he will most probably be led to a wrong conclusion by observing different epithets used, more especially as the anti- thesis of the clauses helps to emphasize the difference. Or take instances where the result will not be mis- understanding, but non-understanding. Thus in the apocalyptic passage 2 Thess. 11. 6, 7, ‘And now ye know what withholdeth (τὸ Kxatéxov)...only he who now “etieth (6 κατέχων ἄρτι) will let,’ the same word

46 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

should certainly have been repeated, that the identity of the thing signified might be clear; and in the doctrinal statement, Col. ii. 9, 10, ‘In him dwelleth all the fulness (τὸ πλήρωμα) of the Godhead bodily, and ye are complete (πεπληρωμένοι) in him, it was still more necessary to preserve the connexion by a similar rendering, for the main idea of the second clause is the communication of the πλήρωμα which resides in Christ to the believers (comp. Ephes. i. 23). Again, the word θρόνος in the Revelation is trans- lated ‘throne, when it refers to our Lord, but ‘seaz? when it refers to the faithful (iv. 4, xi. 16"), or when it refers to Satan (ii. 13, xvi. 10). Now by this varia- tion, as Archbishop Trench has pointed out*, two great ideas which run through this Book, and indeed we may say through the whole of the New Testa- ment, are obliterated ; the one that the true servants of Christ are crowned with Him and share His sove- reignty ; the other, that the antagonism of the Prince of Darkness to the Prince of Light develops itself in ‘the hellish parody of the heavenly kingdom.’ And in other passages again the connexion between dif- ferent parts of the same discourse or the same nar- rative ig severed. Thus in 5. Luke xix. 13, 15, the

1 Rev. iv. 4 ‘And round about the throne (θρόνου) were four and twenty seats (Apdvor).’ * On the Authorized Version, p. §3 sq.

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 47

nobleman going into a far country gives charge to his servants πραγματεύσασθε ἐν ᾧ ἔρχομαι, and when he returns, he summons them ἵνα γνῷ [or γνοῖ] tis τι διεπραγματεύσαντο. If the former had been translated ‘ Zrade ye till I come,’ it would then have corresponded to the nobleman’s subsequent demand of them to ‘know how much every man had gained by ¢vading? But the rendering of our translators, ‘Occupy till I come,’ besides involving a somewhat unintelligible archaism, disconnects the two, and the first indication which the English reader gets that the servants were expected to employ the money in trade is when the master at length comes to reckon with them. Another instance, where the con- nexion is not indeed wholly broken (for the context will not suffer this) but greatly impaired, is Matt. v. 15, 16 λάμπει πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐν TH οἰκίᾳ" οὕτως λαμψάτω τὸ φῶς ὑμῶν ἔμπροσθεν τῶν ἀνθρώπων, which should run ‘It shzweth upon all that are in the house: Even so let your light sizwe before men, etc.’ But in our trans- lation, ‘It gzveth light unto all that are in the house: Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, etc., the two sentences are detached from each other by the double error, of rendering λάμπει, λαμψάτω, by different words, and of misun- derstanding οὕτως. I say ‘misunderstanding,’ because the alternative that ‘so’ is a mere ambiguity of

48 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

expression seems to be precluded by the fact that in our Communion Service the words ‘ Let your light so shine before men, etc.,’ detached from their con- text, are chosen as the zzztzal sentence at the Offer- tory, where the correct meaning, ‘in like manner,’ — could not stand. τς

This love of variety might be still further illus- trated by their treatment of the component parts of words. Thus there is no reason why πολυμέρως καὶ πολυτρόπως in Heb. i. 1 should be translated ‘At sundry times and in divers manners,’ even though for want of a better word we should allow the very in- adequate rendering ‘times’ to pass muster, where the original points to the divers farts of one great com- prehensive scheme. And again in Mark xii. 39 (comp. Matt. xxiii. 6) it is equally difficult to see why πρω- τοκαθεδρίας ἐν ταῖς συναγωγαῖς Kal πρωτοκλισίας ἐν τοῖς δείπνοις should be rendered ‘the chief seats in the synagogues, and the uppermost rooms at feasts.” On the archaic rendering ‘room’ for the second element in πρωτοκλισία, I shall have something to say hereafter.

These instances which have been given will suf- fice. But in fact examples, illustrating this miscon- ception of a translator’s duty, are sown broadcast over our New Testament, so that there is scarcely a page without one or more. It is due to our translators

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 49

however to say, that in many cases, which I have examined, they only perpetuated and did not intro- duce the error, which may often be traced to Tyndale himself, from whom our Version is ultimately derived: and in some instances his variations are even greater than theirs. Thus in a passage already quoted, 1 Cor. xii. 4 sq., he has three different renderings of διαιρέσεις in the three successive clauses, where they have only two; ‘ Ther are adzverszties of gyftes verely, yet but one sprete, and ther are differences of admini- stration and yet but one lorde, and ther are divers maners of operacions and yet but one God’; and in Rom. xvi. his interchanges of ‘salute’ and ‘greet’ are still more frequent than theirs. Of all the English Versions the Rhemish alone has paid attention to this point, and so far compares advantageously with the rest, to which in most other respects it is con- fessedly inferior. And I suppose that the words of our translators’ preface, in which they attempt to jus- tify their course, must refer indirectly to this Roman Catholic Version, more especially as I find that its Latinisms are censured in the same paragraph. If so, it is to be regretted that prejudice should have blinded them to a consideration of some importance.

But not only is it necessary to preserve the same word in the same context and in the same book; equal care should be taken to secure uniformity,

L. R. 4

50 ; ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

where it occurs in the same connexion in different passages and different books. Thus, where quota- tions are given once or more from the Old Testament in the New, the rendering should exhibit (as far as possible) the exact coincidence with or divergence from the original and one another in the language. Again, when the same discourses or the same inci- dents are recorded by different Evangelists, it is especially important to reproduce the features of the original, neither obliterating nor creating differences. Again, in parallel passages in allied epistles, as for instance those of S. Paul to the Romans and Gala- tians, or to the Colossians and Ephesians, or the Epi- stle of S. Jude and the Second Epistle of S. Peter, the exact amount of resemblance should be repro- duced, because questions of date and authenticity are affected thereby. Again, in the writings which claim the same authorship, as for instance the Gospel and Epistles and the Apocalypse of S. John, the simi- larity of diction should be preserved. Though this will be a somewhat laborious task, let us hope that our new revisers will exercise constant vigilance in this matter. As the authors of our Received Version allowed themselves so much licence in the same context, it is no surprise that they did not pay any attention to these coincidences of language which occur in separate parts of the New Testament, and

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. ΜῈ

which did not therefore force themselves on their notice.

Of their mode of dealing with quotations from the Old Testament, one or two instances will suffice by way of illustration.

Deut. xxxii. 35 is twice quoted in exactly the same words. In our English Version it appears in these two forms.

Rom. xii. 10. Heb. x. 30. Vengeance is mine; I will Vengeance belongeth un- repay, saith the Lord. to me, I will recompense,

saith the Lord.

Again, the same words Gen. xv. 6(LXX) ἐλογίσθη αὐτῷ eis δικαιοσύνην are given with these variations: Rom. iv. 3 ‘It was counted unto him for righteous- ness’; Rom. iv. 22 ‘It was zmputed to, him for right- eousness’; Gal. iii. 6 ‘It was accounted to him for righteousness’ (with a marginal note ‘or zmputed’); James ii. 23 ‘It was zmputed unto him for righteous- ness’; while in an indirect reference to it, Rom. iv. 9 (in the immediate context of two of these divergent renderings), a still further variation is introduced, ‘We say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteous- ness,’

Again, καλύψει πλῆθος ἁμαρτιῶν (from Prov. x. 12) is translated in James v. 20 ‘shall Azde a multi-

4—2

52 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

tude of sins,’ and in 1 Pet. iv. 8 ‘shall cover the mul- titude of sins’ (with a marginal reading ‘will’ for ‘shall’),

The variation in the last instance which I shall give is still more astonishing, because the two quo- tations of the same passage (Ps. xcv. 11) occur in the same context.

Heb. iii. 11. : Heb. iv. 3. So I sware in my wrath, As I have sworn in my They shall not enter into wrath, If they shall enter

my rest. into my rest.

Here there is absolutely no difference in the Greek of the two passages; and, as the argument is conti- nuous, no justification of the various renderings can be imagined.

On the parallel narratives of the different Evange- lists it will not be necessary to dwell, because this part of the subject has been discussed at some length elsewhere’. I will content myself with three exam- ples. The first, which affects only the diction, is a fair sample of the defects of our’ Version in this respect, because it is in no way striking or exceptional.

* See for instance Dean Alford’s Byways of New Testament Criticism, Contemporary Review, July 1868.

΄

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 53

Matt. xvi. 26.

Ti γὰρ ὠφε- "λεῖται ἄνθρωπος, ἐὰν τὸν κόσμον ὅλον κερδήσῃ, τὴν δὲ ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ ζημιωθῇ;

‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ??

Mark viii. 36.

Τί γὰρ ὠφε- λήσει ἄνθρωπον, ἐὰν κερδήσῃ τὸν κόσμον ὅλον, καὶ ζημιωθῇ τὴν ψυ- χὴν αὐτοῦ;

‘Forwhat shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ?’

Luke ix. 25.

Ti yap ὠφε- λεῖται ἄνθρωπος, κερδήσας τὸν κόσ- μον ὅλον, ἑαυτὸν δὲ ἀπολέσας ἢ ζημιωθείς ;

‘For what is a man _ advan- taged, if he gain the whole world, and lose him- self, or be cast away?’

Here the coincidences and divergences of the first

two Evangelists are fairly preserved ; but the relations of the third to either are wholly confused or obli-

terated.

My second example shall be of a different kind ; where the variation introduced affects not the ex-

pression only, but the actual interpretation. In the explanation of the parable of the sower

in 5. Mark iv. 16 οἱ ἐπὶ τὰ πετρώδη σπειρόμενοι is properly translated ‘they which ave sown on stony ground, and the corresponding expressions are treat- ed similarly; but in 5. Matthew xiii. 20 ὁ ἐπὶ τὰ πετρώδη σπαρείς becomes, ‘He that received the seed

54 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

into stony places, where (besides minor variations) the person is substituted for the seed, and the corre- sponding expressions throughout the parable are manipulated similarly in defiance of grammar. This rendering is unhappy on many accounts. Besides © making the Evangelists say different things, it has the still further disadvantage, that it destroys one main idea in the parable, the zdentification (for the purposes of the parable) of the seed when sown with the person himself, so that the life and growth and decay of the one are coincident with the life and growth and decay of the other. The form of ex- pression in 5. Luke (viii. 14 τὸ δὲ eis τὰς ἀκάνθας πεσὸν οὗτοι εἰσὶν οἱ ἀκούσαντες) brings out this iden- tity more prominently; but it is expressed not obscurely in the other Evangelists, and should not have been obliterated by our translators in one of them through an ungrammatical paraphrase.

My third example concerns the treatment of a single word. In the account of the scenes preceding the Crucifixion, mention is made of a certain building which by three of the Evangelists is called πραιτώ- ptov. In 5. Matthew (xxvii. 27) it is translated ‘com- mon-hall,’ with a marginal alternative ‘governor's house’; in S. John (xviii. 28, 33, xix. 9) ‘hall of judg- ment’ and ‘judgment-hall, with a marginal alterna- tive ‘Pilate’s house’ in the first passage; while in

DISTINCTIONS CREATED, 55

S. Mark (xv. 16) it is reproduced in the English as ‘pretorium.’ It should be added that this same word when it occurs in the same sense, though referring to a different locality, in Acts xxiii. 35 is rendered ‘judg- ment-hall,’ though a ‘judgment-hall’ would obviously be an unfit place to keep a prisoner in ward; and again in Phil. i. 13 ἐν ὅλῳ τῷ πραιτωρίῳ (where pro- bably it signifies the ‘ preetorian army,’ but where our English translators have taken it to mean another such building) it appears as ‘palace.’ This last ren- dering might very properly have been adopted in all the passages in the Gospels and Acts, as adequately expressing the meaning.

So also in those Epistles which are allied to each other’, the treatment of identical words and expres- sions is neither more nor less unsatisfactory than in the Gospels. :

In the instances already given, though there may be differences of opinion as to the importance of the subject, all probably will agree on the main point that it is advisable to preserve uniformity of render- ing. The illustration which I shall next select is more open to criticism ;.and, as Archbishop Trench and Dean Alford and the Five Clergymen all take a

1 See Blunt’s Duties of the Parish Friest, p. 71, Ellicott’s Rev. sion of the English New Testament, p. 118.

56 ᾿ς ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

different view from my own’, I can hardly hope that my argument will carry general conviction. Yet the case seems to be strong. I refer to the translation of παράκλητος in the Gospel and in the First Epistle of S. John. In the former it is consistently trans- lated ‘Comforter’ (xiv. 16, 26, xv. 26, xvi. 7), while in the one passage where it occurs in the latter (ii. 1) the rendering ‘ Advocate’ is adopted. Is there suffi- cient reason for this difference? No one probably would wish to alter the word ‘ Advocate’ in the Epistle, for the expressions in the context, ‘with the Father, ‘Jesus Christ the righteous (δίκαιον), ‘a pro- pitiation for our sins,’ fix the sense, so that the pas- sage presents a sufficiently close parallel with the common forensic language of S. Paul (eg. Rom. iii. 24—26). But why should the same word be rendered ‘Comforter’ in the Gospel? Now I think it may fairly be maintained γε, that the word παράκλητος in itself means ‘Advocate’ and cannot mean ‘Com- forter’; and secondly, that the former rendering is more appropriate to the context in all the passages in which it occurs.

1 To the same effect also writes Archdeacon Hare, Mission of the Comforter, Note J, p. 523, ‘At present so many sacred associations have connected themselves for generation after generation with the name of the Comforter, that it would seem something like an act of sacrilege

to change it.’ Yet he agrees substantially with the view of the meaning which I have maintained in the text.

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 57

On the first point—the meaning of the word— usage appears to be decisive. It commonly signifies ‘one who is summoned to the side of another (παρα- καλεῖται to aid him ina court of justice, and more particularly ‘an advocate’ or ‘a pleader,’ being ap- plied especially to the ‘counsel for the defence"’; nor, so far as I am aware, does it ever bear any other sense, except perhaps in some later ecclesiastical writers whose language has been influenced by a false inter- pretation of these passages in S. John. In other words παράκλητος is passive, not active; one who παρακαλεῖται, not one who παρακαλεῖ; one who ‘is summoned to plead a cause,’ not one who ‘exhorts or encourages or comforts.’ Nor indeed, if we com- pare the simple word κλητός and the other compounds ἀνάκλητος, EYKANTOS, EXKANTOS, ἐπίκλητος, σύγκλητος etc., or if we observe the general rule affecting adjec- tives similarly formed from transitive verbs, does it seem easy to assign an active sense to παράκλητος. Yet it can hardly be doubted that the rendering ‘Com- forter’ was reached by attributing this active force to παράκλητος, and that therefore it arises out of an error; for the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is again

1 See Hermann, Griech. Antig. Ul. § 142, p. 320. The origin of this sense is illustrated by such passages as Aéschines ¢. Clestph. § 200, καὶ τί det σε Δημοσθένην παρακαλεῖν; ὅταν δ᾽ ὑπερπηδήσας τὴν δικαίαν ἀπολογίαν παρακαλῇς κακοῦργον ἄνθρωπον καὶ τεχνίτην λόγων, κλέπτεις τὴν ἀκρόασιν κιτ.λ.

58 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

and again explained by the Fathers as one who παρακαλεῖ", encourages or comforts men; and the fact that even Greek writers are found to explain the word thus is the only substantial argument (so far as I know) which has been brought against the view here maintained. It is urged indeed that the word ‘Comforter, being derived from the Latin ‘confortator, ‘strengthener,’ and therefore implying something more than ‘comfort’ in the restricted sense of ‘consolation, adequately represents the ' function of the παράκλητος who thus strengthens the cause and confirms the courage of the accused at the bar of justice. But the history of the interpreta- tion, as already given, shows that this rendering’ was not reached in the way assumed, but was based on a

1 So Origen de Princ. ii. 7 (I. p. 93), ἃ passage which unfortunately is extant only in the Latin, but in which (if correctly represented) Origen takes παράκλητος both in the Gospel and in the Epistle in an active sense, explaining it however cozsolator in the Gospel and defprecator in the Epistle. See also Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. xvi. 20 (p. 255), παράκλητος δὲ καλεῖται διὰ τὸ παρακαλεῖν καὶ παραμυθεῖσθαι καὶ συναντι- λαμβάνεσθαι τῆς ἀσθενείας ἡμῶν. And many of the Greek Fathers explain it similarly. The fact to be observed is, that even in the Epistle, where it manifestly has the sense ‘ Advocate,’ they equally derive it from παρακαλεῖν and not παρακαλεῖσθαι, thus giving it an active force; whereas the passage quoted in the last note shows that the meaning ‘ Advocate’ is not to be derived in this way. The Latin Fathers generally follow the old Latin ‘ Advocatus’; but Hilary, though most frequently giving ‘ Advocatus,’ yet once at least renders it ‘ Conso- lator’ (i2 Psalm. CXXV, 1. p. 461).

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 59

grammatical error; and therefore this account can only be accepted as an apology after the fact and not as an explanation of the fact. Moreover it is not fair translating to substitute a subordinate and accidental conception for the leading sense of a word. And lastly, whatever may be the derivation of ‘Com- forter, the word does not now suggest this idca to the English reader.

But secondly, if ‘Advocate’ is the only sense which παράκλητος can properly bear, it is also (as I cannot but think) the sense which the context sug- gests, wherever the word is used in the Gospel. In other words, the idea of pleading, arguing, convincing, instructing, convicting, is prominent in every instance’ Thus in xiv. 16 sq. the Paraclete is described as the ‘Spirit of truth’ whose reasonings fall dead on the ear of the world, and are vocal only to the faithful (ὃ 6 κόσμος ov δύναται λαβεῖν... ὑμεῖς γινώσκετε αὐτό). In xiv. 26 again the function of the Paraclete is described in similar language, ‘He shall ¢each you all things and remind you of all things” In xv. 26 He is once more designated the ‘ Spirit of truth, and here the office assigned to Him is to dear witness of

1 In xiv. 18 the English Version, ‘I will not leave you com/fortless,’ lends a fictitious aid to the sense ‘ Comforter,’ to which the original οὐκ ἀφήσω ὑμᾶς ὀρφανοὺς gives no encouragement, The margin however offers the alternative ‘ orphans’ for ὀρφανούς.

6ο ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

Christ. And lastly in xvi. 7 sq. the idea of the pleader appears still more definitely in the context, for it is there declared that ‘He shall convince’ or ‘convict (ἐλέγξει) the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.” And generally it may be said that the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is represented in these passages as the Advocate, the Counsel, who sug- gests true reasonings to our minds and true courses of action for our lives, who convicts our adversary — the World of wrong and pleads our cause before God our Father. In short the conception (though some- what more comprehensive) is substantially the same as in 3. Paul’s language when describing the function of the Holy Ghost ;. ‘ The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are children of God,’ ‘The Spirit helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which can- not be uttered (Rom. viii. 16, 26).’

Thus, whether we regard the origin of the word, or whether we consider the requirements of the con- text’, it would seem that ‘Comforter’ should give

1 In a case like this we should naturally expect tradition to aid in determining the correct sense, and for this purpose should apply to the earliest Versions as giving it in its best authenticated form ; but in the instance before us they do not render as much assistance as usual. (1) The Old Zatim seems certainly to have had Advocatus originally in all the four passages of the Gospel, as also in the passage of the

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 61

way to ‘Advocate, as the interpretation of παράκλητος. The word ‘Comforter’ does indeed express a true Ὁ office of the Holy Spirit, as our most heartfelt expe- riences will tell us. Nor has the rendering, though inadequate, been without its use in fixing this fact in our minds; but the function of the Paraclete, as our Advocate, is even more important, because wider and deeper than this. Nor will the idea of the ‘Com- forter’ be lost to us by the change, for the English

Te Deum will still remain to recal this office of the

Epistle. It is true that in the existing texts Paracletus (or Paraclitus) occurs in one or more of the passages, and in some MSS in the others : but the earliest quotations from Tertullian onwards must be considered decisive on this point. So far therefore tradition favours the sense which I am maintaining. Jerome retained the Greek word ‘ Paracletus’ in the Gospel, but gave ‘ Advocatus’ in the Epistle. It would appear however that ‘Paracletus’ had already displaced ‘Advocatus’ in some passages in the Gospel in one or more of the many texts of the Old Latin which were current in the fourth century. (2) In the Syriac Versions the Greek word is retained. This is the case with the Cure tonian in John xiv. 16 (the only passage preserved in this Version), and with the Peshito throughout in both the Gospel and the Epistle. (3) In the Zgyftian Versions also‘this is generally the case. In the Memphitic παράκλητος appears in all the passages. In the Thebaic the rendering is different in the Gospels and in the Epistle. In the Epistle it is given, ‘One that prayeth (entreateth) for (over) us’; but in the Gospel (at least in xiv. 16, xv. 26) the Greek word is retained. These parts of the Gospel in the Thebaic Version are not published, so far as I am aware; but I am enabled to state these facts from some manuscript additions made by Dr Tattam in my copy of Woide which was formerly in his possession.

62 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

Paraclete to our remembrance; while the: restora- tion of the correct rendering in the passages of S. John’s Gospel will be in itself an unmixed gain. Moreover (and this is no unimportant fact) the lan- guage of the Gospel will thus be linked in the English Version, as it is in the original, with the lan- guage of the Epistle. In this there will be a twofold advantage. We shall see fresh forcé in the words thus rendered, ‘He will give you another Advocate, when we remember that our Lord is styled by S. John our ‘Advocate’: the Advocacy of Christ illustrating and being illustrated by the Advocacy of the Spirit. At the same time we shall bring out another of the many coincidences, tending to establish an identity of authorship in the Gospel and Epistle, and thus to make valid for the former all the evi- dences external and internal which may be adduced to prove the genuineness of the latter.

This connexion between the Gospel and the Epistle leads me to another illustration, which links the Gospel with the Apocalypse. The idea that the Shechinah, the σκηνή, the glory which betokened the Divine Presence in the Holy of Holies, and which was wanting to the second temple, would be restored once more in Messiah’s days, was a cherished hope of the Jewish doctors during and after the Apostolic ages. In the Apocalypse S. John more than once avails himself

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 63

of imagery derived from this expectation. Thus vii. 15 ‘He that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among ~ them (σκηνώσει ἐπ᾽ αὐτούς)"; xiii. 6 ‘He opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme His name and His ¢abernacle (σκηνήν), and them that dwell (τοὺς σκηνοῦντας) in heaven’; xxi. 3 ‘Behold, the tadber- nacle (σκηνή) of God'is with men, and He will diwell with them (σκηνώσει wer αὐτῶν). Here it is much to be regretted that the necessities of the English lan- guage required our translators to render the substan- tive σκηνὴ by one word and the verb σκηνοῦν by another. In the first passage ‘the significance is entirely lost by translating σκηνώσει ‘shall dwell’ combined with the erroneous rendering of ἐπί: and no English reader would suspect the reference to the glory, the Shechinah, hovering over the mercy-seat*. But our regret is increased when we turn to the Gospel: for there also the same image reappears in the Greek, but is obliterated by the English render- ing; ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt (ἐσκήνοω- σεν) among us, and we beheld His glory’ The two writings, which attribute the name of the Word of God to the Incarnate Son, are the same also which

1 In 2 Cor. xii. 9 a ἐπισκηνώσῃ ἐπ᾽ ἐμὲ ἡ Stvams τοῦ Χριστοῦ, translated ‘that the power of Christ may rest ufon me,’ there seems to be a similar reference to the symbol of the Divine Presence in the Holy of Holies. ;

64 ERRORS AND DEFECTS,

especially connect Messiah’s Advent with the restitu- tion of the Shechinah, the light or glory which is the visible token of God’s presence among men. In this ~ instance the usage of the English language may have deterred our translators. Still they would have earned our gratitude, if following the precedent of the Latin ‘¢abernaculavit they had anticipated later scholars and introduced the verb ‘to tabernacle’ into the English language; or failing this, if by some slight periphrasis they had endeavoured to preserve the unity of idea.

In other cases where artificial distinctions are in- troduced, our translators must be held blameless, for the exigences of the English language left them no choice. Thus in John iii. 8 τὸ πνεῦμα (the wind) ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ (bloweth)...... οὕτως ἐστὶν πᾶς 6 γε- γεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ Πνεύματος (the Spirit), we must patiently acquiesce in the different renderings, though the comparison between the material and immaterial πνεῦμα is impaired thereby; just as in a later passage (xx. 22 ἐνεφύσησεν καὶ λέγει αὐτοῖς, Λάβετε Πνεῦμα “Arytov) the symbolical act of breathing on the disciples loses much of its force to an English reader. Again, it might be necessary to vary the renderings of ψυχή between ‘soul’ and ‘life’; and of σώζειν between ‘to save’ and ‘to make whole.’ But in case of the former word such variations as we find for instance in Matt.

DISTINCTIONS CREATED. 65

Xvi. 25, 26, and the parallel passages, descrve to be reconsidered ; and in their treatment of the latter, as Dean Alford has shown’, our translators have diver- sified the rendering capriciously.

And the same excuse also holds good with an- other class of words; where a pavonomasia occurs in the original, but where it is impossible in English at once to preserve the similarity of sound and to give the sense adequately. In Phil. iii. 2, 3 indeed our translators, following some of the earlier versions, have endeavoured to reproduce the paronomasia, ‘Beware of the concision (κατατομήὴν), for we are the circumcision (περιτομή)᾽; but the result is not encou- raging, for it may be questioned whether ‘concision’ conveys any idea to the English reader. Again the attempt is made in Rom. xii. 3 μὴ ὑπερφρονεῖν παρ᾽ ὃ δεῖ φρονεῖν, ἀλλὰ φρονεῖν εἰς TO σωφρονεῖν, but with no great success, for in the rendering ‘not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly,’ the force of the original is evaporated. On the other hand the rendering of 1 Cor. vii. 31 οἱ χρώμενοι τῷ κόσμῳ τούτῳ [{. τὸν κόσμον] ὡς μὴ κατα- χρώμενοι, ‘they that wse this world, as not abusing it, is adequate. In other passages such as Acts viii. 30 γινώσκεις ἃ ἀναγινώσκεις ‘understandest thou what thou readest ῥ᾽, 2 Cor. iii. 2 γινωσκομένη καὶ ἀναγινω-

1 Contemporary Review, July 1868, p. 323. L, R. 5

66 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

σκομένη ‘known and read,’ 2 Cor. i. 13 ἃ ἀναγινώσκετε ἢ καὶ ἐπιγινώσκετε ‘what ye read or acknowledge, 2 Cor. X. 12 οὐ τολμῶμεν ἐγκρῖναι ἢ συγκρῖναι ἑαυτούς ‘we dare not make ourselves of the number, or compare ourselves, it would be impossible to reproduce the effect of the original. But in other cases such as. I Cor. xii. 2 ὡς ἂν ἤγεσθε, ἀπαγόμενοι ‘carried away as ye were led,’ 2 Cor. iv. 8 ἀπορούμενοι ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐξαπο- ρούμενοι ‘we are perplexed, but not in despair, or 2 Cor. vi. 10 ὡς μηδὲν ἔχοντες καὶ πάντα κατέχοντες ‘as having nothing, and yet possessing all things,’ the rendering might be improved. Nor is there any reason why the play on ἐργαζομένους, περιεργαζομένους, in 2 Thess. iii. 11 should not be preserved by ‘ busi- ness, ‘busy-bodies’; or why in Ephes. v. 15 μὴ ὡς ἄσοφοι ἀλλ᾽ ὡς σοφοὶ should not be rendered ‘not as unwise but as wise. In this latter passage the word ἄσοφος, which occurs nowhere else in the New Tes- tament, has been purposely preferred to the usual μωρός. Yet our translators have rendered ἄσοφοι ‘fools’ here, and rescrved ‘unwise’ for ἄφρονες two verses below, where it is not wanted.

§ 3: From the creation of artificial distinctions in our English Version by different renderings of the same

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 67

word we pass naturally to the opposite fault, the ob- literation of real distinctions by the same rendering of different words. The former error is easily cor- rected for the most part; the latter not always so. For the synonyms of one language frequently cannot be reproduced in another without a harsh expression or a cumbersome paraphrase. Thus οἶδα, γινώσκω, ἔγνωκα, ἐπίσταμαι, have different shades of meaning in Greek, but the obvious equivalent for each in English is ‘I know. Still some effort should. be ‘made (though success is not always possible) to dis- criminate between them, where they occur in the same context, and where therefore their position throws a special emphasis on the distinction. Thus in Acts xix. 15 we should not acquiesce in ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know,’ as a rendering of τὸν ‘Incodv γινώσκω καὶ τὸν Παῦλον ἐπίσταμαι, though all the preceding translations unite with our Authorised Version in obliterating the difference. The sig- nificant distinction which is made in the original between the kind of recognition in the case of the Divine agent and of the human instrument may easily be preserved by rendering, ‘Jesus 1 acknow- ledge and Paul I kuow. Again in such passages as 2 Cor. v. 16 ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν οὐδένα οἴδαμεν κατὰ σάρκα, εἰ καὶ ἐγνώκαμεν κατὰ σάρκα Χριστόν, ἀλλὰ νῦν οὐκέτι γινώσκομεν (and this is a type of a large class of 5-2

68 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

passages, where oiéa and γινώσκω occur together) some improvement should be attempted; nor in the instance given could there be any difficulty in varying the rendering, though elsewhere the task might not prove so easy.

From these allied words I pass on to the distinc- tion between γινώσκειν and ἐπιγινώσκειν, which is both clearer and more easily dealt with. Those who have paid any attention to the language of S. Paul will recognise the force of the substantive éiyvwots as denoting the advanced or perfect knowledge which is the ideal state of the true Christian, and will remem- ber that it appears only in his later epistles (from the Romans onwards), where the more contemplative -aspects of the Gospel are brought into view and its comprehensive and eternal relations more fully set forth. But the power of the preposition appears in the verb, no less than in the substantive; and indeed its significance is occasionally forced upon our notice, where the simple and the compound verb appear in the same context. Thus in I Cor. xiii, 12 ἄρτι γινώσκω ἐκ μέρους, τότε δὲ ἐπιγνώσομαι καθὼς καὶ ἐπεγνώσθην, the partial knowledge (γινώσκειν ἐκ μέρους, comp. ver. 9) is contrasted with the fui know- ledge (ἐπιγινώσκειν) which shall be attained hereafter, though our translators have rendered both words by ‘know.’ Yet strangely enough, where the special

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 69

force of the compound was less obvious, it has not escaped them; for in 2 Cor. vi. 9 ὡς ἀγνοούμενοι καὶ ἐπιγινωσκόμενοι is translated ‘as unknown, and yet well known.

In this particular—the observance of the distinc- tion between a simple word and its derivatives compounded with prepositions—our English Version - is especially faulty. The verb κρίνειν and its com- pounds will supply a good illustration. S. Paul especially delights to accumulate these ; and thus by harping upon words (if I may use the expression) to emphasize great spiritual truths or important personal experiences. Thus he puts together συγκρίνειν, ἀνακρίνειν, 1 Cor. li. 13—I5; κρίνειν, avaxpiver, I Cor. iv. 3, 4; éyxpivew, συγκρίνειν, 2 Cor. x. 12; κρίνειν, διακρίνειν, τ Cor. vi. I—6; κρίνειν, διακρίνειν, κατακρίνειν, Rom. xiv. 22, 23; 1 Cor. xi. 29, 31, 32; κρίνειν, κατακρίνειν, Rom. ii. 1. Now it seems impos- sible in most cases, without a sacrifice of English which no one would be prepared to make, to reproduce the similarity of sound or the identity of root; but the distinction of sense should always be preserved. How this is neglected in our Version, and what confusion. ensues from the neglect, the following instances will show. In 1 Cor. iv. 3, 4, 5, ἐμοὶ δὲ εἰς ἐλάχιστόν ἐστιν ἵνα ὑφ᾽ ὑμῶν ἀνακριθῶ... ἀλλ᾽ οὐδὲ

᾽ \ 3 / e \ 9 / , , ᾿ ἐμαυτὸν ἀνακρίνω...ὁ δὲ ἀνακρίνων με, Κύριός ἐστιν.

7O ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

ὥστε μὴ πρὸ καιροῦ τι κρίνετε, ἕως ἂν ἔλθῃ ὁ Kuptos, ὃς καὶ φωτίσει τὰ κρυπτὰ τοῦ σκότους, the word ἀνακρίνειν is translated throughout ‘judge’; while in a previous passage, I Cor. ii. 14, 15, it is rendered indifferently ‘to discern’ and ‘to judge.’ Dut ava- κρίνειν is neither ‘to judge,’ which is κρίνειν, nor ‘to discern, which is διακρίνειν, but ‘to examine, investi- gate, enquire into, question, as it is rightly translated elsewhere, e.g. I Cor. ix. 3, x. 25, 27; and the correct understanding of the passage before us depends on our retaining this sense. The ἀνάκρισις, it will be remembered, was an Athenian law term for a pre- liminary investigation (distinct from the actual κρίσις or trial), in which evidence was collected and the prisoner committed for trial, if a true bill was found against him. It corresponded in short mutatis mutandis to the part taken in English law proceedings by the grand jury. And this is substantially the force of the word here. The Apostle condemns all these impatient human pracjudicia, these unauthorised ἀνακρίσεις, which anticipate the final κρίσις, reserving his case for the great tribunal when at length οὐ the evidence will be forthcoming and a satisfactory verdict can be given. Meanwhile this process of gathering evidence has begun ; an ἀνάκρισις is indeed being held, not however by these self-appointed ma- gistrates, but by One who alone has the authority

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 71

to institute the enquiry, and the ability to sift the facts: 6 δὲ ἀνακρίνων με Κύριός ἐστιν. Of this half technical sense of the word the New Testament itself furnishes a good example. The examination of S. Paul before Festus is both in name and in fact an ἀνάκρισις. The Roman procurator explains to Agrippa how he had directed the prisoner to be brought into court (προήγαγον αὐτόν) in order that, having held the preliminary enquiry usual in such cases (τῆς avaxpicews γενομένης), he might be able to lay the case before the emperor (Acts xxv. 26). Thus 5. Paul’s meaning here suffers very seriously by the wrong turn given to ἀνακρίνειν ; nor is this the only passage where the sense is impaired thereby. In 1 Cor. xiv. 24 ἐλέγχεται ὑπὸ πάντων, ἀνακρίνεται ὑπὸ πάντων, [καὶ οὕτω] τὰ κρυπτὰ τῆς καρδίας αὐτοῦ φανερὰ γίνεται, the sense required is clearly ‘ sifting, probing, revealing,’ and the rendering of our translators ‘he is judged of all’ introduces an idea alien to the passage. Again, only five verses lower down (xiv. 29) another compound of κρίνειν occurs and is similarly treated, προφῆται δὲ δύο ἢ τρεῖς λαλείτωσαν Kal οἱ ἄλλοι διακρινέτωσαν, ‘let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge, where it would be difficult to attach any precise meaning to the English without the aid of the Greek, and where certainly διακρινέτωσαν ought to be rendered ‘discern’ rather than ‘judge.’

72 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

Another passage which I shall take to illustrate the mode of dealing with xpivew and its compounds is still more important. In 1 Cor. xi. 28—34, a passage in which the English rendering is chargeable with some serious practical consequences and where a little attention to the original will correct more than one erroneous inference, the rendering of κρίνειν, διακρίνειν, κατακρίνειν, is utterly confused. The Greek runs δοκιμαζέτω δὲ ἄνθρωπος ἑαυτὸν καὶ οὕτως ἐκ τοῦ ἄρτου ἐσθιέτω καὶ ἐκ τοῦ ποτηρίου πινέτω" ὁ γὰρ ἐσθίων καὶ πίνων [ἀναξίως] κρίμα ἑαυτῷ ἐσθίει καὶ πίνει, μὴ διακρίνων τὸ σῶμα [τοῦ Kupiov]...ei δὲ ἑαυτοὺς δεε- κρίνομεν, οὐκ ἂν ἐκρινόμεθα" κρινόμενοι δὲ ὑπὸ Κυρίου παιδευόμεθα, ἵνα μὴ σὺν τῷ κόσμῳ κατακρι- θῶμεν...εἴ τις πεινᾷ, ἐν οἴκῳ ἐσθιέτω, ἵνα μὴ εἰς κρίμα συνέρχησθε, where the words in brackets should be omitted from the text. The English rendering corre- sponding to this is; ‘But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread, and drink of that cup. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damuation to himself, not ds- cerning the Lord’s body...For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world...If any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together unto condemnation. Here the faults are manifold. In

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 73

the first place κρίμα is rendered by two separate words ‘damnation’ and ‘condemnation’; and, though we cannot fairly charge our translators with the inferences practically drawn from the first word, yet this is a blemish’ which we would gladly remove. But in fact both words are equally wrong, the correct rendering ‘judgment’ having in cither case been relegated to the margin where it has lain neglected and has exercised no influence at all on the popular mind. And this circumstance (for it is only a sample of the fate which has befallen numberless valuable marginal readings elsewhere) suggests an important practical consideration. If the marginal renderings are intended for English-reading people (and for scholars they are superfluous), they will only then fulfil their purpose, when the margin is regarded as an integral portion of our English Bibles, and when it is ordered by authority that these alternative readings shall always be printed with the text. This then is the second error of our translators: κρίνειν, κατακρί- νειν, are confused, when the force of the passage depends on their being kept separate; for these κρίματα in the Apostle’s language are ‘emporary judgments, differing so entirely from κατάκριμα that they are intended to have a chastening effect and to save from condemnation, as he himself distinctly

states; κρινόμενοι δὲ ὑπὸ Κυρίου παιδευόμεθα, ἵνα μὴ

74 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

σὺν τῷ κόσμῳ κατακριθῶμεν. Lastly, the Version contains a ¢hird error in the confusion οὗ κρίνειν and διακρίνειν; for whereas διακρίνοντες τὸ σῶμα is correctly translated ‘ dzscerning the body cf the Lord’ at the first occurrence of διακρίνειν, yet when the word appears again, it is rendered ‘judge’ to the confusion of the sense; εἰ ἑαυτοὺς διεκρίνομεν, οὐκ ἂν ἐκρινόμεθα, ‘If we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged, where it ought to stand ‘ If we had discerned curselves, we should not have been judged’ In fact S. Paul speaks of three stages, marked respectively by δια- κρίνειν, κρίνειν, and xataxpivev. The first word expresses the duty of persons before and in com- municating; this duty is twofold, they must discern themselves and discern the Lord’s body, that they may understand and not violate the proper relations between the one and other. The second expresses the immediate consequences which ensue from the neglect of this duty—the judgments which are corrective and remedial, but not final. The chird denotes the’ final condemnation, which only then overtakes a man, when the second has failed to reform his character. But this sequence is wholly obliterated in our Version. In Rom. xiv. 22, 23 again, where the words occur together, it would have been well to have kept the distinction, though here the confusion is not so fatal to the meaning: ‘Happy is he that condemneth not

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 25

himself (ὁ μὴ κρίνων ἑαυτὸν) in that thing which he alloweth (ἐν ᾧ δοκιμάζει): And he that doudteth (ὁ δὲ διακρινόμενος) is damned (κατακέκριται) if he eat, because he eateth not of faith.’ S. Paul is not satisfied in this case, that a man should not condemn himself; he must not even judge himself. In other words the case must be so clear that he has no nced to balance conflicting arguments with a view to arriving at a result. Otherwise he should abstain altogether, for his eating is not of faith. Hcre our translators have rendered διακρινόμενος rightly, but a misgiving appears to have occurred to them, for in the margin they add ‘Or, discerneth and putteth a difference between meats, which would be the active ὁ διακρίνων. Indeed an evil destiny would seem to have pursued them throughout, when dealing with compounds of κρίνειν; for in another passage (2 Cor. i. 9) they render ἀπέ- κριμα ‘sentence,’ though the correct meaning ‘answer’ is given in the margin.

This neglect of prepositions in compound words is a very frequent fault in our Version. In the parable of the wheat and the tares indeed, though the correct reading describes the sowing in the one case by σπείρειν and in the other by ἐπισπείρειν (Matt. xiii. 24, 25), yet no blame can attach to our translators for not observing the distinction, as they had in their text the faulty reading ἔσπειρε for

76 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

ἐπέσπειρεν. But elsewhere this excuse cannot be pleaded in their behalf. Thus in the parable of the wedding-feast there is a striking variation of language between the commission of the master and its execution by the servants, which ought not to have been effaced. The order given is πορεύεσθε ἐπὶ tas διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν, but as regards its fulfilment we read simply ἐξελθόντες εἰς τὰς ὁδοὺς (Matt. xxii. 9, 10). In this change of expression we seem to see a reference to the imperfect work of the human agents as contrasted with the urgent and uncompromising terms of the command, which bade them scour the public thoroughfares, following all their outlets ; and certainly it is slovenly work to translate both τὰς διεξόδους τῶν ὁδῶν and τὰς ὁδοὺς alone by the same rendering ‘high-ways. A similar ‘defect again is the obliteration of the distinction between’ δαπανᾶν and ἐκδαπανᾶν in 2 Cor. xii. 15 ‘I will very gladly spend (δαπανήσω) and be spent (ἐκδαπανηθή- σομαι) for you, where ‘wholly spent’ would give the force of the compound. But examples of this kind might be multiplied. Would it not be possible, for instance, to find some rendering, which without any shock to good taste would yet distinguish between φιλεῖν and καταφιλεῖν in such passages as Matt. xxvi. 48, 49 ὃν ἂν φιλήσω αὐτός ἐστιν... καὶ KaTEhirn-

σεν αὐτόν, and Luke vii. 45, 46 φίλημά μοι οὐκ ἔδω-

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 77

Kas, αὕτη δὲ... οὐ διέλιπεν καταφιλοῦσα τοὺς πόδας ἡ pov, so as to bring out the extravagance of the treachcry in the one case and the depth of the devotion in the other, implied in the strong compound καταφιλεῖν ὃ

Hardly less considerable is the injury inflicted on the sense by failing to observe the different force of prepositions, when not compounded. Of this fault one instance must suffice. In 2 Cor. iii. 11 εἰ yap τὸ καταργούμενον διὰ δόξης, πολλῷ μᾶλλον τὸ μένον ἐν δόξη, ‘For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth zs glorious, the distinction of διὰ δόξης and ἐν δόξῃ is obliterated, though the change is significant in the original, where the transitory flush and the abiding presence are distinguished by the change of prepositions, and thus another touch is added to the picture of the contrast between the two dispensations.

Again, how much force is lost by neglecting a change of gender in the English rendering of John i. 11 ‘He came 29 his own (eis τὰ ἴδια), and his own (οἱ ἴδιοι) received him not. Here the distinction in the original between the neuter τὰ ἴδια and the masculine οἱ ἴδιον at once recalls the parable in Matt. xxi. 33 sq.,in which the vineyard corresponds to ta ἴδια and the husbandmen to of ἔδιοι ; but our Version makes no distinction between the place and the

"ὃ ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

persons—between ‘His own home’ and ‘His own people.’ Doubtless there is a terseness and a strength in the English rendering which no one would wil- lingly sacrifice ; but the sense ought to be the first consideration.

Let me pass to an illustration of another kind, where confusion is introduced by the same render- ing of different verbs: 1 Cor. xiv. 36 ‘What, came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only?’ Here there appears to the English reader to be an opposition between from and un¢o, and the two interrogatives seem to introduce alternative proposi- tions. The original however is ἢ ad’ ὑμῶν 6 λόγος τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐξῆλθεν; ἢ εἰς ὑμᾶς μόνους κατήντησεν ; where the fault of the English Version is twofold; the same word is used in rendering ἐξῆλθεν and κατήντησεν, and μόνους is represented by the ambiguous ‘only.’ Thus the emphasis is removed from the pronoun you in both clauses to the prepositions, and the two hypotheses are made to appear mutually exclusive. The translation of Tyndale, which was retained even in the Bishops’ Bible, though somewhat harsh, is correct and forcible, ‘Spronge the worde of God from you? Ether came it unto you only*?’

1 A very important passage, in which the hand of the reviser is needed, may perhaps be noted here. The correct Greek Text of Matt. ν. 32 is πᾶς ὁ ἀπολύων τὴν γυναῖκα αὐτοῦ, παρεκτὸς λόγου πορνείας, ποιεῖ αὐτὴν μοιχευθῆναι, καὶ ὃς ἐὰν ἀπολελυμένην γαμήσῃ μοιχᾶται, where

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 79

Much attention has been directed by recent writers to the synonymes of the New Testament. They have pointed out what is lost to the English reader by such confusions as those of αὐλὴ fold and ποίμνη flock in John x. 16, where in our Version the same word fo/d stands for both’, though the point of our Lord’s teaching depends mainly on the distinction between the many folds and the one flock; of δοῦλοι and διάκονοι in the parable of the wedding-feast (Matt. xxii. 1 sq.), both rendered by servants, though they have different functions assigned to them, and though they represent two distinct classes of beings— the one human, the other angelic ministers’; of κό-

our English Version has ‘ Whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commzt adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.” Here the English Version casts equal blame on the woman, thus doing her an injustice, for obviously she is not in the same position with the husband as regards guilt; but the Greek μοιχευθῆναι (not μοιχᾶσθαι), being a passive verb, implies something quite different. In this instance however the fault does not lie at the door of our translators, who instead of μοιχευθῆναι had the false reading μοιχᾶσθαι; but, the correct text being restored, a corresponding change in the English rendering is necessary. Com- pare also the various reading in Matt. xix. 9.

1 Tyndale and Coverdale preserve the distinction of flock and fold. In the Great Bible it disappears.

2 Here again the older Versions generally preserve the distinction, translating δοῦλοι, διάκονοι by ‘servants,’ ‘ministers,’ respectively. The Rheims Version has ‘waiters’ for διάκονοι. In this case the Geneva Bible was the first to obliterate the distinction, which was preserved even in the Bishops’.

80 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

duwot and σπυρίδες in the miracles of feeding the five thousand and the four thousand respectively—both translated daskets—though the words are set over against each other in the evangelic narratives (Matt. xvi. 9, 10, Mark viii. 19, 20), and seem to point to a different nationality of the multitudes in the two cases; of ζῷα and θηρία in the Apocalypse, both represented by Jdeasts, though the one denotes the beings who, worship before the throne of heaven, and the other the monsters whose abode is the abyss beneath. For other instances, and generally for an adequate treatment of this branch of exegesis, I shall be content to refer to the works of Archbishop Trench and others; but the following examples, out of many which might be given, will serve as further illustrations of the subject, which is far from being exhausted.

In John xiii. 23, 25 ἦν δὲ ἀνακείμενος εἷς ἐκ τῶν μαθητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ τοῦ ᾿Ιησοῦ.. ἀναπεσὼν ἐκεῖνος οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ ᾽Τησοῦ λέγεϊ ‘Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of his disciples... He then lying on Jesus’ breast saith, the English Version makes no distinction between the reclining position of the beloved disciple throughout the meal, described by ἀνακείμενος, and the sudden change of posture at this moment, introduced by ἀναπεσών. This distinc- tion is further enforced in the original by a change

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. SI

in both the prcpositions and the nouns, from ἐν to ἐπί, and from κόλπος to στῆθος. S. John was reclining on the bosom of his Master, and he sud- denly threw back his head upon His breast to ask a question. Again in a later passage a reference occurs—not to the reclining position but to the sudden movement’*—in xxi. 20 ὃς καὶ ἀνέπεσεν ἐν τῷ δείπνῳ ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος αὐτοῦ καὶ εἶπεν, where likewise it is misunderstood by our translators, ‘which also leaned on his. breast and said.’ This is among the most striking of those vivid descriptive traits which distinguish the narrative of the fourth Gospel gener- ally, and which are especially remarkable in these last scenes of Jesus’ life, where the beloved dis- ciple was himself an eye-witness and an actor. It is therefore to be regretted that these fine touches

1 The word ἀναπίπτειν occurs several times in the New Testament and always signifies a change of position, for indeed this idea is inherent in the word. It is used of a rower bending back for a fresh stroke (e.g. Polyb. i. 21. 2), of a horse suddenly checked and rearing (Plat.° Phedr. 254. B, ©), of a guest throwing himself back on the couch or on the ground preparatory to a meal (Matt. xv. 35, John xiii. 12, etc).

The received text of xiii. 25 runs, ἐπιπεσὼν δὲ ἐκεῖνος ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος k.T.’., but the correct reading is as given above. The substitution of ἐπιπεσὼν however does not tell in favour of our translators; for this word ought to have shown, even more clearly than ἀναπεσών, that a change of posture was intended. The οὕτως, which appears in the correct text and gives an additional touch to the picture, has a parallel in iv. 6 ἐκαθέζετο οὕτως ἐπὶ τῇ πηγῇ. In xxi. 20 there is no various reading.

L. R. 6

82 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

of the picture should be blurred in our English Bibles.

Again, in 1 Cor. xiv. 20 μὴ παιδία γίνεσθε ταῖς φρεσίν, ἀλλὰ τῇ κακίᾳ νηπιάξετε, much force is lost by the English rendering, ‘Be not chz/dren in under- standing ; howbeit in malice be ye chz/dren. In the original S. Paul is not satisfied that his converts should be merely children in vice; they must be something less than this, they must be guileless as babes ; and we cannot afford to obliterate the dis- tinction between παιδία and νήπιοι. Again in this same chapter (ver. 7) ὅμως τὰ ἄψυχα φωνὴν διδόντα... ἐὰν διαστολὴν τοῖς φθόγγοις μὴ δῷ is translated, ‘Even things without life giving souzd...except they give a distinction in the sounds, where certainly different words should have been found for φωνὴ and φθόγγος ; and yet our translators did not fail through poverty of expression, for three verses below they have ren- dered φωναὶ voices and ἄφωνον without signification. In the margin they suggest tues for φθόγγοις, and this would be preferable to retaining the same word. As φθόγγος is used especially of musical sounds, per- . haps notes might be adopted. This is just a case where a word not elsewhere found in the English Bible might be safely introduced, because there is no incongruity which jars upon the ear. Again in the following chapter (xv. 40) ἑτέρα μὲν ἡ τῶν ἐπου-

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 83

paviov δόξα, ἑτέρα δὲ ἡ τῶν ἐπιγείων." ἄλλη δόξα ἡλίου, καὶ ἄλλη δόξα σελήνης, καὶ ἄλλη δόξα ἀστέρων, the words ἄλλη and ἑτέρα are translated alike, ‘ The glory of the celestial is one and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and azother glory of the stars.’ Yet it is hardly to be doubted that S. Paul purposely uses ἑτέρα when he is speaking of things belonging to different classes, as ἐπουράνια and ἐπίγεια, and ἄλλη when he is speaking of things belonging to the same class, as the sun and moon and stars; for this is the proper distinction between ἄλλη and ἑτέρα, that, whereas the former denotes simply distinction of individuals, the latter involves the secondary idea of difference of £izd. In fact the change in the form of the sentence by which δόξα, δόξα, from being marked out as the subjects by the definite article and distin- guished by μὲν...δὲ in the first place, become simply predicates and are connected by καὶ... καὶ in the second, corresponds to the change from ἑτέρα to ἄλλη in passing from the one to the other... These words ἄλλος, ἕτερος, occur together more than once, and in all cases something is lost by effacing the distinction. In Gal. i. 6 θαυμάζω. ὅτι. οὕτω ταχέως μετατίθεσθε... εἰς ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο, translated ‘I marvel that ye are so soon removed...unto another Gospel, which is not another; the sense would be 6—2

84 ERRORS AND DEFECTS,

brought out by giving each word its proper force; and again in 2 Cor. xi. 4 ἄλλον ᾿Ιησοῦν κηρύσσει Ov οὐκ ἐκηρύξαμεν, ἢ πνεῦμα ἕτερον λαμβάνετε ὃ οὐκ ἐλάβετε, though the loss is less considerable, the dis- tinction might with advantage have been preserved. In these instances however a reviser might be deterred by the extreme difficulty in distinguishing the two, without introducing some modernism. In the passage first quoted (1 Cor. xv. 40) the end might perhaps be attained by simply substituting ‘other’ for ‘another’ in rendering ἑτέρα.

Still more important is it to mark the distinction between εἶναι and γίνεσθαι, where our translators have not observed it. Thus our English rendering of Joh. viii. 58, ‘Before Abraham was, I am,’ loses half the force of the original, πρὶν ᾿Αβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγώ εἶμι, ‘Before Abraham was born,1 am. The becoming only can be rightly predicated of the patriarch; the deing is reserved for the Eternal Son alone. Similar in kind, though less in degree, is the loss in the render- ing of Luke vi. 36 γένεσθε οἰκτίρμονες, καθὼς [καὶ] ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν οἰκτίρμων ἐστίν, ‘Be ye merciful, as your Father also zs merciful.’ Here also the original ex- presses the distinction between the imperfect effort and the eternal attribute’.

Ὁ In τ Pet. i. 16 our translators, when they gave the rendering ‘ Be ye holy, for I am holy,’ had before them the reading ἅγιος γένεσθε,

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 85

Illustrations of similar defects might be multiplied, though in many cases it is much easier to point out the fault, than to suggest the remedy. Thus such a rendering as 2 Cor. vii. 10 ‘ For godly sorrow worketh repentance (μετάνοιαν) to salvation not to be repented of (ἀμεταμέλητον) belongs to this class. Here the Geneva Testament has ‘causeth amendment unto salvation not to be repented of, and perhaps it were best in this instance to sacrifice the usual rendering of μετάνοια in order to preserve the distinction (unless indeed we are prepared to introduce the word ‘regret’ for μεταμέλεια), especially as μεταμέλεσθαι in the con- text is consistently translated ‘repent.’ Again it were desirable to find some better rendering of πᾶσα δόσις ἀγαθὴ καὶ πᾶν δώρημα τέλειον in James i. 17 than ‘every good gz/t and every perfect gift, since a contemporary of S. James especially distinguishes δόσις, δόμα, from δῶρον, δωρεὰ etc., saying that the latter are much stronger and involve the idea of mag- nitude and fulness which is wanting to the former (Philo Leg. Al. iii. 70, p. 126 ἔμφασιν μεγέθους τελείων ἀγαθῶν δηλοῦσιν x.7T.r.; comp. de Cherub. 25, p- 154), and applying to them the very same epithet ‘perfect’ which occurs in the passage before us. And yet the distinction would be dearly purchased at the

ὅτι ἐγὼ ἅγιός εἶμι, but the correct text is ἅγιοι ἔσεσθε, ὅτι ἐγὼ ἅγιος (omitting εἰμί).

86 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

cost of an offensive Latinism. But whatever difficulty there may be in finding different renderings here, it was certainly not necessary in the sentence immediately preceding, ‘When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin, when it is finished, dringeth forth death, - | ἐπιθυμία συλλαβοῦσα τίκτει ἁμαρτίαν, ἡ δὲ ἁμαρτία. ἀποτελεσθεῖσα ἀποκύει θάνατον, either to obliterate a real distinction by giving the same rendering of τίκτει and ἀποκύει or to create an artificial distinction by adopting different forms of sentences for ἡ ἐπιθυμία συλλαβοῦσα and ἡ ἁμαρτία ἀποτελεσθεῖσα. The Eng- lish might run; ‘Lust when it hath conccived bring-. eth forth sin, and sin when it is perfected (or ‘grown’) gendereth death.’ Again in Rom. xii. 2 ‘ Be not con- Jormed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind,’ for μὴ συσχηματίξεσθε τῷ αἰῶνι τούτῳ, ἀλλὰ μεταμορφοῦσθε TH ἀνακαινώσει τοῦ νοὸς [ὑμῶν], the English not only suggests an iden- tity of expression which has no place in the original but obliterates an important distinction between the σχῆμα or fashion and the μορφὴ or form, between the outward and transitory and the abiding and sub- stantial. We might translate μὴ συσχηματίξεσθε x.7.r. ‘Be ye not fashioned after this world, but be ye trans- formed in the renewing, etc., thus partially retracing our steps and following on the track of Tyndale’s and other earlier Versions, which have ‘ Fashion not your-

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 87

selves like unto this world,’ and so preserve the distinc- tion of σχῆμα and μορφή (though they are not very happy in their rendering of μεταμορφοῦσθε ‘Be ye changed in your shafe’). In this instance our trans- lators have followed the guidance of Wycliffe and the Rheims Version, which have conformed and reformed. In another passage, Phil. ii. 6 sq., where the distinction of μορφὴ and σχῆμα is still more important, it is happily preserved in our Authorised Version; ‘being in the form of God, ‘took upon him the form of a servant, ‘being found in fashiex as a man,

In other cases, where it is even more important for the sense to observe the distinction of synonymes, we scem to have no choice but to acquiesce in the con- fusion. At an earlier stage of the language it might have been possible to establish different renderings, but now the English equivalents are so stereotyped that any change seems impossible. Thus the rendering of διάβολος and δαιμόνιον by the same word ‘devil’ is a grievous loss; and it is much to be regretted that Wycliffe’s translation of δαιμόνιον by ‘fiend’ was not adopted by Tyndale, in which case it would probably have become the current rendering. Now the sense of incongruity would make its adoption impossible. Still greater misunderstanding arises from translating Hades the place of departed spirits, and Gehenna the place of fire and torment, by the same word

88 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

‘hell,’ and thus confusing two ideas wholly distinct. In such a passage as Acts ii. 27, 31 the misconception thus created is very serious. Is it possible even now to naturalise the word //ades and give it a place in our Version? Or must we be satisfied with pointing out in the margin in each case whether the word ‘hell’ represents Hades or Gehenna? Another, though a less important instance, is the word ‘temple,’ which represents both ναός the inner shrine or sanctuary, and ἱερόν the whole of the sacred precincts. Thus in the English Version an utter confusion of localities results from a combination of two such passages as Matt. xxiii. 35 ‘Whom ye slew between the temple (τοῦ ναοῦ) and the altar, and Matt. xxi. 12 ‘Them that sold and bought in the temple’ (ἐν τῷ ἱερῷ). In the first case for rod ναοῦ 5. Luke (xi. 51) uses τοῦ οἴκου ‘the house,’ the building which is, as it were, the abode of the Divine Presence; but our English translators have boldly rendered even τοῦ οἴκου by ‘the temple.’ More hopeless still is it to preserve the distinction between θυσιαστήριον the Jewish and βωμός the Heathen altar, the latter word occurring only once in the New Testament (Acts xvii. 23) and the poverty of our language obliging us there to translate it by the same word as θυσιαστήριον.

The contrast of Jew and Gentile involved in these last words recalls another pair of synonymes, which

~™

DISTINCTIONS OBLITERATED. 89

present the same relation to each other and in which the distinction is equally impracticable, λαός used. especially of the chosen people and in contradistinction to the Gentiles:(e.¢. Acts iv. 25, 27, x; 2, xxi. 28, Rom. ix. 25, 26, I Pet. ii. 10, etc.), and δῆμος denoting the people of a heathen city and more particularly when gathered together in the popular assembly (e.g. at Czesarea, Acts xii. 22'; at Thessalonica, Acts Xvii. 5; at Ephesus, Acts xix. 30, 33).

§ 4.

Another class of errors, far more numerous and much more easily corrected than the last, is due to the imperfect knowledge of Greek grammar in the age in which our translators lived. And here it is instructive to observe how their accuracy fails for the most part just at the point where the Latin language ceases to run parallel with the Greek. In two re- markable instances, at all events, this is the case. The Latin language has only one past tense where

1 A heathen multitude, such as would naturally be found in a city which was the seat of the Roman government, is contemplated here, as the whole incident shows. Hence Tyndale and the later Versions rightly translate θεοῦ φωνὴ καὶ οὐκ ἀνθρώπου (ver. 22) ‘The voice of a god and not of @ man,’ where Wycliffe has ‘ The voice of God and not of man.’ When the Hews of Czsarea are especially intended, ὁ λαὸς is used instead of ὁ δῆμος ; Acts x. 2.

go ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

the Greek has two; a Roman was forced to translate ἐλάλησα and λελάληκα by the same expression ‘locutus sum.’ Accordingly we find that our English trans- lators make no difference between the aorist and the perfect, apparently giving the most obvious rendering on each occasion and not being guided by any grammatical principle in the treatment of these tenses. Again the Latin language has no definite article; and correspondingly in our English Version its pre- sence or absence is almost wholly disregarded. Indeed it would hardly be an exaggeration to say that, if the translators had been left to supply or omit the definite article in every case according to the probabilities of the sense or the requirements of the English, without any aid from the Greek, the result would have been about as accurate as it is at present.

I am not bringing any charge against the ability of our translators. To demand from them a know- ledge of Greek Grammar which their age did not possess would be to demand an impossibility. Accus- tomed to write and to speak in Latin, they uncon- sciously limited the range and capacity of the Greek by the measure of the classical language with which they were most familiarly acquainted. But our own more accurate knowledge may well be brought to bear to correct these deficiencies. Tyndale had said

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. ΟΙ

truly that ‘the Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than the Latin’; and it should be our en- deavour to avail ourselves of this agreement and so to reproduce the meaning of the original with greater exactness. I hope to show, before I have done, that it is no mere pedanti¢ affectation which would prompt us to correct these faults; but that important inter- ests, sometimes doctrinal, sometimes historical, are involved in their adjustment.

1. Under the head of faulty grammar, the Zenses deserve to be considered first. And here I will begin with the defect on which I have already touched— the confusion of the aovist and the perfect. It is not meant to assert that the aorist can always be rendered by an aorist and the perfect by a perfect in English’. No two languages coincide exactly in usage, and allowance must be made for the difference. But still I think it will be seen that our Version may be greatly improved in this respect without violence to the English idiom.

Thus in John i. 3 χωρὶς αὐτοῦ ἐγένετο οὐδὲ ἕν ὃ γέγονεν, or in 2 Cor. xii. 17, 18 μή τινα ὧν ἀπέ- σταλκα πρὸς ὑμᾶς, δι αὐτοῦ ἐπλεονέκτησα ὑμᾶς;

, , , παρεκάλεσα Titov, καὶ συναπέστειλα τὸν ἀδελφόν,

1 A comparison of English with the languages of continental Europe will illustrate the difference of idiom in this respect.

92 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

or in Col, i. 16, 17 ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα..«τὰ πάντα δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν ἔκτισται, is there any reason why the tenses should not have been pre- served, so that the distinction between the historical fact and the permanent result would have appeared in all three cases? Yet our translators have ren- dered ἐγένετο, γέγονεν equally by ‘was made’ in the first passage, ἀπέσταλκα, ἀπέστειλα by ‘I sent’ in the second, and ἐκτίσθη, ἔκτισται by ‘ were created’ in the third. Again in 1 John iv. 9, 10, 14 ἀπέσταλ- κεν, ἀπέστειλεν, ἀπέσταλκεν, are all rendered in an aoristic sense ‘he sent,’ though the appropriateness of either tense in its own context is sufficiently noticeable. On the other hand, in an exactly par- allel case, I Cor. ix. 22 ἐγενόμην τοῖς ἀσθενέσιν ἀσθενὴς ἵνα τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς κερδήσω᾽ τοῖς πᾶσιν γέγονα πάντα, where in like manner the aorist gives an isolated past incident, and the perfect sums up the total present result, the distinction of tenses is happily preserved, ‘To the weak decame I weak that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men’: though ‘I am become’ would have been preferable, as preserving the same verb in both cases. But I fear that this correct rendering must be ascribed to accident: for the hap-hazard way in which these tenses are treated will appear as well from the instances already quoted as from such a passage as 2 Cor. vii. 13, 14; ‘ There-

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 93

ει fore we were comforted (παρακεκλήμεθα) in your comfort: yea, and exceedingly the more joyed we (ἐχάρημεν) for the joy of Titus, because his spirit was refreshed (ἀναπέπαυται) by you all. For if I have boasted (κεκαύχημαι) any thing to him of you, I am not ashamed (κατῃσχύνθην); but as we spake (ἐλαλήσαμεν) all things to you in truth, even so our boasting, which I made before Titus ([7] ἐπὶ Τίτου), is found (ἐγενήθη) a truth,’

Such passages as these bring out this weakness of our translation the more strikingly because the tenses appear in juxta-position. But it is elsewhere that the most serious injury is inflicted on the sense. I will give examples of the aorzs¢ first; and I hope to make it clear that more than the interests of exact scholar- ship are concerned in the accurate rendering.

If I read S. Paul aright, the correct understand- ing of whole paragraphs depends on the retention of the aoristic sense, and the substitution of a per- fect confuses his meaning, obliterating the main idea and introducing other conceptions which are alien to the passages. As illustrations of this, take two passages, Rom. vi. I sq., Col. ii. 11 sq. In the first passage, ἀπεθάνομεν (ver. 2), ἐβαπτίσθημεν (ver. 3), συνετάφημεν (ver. 4), συνεσταυρώθη (ver. 6), ἀπεθάνο- μεν (ver. 8), ὑπηκούσατε (ver. 17), ἐδουλώθητε τῇ δι- καιοσύνῃ (ver. 18), ἐλευθερωθέντες ἀπὸ τῆς ἁμαρτίας,

94 ᾿ ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

δουλωθέντες τῷ Θεῷ (ver. 22), ἐθανατώθητε (vii. 4), + κατηργήθημεν, ἀποθανόντες (ver. 6). In the second passage, περιετμήθητε (ii. 11), συνταφέντες, συνηγέρ- θητε (ver. 12), συνεζωοποίησεν (ver. 13), ἐδειγμάτισεν (ver. 15), ἀπεθάνετε (ver. 20), συνηγέρθητε (iii. 1), ἀπε- θάνετε (ver. 3). Now the consistency with which 8. Paul uses the aorist in these two doctrinal passages which treat of the same subject (scarcely ever inter- posing a perfect, and then only for exceptional rea- sons which are easily intelligible) is very remarkable ; ‘Ye died, ye were buried, ye were raised, ye were made alive’; and the argument might be very much strengthened by reference to other passages where the Apostle prefers the aorist in treating of the same. topics’. In short, 5. Paul regards this change—from sin to righteousness, from bondage to freedofn, from death to life—as summed up in one definite act of the past; potentially to all men in our Lord’s Pas- sion and Resurrection, actually to each individual man when he accepts Christ, is baptized into Christ. Then he is made righteous by being incorporated into Christ’s righteousness, he dies once for all to sin, he lives henceforth for ever to God. This is the 1 For instance Gal. ii. 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 111. 3, 27, δ. 13, 24 (οἱ τοῦ Χριστοῦ τὴν σάρκα ἐσταύρωσαν), Ephes. i. 11, 13, ii. 5, 6 (συνεζωοποίησεν, συνήγειρεν, συνεκάθισεν), 13, 14, ἵν. I, 4, 7, 30 (ἐσφραγίσθητε), Col. i. 13

(ἐρρύσατο, peréornoev), ili. 15, 2 Tim. i. 7, 9, Tit. iii. 5 (ἔσωσεν) : see also 1 Pet. i. 3, 18, ii. 21, iii. 9.

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 95

ideal. Practically we know that the death to sin and the life to righteousness are inchoate, imperfect, gradual, meagrely realised even by the most saintly of men in this life: but S. Paul sets the matter in this ideal light, to force upon the consciences of his hearers the fact that an entire change came over them when they became Christians, that the know- ledge and the grace then vouchsafed to them did not leave them where they were, that they are not and cannot be their former selves, and that it is a contradiction of their very being to sin any more. It is the definiteness, the absoluteness of this change, considered as a historical crisis, which forms the cen- tral idea of S. Paul’s teaching, and which the aorist marks. We cannot therefore afford to obscure this idea by disregarding the distinctions of grammar. Yet in our English Version it is a mere chance whether in such cases the aorist is translated as an aorist.

The misconception which arises from this neglect of the aorist has vitally affected the interpretation of one passage. In 2 Cor. v. 14 ‘If one died for all, then were all dead’ ([εἰ] εἷς ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀπέθανεν, ἄρα οἱ πάντες ἀπέθανον), our Version substitutes the state of death for the fact of dying, and thus interprets the death to be a death ¢hrough sin instead of a death to sim. The reference in the context to the old things passing away, and the language of S. Paul

96 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

elsewhere, e.g. Rom. vi. 2, 8, viii. 6, Col. ii. 20, iii. 3, already quoted, seem to show that the true sense is what would naturally be suggested by the correct rendering of the aorist ; that all men have participated potentially in Christ’s death, have died with Him to their former selves and to sin, and are therefore bound to lead a new life’.

Not very unlike the passages, which I have been considering, is Acts xix. 2 εἰ πνεῦμα ἅγιον ἐλάβετε πιστεύσαντες, which our translators give ‘Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?’ It should run ‘Did ye receive the Holy Ghost, when ye believed ?’ for the aorist of πιστεύειν is used very. commonly, not of the continuous state of belief, but of the definite act of accepting the faith; e.g. Acts x1. 17, Rom. xiii. 11, 1 Cor. iii. 5, xv. 2, Gal. ii. 7, ete.

The instances which have been given hitherto more or less directly affect doctrine. In the two next examples, which occur in quotations from the Old Testament, a /zstorical connexion is severed by the mistranslation of the aorist. In Matt. ii. 15 ἐξ

1 The only passages which would seem to favour the other interpre- tation are I Cor. xv. 22 ἐν τῷ ᾿Αδὰμ πάντες ἀποθνήσκουσιν and Rom. v. 15 εἰ yap τῷ τοῦ ἑνὸς παραπτώματι οἱ πολλοὶ ἀπέθανον. Yet even if this interpretation were adopted, the aoristic sense of ἀπέθανον ought to be preserved; because the potential death of all men in Adam corre- sponds to the potential life of all men in Christ, and is regarded ashaving | been effected once for all in Adam’s transgression, as in Rom. v. 15.

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 97

Αὐγύπτου ἐκάλεσα τὸν υἱόν μου is rendered ‘Out of Egypt save I called my son’: but turning to the original passage in Hosea (xi. 1) we find that the proper aoristic sense must be restored ; ‘When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt.’ Again in 2 Cor. iv. 13 ἐπίστευσα διὸ ἐλάλησα is given ‘I believed and therefore ave J spoken, a rendering unsuited to its position in the ΧΧ of Ps. cxvi. 10 (cxv. 1), whence it is quoted. Such examples as these however are very far from exhausting the subject. In one passage the aorist κτήσασθαι is treated as if κεκτῆσθαι, and rendered ‘ possess’ instead of ‘acquire, in defiance of a distinc- tion which it does not require the erudition of Lord Macaulay’s schoolboy to appreciate: Luke xxi. 19 ἐν τῇ ὑπομονῇ ὑμῶν κτήσασθε [1]. κτήσεσθε] τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν, ‘In your patience 20..5655 ye your souls.” Errors however occur also in this same word in 1 Thess. iv. 4 where the present is similarly treated, εἰδέναι ἕκα- στον ὑμῶν TO ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι ἐν ἁγιασμῷ Kal τιμῇ, ‘that every one of you should know how to fos- sess his vessel in sanctification and honour’; and again in Luke xviii. 12 where ὅσα κτῶμαι is translated ‘all that I possess’: and thus it seems probable that the mistake first arose from a misapprehension of the ‘meaning of κτᾶσθαι rather than from a direct confu- sion of tenses. Yet even so this very misapprehen- L. R. 7

98 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

sion must have been owing to the inability to see how the sense ‘possess’ is derived from the proper force of the perfect’.

The treatment of the serfect is almost equally faulty with the treatment of the aorist. Thus in 1 Cor. xv. 4 sq. 5. Paul lays the stress of his argument on the fact that Christ zs vzsex. This perfect ἐγήγερ- Tat is repeated six times within a few verses (vv. 4, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20), while the aorist ἠγέρθη is not once used. The point is not that Christ once rose from. the grave, but that having risen He lives for ever, as a first-fruit or earnest of the resurrection. Indeed the contrast between the tenses ὅτε ἐτάφη καὶ ὅτι éyn- γερταῖι (ver. 4) throws out this idea in still stronger relief. In the 13th and following verses this con- ception becomes so patent on the face of S. Paul’s language that our translators could not fail to see it, and accordingly from this point onward the perfect is correctly translated: but the fact that in the two earliest instances where it occurs (vv. 4, 12) ἐγήγερται

1 In Matt. x. 9 μὴ κτήσησθε χρυσόν, the older Versions generally render κτήσησθε by ‘possess,’ for which the A. V. substitutes ‘ pro- vide,’ with the marginal alternative ‘get’; and in Acts i. 18 ἐκτήσατο χωρίον the oldest Versions have ‘ hath possessed,’ for which the A. V. (after the Bishops’ and Geneva Bibles) substitutes ‘ purchased.’ These facts seem to show that the proper distinction between κτᾶσθαι and κεκτῆσθαι (which latter does not occur in the New Testament) was beginning to dawn upon Biblical scholars,

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 99

is treated as an aorist, ‘he rose, shows that they did not regard the rules of grammar, but were guided only by the apparent demands of the sense. Another example, closely allied to the last, occurs in Heb. vii. 14, 22. The context lays stress on the wuchangeable priesthood; ‘Thou art a priest for ever, ‘He con- tinueth ever’ (vv. 21, 24). Hence in ver. 14 the writer says πρόδηλον ὅτι ἐξ ᾿Ιούδα ἀνατέταλκεν ὁ Κύριος ἡμῶν, and in ver. 22 κατὰ τοσοῦτο καὶ κρείττονος δια- θήκης γέγονεν ἔγγυος Incots. But these references to present existence are obliterated in the A. V., which substitutes aorists in both cases, ‘Our Lord sprang out of Juda,’ ‘was Jesus made a surety.’

These instances have.a more or less direct doc- _ trinal bearing. The examples, which shall be given next, are important in a 4zstorical aspect. In the passage (2 Cor. xii. 2 sq.), in which 5. Paul describes the visions vouchsafed to one ‘caught up to the third heaven, it can hardly be doubted that he refers to himself. This appears not only from the connexion of the context, but also (in the original) from the mode of expression, οἶδα ἄνθρωπον, oi da τὸν τοιοῦτον ἄνθρωπον. I have already pointed out (p. 43) the capricious variations in the renderings of οἶδα, oidéy, in the context of this passage. But in these two clauses our translators are not only capricious but absolutely wrong, for they give to οἶδα an aoristic sense which

ΞΖ

ICO ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

it cannot possibly have, ‘I £vew a man,’ ‘I knew such a man’; thus disconnecting the actual speaker from the object of the vision, and suggesting to the English reader the idea that the Apostle is speaking of some past acquaintance.

Again S. Matthew in three several passages (i. 22, XXi. 4, XXvi. 56) introduces a reference to prophecies in the Old Testament, which have had their fulfilment in incidents of the Gospel history, by the words. τοῦτο δὲ [ὅλον] γέγονεν ἵνα πληρωθῇ (or ἵνα πληρωθῶσιν) κιτὰλ. In all three passages, it will be observed, the Evangelist has the perfect γέγονεν ‘zs come to pass’ ; and in all three our English Version gives it as an aorist ‘was done. Now it cannot be urged (as it might with some plausibility in the case of the Apo- calypse) that S. Matthew is careless about the use of the aorist and the perfect, or that he has any special fondness for γέγονεν. On the contrary, though the aorist (ἐγένετο, γενέσθαι, etc.) frequently occurs in this Gospel, there are not many examples of the perfect γέγονεν ; and in almost every instance our Version is faulty. In xix. 8 am ἀρχῆς ov γέγονεν οὕτως. the aoristic rendering ‘ From the beginning it cas not so’ entirely misleads the English reader as to the sense; in xxiv. 21 οἵα ov γέγονεν ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς, ‘Such as hath not been from the beginning, would (I suppose) be uni- versally accepted as an improvement on the present

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR, IOI

translation ‘Such as was not from the beginning’; and lastly in xxv. 6 κραυγὴ γέγονεν, the startling effect of the sudden surprise is expressed by the change of tense from the aorist, ‘a cry zs raised, and ought not to be neglected. When therefore this Evangelist in three distinct places introduces the fulfilment of a prophecy by γέγονεν, the fact cannot be without meaning. In two of these passages editors sometimes attach the τοῦτο δὲ ὅλον γέγονεν to the words of the previous speaker—of the angel in i. 22 and of our Lord in xxvi. 56—in order to explain the perfect. But this connexion is very awkward even in these two cases, and wholly out of the question in the remaining instance (xxi. 4). Is not the true solution this; that these tenses preserve the freshness of the earliest catechetical narrative of the Gospel history, when the narrator was not so far removed from the fact that it was unnatural for him to say ‘ This zs come to pass’? I find this hypothesis confirmed when I turn to the Gospel of S. John. He too adopts a nearly identical form of words on one occasion to introduce a prophecy, but with a significant change of tense; xix. 36 ἐγένετο yap ταῦτα iva ἡ γραφὴ πληρωθῇ. To one writing at the close of the century, the events of the Lord’s life would appear as a historic past; and so the γέγονεν of the earlier Evangelist is exchanged for the ἐγένετο of the later.

ΤΟΣ τ ERRORS AND DEFECTS,

An able American writer on the English language, criticizing a previous effort at revision, remarks some- what satirically that, judging from this revised version, the tenses ‘are coming to have in England a force which they have not now in America’ Now I have already conceded that allowance must be made from time to time for difference of idiom in rendering aorists and perfects: and I do not know to what passages in the revision issued by the Five Clergy- men this criticism is intended to apply. But it is important that our new revisers should not defer hastily to such authority, and close too eagerly with a license which may be abused. The fact is, that our judgment in this matter is apt to be misled by two disturbing influences: we must be on our guard alike against the zdola fort and against the zdola specus. |

First, the language of the Authorised Version is so wrought into the fabric of our minds by long habit, that the corresponding conception is firmly lodged there also. Thus it happens that when a change of words is offered to us, we unconsciously apply the new words to the old conception and are

1 Marsh’s Lectures on the English Language no. xxviii. p. 633, speaking of the translation of S. John by the Five Clergymen. The passage is quoted by Bp. Ellicott (Revision of the English New Testament p- 13), who seems half disposed to acquiesce in the justice of the criticism.

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 103

‘dissatisficd. with them because they seem incongru- ous; and perhaps we conclude that English idiom is violated because they do not mean what we expect them to mean, not being prepared to make the necessary effort required to master the new concep- tion involved inthem. J/dola fori omnium molestissima sunt quae ex foedere verborum et nominum se insinua- runt 771 intellectum.

But secondly, the idols of our cave are scarcely less misleading than the idols of the market-place. Living in the middle of the nineteenth century, we cannot without an effort transfer ourselves to the modes of thought and of language, which were com- mon in the first. The. mistranslation from which this digression started affords a good instance of this source of misapprehension. We should not our- selves say ‘ This zs come to pass, in referring to facts which happened more than eighteen centuries ago, and therefore we oblige the eye-witnesses to hold our own language and say ‘This came to pass.’

From the perfect tense I pass on to the present. And here I find a still better illustration of the errors into which we are led by following the zdola specus. In the Epistle to the Hebrews the sacred writer, when speaking of the temple services and the Mosaic ritual, habitually uses the present tense: e.g. ix. 6, 7,

9 εἰσίασιν οἱ ἱερεῖς, προσφέρει ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ, δῶρά

104 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

τε καὶ θυσίαι προσφέρονται, X. I θυσίαις ἃς προσ- φέρουσιν. Now I do not say that this is absolutely conclusive as showing that the Epistle was written before the destruction of Jerusalem, but it is certainly a valuable indication of an early date and should not have been obliterated. Yet our translators in such cases almost invariably substitute a past tense, as in the passages just quoted, ‘the priests zvem¢ in,’ ‘he offered for himself, ‘were offered both gifts and sacrifices,’ ‘sacrifices which they offered’ And simi- larly in ix. 18 they render ἐγκεκαίνισται ‘was dedi- cated,’ and in ix. 9 τὸν καιρὸν τὸν ἐνεστηκότα ‘the time Zien present. Only in very rare instances do they allow the present to stand, and for the most part in such cases alone where it has no direct his- torical bearing. The temple worship was a thing of the remote past to themselves in the seventeenth century, and they forced the writer of the Epistle to speak their own language.

Another and a more important example of the present tense is the rendering of of σωζόμενοι. In the language of the New Testament salvation is a thing of the past, a thing of the present, and a thing of the future. S. Paul says sometimes ‘ Ye (or we) were saved’ (Rom. viii. 24), or ‘Ye have been saved’ (Ephes. ii. 5, 8), sometimes ‘Ye are being saved’ (1 Cor, xv. 2), and sometimes ‘ Ye shall be

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 105

saved’ (Rom. x. 9, 13). It is important to observe this, because we are thus taught that σωτηρία involves a moral condition which must have begun already, though it will receive its final accomplishment here- after. Godliness, righteousness, is life, is salvation. And it is hardly necessary to say that the divorce of morality and religion must be fostered and en- couraged by failing to note this and so laying the whole stress either on the past or on the future—on the first call or on the final change. It is there- fore important that the idea of salvation as a rescue from sin through the knowledge of God in Christ, and therefore a progressive condition, a present state, should not be obscured; and we cannot but regret such a translation as Acts ii. 47.‘The Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved? where the Greek τοὺς σωξομένους implies a different idea. In other passages, Luke xiii. 23, 1 Cor. i. 18, 2 Cor. ii. 15, Rev. xxi. 24 (omitted in some texts), where οἱ σωζόμενοι occurs, the renderings ‘ be saved, are saved’ may perhaps be excused by the requirements of the English language, though these again suggest rather a complete act.than a continuous and progressive state.

In other cases the substitution of a past tense ‘inflicts a slighter, but still a perceptible injury. It obscures the vividness of the narrative or destroys

106 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

the relation of the sentences. Thus in Matt. iii. 1, 13, the appearing of John the Baptist and of our Lord is introduced in the same language: ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ἐκείναις παραγίνεται Iwavyns ὁ βαπτιστής, and τότε παραγίνεται ὃ ᾿Ιησοῦς. It is a misfortune that we are obliged to translate the expression παρα- γίνεται by the very ordinary word ‘come’: but the English Version by rendering the first sentence ‘In those days came John, while it gives the second correctly ‘Then cometh Jesus, quite unnecessarily impairs both the vigour and the parallelism of the narrative. Exactly similar to this last instance is another in 5. Luke vii. 33, 34, ἐλήλυθεν γὰρ ᾿Ιωάννης ὁ βαπτιστής... ἐλήλυθεν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου, where again the first ἐλήλυθεν is translated came, the second is come. '

In rendering zmperfect tenses, it is for the most part impossible to give the full sense without encum- bering the English idiom unpleasantly. . But in ex- ceptional usages, as for instance where the imperfect has the inchoate, ¢entative force, its meaning can be preserved without any such sacrifice, and ought not to be obliterated. Thus in Luke i. το ἐκάλουν αὐτὸ Ζαχαρίαν is not ‘ They called it (the child) Zacharias, but ‘They were for calling it; ‘They would have called it” Closely allied to this is the conditional sense of the imperfect, which again our English

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 107

translators have rendered inadequately or not at all. Thus in Gal. iv. 20 ἤθελον δὲ παρεῖναι πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἄρτι is not ‘I desire to be present with you now, as our translators have it, but ‘I could have desired,’ and in Matt. iii. 14 6 Ἰωάννης διεκώλυεν αὐτόν is not ‘John forbade him,’ but ‘John would have hindered him? Again in Rom. ix. 3 ηὐχόμην yap ἀνάθεμα εἶναι αὐτὸς ἐγὼ ἀπὸ τοῦ Χριστοῦ the moral difficulty disappears, when the words are correctly translated, not as the English Version ‘I could wish that myself were accursed for Christ, but ‘I could have wished,’ etc.; because the imperfect itself implies that it is im- possible to entertain such a wish, things being what they are. Again in Acts xxv. 22 ἐβουλόμην. καὶ αὐτὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἀκοῦσαι, the language of Agrip- pa is much more courteous and delicate than our English Version represents it. He does not say ‘I qould also hear the man myself, but ‘I myself also could have wished to hear the man, if the favour had not been too great to ask. Elsewhere our Version is more accurate, e.g. Acts vii. 26 συνήλλασσεν αὐτοὺς eis εἰρήνην ‘ would have set them at one again’.’

2. If the rendering of the tenses affords wide scope for improvement, this is equally the case with the treatment of the definite article. And here again

1 Here however our translators appear to. have read συνήλασεν, so that their accuracy is purely accidental.

108 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

I think it will be seen that theology is almost as deeply concerned as scholarship in the correction of errors. In illustration let me refer to the passage which the great authority of Bentley brought into prominence, and which has often been adduced since his time. In Rom. v. 15—1I9 there is a sustained contrast between ‘the one (ὃ εἷς) and ‘the many (of πολλοῦ), but in the English Version the definite article is systematically omitted: ‘If through the offence of one many be dead, and so throughout the passage, closing with, ‘For as by one man’s disobedience szazy were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous,’ In place of any comment of my own, I will quote Bentley’s words. Pleading for the correct rendering he says; ‘By this accurate version some hurtful mistakes about partial redemption and absolute re- probation had been happily prevented. Our English readers had then seen, what several of the fathers saw and testified, that οἱ πολλοὶ the many, in an antithesis to te one, are equivalent to πάντες all in ver. 12 and comprehend the whole multitude, the entire species of mankind, exclusive only of the one’, In other words the benefits of Christ's obedience extend to all men potentially. It is only human self-will which places limits to its operation.

1 Bentley’s Works 111. p. 244 (ed. Dyce).

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. 109

Taken in connexion with a previous illustration (p. 93 sq.), this second example from the Epistle to the Romans will enable us to estimate the amount of injury which is inflicted on S. Paul’s argument by grammatical inaccuracies. Both the two great lines of doctrinal teaching respecting the Redemption, which run through this Epistle—the one relating to the mode of tts operation, the other to the ertent of its appli- cation—are more or less misrepresented in our English Version owing to this cause. The former is cbscured, as we saw, by a confusion of tenses; while the latter is distorted by a disregard of the definite article.

This however is the usual manner of treating the article when connected with πολλοὶ and similar words; e.g. Matt. xxiv. 12 ‘The love of many shall wax cold,’ where the picture in the original is much darker, τῶν πολλῶν ‘the many, the vast majority of the disciples; or again Phil. i. 14‘ And many of the brethren in the Lord waxing confident, where the error is even greater, for S. Paul distinctly writes τοὺς πλείονας ‘the greater part.’ Similarly also it is neglected before λοιπός : e.g. Luke xxiv. 10 ‘And other women that were with them’ (αἱ λοιπαὶ σὺν αὐταῖς); 1 Cor. ix. 5 ‘To lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles’ (ὡς καὶ οἱ λοιποὶ ἀπόστολοι); 2 Cor. xii. 13 ‘Ye were inferior to other churches’ (τὰς λοιπὰς ἐκκλησίας); in all which passages historical

110 ERRORS AND DEFECTS,

facts are obscured or perverted by the neglect of the article. And again in 2 Cor. ii. 6, where ἡ ἐπιτιμία αὕτη ἡ ὑπὸ τῶν πλειόνων is rendered ‘this punishment which was inflicted of many, the conception of a regular judicial assembly, in which the penalty is decided by the vote of the majority, disappears.

Nor is the passage quoted by Bentley the only © example in which the broad features of 5. Paul’s teaching suffer from an indifference to the presence or the absence of the definite article. The distinc- tion between νόμος and ὁ νόμος is very commonly disregarded, and yet it is full of significance. Be- hind the concrete representation—the Mosaic law itself—S. Paul sees an imperious principle, an over- whelming presence, antagonistic to grace, to liberty, to spirit, and (in some aspects) even to life—abstract law, which, though the Mosaic ordinances are its most signal and complete embodiment, nevertheless is not exhausted therein, but exerts its crushing power over the conscience in diverse manifestations. The one—the concrete and special—is ὁ νόμος ; the other—the abstract and universal—is νόμος. To the full understanding of such passages as Rom. ii. 12 sq., iii. 19 sq., iv. 13 Sq., vil. I sq., Gal. iii. 10 sq., and in- deed to an adequate conception of the leading idea of 5. Paul’s doctrine of law and grace, this distinc- tion is indispensable.

FAULTS ΟΕ. GRAMMAR. II!

The Gospels again will furnish illustrations of a somewhat different kind. To us ‘Christ’ has become a proper name, and, as such, rejects the definite article. But in the Gospel narratives, if we except the headings or prefaces and the after-comments of the Evangelists themselves (eg. Matt. i. 1, Mark i. 1, John i. 17), no instance of this usage can be found. In the body of the narratives we read only of ὁ Χριστός, the Christ, the Messiah, whom the Jews had long expected, and who might or might not be identified with the person ‘Jesus,’ accord- ing to the spiritual discernment of the individual. Χριστὸς is nowhere connected with “Incods in the Gospels with the exception of John xvii. 3, where it occurs in a prophetic declaration of our Lord ἵνα ᾿ γινώσκωσιν τὸν μόνον ἀληθινὸν Θεὸν καὶ dv ἀπεστείλας ᾿Ιησοῦν Χριστόν; nor is it used without the de- finite article in more than four passages, Mark ix. 41 ἐν ὀνόματι ὅτι Χριστοῦ ἐστέ, Luke ii. 11 σωτὴρ ὅς ἐστιν Χριστὸς Κύριος, xxiii. 2 λέγοντα ἑαυτὸν Χριστόν, John ix. 22 αὐτὸν ὁμολογήσῃ Χριστόν, where the very ex- ceptions strengthen the rule. The turning-point is the Resurrection: then and not till then we hear of ‘Jesus Christ’ from the lips of contemporary speakers (Acts ii. 38, iii. 6), and from that time forward Christ _ begins to be used as a proper name, with or with- out the article. This fact points to a rule which

112 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

should be strictly observed in translation. In the Gospel narratives ὁ Χριστὸς should always be ren- dered ‘the Christ, and never ‘Christ’ simply. In some places our translators have observed this (e.g. Matt. xxvi. 63, Mark viii. 29), and occasionally they have even overdone the translation, rendering 6 Χριστὸς by ‘that Christ’ John i. 25, [vi. 69], or ‘the very Christ’ John vii. 26; but elsewhere under exactly the same conditions the article is omitted, e.g. Matt. Xvi. 16, Xxiv. 5, Luke xxiii. 35, 39, etc. Yet the ad- vantage of recognising its presence even in extreme cases, where at first sight it seems intrusive, would be great. In such an instance as that of Herod’s enquiry, Matt. ii. 4 ποῦ ὁ Χριστὸς γεννᾶται, ‘Where Christ should be born, probably all would acknow- ledge the advantage of substituting ‘ze Christ’; but would not the true significance of other passages, where the meaning is less obvious, be restored by the change? Thus in Matt. xi. 2 6 δὲ Ἰωάννης ἀκούσας ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ τὰ ἔργα τοῦ Χριστοῦ, the Evangelist’s meaning is not that the Baptist heard what Jesus was doing, but that he was informed of one per- forming those works of mercy and power which the Evangelic prophet had foretold as the special func- tion of the Messiah. I have studiously confined

1 TI find that the view, which is here maintained, of the use of Χριστὸς and ὁ Χριστὸς is different alike from that of Middleton (Greek

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR, τ

the rigid application of this rule to the historical portions of the Gospels and excepted the Evange- lists’ own prefaces and comments: but even in these latter a passage is occasionally brought out with much greater force by understanding τὸν Χριστὸν to apply to the office rather than the individual, and translat- ing it ‘tie Christ.’ In the genealogy of 5. Matthew for instance, where the generations are divided sym- metrically into three sets of fourteen, the Evangelist seems to connect the last of each set with a critical epoch in the history of Israel; the first reaching from the origin of the race to the commencement of the monarchy (ver. 6 ‘ David the king’); the second from the commencement of the monarchy to the captivity in Babylon; the third and last from the captivity to the coming of the Messiah, te Christ (ἕως τοῦ Χριστοῦ). Connected with the title of the Messiah is that of 26 prophet who occupied a large space in the Messianic horizon of the Jews—the prophet whom Moses had foretold, conceived by some to be the Messiah himself, by others an attendant in his train. In one passage only (John vii. 40) is 6 προφήτης, so uscd, rightly given in our Version. In the rest (John

Article on Mark ix. 41) and from those of others whom he criticizes. I should add that I wrote all these paragraphs relating to the definite article without consulting Middleton, and without conscious reminiscence of his views on any of the points discussed,

L. R. 8

114 ERRORS AND DEFECTS:

i. 21, 25, vi. 14) its force is weakened by the exag- gerated rendering ‘ hat prophet’; while in the margin of i. 21 (as if to show how little they understood the exigencies of the article) our translators have offered an alternative, ‘Art thou @ prophet ?’

As relating to the Person and Office of Christ another very important illustration presents itself. In Col. i. 19 S. Paul declares that ἐν αὐτῷ εὐδόκησεν πᾶν TO πλήρωμα κατοικῆσαι, which is rendered ‘ For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.’ Here an important theological term is sup- pressed by the omission of the article; for τὸ πλή- ρωμα is ‘the fulness, ‘the plenitude, p/eroma being a recognised expression to denote the totality of the Divine powers and attributes (John i. 16, Eph. i. 23, iii. 19, iv. 13, Col. ii. 9), and one which afterwards became notorious in the speculative systems of the Gnostic sects. And with this fact before us, it is a question whether we should not treat τὸ πλήρωμα as a quasi-personality and translate ‘In Him all che Fulness was pleased to dwell, thus getting rid of the ellipsis which our translators have supplied by the Father in italics; but at all events the article must be preserved.

Again, more remotely connected with our Lord’s office is another error of omission. It is true of Christianity, as it is true of no other religious system,

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR, ΤΙΝ

that the religion is identified with, is absorbed in, the Person of its founder. The Gospel is Christ and Christ only. This fact finds expression in many ways: but more especially in the application of the same language to the one and to the other. In most cases this identity of terms is equally apparent in the English and in the Greek. But in one instance it is obliterated by a mistranslation of the definite article. Our Lord in S. John’s Gospel, in answer to the dis- ciple’s question ‘ How can we know ¢he way?’ answers ‘lam the way’ (xiv. 5,6). Corresponding to this we ought to find that in no less than four places in the Acts of the Apostles the Gospel is called ‘ the way’ absolutely; ix. 2 ‘If he found any that were of the way (ἐάν τινας εὕρῃ τῆς ὁδοῦ ὄντας)"; xix. 9 ‘ Divers believed not, but spake evil of the way’; xix. 23 “There arose no small stir about the way’; xxiv. 22 ‘Having more perfect knowledge of the way’; but in all these passages the fact disappears in the English Version, which varies the rendering between ‘¢hzs way’ and ‘¢hat way,’ but never once translates τὴν ὁδόν ‘the way.’

But more especially are these omissions of the article frequent in those passages which relate to the Second Advent and its accompanying terrors or glories. The imagery of this great crisis was defi-, nitely conceived, and as such the Apostles refer to it.

8—2

116 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

In the Epistles to the Thessalonians more especially S. Paul mentions having repeatedly dwelt on these topics to his converts; ‘ Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things ?’ (2 Thess. ii. 5). Accordingly, he appeals to incidents connected with the Second Advent, as known facts: ἐὰν μὴ ἔλθῃ ἡ ἀποστασία πρῶτον Kal ἀποκαλυφθῇ ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς ἁμαρτίας [v. 2. ἀνομίας] ‘ Except the falling away come first and ¢#e man of sin be revealed, where our Version makes the Apostle say, ‘a falling away,’ ‘¢iat man of sin,’ just as a little lower down it translates 6 ἄνομος ‘that wicked,’ instead of ‘the lawless one. Similarly in the Epistle to the Hebrews (xi. 10) it is said of Abraham in the original that ‘He looked for the city which hath ¢he foundations (ἐξεδέχετο τὴν τοὺς θεμελίους ἔχουσαν πόλιν) A definite image here rises before the sacred writers mind of the new Jerusalem such as it is described in the Apocalypse, ‘The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and in them the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb’ (xxi. 14), ‘The foundations of the wall of the city were garnished with all manner of precious stones, εἰς, (xxi. 19 54.). But in our Version the words are robbed of their meaning, and Abraham is made to look for “ὦ city which hath foundations ’—a senseless expression, for no city is without them. Again, in the Apoca- 1 See Abp, Trench’s Authorised Version, Ὁ. 86. .

FAULTS OF GRAMMAR. II7

lypse the definite article is more than once disregarded under similar circumstances. Take for instance vii. 13, 14 ‘What are these which are arrayed in white robes (τὰς στολὰς Tas Aeveas)?’ with the reply, ‘ These are they which came out of great tribulation (ἐκ τῆς θλίψεως τῆς peyadns)’; xvii. 1 ‘That sitteth upon many waters’ (ἐπὶ τῶν ὑδάτων τῶν πολλῶν, for this was the reading in their text). And another instance, not very dissimilar, occurs in the Gospels. The same expression is used six times in S. Matthew (viii. 12, xiii. 42, 50, xxii. 13, xxiv. 51, xxv. 30) and once in S. Luke (xiii. 28) to describe the despair and misery of the condemned: ἐκεῖ ἔσται 6 κλαυθμὸς καὶ ὁ βρυγμὸς τῶν ὀδόντων, where the rendering should be corrected into ‘There shall be ¢he wailing and ¢he gnashing of teeth.’ |

The last instance which I shall take connected with this group of facts and ideas relating to the end of the world is more subtle, but not on that account less important. I refer to the peculiar sense of ἡ ὀργή, as occurring in a passage which has been variously explained, but which seems to admit only of one probable interpretation, Rom. xii. 19 μὴ ἑαυτοὺς ἐκδικοῦντες, ἀγαπητοί, ἀλλὰ δότε τόπον TH ὀργῇ" γέ- γραπται γὰρ ᾿Ἐμοὶ ἐκδίκησις, ἐγὼ ἀνταποδώσω, λέγει Κύριος. With this compare Rom. v. 9 σωθησόμεθα δι’ αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῆς ὀργῆς, Which is rendered ‘ We shall

118 ERRORS AND DEFECTS.

be saved from wrath through him,’ and more especially 1 Thess. ii. 16 ἔφθασεν (ἔφθακεν) δὲ ἐπ᾽ αὐτοὺς ἡ ὀργὴ εἰς τέλος, where the definite article is correctly repro- duced in our Version, ‘For ¢e wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.’ From these passages it appears that ἡ ὀργή, ‘the wrath, used absolutely, signifies the Divine retribution; and the force of 5. Paul’s injunction in Rom. xii. 19 δότε τύπον TH ὀργῇ is this; ‘Do not avenge yourselves: do not anticipate the Divine retribution; do not thrust yourselves into God’s place, but leave room for His judgments ’—a sense which the English rendering ‘rather give place unto wrath’ does not suggest, and probably was not intended to represent. In the same way τὸ θέλημα is the Divine Will (Rom. ii. 18 γινώσκεις τὸ θέλημα)

1 This word θέλημα came to be so appropriated to the Divine Will, that it is sometimes used in this sense even without the definite article ; e.g. Ignat. Rom. 1 ἐάνπερ θέλημα ἣ τοῦ ἀξιωθῆναί με (the correct text), Ephes. 20 ἐάν με καταξιώσῃ Ἰησοῦς Χριστὸς ἐν τῇ προσευχῇ ὑμῶν καὶ θέλημα ἢ, Smyrin. 1 υἱὸν Θεοῦ κατὰ θέλημα καὶ δύναμιν [Θεοῦ] (where Θεοῦ is doubtful), 11 κατὰ θέλημα κατηξιώθην.

These passages point to the true interpretation of 1 Cor. xvi. 12 οὐκ ἦν θέλημα ἵνα viv ἔλθῃ, ἐλεύσεται δὲ ὅταν εὐκαιρήσῃ which is (I believe) universally interpreted as in our English Version ‘his will