The Revised Scriptures.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 168, 16 October 1880, Page 2

The Revised Scriptures.

(From the Athenaeum.) The first edition, as it may be called, of the revised translation of the New Testament may be expected in the autumn, and along with the English translation two recensions of the Greek text will be issued simultaneously : the one will proceed from the Clarendon and the Other from the Pitt Press.

These two texts will exhibit a notable and rather suggestive contrast in the different methods pursued in their construction. The Oxford text will represent the critical spirit of the nineteenth century, which is somewhat prone to seek new departures and to break with the past. Accordingly the ■Clarendon will publish the text which the revisionists have found it necessary to frame for themselves, after careful weighing and mature consideration of all available evidence for and against the readings adopted. For the behoof, however, of those weaker vessels who continue to have a superstitious veneration for the name of Robert Stephens and the Greek used by the translators of 1611, all passages in which the Oxford text departs from the revised text will be indicated by foot-notes, and in these notes the reading of the Textus Receptus will be given. The Cambridge text will, on the contrary, be neither more nor less than a reprint of the Textus Receptus with foot-notes giving the reading adopted by the revisionists. Professor Palmer is responsible for the Clarendon text, Dr. Scrivener for the other. It is with regret that we hear it said that the form in which all Englishmen know, and most of them use, the Lord’s Prayer, is no longer to be the form which is to pass current. We shall rejoice if the report, which is widely circulated, proves incorrect; a greater calamity than such a change as rumor declares to be imminent it would be difficult at the present moment to imagine.