REVISING THE BIBLE.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1551, 21 September 1912, Page 9

REVISING THE BIBLE.

A' few months ago (writes the London correspondent of'.a iVewYork paper),, I noted.'tllo forthcomings publication' of- the results of a , singular task: that had.been set himself by a distinguished lawyer, Sir ■Edward Clarke. Sir Edward has been .'spending his leisure .in preparing a "Bow version of'"St. Paul's- Epistles'/ which should.be n cross between the Authorised Version of 1611 and tho .Revised Version of 1881, embodying the "necessary",alterations found in tne latter, but retaining as far as. possible the familinr language of the,former. 'As might have been expected, this new hybrid satisfied nobody, it pleases neither those who are irritated by the least disturbance of tho "rhythm" of the A.V. nor those who hold that the first duty of a translator is to make clear to English readers, the meaning of the original. Sir Edward Clarke's experiment, however, has at least this justification, that it has-called'forth the article on

"The Translation of tho New Testament" ,in the current numbar of-the ."London Quarterly Eeview." (The "London ,Quarttrly,"'by the way, is by no means the same thing as the London "Quarterly," although the'printing '.'style" of some American composing-rooms refuses to recognise any difference between them.) The author of this article, Ernest E. Kellett, is 'not a barrister, and, therefore, perhaps, ho is lacking in the main qualification claimed for himself by Sir Edward Clarke, namely, that he has spent his life , "in endeavouring to put : logical thought into clear, ■ forcible, and .harmonious language." But his experience of more than "twenty, years, as a master'in one of our leading secondary schools— where his main work, I believe, has been, the teaching.of English' at anyrato helped him to realise the importance of some problems of' interpretation that lie ■outside tho practice of the . lawcourts: A scholar with • no taint of pedantry, he is able to appraise at'its true value the loose and" casual fashion

in which Sir Edward Clarke and his sympathisers approach the question. Mr. Kellott's first point against the A.V. —and therefore against any other version, which, like.the E.V.,is a mere modification of it—is that it is.a literal translation. "It may-be laid down as a rule with hardly a single exception that a literal translation cannot be an exact one." When Jo'wett translated Plato,- or Jebb, Sophocles, or Butcher the Poetics of Aristotle, not the slightest attempt was made to attain literality... The trans-lators'.vrcrc..masters-of''both Greek and .English; but-from their very desire for precision, they, shunned literality like the plague/ Mr.- Kellett gives instances where the Revisers, through this , - fetich of literality; have left the reader ■ trith hardly any clue to'tho meaning of the text. ■ • ■ • A more important objection, is the archaic style, a feature which was deliberately retained by ' the ' 1881 Devisers. "It ■is just here," declares Sir. Ktillc.lt, "tha't'our main quarrel with them lies. Archaicism is the unpardonable sin-in a translation of -tho New Testament; for there is nothing archaic in tho original." Of course, there are some' books in whose translation an archaic stylo is not only permissible, but essential; for example, the Odyssey, the Bhasravad Gita, the Mabinogion, and large portions of the Old Testament. The ."little epic of Ruth" is instanced by Mr. Kollett qmonu'these. But. in order that the peculiar character ! of those very episodes may bo properly, appreciated, the style that is appropriate to them must not bo used also— as both Hie A.V. and the K.V. use it—for thp historical narratives of the Gospels and tho Acta, and the philosophical' argument of the Epistles:

In Jlr. Kellott's opinion this undiscrim. fnatin? employment of an archaic stvle involves a serious practical loss. "To retain tho phraseology of the A.V. is fit merely a niece of nrehaistic pedantrv. Tt is to run the risk of throwing the life pf Christ into the rrnlm of dreamland. Told in a style which recoils that of Jlnlorv, it tonrts l» give the impression that Tsathan.-iel is no more real than Sir Bnrs. Hint tho Woman of Samaria is as rjhanhsrnal as Guinevere, and that the Good News" was proulninietl by its earliest teachers in a dead jariron' no more msnifioant than that of chivalry i= to us." Yet. a.? .the rpcent discoveries of Egyptian nanyri haw shown, the Greek of Hie N«\v Testament was the everyday speech of tho

Jfr. Kell-tt is-well aware that tho prenavnlion'nf ■the-'kind of trnnslotion 1»> 'lesircs will be-no o-i=v.mar>»r. Porhans hn . 3ci>rcoly rnipha*i?w -ufficientlv tin: nMd of ,i ereater subdivision of lahoiir Mi-in has hithn-to bern H-ipd-inaitr trans-

latiou or revision. "]?or examnle. tlie determination, of the- text might surely

bo put into the hands of a group of scholars- that had no responsibility for flio translation proper. Mr. Kellett's irrefutable doctrine that tho stylo of the rendering should correspond to variations in tho r,trj-1o of the original points also to tno need of a. certain specialisation iu tlio choice- of tho translators. Even \ndre«- L ail? , ;ith nll , li< v[ . rsati m Vi , va3 content with translating Homer and Theocritus. Ho did not so presume upon his successes in this region as to attempt English versions of the "Anabasis" and ru'-' « Coro »«" and tho "Nicomachean JitJllCS.