THE GLOBE. THURSDAY, JULY 14, 1881. THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2272, 14 July 1881, Page 2

THE GLOBE. THURSDAY, JULY 14, 1881. THE REVISED NEW TESTAMENT.

General interest will naturally be felt in the result of the labors of the company appointed to revise the Now Testament, and the copies that have arrived by mail will he scanned with much curiosity and thought. Expectation was rather sharpened than otherwise by the action of the solicitors for the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, who, it will be remembered, before the issue of the newwork, proclaimed the quoting of passages from it as illegal, threatened the “ Record ” and other papers, and demanded apologies for the wrong done. At the time wo called attention to the singularity of such action as coming from a firm who, it was inferred, were acting on behalf of the most venerable of our educational institutions. Speaking broadly it may be said that the new edition is a failure. Most of the English papers agree in this. The Revisers have stepped out of the bonnds prescribed to them. The first rule agreed to by the Committee of Convocation on the 25th of May IS7O, was “to introduce • as few alterations as possible into the . text of the Authorised Version,consistently i with faithfulness.” And the reason for such an instruction is self-evident 1 enough. The Authorised Version is a , model of nervous English ; it was 1 written at a time when the English language was hardening into its present form, and it possesses in consequence the freshness of youth, combined with the result of the ripe scholarship of the forty-seven scholars who worked at it from 1607 to 1610. But there is another t and a stronger reason why the Authorised Version should not be altered in any way 1 except were absolutely necessary. For more than two centuries and a half its words and phrases have been eating themselves into the national mind. It has | served as the solace for millions of onr countrymen at all times and in all places. From the king to the beggar, all have had their sorrows solaced, their joys tempered by the I harmonious rythms in which its sublime • truths are enfolded. It is a serious matter to disturb the wording of a book which has been incorporated, as it were, into the very life-blood of the nation. r Where the text was manifestly wrong, there, of course, it was expected that the Revisers would correct the error, but it was trusted the revisions would he as few and as far between as was possible, and ■ that, if there was to he a fault on any side, it would rather lie in the Revisers passing over slight shades of difference of meaning between the English and the Greek original, in order not to disturb the wording of the present version. This was the broad and catholic view taken by the Committee of Convocation, and it is, we think, a view that would commend itself to any man with a wide knowledge of the world and a sympathetic feeling towards the masses, who are not touched by the minuter shades of scholarship, bat would naturally bo exceedingly touched if familiar phrases which they had so frequently quoted, and on the truth conveyed in which they had so long built their conduct in life, should bo needlessly tampered with. But the Committee apparently did not take into consideration the prime failing of tho larger number of scholars. That failing results in a willingness to place critical accuracy in a position superior to the wider spirit of the text. But in the present instance there is even worse than this. There are cases in which there seems no rhyme or reason for tho alteration made. For instance, in tho Lord’s Prayer, what good case can be made out for altering “ Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven ” into “ Thy will ho done as in heaven so in earth.” There seems not to be tho slightest difference between tho meaning of the two sentences. Then, in other parts of the Bible, “ Extort no moro” is to ho read for “ Exact no more” ; “ The hungry he hath filled with good things,” for “He hath filled the hungry with good things”; “ All that is mine is thine” for “ All that I have is thine,” and so on in a largo number of instances. In many cases tho alterations are absolutely objectionable. In the Lord’s Prayer “ Deliver us from evil” is to be altered into “ Deliver us from tho Evil One,” while in St. Paul’s grand definition of charity the word “ charity” is turned into “ love,” an alteration that not only destroys the harmony of the passage, but does not express the true spirit of the writer’s meaning nearly as well, by reason of the various uses in which the word “ love” has been employed. But it cannot ho denied that the Revisers have done much good work, as might have been expected from tho eminent scholars who have been engaged. A number of corrupt passages have had their true meaning brought out, and tho world is so much the richer in consequence. For instance, in the present version Agrippa’s remark to St. Paul roads “ Almost thou persuadest mo to bo a Christian.” The true rendering is, “With hut little persuasion thou wouldst faiu make me a Christian.” Agrippa did not mean that he was well-nigh converted by tho arguments used, but that St. Paul’s arguments were not sufficiently elaborated or conclusive. The true rendering gives a vastly different idea of Agrippa’s character. while it destroys an illusion and a phrase which have acted many a part in days gone by. lu tho doelriual portions of St. Paul’s Epistles, and in tho gospel of St. John, tho closer scholarship of tho new edition has brought out many* valuable results by clearing up much that was obscure. Tho faults of the now version being apparently well recognised by the English public, as evidenced by T the tone of the English press, it is little probable that tho now version will be universally accepted, unless tho blemishes to which we have alluded are rectified. “ Tho language,” says a contemporary, “ of tho Authorised Version, with its solemn and

pathetic notea of archaism, is entangled in the heartstrings of tho people.” It is not likely that the public will eeo with apathy that which they have known so long and loved so well, needlessly tampered with. The work of the Revisers need not in any way be thrown away, but tho New Version will have to be remodelled before it becomes generally acceptable.