The law of the LORD is perfect, converting the soul:
the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the
simple.
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart :
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the
eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever :
the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous
altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is Thy servant warned: and in
keeping of them there is great reward.
Who can understand his errors cleanse Thou me
from secret faults.
Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins ;
let them not have dominion over me : then shall I be
upright, and I shall be innocent from the great trans-
gression.
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my
heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my strength,
and my redeemer.
The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart :
the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the
eyes.
The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring for ever :
the judgments of the LORD are true and righteous
altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much
fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.
Moreover by them is Thy servant warned: and in
keeping of them there is great reward.
Who can understand his errors cleanse Thou me
from secret faults.
Keep back Thy servant also from presumptuous sins ;
let them not have dominion over me : then shall I be
upright, and I shall be innocent from the great trans-
gression.
Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my
heart, be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my strength,
and my redeemer.
PSALM 19. 7-14.
The story of the English Bible has often been written, and well written; with sympathy and insight, that is, as well as with knowledge . In what follows here it is told from the standpoint of the Tercentenary of the Authorized Version, which has now pursued its blessed and fruitful career for three hundred years. What went before it came, is dealt with only in so far as that is necessary to trace back to its sources this river of God which is full of water, and which has been bringing beauty and fertility wherever it has flowed. What has happened since it came, is dealt with only in so far as that is necessary in order to see how much has grown out of this wonderful version, which is the English Bible rather than an English version, as it has pursued its unique course to the glory of God and the good of men. For its natural strength is not abated; nor has its fascination grown less as the years have gone by. Inviting as the theme is, nothing has been said regarding the ancient versions and manuscripts which lie behind our English translation; and which, in an altogether adequate manner, fill up the gap between the Bible as we have it now and the original autographs which have long since disappeared. There is no translated classic which has such a wealth of manuscript authority behind it as the Bible ; and those who speak as if the existence of various readings, and the like, left us in any real doubt as to what the message of Scripture is in any detail, to say nothing of its message in its outstanding doctrines, must be strangely ignorant of the facts of the case, or weirdly biassed against the Evangel. Even apart from the manuscripts and versions which are so abundant and helpful, the early Christian Fathers made such liberal use of the Scriptures in their writings, that if everything else were lost which comes to us from other sources, the greater part of the Bible could be recovered from their works. In particular, the whole of the New Testament, except a few verses, is quoted by them in one passage or another .
The English-speaking peoples everywhere owe so much to the English Bible and especially to that version of it which for well-nigh three centuries was the only version read that it would be both unseemly and ungrateful were no adequate notice taken of the Tercentenary of its appearance in the land, as a great gift of God to the nation. All through these three hundred years it has been spreading light and life and liberty ; and there must be multitudes who are eager to acknowledge their vast indebtedness to it. It has comforted the sorrowing and cheered the downcast. It has guided the perplexed and strengthened those who were ready to perish. It has interpreted the deepest emotions of the believer and increased his gladness. It has led the sinful and erring back to God. And still there are inexhaustible depths of comfort and inspiration and growth, for those who explore the riches of its treasury.
In the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, the river from the Temple, which grew without tributaries, flowed eastward to the Desert and the Dead Sea; and by the same law of spiritual gravitation which prevails in the realm of the consecrated life, this other river of living water from the throne of God and of the Lamb has always flowed down to the wilderness, and has enriched the lives of the needy and poor. Its work, too, has been to make all the land as if it were beside an Engedi; to render the repulsive attractive and the sordid fair ; to turn the barren places into the garden of the Lord ; and to make the Dead Sea teem with life, even as the Great Sea. ' Everything shall live whither the river 'cometh.'
It is well, therefore, that those whom this river long since too deep except for those who can swim has so greatly blessed, should walk beside its banks that they may see how marvelously God has led His people, and what great things He has done for them. If our celebration of the Tercentenary is to be worthy of such an occasion, there must not only be emotion, but research ; and the fuller the knowledge is of what God has wrought, the more profound will the gratitude be. If we are to possess the whole land, and give thanks with intelligence, it is both natural and obvious that we should deal, first, with the sources of the river as they are to be found in previous English versions, whether partial or complete ; that we should then consider with greater detail how the river itself arose; and, finally, that we should look at it as it has flowed down through the ages ever since, in splendor and majesty. To that threefold division there may well be added, as supplement, some reference to the Revised Version of our own time, which will at least do epoch-making service in hearty co-operation with the Authorized Version, how- ever unlikely it seems that it will ever displace it in popular esteem or popular use.
More than any of our predecessors we can say that others have labored, and we have entered into their "labors" ; and we shall best show our gratitude to the Authorized Version, and our loyalty for all it has achieved, by entering into the whole of the vast inheritance it has brought us . No true friend of the Authorized Version ever claimed finality for it, any more than finality can be claimed for the Revised Version, or any other. That the Authorized Version may continue to be the English Bible to the end of time, and must always be an object of wonder and delight, can in no way interfere with the Christian duty and privilege of welcoming light whenever it breaks forth, or in whatever way it may come; since all light is of God, and belongs to those who are His heirs. It is the strong and confident who are truly tolerant and open-eyed, and hospitable to the ever-deepening revelation.
Many saints of God have contributed to the noble inheritance in which we now rejoice; many whose names have perished although their work endures, and the list is still unfinished. To the roll-call of fame on which such names appear as those of Caedmon and Bede; Alfred and Rolle; Wycliffe and Purvey; Tyndale and Coverdale; Cromwell and Cranmer; Rogers and Whittingham; Reynolds and Andrewes; Saville and Harding: there fall to be added in our own generation such names as those of Alford and Westcott; Hort and Scrivener; Davidson and Perowne; and other scholars who have had open eyes on all study and research, and hospitable hearts for all truth, and have kept Biblical learning in our land abreast of all the discoveries and progress of modern times. Those who deem it necessary to depreciate the Authorized Version in the interests of the Revised are shortsighted and circumscribed; while those who think that loyalty to the Authorized Version demands hostility to the Revised are failing in their loyalty to Him who is ever causing new light to break forth for those who have the eyes to see it and the hearts to appreciate it.
Perhaps the best form which the popular use of either of the versions can now assume, is that the two should be used side by side, at least for private study . This can now be literally done, either with the two in parallel columns as they can be had in convenient forms, or in interlinear editions such as are now also in use. To compare the two versions, to trace the changes which have been made in the later version, and to understand why they were made, is to know the Scriptures themselves after a new fashion; and manifestly the purpose of every translation is to enable those who read it to do this, and thus to bring 'them face to face with the real meaning of what God the Self-revealer has spoken to men in His Word. This mode of comparing Scripture with Scripture often provides the most helpful of all textual commentaries, and brings the reader nearest to the truth.
Those alone have the true reverence for Scripture, or true faith in its message, who seek always and everywhere to hear what God has said, and to be obedient to the heavenly vision. "Its seed is in itself," as the Word itself has it in another connection ; and those who really trust in it to do its own Divine, saving, keeping work, will never yield to that worship of the external which reaches its climax in those who worship the letter, and make a fetish of the Book itself, apart from what it says. Nor will they ever think of it as if it acted mechanically, as a sort of charm. Marvelous as its fruits have been, alike in individual lives and among the nations, it never works by magic, but always on moral and spiritual lines . "The Spirit ' breathes upon the Word, and brings the truth to sight." Little as God needs our learning, He has even less need of our ignorance; and those alone are truly loyal, either to the old version or the new, who use every, means in their power to get at the very heart of the revelation of God in Christ, as it is contained for just in His Holy Word.
It is in the Word itself, therefore, and not in any mistaken views of it, no matter how strenuously these may be advocated, or how conscientiously they may be believed, that our trust is to be placed ; and that version of the Scriptures which most fully sets forth God's actual manifestation of Himself and His purpose of grace among men, in terms which the ordinary man can understand, is the version which will bear most fruit, and which therefore ought to be most heartily welcomed and most widely circulated. Whatever is to be the future relation between the Authorized Version and the Revised Version, and whether as seems most probable they are to flourish side by side, history has abundantly vindicated the claim of the former to be a true and adequate representation of the Word of God as set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It is a representation, indeed, which has far more of the characteristics of an original work than of a translation from another language. What has been claimed with justice for Luther's German Bible may be equally claimed for the Authorized Version among ourselves that it is rather a re -writing than a mere translation ; a transfusing of the original into a new language rather than a mere version of the letter ; so deep is the insight, so true the sympathy, so perfect the command of clear popular language. Its ascendency can only be ascribed to its intrinsic excellence. It is the English Bible. Its authority arises from its Divine right to rule; and to deny this is to be guilty of lese majeste.
Even those who emphasize most the inadequacy of the text on which the Authorized Version is based, and the greatness of the progress in comparative philology and the study of the original languages which has been made since the days of King James, hasten to acknowledge, and that in no grudging fashion, that nothing could have more truly or more impressively set forth not only the meaning but the spirit of Scripture, than it did. Nor are those awanting among students and scholars who go further, and say that such was the spiritual sympathy of the translators of three centuries ago, and such their scholarly insight into the fullness of the Word, that they have wonderfully anticipated in their renderings the truer text to which they had no access. "The Revised New Testament is substantially the same as that of Wycliffe and Tyndale, though they lacked the MSS. we have today," says one who is deeply impressed with the superiority of the later text and of its new rendering. The Revisers themselves say, and say it with enthusiasm, that the more they worked with the Authorized Version, the greater did their admiration of it become . "We have had to study this great version carefully and minutely, line by line," they say in their Preface; "and the longer we have been engaged upon it, the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and, we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm."
A competent scholar and critic has gone even further than to suggest a happy anticipation of the true text and the true rendering on the part of the translators in 1611. He maintains that "the Greek of the New Testament may never be understood as classical Greek is understood;" and that the Revisers have in reality distorted passages formerly correctly rendered "by translating in accordance with Attic idiom phrases that convey in later Greek a wholly different sense, the sense which the earlier translators in happy ignorance had recognized that the context demanded." Be this as it may, nothing that is said about versions or translations or texts ought ever to be allowed to make us feel that we are removed even by one step from the very mind of God as He has revealed it to us in His Holy Word.
The Bible not only occupies a unique place in the literature and life of the human race, and has some inherent power of its own which no other book has ; it bears evidence of having been given in order that it might be rendered into other tongues. It loses less than any other book by being translated ; and manifold testimony has been borne to the fact that the Authorized Version in particular resembles a book in its original language rather than a translation . "The tongue of the Hebrew, the idioms of Hellenistic Greek, lent themselves with a curious felicity to the purposes of translation." Although it is Oriental in its origin, the Bible is at home in the West as truly as in the East. Other sacred books, like trees, have their zones of vegetation beyond which they cannot grow ; but where ever man can live, the Bible can flourish as native to the soil. And nowhere has this been made more manifest than during these bygone three centuries in our own land. Muir.
The English-speaking peoples everywhere owe so much to the English Bible and especially to that version of it which for well-nigh three centuries was the only version read that it would be both unseemly and ungrateful were no adequate notice taken of the Tercentenary of its appearance in the land, as a great gift of God to the nation. All through these three hundred years it has been spreading light and life and liberty ; and there must be multitudes who are eager to acknowledge their vast indebtedness to it. It has comforted the sorrowing and cheered the downcast. It has guided the perplexed and strengthened those who were ready to perish. It has interpreted the deepest emotions of the believer and increased his gladness. It has led the sinful and erring back to God. And still there are inexhaustible depths of comfort and inspiration and growth, for those who explore the riches of its treasury.
In the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, the river from the Temple, which grew without tributaries, flowed eastward to the Desert and the Dead Sea; and by the same law of spiritual gravitation which prevails in the realm of the consecrated life, this other river of living water from the throne of God and of the Lamb has always flowed down to the wilderness, and has enriched the lives of the needy and poor. Its work, too, has been to make all the land as if it were beside an Engedi; to render the repulsive attractive and the sordid fair ; to turn the barren places into the garden of the Lord ; and to make the Dead Sea teem with life, even as the Great Sea. ' Everything shall live whither the river 'cometh.'
It is well, therefore, that those whom this river long since too deep except for those who can swim has so greatly blessed, should walk beside its banks that they may see how marvelously God has led His people, and what great things He has done for them. If our celebration of the Tercentenary is to be worthy of such an occasion, there must not only be emotion, but research ; and the fuller the knowledge is of what God has wrought, the more profound will the gratitude be. If we are to possess the whole land, and give thanks with intelligence, it is both natural and obvious that we should deal, first, with the sources of the river as they are to be found in previous English versions, whether partial or complete ; that we should then consider with greater detail how the river itself arose; and, finally, that we should look at it as it has flowed down through the ages ever since, in splendor and majesty. To that threefold division there may well be added, as supplement, some reference to the Revised Version of our own time, which will at least do epoch-making service in hearty co-operation with the Authorized Version, how- ever unlikely it seems that it will ever displace it in popular esteem or popular use.
More than any of our predecessors we can say that others have labored, and we have entered into their "labors" ; and we shall best show our gratitude to the Authorized Version, and our loyalty for all it has achieved, by entering into the whole of the vast inheritance it has brought us . No true friend of the Authorized Version ever claimed finality for it, any more than finality can be claimed for the Revised Version, or any other. That the Authorized Version may continue to be the English Bible to the end of time, and must always be an object of wonder and delight, can in no way interfere with the Christian duty and privilege of welcoming light whenever it breaks forth, or in whatever way it may come; since all light is of God, and belongs to those who are His heirs. It is the strong and confident who are truly tolerant and open-eyed, and hospitable to the ever-deepening revelation.
Many saints of God have contributed to the noble inheritance in which we now rejoice; many whose names have perished although their work endures, and the list is still unfinished. To the roll-call of fame on which such names appear as those of Caedmon and Bede; Alfred and Rolle; Wycliffe and Purvey; Tyndale and Coverdale; Cromwell and Cranmer; Rogers and Whittingham; Reynolds and Andrewes; Saville and Harding: there fall to be added in our own generation such names as those of Alford and Westcott; Hort and Scrivener; Davidson and Perowne; and other scholars who have had open eyes on all study and research, and hospitable hearts for all truth, and have kept Biblical learning in our land abreast of all the discoveries and progress of modern times. Those who deem it necessary to depreciate the Authorized Version in the interests of the Revised are shortsighted and circumscribed; while those who think that loyalty to the Authorized Version demands hostility to the Revised are failing in their loyalty to Him who is ever causing new light to break forth for those who have the eyes to see it and the hearts to appreciate it.
Perhaps the best form which the popular use of either of the versions can now assume, is that the two should be used side by side, at least for private study . This can now be literally done, either with the two in parallel columns as they can be had in convenient forms, or in interlinear editions such as are now also in use. To compare the two versions, to trace the changes which have been made in the later version, and to understand why they were made, is to know the Scriptures themselves after a new fashion; and manifestly the purpose of every translation is to enable those who read it to do this, and thus to bring 'them face to face with the real meaning of what God the Self-revealer has spoken to men in His Word. This mode of comparing Scripture with Scripture often provides the most helpful of all textual commentaries, and brings the reader nearest to the truth.
Those alone have the true reverence for Scripture, or true faith in its message, who seek always and everywhere to hear what God has said, and to be obedient to the heavenly vision. "Its seed is in itself," as the Word itself has it in another connection ; and those who really trust in it to do its own Divine, saving, keeping work, will never yield to that worship of the external which reaches its climax in those who worship the letter, and make a fetish of the Book itself, apart from what it says. Nor will they ever think of it as if it acted mechanically, as a sort of charm. Marvelous as its fruits have been, alike in individual lives and among the nations, it never works by magic, but always on moral and spiritual lines . "The Spirit ' breathes upon the Word, and brings the truth to sight." Little as God needs our learning, He has even less need of our ignorance; and those alone are truly loyal, either to the old version or the new, who use every, means in their power to get at the very heart of the revelation of God in Christ, as it is contained for just in His Holy Word.
It is in the Word itself, therefore, and not in any mistaken views of it, no matter how strenuously these may be advocated, or how conscientiously they may be believed, that our trust is to be placed ; and that version of the Scriptures which most fully sets forth God's actual manifestation of Himself and His purpose of grace among men, in terms which the ordinary man can understand, is the version which will bear most fruit, and which therefore ought to be most heartily welcomed and most widely circulated. Whatever is to be the future relation between the Authorized Version and the Revised Version, and whether as seems most probable they are to flourish side by side, history has abundantly vindicated the claim of the former to be a true and adequate representation of the Word of God as set forth in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. It is a representation, indeed, which has far more of the characteristics of an original work than of a translation from another language. What has been claimed with justice for Luther's German Bible may be equally claimed for the Authorized Version among ourselves that it is rather a re -writing than a mere translation ; a transfusing of the original into a new language rather than a mere version of the letter ; so deep is the insight, so true the sympathy, so perfect the command of clear popular language. Its ascendency can only be ascribed to its intrinsic excellence. It is the English Bible. Its authority arises from its Divine right to rule; and to deny this is to be guilty of lese majeste.
Even those who emphasize most the inadequacy of the text on which the Authorized Version is based, and the greatness of the progress in comparative philology and the study of the original languages which has been made since the days of King James, hasten to acknowledge, and that in no grudging fashion, that nothing could have more truly or more impressively set forth not only the meaning but the spirit of Scripture, than it did. Nor are those awanting among students and scholars who go further, and say that such was the spiritual sympathy of the translators of three centuries ago, and such their scholarly insight into the fullness of the Word, that they have wonderfully anticipated in their renderings the truer text to which they had no access. "The Revised New Testament is substantially the same as that of Wycliffe and Tyndale, though they lacked the MSS. we have today," says one who is deeply impressed with the superiority of the later text and of its new rendering. The Revisers themselves say, and say it with enthusiasm, that the more they worked with the Authorized Version, the greater did their admiration of it become . "We have had to study this great version carefully and minutely, line by line," they say in their Preface; "and the longer we have been engaged upon it, the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and, we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences, and the felicities of its rhythm."
A competent scholar and critic has gone even further than to suggest a happy anticipation of the true text and the true rendering on the part of the translators in 1611. He maintains that "the Greek of the New Testament may never be understood as classical Greek is understood;" and that the Revisers have in reality distorted passages formerly correctly rendered "by translating in accordance with Attic idiom phrases that convey in later Greek a wholly different sense, the sense which the earlier translators in happy ignorance had recognized that the context demanded." Be this as it may, nothing that is said about versions or translations or texts ought ever to be allowed to make us feel that we are removed even by one step from the very mind of God as He has revealed it to us in His Holy Word.
The Bible not only occupies a unique place in the literature and life of the human race, and has some inherent power of its own which no other book has ; it bears evidence of having been given in order that it might be rendered into other tongues. It loses less than any other book by being translated ; and manifold testimony has been borne to the fact that the Authorized Version in particular resembles a book in its original language rather than a translation . "The tongue of the Hebrew, the idioms of Hellenistic Greek, lent themselves with a curious felicity to the purposes of translation." Although it is Oriental in its origin, the Bible is at home in the West as truly as in the East. Other sacred books, like trees, have their zones of vegetation beyond which they cannot grow ; but where ever man can live, the Bible can flourish as native to the soil. And nowhere has this been made more manifest than during these bygone three centuries in our own land. Muir.
Experience The Book.
No comments:
Post a Comment