THE REVISED OLD TESTAMENT.
It required fifty years of the Elizabethan age to introduce that revision of the English Bible which has so long been the standard edition of the Holy Scriptures in our tongue. It would be strange if the revision of that standard Bible which has just been completed were to come into immediate and general use. The New Testament revision met with a harsh reception from the critics of conservative temper; and it certainly has some defects, though the sense of the original is more obvious, to use the mildest term, in the new than in the older revision. The revised Old Testament has consumed fourteen years of the labor of the English and American committees, and the most obvious fact is that it is a more conservative piece of work than the revised New Testament. The committees probably profited by the buffetings of their New Testament revision brethren; but they had a simpler task, since they had not to settle the text of the original Hebrew, whereas the Greek text of the New Testament is still a battle ground of criticism. After all, however, the two revisions constitute one “revised Bible,” and must stand or fall together. The general judgment may probably run to the effect that the New Testament is revised too much and the Old too little. There is a special defect, however, in the New Testament English—it is not idiomatic, and it is not always intelligible. There is a rumor that it will be re-revised into harmony with the conservatism which characterizes the new Old Testament. It is not to be overlooked that there are various demands made upon a revision. Those who most earnestly desire one have in view a more plain and understandable text for popular use. Wycliffe’s great thought, “a Bible understonden of the people,” is their desire. But the literary demands upon the revisers exclude intelligibility by the people as a governing rule. This group of demands defies the skill of any revision committee. They ask for improvements; but they object to any changes. The Bible as an Elizabethan classic is their admiration and they seem not to be willing that the people should have any other Bible. There would seem to be ample room for both revisions; let the literary people have their English of 1611, while the people have English of this century. We are not yet, however, sufficiently advanced in the thinking which revision requires to qualify even the critics among us to distinguish between a classic text for scholars and a plain text for the millions. A modern English Bible will come by and by; we can afford to wait, and meanwhile to study the fruits of the labors of a Revision Committee loaded down with a great weight of conservative environments. For it is not the classicist alone who stands guard over the old English text; conservative theologians regard that old text as too sacred to be modernized, and distrust modernizing as involving changes in the moral and religious influence of the Bible upon mankind. The intelligibility of the Bible is not, to such thinkers, a leading requisite; reverence for its mysteries ranks all other considerations. We are probably outgrowing this view of Holy Scripture; but it is an opinion strong enough yet to keep utterly dead English locutions in the revised Old Testament of 1885. This conservatism is much stronger in England than in this country; the American Committee desired to substitute modern for obsolete words.
That any changes have been made under such respectable and imposing auspices is a great gain to Christian knowledge. The thing is done; the grand old text has been subjected to a revision. It is quite possible that we are entering an age of biblical revision; and it should be remembered that the Bible of 1611 closed an age of revision. It was the last in a series of revisions, each of which contributed to the perfection of the English text. We can not be content with an English Bible which employs which for who, wist for knew, earing for plowing and ouches for settings. The American Committee was thoroughly right in desiring to use modern words in these and other cases. If any revision is to stand, it must contain such modifications of the old text. A satisfactory English text can not be attained so long as the English Christians insist upon retaining archaic forms of such insignificance as the foregoing; there must be an agreement to make an English text on Wycliffe’s principle of popular intelligibleness, before a revision can be of very high utility. The present revision breaks the ice; we have begun; some time or other we shall go on to the logical conclusion of the movement—a modern English Bible for all who use our mighty speech. The assent of the conservative to a single change concedes the principle of revision; his assent to many changes prepares the way for all that are necessary to the modernizing of the Book of Books.