Errors of Translators.
These errors of the transcribers have been immeasurably increased by the translators. A perfect translation is impossible, and for these reasons: 1. No language has words to express perfectly all the words of another language. 2. Languages change with time and the words of one age have a different meaning in the next. 3. Many writers do not express themselves clearly, and it is often impossible to fully comprehend their meaning. This is especially true of Bible writers. 4. No two translators will grasp the meaning of a writer in exactly the same manner, or convey it in the same words.
In regard to the Old Testament the Hebrew language, as anciently written, was the most difficult of all languages to translate. It was written from right to left; the words contained no vowels; there were no intervening spaces between the words, and no punctuation marks. Even with the introduction of vowel points many words in Hebrew, as in English, have more than one meaning. Without these points, as originally written, the number is increased a hundred fold. The five English words, bag, beg, big, bog, and bug, are quite unlike and easily distinguished. Omit the vowels, as the ancient Jews did, and we have five words exactly alike, or rather, one word with five different meanings. The Hebrew language was thus largely composed of words with several meanings. As there were no spaces between words it was sometimes hard to tell where a word began or where it ended; and as there were no punctuation marks, and no spaces between sentences, paragraphs, or even sections, it was often difficult to determine the meaning of a writer after the words had been deciphered.
Here is the best known passage in the Bible printed in English as the Jews would have written it in Hebrew:
bllwhtmcmdgnkhtmnhtbdllhnvhntrhchwrhtfR
vgrfwsstbdrsvgrfdndrbldrdshtsvgnvhnstshtrnnd
nkhtsnhtrflvmrfsrvldtbnttpmttntnsdldnsrtbdrn
nmrvrfrlghtdnrphtdnmdg
In the printed text there is little danger of mistaking one letter for another; in the written text there is, especially if they resemble each other. The Hebrew letters corresponding to our D and R were nearly alike and easily confounded. Consequently in Numbers i, 14, we have “Eliasaph the son of Deuel,” and in Numbers ii, 14, “Eliasaph the son of Reuel.” Only God knows which is correct, and he does not care to enlighten us. Therefore we must believe that both are correct or be damned.
St. Jerome says: “When we translate the Hebrew into Latin we are sometimes guided by conjecture.” Le Clerc says: “The learned merely guess at the sense of the Old Testament in an infinity of places” (Sentim, p. 156). The Old Testament as we have it, then, consists largely of guesses and conjectures.
The title page of our Authorized Version of the Bible contains these words: “Translated out of the original tongues.” The Old Testament is declared to be a correct translation of the accepted Hebrew. In its preparation, however, the Greek more than the Hebrew version was followed. Referring to the King James translators, the historian John Clark Ridpath says: “Following the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew original, they fell into many errors which a riper scholarship would have avoided” (Cyclopedia of Universal History. Vol. II., p. 763). Instead of being a collection of original guesses and conjectures our Old Testament is, to a great extent, merely a bad English translation of a corrupted copy of a spurious Greek translation of the original (?) Hebrew.
On the title page of the Authorized Version of the New Testament appears another falsehood: “Translated out of the original Greek.” The original Greek of the New Testament, it is claimed, belongs to the first century. The “original Greek” out of which our version was translated is less than 500 years old. The Greek version from which it was translated was made by Erasmus in 1516. Referring to the materials employed by Erasmus in the preparation of his work, the Rev. Alexander Roberts, D. D., in his “Companion to the Revised Version of the English New Testament,” a work which the Committee on Revision delegated him to write and which was approved, makes the following admissions:
“In the Gospels he principally used a cursive MS. of the fifteenth or sixteenth century.”
“In the Acts and Epistles he chiefly followed a cursive MS. of the thirteenth or fourteenth century.”
“For the Apocalypse he had only one mutilated manuscript.”
“There are words in the professed original for which no divine authority can be pleaded, but which are entirely due to the learning and imagination of Erasmus.”
Little do Christians realize how much of the Bible is due to the imagination of theologians.
In view of the difficulties that I have mentioned, if the translators had earnestly tried to give us a faithful translation of the Bible their work would have teemed with imperfections. But they did not even attempt to give us a faithful translation. We know that in numerous instances they purposely mistranslated its words. A hundred examples might be cited. One will suffice—sheol.
The translators themselves ought to be the best judges of each other’s work. Of Beza’s New Testament, Castalio says: “It would require a large volume to mark down the multitude of errors which swarm in Beza’s translation.” Of Castalio’s translation, Beza says: “It is sacrilegious, wicked, and downright pagan.” Reviewing Luther’s Bible, Zwingle writes: “Thou corruptest, O Luther, the Word of God. Thou art known to be an open and notorious perverter of the Holy Scriptures.” Luther, in turn, calls the translators of Zwingle’s Bible “a set of fools, anti-Christs, and impostors.”
Our Authorized Version is certainly as faulty as any of the above, and its translators have been the recipients of as severe criticisms as those quoted. The Committee on Revision, while compelled to treat it respectfully, declared against its infallibility in the following words: “The studied variety adopted by the translators of 1611 has produced a degree of inconsistency that cannot be reconciled with the principles of faithfulness” (Preface to N. V.).