I can hope is that in some specified English editions of the Old and New Testament each Appendix will regularly be maintained, and that this token of the happy union of England and America in the blessed work of revising their common version of God’s holy Word will thus be preserved to the end.
But we must now pass onward to considerations very closely affecting the renderings of the Revised Version of the Greek Testament.
I have already said that very recently a new and unexpected charge has been brought against the Revisers of the Authorised Version. And the charge is no less than this, that the Revisers were ignorant in several important particulars of the language from which the version was originally made that they were appointed to revise.
Now in meeting a charge of this nature, in which we may certainly notice that want of considerate intelligence which marks much of the criticism that has been directed against our revision, it seems always best when dealing with a competent scholar who does not give in detail examples on which the criticism rests, to try and understand his point of view and the general reasons for his unfavourable pronouncement. And in this case I do not think
it difficult to perceive that the imputation of ignorance on the part of the Revisers has arisen from an exaggerated estimate of the additions to our knowledge of New Testament Greek which have accumulated during the twenty years that have passed away since the Revision was completed. If this be a correct, as it is certainly a charitable, estimate of the circumstances under which ignorance has been imputed to us in respect of several matters relating to the Greek on which we were engaged, let us now leave our critics, and deal with these reasonable questions. First, what was the general knowledge, on the part of the Revisers, of the character and peculiarities of New Testament Greek? Secondly, what is the amount of the knowledge relative to New Testament Greek that has been acquired since the publication of the revision? and thirdly, to what extent does this recently acquired knowledge affect the correctness and fidelity of the renderings that have been adopted by the Revisers? If these three questions are plainly answered we shall have dealt fully and fairly with the doubts that have been expressed or implied as to the correctness of the revision.
First, then, as to the general knowledge
which the revisers had of the character and peculiarities of the Greek of the New Testament.
This question could not perhaps be more fairly and correctly dealt with than by Bishop Westcott in the opening words of his chapter on Exactness in Grammatical Detail, in the valuable work to which I have already referred. What he states probably expresses very exactly the general view taken by the great majority, if not by all, of the Revisers in regard of the Greek of the New Testament. What the Bishop says of the language is this: “that it is marked by unique characteristics. It is separated very clearly, both in general vocabulary and in construction, from the language of the LXX, the Greek Version of the Old Testament, which was its preparation, and from the Greek of the Fathers which was its development [106].”
If we accept this as a correct statement of the general knowledge of the Revisers as to the language of the Greek Testament, we naturally ask further, on what did they rely for the correct interpretation of it. The answer can readily be given, and it is this: Besides their general knowledge of Greek which, in
the case of the large majority, was very great, their knowledge of New Testament Greek was distinctly influenced by the grammatical views of Professor Winer, of whose valuable grammar of the Greek Testament one of our Company, as I have mentioned in my first Address, had been a well-known and successful translator. Though his name was not very frequently brought up in our discussions, the influence his grammar exerted among us, directly and indirectly, was certainly great; but it went no further than grammatical details. His obvious gravitation to the idea of New Testament Greek forming a sort of separate department of its own probably never was shared, to any perceptible extent, by any one of us. We did not enter very far into these matters. We knew by every day’s working experience that New Testament Greek differed to some extent from the Greek to which we had been accustomed, and from the Septuagint Greek to which from time to time we referred. But further than this we did not go, nor care to go. We had quite enough on our hands. We had a very difficult task to perform, we had to revise under prescribed conditions a version which needed revision almost in every verse, and we had no time to