as we are indebted to Dr. Deissmann for his illustrations, especially in regard of vocabulary, we must read with serious caution, and watch all attempts to make Inscriptions or Papyri do the work of an interpretation of the inner meaning of God’s Holy Word which belongs to another realm, and to the self-explanations which are vouchsafed to us in the reverent study of the Book—not of Humanity (as Deissmann speaks of the New Testament) [112] but of—Life.
I have now probably dealt sufficiently with the second of the three questions which I have put forward for our consideration. I have stated the general substance of the knowledge which has been permitted to come to us since the revision was completed. I now pass onward to the third and most difficult question equitably to answer, “To what extent does this newly-acquired knowledge affect the correctness and fidelity of the revision of the Authorised Version of the New Testament?” It is easy enough to speak of “ignorance” on the part of the Revisers, especially after what I have specified in the answer to the question on which we have just been meditating; but
the real and practical question is this, “If the Revisers had all this knowledge when they were engaged on their work, would it have materially affected their revision?”
To this more limited form of the question I feel no difficulty in replying, that I am fully and firmly persuaded that it would not have materially affected the revision; and my grounds for returning this answer depend on these two considerations: first, that the full knowledge which some of us had of Winer’s Grammar, and the general knowledge that was possessed of it by the majority, certainly enabled us to realize that the Greek on which we were engaged, while retaining very many elements of what was classical, had in it also not only many signs of post-classical Greek, but even of usages which we now know belong to later developments. These later developments, all of which are, to some extent, to be recognized in the Greek Testament, such as the disappearance of the optative, the use of ίνα with the subjunctive in the place of the infinitive, the displacement of μετά by συν, the interchange of εις and εν, of περί and υπέρ, the use of compound forms without any corresponding increase of meaning, the extended usage of the aorist, the wider sphere
of the accusative, and many similar indications of later Greek—all these were so far known to us as to exercise a cautionary influence on our revision, and to prevent us overpressing the meaning of words and forms that had lost their original definiteness.
My second reason for the answer I have given to the question is based on the accumulating experience we were acquiring in our ten years of labour, and our instinctive avoidance of renderings which in appearance might be precise, but did in reality exaggerate the plain meaning intended by the Greek that we were rendering. Sometimes, but only rarely, we fell into this excusable form of over-rendering. Perhaps the concluding words of Mark xiv. 65 will supply an example. At any rate, the view taken by Blass [114] would seem to suggest a less literal form of translation.
When I leave the limited form of answer, and face the broad and general question of the extent to which our recently-acquired knowledge affects the correctness and fidelity of the revision, I can only give an answer founded on an examination of numerous passages in which I have compared the comments of Dr. Blass in his Grammar, and
of Dr. Deissmann in his “Bible Studies with the renderings of the Revisers.” And the answer is this, that the number of cases in which any change could reasonably be required has been so small, so very small, that the charge of any real ignorance, on the part of the Revisers, of the Greek on which they were engaged, must be dismissed as utterly and entirely exaggerated. We have now acquired an increased knowledge of the character of the Greek of the New Testament, and of the place it holds in the historical transition of the language from the earlier post-classical to the later developments of the language, but this knowledge, interesting and instructive as it may be, leaves the principles of correctly translating it practically intact. In this latter process we must deal with the language of the Greek Testament as we would deal with the language of any other Greek book, and make the book, as far as we have the means of doing so, its own interpreter.
Having thus shown in broad and general terms, as far as I have been able to do so, that we may still, notwithstanding the twenty years that have passed away, regard the Revised Version of the Greek Testament as
a faithfully executed revision, and its renderings such as may be accepted with full Christian confidence, I now turn to the easier, but not less necessary, duty of bringing before you some considerations why this Version and, with it, the Revised Version of the Old Testament, should be regularly used in the public services of our Mother Church.