(e) Let the remark be added in passing, that we greatly [pg 224] dislike the affectation of printing certain quotations from the Old Testament after the strange method adopted by our Revisers from Drs. Westcott and Hort.
(f) The further external assimilation of the Sacred Volume to an ordinary book by getting rid of the division into Verses, we also hold to be a great mistake. In the Greek, by all means let the verses be merely noted in the margin: but, for more than one weighty reason, in the English Bible let the established and peculiar method of printing the Word of God, tide what tide, be scrupulously retained.
(g) But incomparably the gravest offence is behind. By far the most serious of all is that Error to the consideration of which we devoted our former Article. The New Greek Text which, in defiance of their Instructions,[698] our Revisionists have constructed, has been proved to be utterly undeserving of confidence. Built up on a fallacy which since [pg 225] 1831 has been dominant in Germany, and which has lately found but too much favour among ourselves, it is in the main a reproduction of the recent labours of Doctors Westcott and Hort. But we have already recorded our conviction, that the results at which those eminent Scholars have arrived are wholly inadmissible. It follows that, in our account, the “New English Version,” has been all along a foredoomed thing. If the “New Greek Text” be indeed a tissue of fabricated Readings, the translation of these into English must needs prove lost labour. It is superfluous to enquire into the merits of the English rendering of words which Evangelists and Apostles demonstrably never wrote.
(h) Even this, however, is not nearly all. As Translators, full two-thirds of the Revisionists have shown themselves singularly deficient,—alike in their critical acquaintance with the language out of which they had to translate, and in their familiarity with the idiomatic requirements of their own tongue. They had a noble Version before them, which they have contrived to spoil in every part. Its dignified simplicity and essential faithfulness, its manly grace and its delightful rhythm, they have shown themselves alike unable to imitate and unwilling to retain. Their queer uncouth phraseology and their jerky sentences:—their pedantic obscurity and their stiff, constrained manner:—their fidgetty affectation of accuracy,—and their habitual achievement of English which fails to exhibit the spirit of the original Greek;—are sorry substitutes for the living freshness, and elastic freedom, and habitual fidelity of the grand old Version which we inherited from our Fathers, and which has sustained the spiritual life of the Church of England, and of all English-speaking Christians, for 350 years. Linked with all our holiest, happiest memories, and bound up with all our purest aspirations: part and parcel of [pg 226] whatever there is of good about us: fraught with men's hopes of a blessed Eternity and many a bright vision of the never-ending Life;—the Authorized Version, wherever it was possible, should have been jealously retained. But on the contrary. Every familiar cadence has been dislocated: the congenial flow of almost every verse of Scripture has been hopelessly marred: so many of those little connecting words, which give life and continuity to a narrative, have been vexatiously displaced, that a perpetual sense of annoyance is created. The countless minute alterations which have been needlessly introduced into every familiar page prove at last as tormenting as a swarm of flies to the weary traveller on a summer's day.[699] To speak plainly, the book has been made unreadable.
But in fact the distinguished Chairman of the New Testament Company (Bishop Ellicott,) has delivered himself on this subject in language which leaves nothing to be desired, and which we willingly make our own. “No Revision” (he says) “in the present day could hope to meet with an hour's acceptance if it failed to preserve the tone, rhythm, and diction of the present Authorized Version.”[700]—What else is this but a vaticination,—of which the uninspired Author, by his own act and deed, has ensured the punctual fulfilment?
We lay the Revisers' volume down convinced that the case of their work is simply hopeless. Non ego paucis offendar maculis. Had the blemishes been capable of being reckoned up, it might have been worth while to try to remedy some of them. But when, instead of being disfigured [pg 227] by a few weeds scattered here and there, the whole field proves to be sown over in every direction with thorns and briars; above all when, deep beneath the surface, roots of bitterness to be counted by thousands, are found to have been silently planted in, which are sure to produce poisonous fruit after many days:—under such circumstances only one course can be prescribed. Let the entire area be ploughed up,—ploughed deep; and let the ground be left for a decent space of time without cultivation. It is idle—worse than idle—to dream of revising, with a view to retaining, this Revision. Another generation of students must be suffered to arise. Time must be given for Passion and Prejudice to cool effectually down. Partizanship, (which at present prevails to an extraordinary extent, but which is wondrously out of place in this department of Sacred Learning,)—Partizanship must be completely outlived,—before the Church can venture, with the remotest prospect of a successful issue, to organize another attempt at revising the Authorized Version of the New Testament Scriptures.
Yes, and in the meantime—(let it in all faithfulness be added)—the Science of Textual Criticism will have to be prosecuted, for the first time, in a scholarlike manner. Fundamental Principles,—sufficiently axiomatic to ensure general acceptance,—will have to be laid down for men's guidance. The time has quite gone by for vaunting “the now established Principles of Textual Criticism,”[701]—as if they had an actual existence. Let us be shown, instead, which those Principles be. As for the weak superstition of these last days, which—without proof of any kind—would erect two IVth-century Copies of the New Testament, (demonstrably derived from one and the same utterly depraved archetype,) [pg 228] into an authority from which there shall be no appeal,—it cannot be too soon or too unconditionally abandoned. And, perhaps beyond all things, men must be invited to disabuse their minds of the singular imagination that it is in their power, when addressing themselves to that most difficult and delicate of problems,—the improvement of the Traditional Text,—“solvere ambulando.”[702] They are assured that they may not take to Textual Criticism as ducks take to the water. They will be drowned inevitably if they are so ill-advised as to make the attempt.
Then further, those who would interpret the New Testament Scriptures, are reminded that a thorough acquaintance with the Septuagintal Version of the Old Testament is one indispensable condition of success.[703] And finally, the Revisionists of the future (if they desire that their labours should be crowned), will find it their wisdom to practise a severe self-denial; to confine themselves to the correction of “plain and clear errors;” and in fact to “introduce into the Text as few alterations as possible.”
On a review of all that has happened, from first to last, we can but feel greatly concerned: greatly surprised: most of all, disappointed. We had expected a vastly different result. It is partly (not quite) accounted for, by the rare attendance in the Jerusalem Chamber of some of the names on which we had chiefly relied. Bishop Moberly (of Salisbury) was [pg 229] present on only 121 occasions: Bishop Wordsworth (of S. Andrews) on only 109: Archbishop Trench (of Dublin) on only 63: Bishop Wilberforce on only one. The Archbishop, in his Charge, adverts to “the not unfrequent sacrifice of grace and ease to the rigorous requirements of a literal accuracy;” and regards them “as pushed to a faulty excess” (p. 22). Eleven years before the scheme for the present “Revision” had been matured, the same distinguished and judicious Prelate, (then Dean of Westminster,) persuaded as he was that a Revision ought to come, and convinced that in time it would come, deprecated its being attempted yet. His words were,—“Not however, I would trust, as yet: for we are not as yet in any respect prepared for it. The Greek, and the English which should enable us to bring this to a successful end might, it is to be feared, be wanting alike.”[704] Archbishop Trench, with wise after-thought, in a second edition, explained himself to mean “that special Hellenistic Greek, here required.”
The Bp. of S. Andrews has long since, in the fullest manner, cleared himself from the suspicion of complicity in the errors of the work before us,—as well in respect of the “New Greek Text” as of the “New English Version.” In the Charge which he delivered at his Diocesan Synod, (22nd Sept. 1880,) he openly stated that two years before the work was finally completed, he had felt obliged to address a printed circular to each member of the Company, in which he strongly remonstrated against the excess to which changes had been carried; and that the remonstrance had been, for the most part, unheeded. Had this been otherwise, there is good reason to believe that the reception which the Revision has met with would have been far less unfavourable, and that many a controversy which it has stirred up, would have been avoided. We have been assured that the [pg 230] Bp. of S. Andrews would have actually resigned his place in the Company at that time, if he had not been led to expect that some opportunity would have been taken by the Minority, when the work was finished, to express their formal dissent from the course which had been followed, and many of the conclusions which had been adopted.