5. But again, a modern translation—does this imply that no words or phrases in any degree antiquated are to be admitted? Not so, for great numbers of such words and phrases are still in constant use. To be antiquated is not the same thing as to be obsolete or even obsolescent, and without at least a tinge of antiquity it is scarcely possible that there should be that dignity of style that befits the sacred themes with which the Evangelists and Apostles deal.
6. It is plain that this attempt to bring out the sense of the Sacred Writings naturally as well as accurately in present-day English does not permit, except to a limited extent, the method of literal rendering—the verbo verbum reddere at which Horace shrugs his shoulders. Dr. Welldon, recently Bishop of Calcutta, in the Preface (p. vii) to his masterly translation of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, writes, "I have deliberately rejected the principle of trying to translate the same Greek word by the same word in English, and where circumstances seemed to call for it I have sometimes used two English words to represent one word of the Greek;"—and he is perfectly right. With a slavish literality delicate shades of meaning cannot be reproduced, nor allowance be made for the influence of interwoven thought, or of the writer's ever shifting—not to say changing—point of view. An utterly ignorant or utterly lazy man, if possessed of a little ingenuity, can with the help of a dictionary and grammar give a word-for-word rendering, whether intelligible or not, and print 'Translation' on his title-page. On the other hand it is a melancholy spectacle to see men of high ability and undoubted scholarship toil and struggle at translation under a needless restriction to literality, as in intellectual handcuffs and fetters, when they might with advantage snap the bonds and fling them away, as Dr. Welldon has done: more melancholy still, if they are at the same time racking their brains to exhibit the result of their labours—-a splendid but idle philological tour de force —in what was English nearly 300 years before.
7. Obviously any literal translation cannot but carry idioms of the earlier language into the later, where they will very probably not be understood; /2 and more serious still is the evil when, as in the Jewish Greek of the N T, the earlier language of the two is itself composite and abounds in forms of speech that belong to one earlier still. For the N.T. Greek, even in the writings of Luke, contains a large number of Hebrew idioms; and a literal rendering into English cannot but partially veil, and in some degree distort, the true sense, even if it does not totally obscure it (and that too where perfect clearness should be attained, if possible), by this admixture of Hebrew as well as Greek forms of expression.
8. It follows that the reader who is bent upon getting a literal rendering, such as he can commonly find in the R.V. or (often a better one) in Darby's New Testament, should always be on his guard against its strong tendency to mislead.
9. One point however can hardly be too emphatically stated. It is not the present Translator's ambition to supplant the Versions already in general use, to which their intrinsic merit or long familiarity or both have caused all Christian minds so lovingly to cling. His desire has rather been to furnish a succinct and compressed running commentary (not doctrinal) to be used sidc by side with its elder compeers. And yet there has been something of a remoter hope. It can scarcely be doubted that some day the attempt will be renewed to produce a satisfactory English Bible—one in some respects perhaps (but assuredly with great and important deviations) on the lines of the Revision of 1881, or even altogether to supersede both the A.V. and the R.V.; and it may be that the Translation here offered will contribute some materials that may be built into that far grander edifice.
10. THE GREEK TEXT here followed is that given in the Translator's Resultant Greek Testament.
11. Of the VARIOUS READINGS only those are here given which seem the most important, and which affect the rendering into English. They are in the footnotes, with V.L. (varia lectio) prefixed. As to the chief modern critical editions full details will be found in the Resultant Greek Testament, while for the original authorities—MSS., Versions, Patristic quotations—the reader must of necessity consult the great works of Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, and others, or the numerous monographs on separate Books. /3 In the margin of the R.V. a distinction is made between readings supported by "a few ancient authorities," "some ancient authorities," "many ancient authorities," and so on. Such valuation is not attempted in this work.
12. Considerable pains have been bestowed on the exact rendering of the tenses of the Greek verb; for by inexactness in this detail the true sense cannot but be missed. That the Greek tenses do not coincide, and cannot be expected to coincide with those of the English verb; that—except in narrative—the aorist as a rule is more exactly represented in English by our perfect with "have" than by our simple past tense; and that in this particular the A.V. is in scores of instances more correct than the R.V.; the present Translator has contended (with arguments which some of the best scholars in Britain and in America hold to be "unanswerable" and "indisputable") in a pamphlet On the Rendering into English of the Greek Aorist and Perfect. Even an outline of the argument cannot be given in a Preface such as this.
13. But he who would make a truly English translation of a foreign book must not only select the right nouns, adjectives, and verbs, insert the suitable prepositions and auxiliaries, and triumph (if he can) over the seductions and blandishments of idioms with which he has been familiar from his infancy, but which, though forcible or beautiful with other surroundings, are for all that part and parcel of that other language rather than of English: he has also to beware of connecting his sentences in an un-English fashion.
Now a careful examination of a number of authors (including Scottish, Irish, and American) yields some interesting results. Taking at haphazard a passage from each of fifty-six authors, and counting on after some full stop till fifty finite verbs—i. e. verbs in the indicative, imperative, or subjunctive mood—have been reached (each finite verb, as every schoolboy knows, being the nucleus of one sentence or clause), it has been found that the connecting links of the fifty-six times fifty sentences are about one-third conjunctions, about one-third adverbs or relative and interrogative pronouns, while in the case of the remaining third there is what the grammarians call an asyndeton—no formal grammatical connexion at all. But in the writers of the N.T. nearly two-thirds of the connecting links are conjunctions. It follows that in order to make the style of a translation true idiomatic English many of these conjunctions must be omitted, and for others adverbs, &c., must be substituted.