11. When any Place of special obscurity is doubted of, Letters to be directed, by Authority, to send to any Learned Man in the Land, for his judgment of such a Place.
12. Letters to be sent from every Bishop, to the rest of his Clergy, admonishing them of this Translation in hand; and to move and charge, as many as being skilful in the Tongues; and having taken pains in that kind, to send his particular Observations to the Company, either at Westminster, Cambridg, or Oxford.
13. The Directors in each Company to be the Deans of Westminster and Chester for that place; and the King’s Professors in the Hebrew or Greek in either University.
14. These Translations to be used, when they agree better with the Text than the Bishops’ Bible; viz., Tindall’s, Matthew’s, Coverdale’s, Whitchurch’s,[44] Geneva.
15. Besides the said Directors before mentioned, three or four of the most Ancient and Grave Divines, in either of the Universities not employed in Translating, to be assigned by the Vice-Chancellor upon conference with the rest of the Heads, to be Overseers of the Translations as well Hebrew as Greek, for the better observation of the 4th rule above specified.[45]
Besides these rules, some others of a more definite nature seem to have been adopted by the translators themselves. At the Synod of Dort, held in the years 1618 and 1619, the question of preparing a new Dutch translation came under consideration, and for the guidance of its deliberations upon this point the English Delegates[46] were requested to give an account of the procedure observed in the translation recently made in England. In a matter of such grave importance the Delegates felt that they ought not to give any off-hand statement, and accordingly, after careful consideration, prepared a written account, which was presented to the Synod on its seventh Session, November 20th, 1618. In this account eight rules are given, the first three of which embody the substance of the first, sixth, and seventh of the rules given above. The others direct:
That where the Hebrew or Greek admits of a twofold rendering, one is to be given in the text, and the other noted in the margin; and in like manner where an important various reading is found in approved authorities.
That in the translation of the books of Tobit and Judith, where the text of the old Latin Vulgate greatly differs from that of the Greek, the latter text should be followed.
That all words introduced for the purpose of completing the sense are to be distinguished by a difference of type.
That new tables of contents should be prefixed to each book, and new summaries to each chapter.