In 1796 Dr. William Newcome, Archbishop of Armagh, published “An attempt towards revising our English Translation of the Greek Scriptures, or the New Covenant of Jesus Christ; and towards illustrating the sense by philological and explanatory notes.”
Passing over some other works less worthy of notice, a scholarly attempt was made in 1836 by Grenville Penn to introduce into the English version some of the results which had then been attained by the critical examination of ancient authorities. This work bore the title, “The Book of the New Covenant of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, being a critical revision of the text and translation of the English version of the New Testament, with the aid of most ancient manuscripts, unknown to the age in which that version was last put forth by authority.”
It is not to be supposed that any of these translations were published with the expectation of securing so large a measure of favour as to supersede the current version. Their primary purpose was to aid the private study of the Bible; but they have been of great service also in keeping the general question of revision before the notice of thoughtful persons, and they have each in their measure contributed to a more exact knowledge of the Scriptures.
The failure of the earlier of these attempts at revision arose in part from the imperfect state of the texts upon which they were based. This soon became obvious, and Biblical scholars saw that for some time to come their labours must be spent rather in laying the foundation for a future revision than in attempting it themselves, and this in three distinct departments. The first of these was the collection, as described in the last lecture, of the material supplied by ancient manuscripts, and by early versions and quotations. In this department a long succession of faithful men have laboured, amongst whom may be mentioned Brian Walton, who in 1657 published his famous Polyglot Bible in six folio volumes, giving in addition to the original Hebrew and Greek, the Samaritan Pentateuch, the Septuagint, Latin, Syriac, Arabic, Æthiopic, and Persian versions; Dr. John Mill, whose New Testament was published in 1770, and of whom it has been justly said that “his services to Bible criticism surpass in extent and value those rendered by any other except one or two men yet living;”[101] Dr. Richard Bentley, who, having himself collated the Alexandrine and other ancient MSS., and by various agencies amassed a large store of critical material, published in 1720 his “Proposals for Printing” revised texts both of the Greek New Testament and the Latin Vulgate; Dr. Kennicott, who in 1760 aroused public attention to the importance of collating all Hebrew MSS. made before the invention of printing, and who personally, or through the aid of others, collated more than six hundred Hebrew MSS., and sixteen MSS. of the Samaritan Pentateuch; John Bernard de Rossi, professor of Oriental languages in the University of Parma, who in 1784-8 published the results of the collation of seven hundred and thirty-one MSS., and of three hundred editions of the Hebrew Scriptures; and, to come to more recent times, Dr. Constantine Tischendorf, Dr. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, and Dr. Frederick Henry Scrivener, whose names are to be held in the highest honour, as of men who have rendered invaluable service to their own and future generations in the exhausting and self-denying work of the collation of Biblical MSS., and through whose care and accuracy the means of obtaining an exact knowledge of a large number of most precious documents have been placed within easy reach of all.
The second department of labour is the application of the material thus collected to the correction of the text. Here again a vast amount of patient work has been done, and out of the successive labours of a long series of critics much valuable experience has been gained and the best methods gradually learnt. Amongst those who have thus laboured in the criticism of the text of the New Testament may be mentioned the names of Bengel, Wettstein, Griesbach, Scholz, Tischendorf, Lachmann, Alford, Tregelles, Westcott, and Hort; and of that of the Old Testament, Buxtorf, Leusden, Van der Hooght, Michaelis, Houbigant, Kennicott, and Jahn.
The third department is that which is concerned with the investigation of the meaning of the sacred writers; and how much has been done in this will be manifest to any one who makes the attempt to reckon up the long series of commentaries, English and Continental, on the books of the Holy Scriptures, published since the Revision of 1611, commencing with the Annotations of the eminent Nonconformist, Henry Ainsworth, on the Pentateuch, Psalms, and Song of Solomon, 1627, down to the recent commentaries on Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, by Dr. J. B. Lightfoot, the present Bishop of Durham. The attempt to make this enumeration will deepen the desire that the light which has been shed upon the Bible by this long succession of its learned and earnest students should now be employed for the guidance and help of the ordinary readers of its pages.
To such desire emphatic expression has been given in various ways through full two generations, with an ever increasing intensity, and by representative men amongst all Christian communities.
So early in the present century as the year 1809, Dr. John Pye Smith, President of the Congregational College at Homerton, thus wrote: “That such blemishes should disfigure that translation of the best and most important of volumes, which has been and still is more read by thousands of the pious than any other version, ancient or modern; that they should be acknowledged by all competent judges to exist; that they should have been so long and often complained of; and yet that there has been no great public act, from high and unimpeachable authority, for removing them, we are constrained to view as a disgrace to our national literature. We do not wish to see our common version, now become venerable by age and prescription, superseded by another entirely new; every desirable purpose would be satisfactorily attained by a faithful and well-conducted revision.”[102]
In the following year (1810) Dr. Herbert Marsh, then Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and subsequently Bishop of Peterborough, in the first edition of his Lectures wrote: “It is probable that our authorised version is as faithful a representation of the original Scriptures as could have been formed at that period. But when we consider the immense accession that has since been made, both to our critical and philological apparatus;” “when we consider that the most important sources of intelligence for the interpretation of the original Scriptures were likewise opened after that period, we cannot possibly pretend that our authorised version does not require amendment.”[103]
In 1816 Thomas Wemyss, a learned layman, who had devoted himself to Biblical studies, called attention, under the title of Biblical Gleanings, to a number of passages which were generally allowed to be mistranslated; and in 1819 Sir James Bland Burges published Reasons in favour of a New Translation of the Scriptures.