The New Testament. Translated from the Original Greek, etc. By LEICESTER AMBROSE SAWYER. Boston: John P. Jewett & Co. 1858.
Few books merit the criticism which they receive; fewer receive all they merit. Here is a work, a translation, which is more likely than most to get its deserts, because its circle of critics will be unusually large. It purports to be a new and improved version of "the Book of Books," and puts forth claims which will be conceded only after it shall have sustained the most extensive, minute, and even prejudiced scrutiny. The Bible has more readers than any other book; and that which claims to be an improved Bible must, if it secure anything like a general attention, meet with criticisms from all quarters. Mr. Sawyer is fortunate in one respect: his work will be examined and judged by multitudes who never undertook to criticize any other book; he will have, therefore, ultimately, a popular judgment of his task and its performance. But he is unfortunate in another point: for he must meet that popular sentiment which at the outset looks with disfavor upon anything that has even the appearance of meddling with the commonly received and almost universally approved version of the Holy Scriptures. Let us, in a brief space and with as little of formal and scholastic criticism as possible, examine Mr. Sawyer's translation.
A work of such a character as this should be judged not more by its absolute or intrinsic merits than by a comparison of them with the design avowed and the claims advanced by the author. In a task of such magnitude we ought not to expect to find everything perfect. If the completed structure have a symmetry of proportions and excellence of finish approaching reasonably near to the plan proposed, we should not too severely censure minor defects. Critics rarely accord all that authors claim; the former measure the actual achievement,—the latter look to the ideal conception; if the one be in a reasonable degree commensurate with the other, we should be lenient toward the faults of the performance.
With this charitable substratum for our critical structure, let us test
Mr. Sawyer's new version by contrasting it with his own avowed design
and the claims with which he introduces his completed task. In the
Preface he says,—
"This is not a work of compromises, or of conjectural interpretations of the Sacred Scriptures, neither is it a paraphrase, but a strict [strictly] literal rendering. It neither adds nor takes away; but aims to express the original with the utmost clearness and force, and with the utmost precision."
This is a somewhat pretentious claim. A strictly literal rendering of any language into another is by no means always an easy task; and it is especially difficult to couple, as the translator in this case asserts he has done, the utmost clearness, force, and precision in the expression of the thought, with minute exactness of version. We are surprised that Mr. Sawyer should have rested his claim for the excellence and superiority of his translation mainly upon this quality of literalism, for it is often the case that the closest literalist is the worst translator. It is often impossible to render the thoughts expressed in the peculiar idioms of one tongue into exactly corresponding idioms of another. There are idiomatic forms, especially in the Greek, which have no precisely correspondent forms in the English, and yet these are not unfrequently the most forcible expressions of any to be found in the original; any attempt to render these literally must be abortive; and a literal rendering, or as nearly literal as possible, is the worst translation, because it sacrifices the clearness, force, and precision, to say nothing of the grace and delicacy, of the original. The French language abounds in words and phrases the literal translation of which into English perverts the meaning and destroys the force of the original. Still more is a strictly literal rendering incompatible with the preservation and transference of the beauties of style and the strength of diction. The widest range of the thought, its more delicate shades and subtiler connections, often depend in great part upon the peculiar forms of the language in which they are first clothed; and by a strictly literal translation the scope of the thought is narrowed, its finer lines obscured, and that which is of more importance than all else, the fitness of the expression, is altogether lost. The utmost strictness of literal translation is a poor compensation for the resultant poverty of language and dilution of thought; and by as much as the original is more impressive in its rich and fitting garb, by so much the more is it made to appear mean and unlike itself when forced to clothe itself in scanty second-hand habiliments.
We have said thus much on this point for two reasons: first, because it is on this chiefly that Mr. Sawyer appeals to the public for a verdict in favor of his translation; and secondly, because it is a common and popular notion, that, the more literal a translation can be made, especially in the case of the Bible, the better and more trustworthy it will be. And we are willing to admit, that, in translating the Holy Scriptures, the greatest degree of strictness in literal rendering, compatible with the full and correct expression of the thought, is and should be a first consideration; the translator should take no liberties with the text, by way either of omission, alteration, or compromise; he must in no way vitiate the thought; and if he keep within this rule, he will have escaped just criticism, and may claim the merit of faithfulness to his task. Has Mr. Sawyer, then, in his New Testament, given a strictly literal rendering? and is it an improvement on the common version? We have space for only a few specimens of his translation, and we have taken some of the first that attracted our notice; it will be observed that they are none of them abstruse or disputed passages.
COMMON VERSION.
Matt. ii. 16.
"Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem and in all the coasts thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently inquired of the wise men."