All English translators of the Bible since the sixteenth century have attempted to present the Scriptures in language easily understood, and most of them have tried to render the ancient tongues as closely and accurately as possible. But as Cardinal Newman said, to live is to change, and until a language dies it can claim no exemption from this law. Whether it is also true, as the Cardinal went on to say, that to become perfect is to have changed often, is another matter, but certainly after the lapse of centuries changed habits of speech throw a veil over what was once clear and direct enough. Old-fashioned or obsolete language has a certain charm, but it is apt to deflect the mind from the living message which it is the business of words to convey. We notice this less in the case of the English Bible than with other kinds of literature, no doubt because we have greater familiarity with it. In this respect it does not make much difference whether we are speaking of King James's Bible of 1611 or of the Revised Version of 1881-5, whose first principle was "to introduce as few alterations as possible into the Text of the Authorized Version consistently with faithfulness". But let us try the effect of a version two centuries nearer our own time than the Authorized Version. It is from A Liberal Translation of the New Testament of 1768, by Edward Harwood.
Do not think that the design of my coming into the world is to abrogate the law of Moses, and the prophets-I am only come to supply their deficiencies, and to give mankind a more complete system of morals.
For I tell you that the precepts of morality are of eternal and immutable obligation, and their power and efficacy shall never be relaxed or annulled, while the world endures.
(Matt. v. 17-18.)
Nobody could mistake this for 'current English', 'modern speech', or indeed for anything than what it is-an example, good or bad according to taste, of eighteenth-century English style. Furthermore, no one if he were translating the Bible today would deliberately try to imitate it, even if he could.
Let us take another example almost contemporary with Harwood's: the beginning of the Parable of the Prodigal from Anthony Purver's New and Literal Translation of 1764:
Some man had two sons; the younger of whom said to the father, Father, give me the Part of the Substance that is appointed: accordingly he divided to them the Living. (Luke xv. 11-12.)
Here we are brought up against a problem which besets all translators: namely that of choosing between a close literal rendering, which may do violence to English idiom as in the example from Purver; or of translating in the sense of a more or less free transposing into contemporary and idiomatic English, which can easily slip into paraphrase, but may more successfully convey the meaning of the original. In this respect Harwood, to our eyes and ears, seems to take unwarranted liberties with the original, often with ludicrous results. But to a certain class of his contemporaries the effect may not have been so different from similar, though more sober efforts of more recent times. At the risk of labouring the obvious, then, we need to bear in mind that any attempt to render from one language into another is bound to take some liberties with the original, and that the structure and idiom of Hebrew and Greek are not those of English at any point in its history.
There is another point worth noticing. Most translations of the Old and New Testaments since the Revised Version have had as their avowed object the rendering of the originals into modern or contemporary or plain English. So much is generally stated boldly on the title-page, and is at least defensible in view of what has been said above. But fresh manuscript evidence, and especially the discoveries of Egyptian papyri, together with the work of philological scholars, have resulted in a great deal more being known about the Biblical languages and the history of the Hebrew and Greek texts than was possible when the Revised Version was made. This in turn has provided another incentive to further revisions and attempts at translation, and on these grounds alone there is ample reason for the larger and more official undertakings such as the American Revised Standard Version and the new English translation now in progress. However, it will generally be found that after 1881 concern for the style of the translation and its up-to-datedness was more to the fore, while in recent years the tendency has been to concentrate more on the original text and the accuracy with which it may be presented to the English reader.
The first example to be noticed is by way of being an exception to the tendency noticed above. In 1885, the same year in which the Revised Version of the Old Testament appeared, Helen Spurrell brought out A New Translation of the Old Testament from the Original Hebrew, a remarkable achievement for a woman who did not begin to learn the language until she was turned fifty. In style her translation shows no great break with the past, but she allowed herself considerable freedom in amending the text from the versions.
Another heroic attempt was made by Ferrar Fenton, who in his Preface to the Pentateuch says of himself:
in my youth I pledged a resolve to God to use my talents and acquirements to establish the authenticity of the Sacred Scriptures as revealed from Him to Man, by making them intelligible, through the use of modern English, to my countrymen . . . and although I have been engaged in active commercial affairs for over forty years, I never ceased my studies to that end.
His New Testament came out in 1895, and in 1903 he completed The Holy Bible in Modern English in one volume, the New Testament having meanwhile been retranslated from Westcott and Hort's Greek text. His reverence for the Massoretic text caused him to abandon the usual order of the Old Testament books in favour of that of the Hebrew Bible, and provoked the observation, "I discovered, in the Old Testament, that wherever the Greek translators had blundered in their rendering of the Hebrew or Chaldee text, every translation in every language . . . had one after another repeated the blunders of the Greek." It was perhaps not to be expected that he would always achieve the accuracy of more professional scholars, and his renderings show a certain amount of eccentricity as well as originality. But his work had a considerable following, and was reprinted as recently as 1938.
A venture of a different kind began to appear in 1893 entitled The Sacred Books of the Old and New Testaments. It was designed to cover each of the books of the Old Testament with a revised edition of the Hebrew text and, in a companion volume, a new English translation with comments, the whole prepared by the best scholars of Europe and America. In addition the literary sources of the different books were distinguished by the use of contrasting colours, from which it was known as The Polychrome Bible. This combination of literary and textual scholarship was not carried through, however, and in the Old Testament did not go beyond Daniel, while the New Testament was not even begun.
A different approach which reflected a changing attitude to Scripture was seen in R. G. Moulton's The Literary Study of the Bible, published in America in 1896, in which the author called for greater attention to and appreciation of the different literary forms to be found in the Bible. It was followed by the separate publication of the individual books, in which the material was arranged and set out with appropriate headings and other typographical aids as prose narrative, poetry, and even in dramatic form. It was completed in 1907 and issued with notes in one volume as The Modern Reader's Bible. In pursuing his aim—"the best treatment of this literature is to read it "—the compiler has arranged the Old Testament as history (Genesis to Esther), prophets, poets, and philosophy (Wisdom books); while the New Testament opens with Luke-Acts (with the Pauline Epistles inserted into the narrative at appropriate points), followed by the rest of the New Testament Epistles, and other books (Matthew, Mark, John, Revelation). The text follows the English Revised Version closely, departing from it only occasionally in the choice of marginal readings and such small modifications as are necessary for setting out the material in literary form.
The early years of this century saw a number of attempts on both sides of the Atlantic to render the New Testament in the language of the day. The Twentieth Century New Testament (completed in 1901, revised edition 1904) was the work of an anonymous group of American scholars who attempted to "exclude all words and phrases not used in current English "—except in poetical passages, quotations from the Old Testament, and in the language of prayer. It was a completely new translation in which "every word has been carefully weighed", and was based on the text of Westcott and Hort. The order of the books is modified, having the Gospels (with Mark first), Acts, James, the Pauline Epistles in chronological succession, Hebrews, the rest of the Catholic Epistles, and Revelation. Everything is done by means of headings and indented sub-headings, quotation marks and so forth to give the text a modern appearance. But while the claim to render it in current English may be allowed, it cannot be said that the style is very distinguished.
Similar in character is R. F. Weymouth's New Testament in Modern Speech (1902, revised by E. Hampden-Cook, and again later by J. A. Robertson). The translation, which is freer and smoother than that of the Twentieth Century New Testament, is based on a text published separately by Weymouth as The Resultant Greek Testament, which was formed by adopting the majority readings of modern editions of the Greek text. The version is more successful in the Epistles than in the Gospels, where a certain flatness of style hardly does justice to the original.
None of the versions so far mentioned achieved the enormous success of James Moffatt's The New Testament, A New Translation, first published in 1913. Whatever their merits, his was incomparably better. Moffatt allowed himself more room than his predecessors, and in consequence his translation is easier and more colloquial, without being a paraphrase. But what characterizes it most is its freshness, frequently illuminating, even if sometimes one feels that Moffatt sits just a little too loosely to the original. " I have tried," he says in his Preface to the New Testament, "not to sacrifice the spirit to the letter." At the same time he knew what he was doing: he was a master in New Testament scholarship, and his knowledge not only of the text, but also of the literary and lexical studies which have thrown so much light on early Christian writing, made him admirably fitted for the task. Moffatt was also well aware of the fact that every translation is at the same time an interpretation, and, as he says, "its effectiveness depends largely upon the extent to which the interpreter has been able to see the original and to convey his impressions of what he has seen". Used and understood with this in mind, his version is of interest and value to the student as well as the general reader.
In 1924 Moffatt followed up his earlier success with a translation of the whole Old Testament, a task which few scholars of his day and since would, or perhaps could, have contemplated. In the New Testament he had followed pretty closely, as to the Greek, von Soden's text. In the Old Testament he took liberties, in favour of the versions and of conjectural emendation, which were not altogether in keeping with the increasing respect of scholars for the Massoretic text, and this has been considered a weakness. There is also some attempt to indicate the different sources of the Pentateuch by means of italic type and brackets, and the poetry is set out in poetic form; but otherwise Moffatt depends less on typographical devices than any of the versions so far described. Both Old and New Testaments were finally revised by the author in 1935.
It would be too much to expect so vast an undertaking to be equally successful in all its parts, and it may well be that the Old Testament does not as a whole come up to the New. But taking it by and large it is a remarkable achievement which in its time has provoked vast numbers of people to a fresh appreciation and understanding of the Biblical story.
Meanwhile in 1917 there appeared The Holy Scriptures According to the Massoretic Text-A New Translation, published by the Jewish Publication Society of America, which has become the version now generally used by English-speaking Jews. It was produced by Prof. Max Margolis and a board of American Jewish scholars, and is much closer in style to the older English versions.
Another American venture was initiated by the publication in 1923 of E.J. Goodspeed's The New Testament: An American Translation. This is a rendering of Westcott and Hort's text into "simple straightforward English of everyday expression", not merely in order to put it across, as Americans might say, but as Goodspeed points out, because this is most appropriate to the New Testament writers, who themselves wrote in the language of everyday life. The English has a distinct American flavour without being undignified, and is quite the best of the translations of the New Testament produced in America by individual scholars. It was followed in 1927 by The Old Testament: An American Translation by J. M. Powis Smith (the general editor), A. R. Gordon, J. Meek and L. Waterman, which was published with Goodspeed's New Testament in 1931 as The Bible: An American Translation. To this in 1939 was added Goodspeed's version of the Apocrypha, the whole work being entitled The Complete Bible: An American Translation. A sign of the times is that the translation of the Old Testament is nearer than might have been expected to the traditional style, and in the Preface it is remarked that a new version was needed not only to make the English text more intelligible, but because of the great advance in Hebrew and textual scholarship over the previous forty years. The Old Testament volume originally had a considerable body of textual notes which show a pretty free handling of the Massoretic text, but this was omitted from the complete edition.
One of the most notable features of recent years has been the important contribution to Biblical studies made by Roman Catholic scholars, and in Bible translation this has not been confined to new or revised versions of the official Vulgate text. The Westminster Version of the Sacred Scriptures began to appear in 1913, under the general editorship of the Jesuit Fathers C. Lattey and J. Keating. The Old Testament volumes are translated from the Hebrew, and each book is provided with a scholarly introduction and notes. So far Ruth, Psalms (complete in a small edition) and most of the Minor Prophets have appeared. A complete New Testament translated by Father Lattey was published in 1935, and in the Preface the author writes that the aim has been:
to stimulate the study of the Sacred Scriptures, first by providing as faithful a rendering as possible from the best available Greek text, and then by presenting it with all the aids to intelligibility and readableness which a rational typographical arrangement, plentiful notes, and the removal of all arbitrary interruptions of the sense could supply.
Unlike many modern translations this is in what may be called Biblical English style.
In America a revision of the Challoner-Rheims version of the Vulgate with textual and explanatory notes was published in 1941, and in 1954 The New Testament Rendered from the Original Greek, with explanatory notes, by Fathers Kleist and Lilley. Meanwhile the first volume of a translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew and Aramaic by American Roman Catholic scholars appeared in 1952.
In England the most noteworthy contribution in this field is the work of the late Monsignor Ronald Knox, who in 1939 was commissioned by the Roman Catholic hierarchy to undertake a new translation from the Latin Vulgate. The New Testament was published in 1945, and the Old in two volumes-Genesis to Esther, and Job to II Maccabees (with an alternative translation of the Psalms from the Latin text of the Pontifical Biblical Institute) - in 1949. In the Translator's Note prefaced to the Old Testament Mgr. Knox outlines his method:
Throughout the books which are included in the Jewish canon, I have translated from the Vulgate, with constant reference to the Massoretic text; I have naturally consulted the Septuagint in cases of difficulty, although (except in the Psalms) it seldom throws much light on discrepancies between the Latin and the Hebrew. In a handful of passages where the Vulgate text yields no tolerable sense, or yields a sense which evidently quarrels with the context, I have rendered from the Hebrew, giving a literal translation of the Latin in a foot-note. Where the Latin makes good sense, but is at variance with the Hebrew, I have indicated the fact of disagreement, but without giving the full Hebrew text if the difference is slight, or if the Hebrew text is itself unintelligible.
Speaking more generally it is, he says in the same Note, "my idea of how the Old Testament ought to be translated, and does not claim to do anything more". Some thirty years earlier Dr. Moffatt had posed some of the questions which confronted him, as a translator of the Bible into English: "How far is he justified in modernizing an Oriental book? How far can he assume that certain turns of expression have become naturalized in English by the Authorized Version?" He might well also have asked: "How far are the expressions naturalized in the Authorized Version due in turn to the Hebrew and Greek from which they were translated?" For Mgr. Knox these considerations do not apply, or they apply differently, since his version is of the Latin Vulgate of the Western Church; and certainly the most striking aspect of his achievement is his remarkable freedom from the gravitational pull of King James's Bible. As an essay in the art of translating it will bear comparison with anything of its kind, and has been justly praised for its excellent qualities.
If there are few today who, like Dr. Moffatt and Mgr. Knox, undertake a translation of the complete Bible, there has been in the last few years a steady stream of versions of the New Testament in whole or in part. In 1949 Bishop J. W. C. Wand (then archbishop of Brisbane) published The New Testament Letters, an interpretative "free translation or close paraphrase". Another and very successful attempt in the same manner is J. B. Phillips's Letters to Young Churches (1947), which effectively brings the Epistles before the reader as documents intimately bound up with the life of the Apostolic Church. This has since been followed by the same author's The Gospels Translated into Modern English (1952), and The Young Churches in Action (1955) which presents the Acts of the Apostles. T. F. and R. F. Ford brought out The Letchworth Version of the New Testament in 1948, and C. K. Williams The New Testament: A New Translation in Plain English in 1952. Protesting that the Greek Gospels have a literary quality and beauty all their own which is different from that of the Authorized Version E. V. Rieu has attempted a rendering which is included in a well-known series of translations as The Four Gospels, A New Translation from the Greek (1952).
Before going on to consider the two major undertakings of our time in this field mention should be made of The Bible in Basic English, published in 1949, which was prepared by a committee under the direction of Prof. S. H. Hooke. This 'reduced' form of the English language comprises a vocabulary of 850 words, to which, however, were added fifty special Bible words, and others bringing the total up to 1,000. Within these limits it was inevitable that something should be lost, but in the outcome it is surprisingly little.
We have seen in the last chapter on the Revised Version that the English revisers had, from 1872 onwards, the co-operation of a committee of American scholars who submitted their suggestions and criticisms to their English colleagues at each stage of the work. At the final revision the recommendations of the Americans which were not adopted were printed at the end of both Old and New Testaments, and it was agreed that for fourteen years no change should be made. The American Committee, however, remained in being, and at the end of the fourteen-year period of copyright it was decided to prepare an edition which would replace the American preferences in the text and at the same time make such other changes as were necessary to bring the text into conformity with American usage. At the same time marginal variants referring to the versions were considerably reduced, and the English preferences removed to an appendix. The new edition was published in 1901 and is known as the American Standard Version, but it had no great success-less even than the English Revised Version of 1881-5—and the King James's version continued widely in use. It was this comparative failure which, when the time came for the renewal of the copyright in 1928, prompted the International Council of Religious Education to set up a committee to consider the possibility of further revision; but not until 1937 was a decision reached and the new version authorized. This was:
to embody the best results of modern scholarship as to the meaning of the Scriptures, and express this meaning in English diction which is designed for use in public and private worship and preserve those qualities which have given to the King James version a supreme place in English literature.
The work was undertaken by a company of scholars representing all the principal Protestant denominations of America, which divided into two sections and included in the Old Testament group a representative of the Jewish faith. For the Old Testament it was laid down, in accordance with recent tendencies in this field, that in rendering the Massoretic Hebrew with the aid of the versions, the revisers were to be as sparing as possible in their recourse to conjectural emendation, while for the New Testament Westcott and Hort's text was to be taken as standard. It was also decided at the outset that any changes made at the final stages must receive a two-thirds majority of the whole committee.
The New Testament was published in February 1946, the Old Testament appeared in September 1952, and the Revised Standard Version was complete-it is a matter for regret that the Apocrypha, although part of the King James's Bible, was not restored. Both parts met with immense succcess not only in America but also in England. The principles on which the revision was carried through prevented any very radical departure from traditional Biblical usage, while at the same time there is a great gain in clarity and directness of expression. Again, it partakes much more of the nature of an ' authorized version' since, in contrast to the numerous attempts at revision or translation by individuals, it is known to be the work of a body of scholars eminent in their own right as well as representative of the different Churches. In all respects it stands on its own merits as a most important landmark in the history of the English Bible.
Before the last war, when the copyright of the English Revised Version was running out, the Oxford University Press invited Prof. G. R. Driver of Oxford and Prof. J. M. Creed of Cambridge to submit specimens of revised passages of the Revised text from the Old and New Testaments respectively. The samples were accordingly prepared and considered, and it may be surmised that at this stage it was not intended to do more than bring the 1881-5 text abreast of modern scholarship. However, the death of Prof. Creed in 1940, and shortly afterwards the outbreak of war and the absence abroad of Prof. Driver on military service, brought these negotiations to a stop.
After the war the Church of Scotland took up the idea of a completely new translation of the Bible, although there was still influential support in England for the earlier proposal to revise the existing versions. The Scottish view, however, gained ground, and as a result of resolutions carried in the General Assembly and the Convocations, in 1947 a Joint Committee was appointed representing the Established Churches of England and Scotland, the Free Churches of Great Britain, the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge and other interested bodies, to take in hand a new translation of the whole Bible (including the Apocrypha) into modern English. Two advisory and consultative panels were set up for the Old and New Testaments, and after receiving their reports the Joint Committee, meeting in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Truro, organized itself for the task. Three panels were appointed to be responsible for translation, of which the convenors were Prof. T. H. Robinson (Old Testament and also Apocrypha) and Dr. C. H. Dodd (New Testament), while a fourth panel was appointed to give advice on literary and stylistic matters. On the death of Dr. Hunkin, bishop of Truro, in 1952 the bishop of Winchester, Dr. A. T. P. Williams, succeeded as Chairman of the Joint Committee, and there have been other changes: in 1949 Dr. Dodd became General Director of the whole project in addition to being Convenor of the New Testament panel, and Prof. Robinson has been succeeded by Prof. Driver as Convenor of the Old Testament panel and by Prof. G. D. Kilpatrick of that dealing with the Apocrypha.
In deciding on an entirely new translation rather than a revision of the existing versions the sponsors had in view three types of reader.
First, there are today many people who have no effective contact with any of the Churches, and for whom the Authorized Version has no associations. Such people may be intelligent and interested enough to understand what the Bible is about if it is presented to them in language which is acceptable. But being unfamiliar with the English of the seventeenth century the language of the current versions, if not actually unintelligible or misleading, has to them an air of unreality.
Second, there are the pupils growing up in the various kinds of 'modern' schools where the Bible is read in the course of their instruction.
Third, there are the people to whom the Authorized Version is so familiar that they are lulled rather than aroused by its phrases, but who would be more likely to respond to the stimulus of a new and contemporary version which will break through the barrier of familiarity.
With these three types of reader in view the translation will aim at being as accurate as may be without pedantry, and as intelligible to present-day readers as the original was to its first readers, in an idiom which is genuinely English and such as will not repel by its strangeness or remoteness: a 'timeless' English which avoids both archaisms and transient modernisms.
The method by which the work is being carried out is briefly as follows. First a book or portion of a book is allocated to an individual translator (not necessarily a member of any of the panels) who produces a first draft. In the case of the Old Testament this is sent to Prof. Driver, who works through it with special regard to points of Hebrew and textual scholarship, and returns the draft with his suggestions to the translator, who is free to accept or reject them. Any differences are subsequently discussed with the translator and the full panel. In the case of the New Testament the first draft is submitted to all members of the panel, who at subsequent meetings work through the draft with the translator. In each case, when all outstanding questions with regard to translation have been settled, the revised draft is submitted to the panel of literary advisors, whose criticisms and suggestions are considered by the original panel in a further review. Agreement having been reached, the text is put aside, though with the possibility of reconsideration in the light of later work, until such time as it will be brought before the Joint Committee for final approval. After eight years the New Testament panel is a little more than half-way through its appointed task, and may be ready for publication about 1960. The Old Testament will in the nature of things take longer to complete, but it is possible that it may be ready by 1970. If it is remembered that the Revised Version was fourteen years in the making, and the American Revised Standard Version fifteen, and that these were revisions of an existing text and not completely new translations, the period of waiting will not seem excessive.
There will thus eventually be two major versions of the English Bible belonging to the mid-twentieth century, one entirely new, the other (the American Revised Standard Version) having a line of descent running back to Tyndale. Each in its own way will have been prepared to meet the varying needs of our time, and they will be complementary to one another in performing the task which confronts the Church in each generation-that of bringing the Word of God to men. They will have this in common, that the best scholarship, American and English, has been devoted to them, and together will exemplify that scribe of the Kingdom who, as St. Matthew tells us "bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old".