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Lesson 66

OLDER BIBLE TRANSLATIONS IN CURRENT USE

This lesson concerns itself with translations made prior to the twentieth century and now in use. The popular King James Version (1611) is still the most widely used Bible version. It has many virtues: It is a revision of the former translations; it was executed by a committee representing more than one sect; it was compared with the original languages; it has beauty of language; and it is accepted by the majority of English-speaking people.

At the present time it has a drawback which it did not have originally, in that some of the words used in it are

now unintelligible, as wot for know; or different in meaning today, as prevent for precede. Its style of translating is rather literal than free, which is an advantage for analytical study but a drawback for straight reading. No doubt the translators were hindered in their translating by the king's instruction to keep ecclesiastical words such as bishop, deacon, etc. The text from which the King James Version was made was the Masoretic Hebrew, and the Greek text represented largely the Ecclesiastical or Byzantine Recension. Another fault of the Authorized Version is the unnecessary number of words used to translate the same original word in different places.

Douay Version. This version, translated by Gregory Martin (a Roman Catholic priest who later became a Jesuit) and four other Roman Catholic scholars from the English College at Douay, Belgium, was not made from the original languages, but from the Roman Catholic Version known as the Vulgate. The translation is rather literal and originally contained so many unintelligible Latin words that the ordinary English reader would have to go to the priest for an explanation. Though it was all complete in 1582, it was not published until 1609. This version was revised in 1750 by Bishop Richard Challoner and Francis Blyth. This Challoner-Douay Version was made the approved English version for Catholics in America in 1810. It is accepted by English-speaking Catholics. A recent revision has been made of the Greek Scriptures portion of the Challoner-Douay Version. (See the next lesson.)

Charles Thomson (1729-1824), secretary of the Continental Congress and the first secretary of the Congress of the United States, translated the entire Bible from the Greek, which was published in Philadelphia in 1808. A new edition of it was published in England by S. F. Pells in 1907.

The Greek Septuagint, from which Thomson put in English the pre-Christian Scriptures, was translated from the Hebrew during the second and third centuries before Christ. Some parts of it are translated literally from He-

brew into Greek and some parts are rather freely translated. Certain parts of the Hebrew text are entirely omitted: the Septuagint omitted one-sixth of the book of Job. This missing portion was translated into Greek rather freely by Theodotion (A.D. 180-182) and is usually included in the later copies of the Septuagint. The Septuagint translation of Daniel is so poor that it is usually replaced by Theodotion's revision of it according to the Hebrew. Throughout the Septuagint the word Lord is used instead of Jehovah.

George R. Noyes (1798-1868), a Unitarian preacher, was regarded as one of the best Hebrew and Greek scholars in the United States in his time. Between 1827 and his death he translated Job, Psalms, the Prophets, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Canticles from the Hebrew, and the Greek Scriptures from the Greek text of Tischendorf. In 1838 he revised his translation of Job, which is quoted in The New World. For Jehovah, he sometimes uses Jehovah, but often he uses LORD and GOD.

In 1844, S. Bagster and Sons published Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton's translation of the Septuagint into English.

James Murdock translated into English the Syriac Version of the Greek Scriptures, which was published in New York in 1851. For all except John 7: 53 to 8:11; Luke 22: 17,18; 2 Peter; 1 John 5: 7; 2 John; 3 John; Jude; and Revelation, Murdock used the Peshitta Syriac Version, which in turn is a revision made A.D. 411 of the Old Syriac Version. The Greek text used for this revision was apparently an early form of the Byzantine family. In some places the Peshitta is somewhat free, at times being almost a paraphrase. The original Syriac translation, of which the Peshitta is a revision, was made sometime before A.D. 170. Murdock translated Revelation from the Harclean Syriac Version, which is a very literal revision made in 616 of the Philoxenian Syriac Version made in 508. For 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude, Murdock used either the Harclean or the Philoxenian Version. Luke 22:17,18;

John 7: 53 to 8:11; and 1 John 5:7 first appear in Syriac in a manuscript written in Mount Lebanon in 1626.

Isaac Leeser (1806-1868), a Jewish rabbi of Philadelphia, revised the King James Version of the Hebrew Scriptures according to the Masoretic Hebrew text and published his revision in 1853. It was the accepted English version of the Scriptures in the synagogues and homes of the Jews in the United States for more than fifty years. It is more literal than free.

Robert Young (1822-1888), compiler of the Analytical Concordance to the Bible, translated the whole Bible from the Masoretic Hebrew text and the same Greek text used for the Authorized Version of 1611, and published his translation in 1862. He later revised and republished it. He always uses the name Jehovah wherever it appears in the original. Though his translation is not as literal as an interlineary one would be, it is perhaps the most literal translation of the whole Bible into English. It is the only translation of the Bible in English that translates the Hebrew verb forms uniformly according to the Hebrew idiom. It is a valuable aid to analytical study of the Bible.

Benjamin Wilson, a Christadelphian, published a translation of the Greek Scriptures in 1864, in New York, and designated his work The Emphatic Diaglott. It has so many features of great value, such as a Greek text with an interlinear word-for-word translation in one column and an emphatic English translation in another, that a detailed consideration of its uses in analytical study is undertaken in Lessons 68 and 69.

In 1870 a British revision committee began to revise the King James Version. An American revision committee began co-operating two years later. The revision of the Greek Scriptures was completed and published in 1881; the Hebrew Scriptures were completed four years later; and the complete Bible was published in 1885. In addition to changes in typographical style, the Revised Version replaced old-fashioned words that could not be easily understood and

words that had changed their meaning. For the Hebrew Scriptures the usual Hebrew text was used slightly revised by means of the Septuagint, the Syriac and the Latin Vulgate. For the Greek Scriptures an entirely new text was used, differing greatly from the text used in the King James Version. Two or three changes were made per verse of the Greek Scriptures. The Revised Version uses the name Jehovah very little more than the King James Version does. The Revised Version uses sheol twenty-nine times. Like the King James Version, it is a literal translation and retains the same style of English.