CURRENT LITERATURE.
Holy Bible. Edited, with various Renderings and Readings from the Best Authorities. (Eyre and Spottiewoode.)—This volume, the result of long and careful research on the part of four distinguished scholars, will be acceptable both to special students and to ordinary Bible readers. Everybody knows that our version, excellent as it is on the whole, is disfigured by a good many mistranslations, which now and then grievously impair and obscure the sense. It is no exaggeration to say that some passages, as they stand, are quite unintelligible. Occasion- ally a very simple remedy will suffice, and the change of a single word will clear up the sense. Of course it sometimes happens that the sub- stitution of a more exact rendering of the original does not quite have the desired effect, for while something is gained, something is also lost. *What a Bible student wants is to know the various shades of meaning of which certain words are susceptible, and this will give him a fuller insight into the book. Very often there is no one word which will cover the various significations of the Hebrew or Greek, and translators have simply a choice of difficulties. The notes in the present volume comprise variations of rendering and variations of reading. If a various rendering has no name appended to it, it is to be understood that it is accepted by the general verdict of scholars. These various renderings are limited to such as sensibly affect the meaning. The Authorised Version is often obscured by the use of different English words for one word of the original. Thus the point of an argument is sometimes lost, or at least seriously impaired. On the whole, one uniform rendering should be adhered to in such eases, even at the cost of some little apparent awkwardness. In this manner, as the editors observe, unexpected parallelisms between different parts of the Bible are often very in- structively suggested. As to various readings, the editors have availed themselves of the labours of Lachmann, Tischendorf, Trogelles, West- cott, and Hort. In this field there is still work to be done. Even in the Hebrew text, jealously guarded as it was by the Jews, there aro, several errors, as may with certainty be inferred from a comparison of the corresponding chapters in the Books of Samuel and Kings on the one hand, and in the Chronicles on the other. By means of the ancient versions, which carry us back far beyond the date of the earliest MSS., the original text may now and them in doubtful cases be restored. But this is a work which eminently requires, to use the words of the present editors, "tact and sobriety." The very nature of the Hebrew characters unfortunately lends itself to error and confusion. Many passages become immediately intelligible on a slight alteration in the form of one or two letters. Such emendations are perfectly admissible, but those bold conjectures which may now and then be ventured on in the Greek and Roman classics, are here out of place. It is in its presenting both various readings and various renderings that this volume differs from the larger revision of the Bible now in progress, in which the present editors are themselves taking part.
Previous page
