THE REVISED VERSION OF ROMANS VIII,, 3.
[TO TER EDITOR OF TRH .SPECTATOR.']
Ssa,—I am not going to add one other to the many letters which have appeared respecting the general character of the Revised Version. I write with the single object of calling the attention of your readers to the rendering which the Revisers have given us of Romans viii., 3.
In the Authorised Version, this passage stands thus :—" For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Sou in the likeness of einful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh :" and in the original, the words which are translated "and for sin" are sal e-Esi det.4apriac. I greatly regret to find that the Revisers, instead. of keeping faithfully to the words of St. Paul, as the Translators of 1611 did, have introduced. into the English Text the gloss of a special theological school; and. that their version, I do not say perversion, of the Apostle's statement is the following :—" For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as an offerimg for sin [s, or, "and for sin"], condemned sin in the flesh." The substitutionary conception of the death of Christ may, or may not, be discoverable in other portions of the New Testament, but to import it bodily into the verse in question (while the Greek Text remains unaltered), is simply the superfluity of dogmatic naughtiness. It is some comfort to learn from the Appendix to the Revision that the American Committee did not approve of the arbitrary addi- tion to the Authorised. Text which was made by their English brethren, and that they sent over the following suggestion or remonstrance :—" Rom. viii., 3.—Let marg. g and. for sin ') and the text exchange places." Believing that in the present instance our American friends were in the right, I am, Sir, &c.,
St. Philip's Vicarage, Stepney, E. A. J. Ross, E.D.
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