THE AUTHORISED VERSION.

SOME recent letters to the Times by Canon Beeching have called attention with force and reason to the desirability of emending the Authorised Version of the New Testament in such a way as to save the form and spirit of that glorious possession while correcting the admitted mistakes. The Revisers of the New Testament failed to do this. Three hundred years ago this year the Authorised Version of the Bible was given to the world. It is a suitable occasion, while acknowledging the majesty and simplicity of the translation, to remove the few reproaches which can be brought against it. As Canon Beeching has pointed out, the Revisers of the Authorised Version of the Old Testament and the Revisers of the Authorised Version of the New Testament employed different methods. The Revisers of the Old Testament retained the old form wherever it was possible ; they were rightly indulgent towards everything but mistakes. But the Revisers of the New Testament went much further : they changed the language when there were no mistakes to correct; they made it a rule not to translate the Greek aorist by the English perfect ; and they nearly always gave the same rendering to any Greek word whatever its context might be. Corrections of the Authorised Version are indeed necessary, because it contains undoubted mistranelations, and because the Greek text, which was used in 1611, has since been greatly purified by the researches of scholars. But such wide changes as the Revisers of the New Testament introduced strangely ignored the extraordinary hold which the Authorised Version has on the affections of English-speaking people as a symbol of their union, as a standard of undefiled English, and as a revelation of the magic and eloquence of old and simple words. We heartily agree, therefore, with the suggestion that the Authorised Version of the New Testament ought to be revised in the spirit which guided the Revisers of the Old Testament., and we cannot imagine a more appropriate time for the work to be undertaken than in this tercentenary year of the Authorised Version.

We mentioned the New Testament Revisers' practice of generally translating a word in the same way, whatever the context. This was a break with ancient custom. Coverdale has often been spoken of as the first to allow himself latitude in his rendering of a word according to its context, but really the habit was older. How much of the beauty of the Authorised Version depends -upon this latitude—a beauty

which involves no error whatever—may be seen in the following sentences from Revelation :- Rev. xv. 6: "And the seven angels came out of the Temple ; . . clothed in pure and white linen."

Rev. air. 8: "And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white."

Rev. xxi. 18: "And the city was pure gold, like unto dear glass."

In these sentences " pure," " clean," and " clear" all re- present the same Greek adjective.

Attempts to make the Bible easier for people to understand sometimes defeat themselves. We would not underrate the aid which the Revised Version of the New Testament has been to people who do not understand Greek ; it has often thrown a flood of light on dark passages by its scrupulous accuracy. But it should also be remembered that the Authorised Version has itself created an understanding and know- ledge of words and a love of certain happy phrases which . did not exist before; and it has thus succeeded amply in explaining itself. It has been said that the language of the Authorised Version was more often used in the common writing and speaking of the nineteenth century than in either the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. As Professor A. S.

Cook, of Yale, reminds us in an admirable but too brief book, The Authorised Version of the Bible and its Influence (G. P.

Putnam's Sons, 3s. 6d.), many terms formerly regarded as awkward or alien to the genius of the language are now understood and accepted solely through the influence of the Authorised Version. The translators of the Authorised Version used English words, but not always English phrases.

Hebraisms were used, but these have now become part of the English language. A characteristic Hebraism, which is not recognised as such to-day, is the " of " in phrases like "the oil of gladness," "King of Kings," and so on. Even early in the nineteenth century Hallam said that the Authorized Version abounded in " obsolete phraseology and single words long since abandoned." To-day, as Professor Cook says, this is obviously less true of the Bible than of Shakespeare. The words which objectors of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would have cast out as barbarous have now become familiar not only in poetry but in popular language. Professor Cook takes phrases at random from the Authorized Version which people use in the exchange of ideas every day, phrases which are scarcely thought of as Biblical at all: "highways and hedges," "clear as crystal," "hip and thigh," " arose as one man," " lick the dust," " a thorn in the flesh," " a broken reed," " root of all evil," " sweat of his brow," "heap coals of fire," "a law unto themselves," " the rat of the land," " a soft answer," " a word in season," "weighed in the balance and found wanting," and so forth.

Substantially to change the Authorised Version is to com- mit a surgical operation on the ages. It has grown up with our modern language, which it has largely formed, enriched, and rejuvenated. It has triumphed on its merits. We call it the Authorised Version, but it has never been proved that it was "authorised" by Parliament, or Con- vocation, or King. It did not offer itself as a new translation; it gathered together the good of previous trans- lations, and in essence it is the translation of Tindale.

"Truly, good Christian reader," said the translators, "we never thought, from the beginning, that we should need

to make a new translation, nor yet to make of a bad one a good one ; . . . . but to make a good one better, or out of many good ones one principal good one, not justly to be excepted against—that hath been our endeavour, that our mark." As the Authorised Version is substan-

tially Tindale's, it is pertinent to ask what was the motive of Tindale, what the spirit guiding him. Professor Cook reminds us that Tindale had the splendid ideal of making a Version which all the people could understand. "If God spare me life," he said, " ere many years I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than you [a theologian] do." The translators of 1611 admitted words which Tindale had rejected as unsuitable to his purpose—for example, they employed " grace " instead of "fivour," and " salvation " instead of " health " —but they passed nothing which, as experience has since proved, could not be easily embraced in the language. "In its production," Gardiner has said truly and well of the Authorised Version, "all sectarian influences were banished, and all hostilities were mute."

This Version soon superseded all others. It alone was read in publio worship and in the home, and it came to be accepted with such confidence that, after a time, it was almost forgotten that it was a translation, and people attributed to it a plenary verbal inspiration. It is marvellous to think with how few words it accomplishes its effects. Professor Cook points out that the "New English Dictionary" reckons the words of the English language from A to L as 160,803. Shakespeare uses about 21,000 words; Milton 13,000; but the whole Authorised Version uses only about 6,000. Truly eloquence, as Goldsmith says, is not in the words but in the subject. We all know the influence of the Bible on every great modern writer or speaker of the English tongue. Coleridge, Carlyle, Macaulay, Ruskin, Tennyson, Lincoln, Walt Whitman, to take only a few names, all admitted the Authorised Version to be their primal source and example. This incomparable posses- sion, with its vast simplicity and moving eloquence, its " preternatural grandeur," as Fronde said, and its deep tenderness, is not a thing to be changed by one phrase save where mistranslations or new knowledge of the Greek texts make corrections imperative. The Revisers of the New Testa- ment, it ought to be said, recognised all this. They wrote : " We have had to study this great Version carefully and minutely, line by line; and the longer we have been engaged upon it the more we have learned to admire its simplicity, its dignity, its power, its happy turns of expression, its general accuracy, and, we must not fail to add, the music of its cadences and the felicities of its rhythm." The case for a more moderate emendation than theirs of the Authorised Version is based on the judgment that their practice was much less admirable than their precept.

All we • need is the Authorised Version revised when and where mistranslation can be proved—and by mistranslation we mean something which actually misrepresents and changes the meaning of the original. In that case revision is of course necessary. In every other case let the present Version stand as it is.