The Missing Word
SIR,—The answer which Janus's friends, lay and clerical, might return to his question, what is the missing word in the quotation: "There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their by night," will depend on which version of the Bible each of them uses. The word (Luke II, 8) is " flock " in the Authorised and Revised Versions of the Bible ; and this word also appears in the Roman Catholic translation of the Vulgate which is annotated by Bishop Challoner ; but the Rev. James Moffatt, in A New Translation of the Bible, uses " flocks," and so does Monsignor Ronald Knox in his brilliant translation of the New Testament. A layman like myself, with little Latin and no Greek, but with some knowledge of .sheep-farming, is inclined to believe that Mr. Moffatt and Father Knox are right, and that the other translators are wrong, since a flock is.shepherded by one person, and "shepherds" would surely be looking after several flocks. At this point in my letter I wondered if flock could be used in the plural, and 1 consulted A New English Dictionary. where I learnt that the word, among other meanings, denotes "a number of domestic animals chiefly, and now exclusively, of shee,, or goats, kept together under the charge of one or more persons," so it appears that, although the flock may be few, the shepherds may be many. Whatever answer Janus receives, flock or flocks, the respondent will be right and in good company.— [Janus writes: So far as I am concerned it is not a question of " which version." I asked what was the missing word in a particular version— the Authorised. I quoted, as Mr. Ervinc does, from that version.]
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