Section 375 — A Dictionary of the Bible

cerning which the Gentiles were wont to inquire, seeking the likenesses of their idols.

1 Mac 643 and the king seemed § to be upon him.

1 Mac 662 And the king en- tered. ..andhe saw... and set at nought... and gave

On the whole, a study of the RV of the Apocr. cannot fail to make us aware of the great amount of work still to be done before such a translation as we desire to see can be produced: work in settling the text, in harmonizing proper names, in elucidat- ing obscure passages. But it cannot fail to make us conscious also of the vast amount of work done. That there are inequalities in the workmanship none will deny. Wisdom is better done than Sirach, 2 Mac. than 1 Maccabees. But let the fair-minded reader take any of these books, and compare care- fully the rendering of a few consecutive chapters in them with that in the AV. He will meet, no doubt, with changes that he demurs to as uncalled for or even wrong. He will be perplexed, on the other hand, by the seeming neglect of alterations, where he had thought them necessary. But for one such case he will find a score, in which the new version is an improvement upon the old, in point of exactness, or finish, or consistency of diction. The Revisers have at any rate thrown down the gage, and may now say to their critics: So non placebit, reperitote rectius.

x. Toe ‘ AMERICAN REVISED’ VERSION,** 1900 and 1901.—With the completion of their work in 1885, the English members of the joint Revision Company regarded their corporate existence as at anend. The American members retained their or- ganization. In assigning the copyright to the two University Presses, it had been stipulated that for fourteen years every copy issued from those presses should contain in an appendix the readings pre- ferred by the Americans ; and that the latter, for their part, should give their sanction to no other

* A comparison of vv.2-27 shows that the similes are taken from rivers :—Pishon and Tigris, Euphrates and Jordan, # and Gihon. Hence, from considerations of symmetry, x should re- present, not ‘light,’ or anything of the kind, but the name of a river. Edersheim thinks that the Greek translator had 183 before him, which in Am 88 and elsewhere means not ‘as the light,’ but ‘as the river’ (i.e. the Nile), as if 1833; and that he wrongly took the former rendering. —See the review in the London Quarterly, before cited, p. Me 7

+ Gr. rasdeepiov vewrépov, ‘a young lad’ (Bissell). Cf. Jn 69,

tThe RV follows the best-supported reading of the Greek. But Fritzsche, on the authority of some cursives, with the Complut. and the Aldine of 1518, inserts rot éxvypages Ex” wiraiv before r& bueduere. Such a mode of desecrating the sacred books would be intelligible. Other explanations may be seen in Bissell. All that is here contended for is, that the RV takes no account of the plural in epi éy, makes éEnpebvay do double duty for ‘were wont to inquire, seeking,’ and gives a very obscure sense. .

§The AV appears to have followed the reading of some cursives, 2%”, ‘he (Eleazar) supposed.’ The RV adopts the common reading d96z, better taken impersonally (see Grimm), ‘it seemed that,’ just as in the Lat., ‘et visum est ei quod

| This is cited as an instance of the paodyy, very closely observed throughout this book, of paralaais, or co-ordination, as distinguished from subordination, of clauses. By retaining this peculiarity, the Revisers have reproduced more exactly the form of the original, but at the cost of sacrificing English idiom. , ;

4 A help towards this has been gained by the introduction, in 1898, of marginal references throughout the RV.

VERSIONS (ENGLISH) 269

version for the same number of years. It became evident, however, as time went on, that the American Revisers would not be content with a version in which the renderings they preferred were permanently consigned to an appendix. Ac- cordingly they continued their labours, it might almost be said without interruption from 1885; and the result has been a fresh recension of the RV of the NT in 1900, and of the whole Bible in 1901.

The book is well printed by Thomas Nelson & Sons, of New York. Each page has two columns. The space running down the middle of each is occupied by marginal references. Various readings printed in italics are grouped at the foot of each column, or in the side margins, according to the size of the book. Along the top of each page runs a headline summarizing the contents of that page. The Apocryphal books are not included. The titles present several noticeable variations from the customary form. The NT title-page begins : ‘The New Covenant, commonly called The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour,’ but the title of the whole Bible (there being no separate title of the OT) does not exhibit the word ‘cove- nant. ‘S. for Saint is not prefixed to the names of the writers of the NT. ‘The Acts’ is the sole title of the historical book ; The Epistle to the Hebrews bears no author’s name; the term ‘general’ is discontinued before the Catholic Epistles ; and the last book is simply ‘The Revela- tion of John.’