6. Grammatical inaccuracy must be noted as a de- fect pervading, more or less, the whole extent of the present version of tlie N. T. Instances will be found in abundance in Trench and Scholefield (passim}, and in any of the better Commentaries. Such Gallicisms as "i am come," "Babylon is fallen," etc., to say nothing of outright French words, e. g. " bruit" for noise (Nah. iii, 19), have often escaped detection. The true force of tenses, cases, prepositions, articles, is continually lost, sometimes at the cost of the finer shades which give vividness and emphasis, but some- times also entailing more serious errors. In justice to the translators of the N. T., it must be said that, situ-
ENGLISH VERSIONS
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ENGLISH VERSIONS
ated as they were, such errors were almost inevitable. The}' learned Greek through the medium of Latin. Lexicons and grammars were alike in the universal language of scholars; and that language was poorer and less inflected than the Greek, and failed utterly to represent, e. g. the force of its article, or the differ- ence of its aorist and perfect tenses. Such books of this nature as were used b}' the translators were neces- sarih' based upon a far scantier induction, and were therefdre more meagre and inaccurate than those •which have been the fruits of the labors of later schol- ars. Recent scholarship may in many things fall short of that of an earlier time, but the introduction of Greek lexicons and grammars in English has been beyond all doubt a change for the better.
7. The Held of the 0. T. has been far less adequatelj^ worked than tliat of the N. T., and Hebrew scholar- ship has made far less progress than Greek. Rela- tively, indeed, there seems good ground for believing that Hebrew was more studied in the early part of the 17th century than it is now. It was newer and more popular. The reverence which men felt for the per- fection of the "Hebrew vei'ity" made them willing to labor to learn a language which they looked upon as half-divine. But here, also, there was the same source of error. The early Hebrew lexicons represented part- ly, it is true, a Jewish tradition, but partlj' also were based upon the Vulgate (bishop Marsh, Lectures, ii, A pp. fil). The forms of cognate Shemitic languages had not been applied as a means for ascertaining the precise value of Hebrew words. The grammars, also in Latin, were defective. Little as Hebrew professors have, for the most part, done in the way of exegesis, any good commentarj^ on the O. T. will show that here also there are errors as serious as in the N. T. In one memorable case, the inattention, real or apparent, of the translators to the force of the Iliphil form of the verb (Lev. iv, 12) has led to a serious attack on the truthfulness of the whole narrative of the Pentateuch (Colcnso, Pentateuch critically Examined, pt. i, ch. vii).
8. The poetical character of many portions of the O. T. is wholly obscured by the arrangement of the A. v., and, indeed, its authors and editors seem to have ignored the poetical element altogether. This is a de- fect of very great importance, and should be remedied by a proper distribution of the clauses according to the Hell, laws of parallelism (q. v.), as well as by a more careful observance of that system of transposition of the terms of each hemistich that is characteristic of all poetr}'.
0. The division into chapters and verses is a matter that ought not to be passed over in any future revis- ion. The former, it must be remembered, does not go further back than the loth century. The latter, thougli answering, as far as the (). T. is concerned, to a long-standing Jewish arrangement, depends, in the X. T., upon the work of Robert Stephens. Neither in the O. T. nor in the N. T. did the verse-division ap- pear in any earlier edition than that of Geneva. The inconveniences of changing both are probably too great to be risked. The hal)it of referring to chapter and verse is too deeply rooted to be got rid of. Yet the division, as it is, is not seldom artiticial, and some- times is absolutely nnsleading. No one would think of printing any other book, in prose or poetry, in short clauses like the verses of our Hildes, and the tendency of such a division is to give a broken and discontinu- ous knowledge, to make men good textuaries but bad divines. An arrangement like tliat of the paragraph Billies of our own time, with the verse and cliapter di- visions relegated to the margin, ought to form part of any authoritative revision.
10. ( )tber points of detail remain to be noticed brief- ly : (1.) Tlie chapter-headings of the A.V. ofterr go be- yond tlieir proper province. If it is intended to give an autlioritative commentary to the lay reader, let it be done thoroughly. But ifthat attenipt is abandon-
ed, as it was deliberately in 1611, then for the chapter- headings to enter, as thej' do, upon the work of inter- pretation, giving, as in Canticles, Psalms, and Proph- ets, passim, mystical meanings, is simply an inconsist- ency. What should be a mere table of contents be- comes a gloss upon the text. (2.) The use of italics in printing the A.V., if of advantage in point of minute criticism, is at least open to some risks. At first they seem an honest confession on the part of the transla- tors of what is or is not in the original. On the other hand, they tempt to a loose translation. Few writers would think it necessary to use them in translating other books. If the words do not do more than repre- sent the sense of the original, then there is no reason for treating them as if they were added at the discre- tion of the translators. If the\' go beyond that, they are of the nature of a gloss, altering the force of the original, and have no right to be there at all, while the fact that they appear as additions frees the translator from the sense of responsibility. (.S.) Good as the principle of marginal references is, the margins of the A.V., as now printed, are somewhat inconveniently crowded, and the references, being often merely ver- bal, tend to defeat their own purpose, and to make the reader weary of referring. They need, accordingly, a careful sifting; and though it would not be desirable to go back to the scantj' number of the original edi- tion of IGll, something intermediate between that and the present overabundance would be an improvement. (4.) Marginal readings, on the other hand, indicating variations in the text, or differences in the judgment of translators, might be profitabh' increased in num- ber. The results of the labors of scholars would thus be placed within the reach of all intelligent readers, and so many difficulties and stumbling-blocks might be removed.