Review of Current Religious Thought: December 05, 1960

We approach the new year with growing anticipation of an event which promises to be of unusual significance in the Christian world—the appearance, namely, of a new English translation of the New Testament, which will mark the completion of the first stage in the preparation of a new translation of the whole Bible. Before considering some of the implications of this event, let us cast a glance back over the story of the English Bible as it has developed through the centuries. It is now more than 1200 years since the shepherd-poet Caedmon was transposing the biblical narratives into the vernacular as he sang his spiritual songs. From him a line, somewhat tenuous in places, may be traced of those who were responsible for giving the British people at least some portions of the Scriptures in their own language. There was Caedmon’s contemporary Aldhelm, who is reputed to have rendered the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon; and, in the next century, there was the Venerable Bede, whose last work was the translation of St. John’s Gospel, completed as he lay dying; and, in the ninth century, King Alfred, who translated the Ten Commandments and prefaced them to the laws of his kingdom; and Aelfric at the end of the tenth century; and Aldred, Archbishop of York, the translator of the Lindisfarne Gospels, who crowned William the Conqueror king on Christmas Day, 1066; and Orm and Richard Rolle de Hampole in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries respectively.

It is to John Wycliffe, “the morning star of the Reformation,” who was born about 1324, that (in collaboration with his friend Nicholas de Hereford) we owe the first English translation of the whole Bible—a translation, however, not made from the original Hebrew and Greek but from the Latin text of the Vulgate version. It was, accordingly, a translation of a translation. The task of translating from the original languages was undertaken nearly two centuries later by the great scholar and reformer William Tyndale, who suffered martyrdom in 1536, but not before he had given the English people the whole of the New Testament and much of the Old in their own language. Miles Coverdale’s Bible, which was first published in 1535, the year prior to Tyndale’s martyrdom, was in a sense the completion of Tyndale’s work, though Coverdale himself was not a Hebrew and Greek scholar and prepared his translations from German and Latin versions. John Rogers, in turn, revised Coverdale’s version in the Bible that appeared under the name of Thomas Matthew in 1537 and consequently has come to be known as Matthew’s Bible. 1539 saw the edition of Cranmer’s or the Great Bible (so called because of its bulk), which was, in the main, a revision by Coverdale of the Matthew’s Bible.

Twenty years later, in 1560, the Geneva Bible was published. It received this name because it was produced by a small group of English exiles in Geneva, chief of whom was William Whittingham, during the time when John Knox was pastor of the British congregation there. It was in this version that for the first time the division of the text into chapters and verses was made and that English words which were necessary for rounding off the sense, but did not correspond to words in the original text, were printed in italics. The Geneva version was remarkable also for its marginal notes—another innovation which contributed greatly to its influence. It has also come to be known as the “Breeches” Bible because in Genesis 3:7 for “aprons” it reads “breeches”—a rendering which had first appeared in Wycliffe’s version two hundred years earlier. Readers are referred to an interesting account of the history and characteristics of the Geneva Bible, to mark its 400th anniversary, in this year’s October issue of Theology Today written by Professor Bruce M. Metzger. “It was,” he says, chiefly owing to the dissemination of copies of the Geneva version of 1560 that a sturdy and articulate Protestantism was created in Britain, a Protestantism which made a permanent impact upon Anglo-American culture.”

Next year will see the celebration of the 350th anniversary of the famous Authorized or King James Version. This was the work of a commission of some 50 scholars whose expressed aim was not to make a new translation but to improve what was already to hand. On the success of their labors there is no need for me to dilate here. In it the master-work of William Tyndale is still very largely preserved. Over the intervening centuries it has maintained an unchallenged place in the affections of the English-speaking peoples—and that despite the appearance of the Revised Version in 1881–5, which was the fruit of the protracted labors of 99 scholars, both British and American. The American Standard Version (or American Revised Version), which was published in 1901, was intended to be a strengthening of the RV at points where there seemed to be room for improvement. Since then various individual scholars have given themselves to the task of preparing new translations. Of these, the best known are Weymouth’s New Testament (1903), Moffatt’s Bible (NT 1913, OT 1924), and, most recently, J. B. Phillips’ New Testament.

The latest revision has been that of the Revised Standard Version (NT 1946, OT 1952)—the work of 91 American and Canadian scholars—which is also proving widely acceptable and represents a distinct advance on the R.V.

But, as Professor F. F. Bruce says (in a new work on The English Bible which is to be published in March of next year by the Oxford University Press, New York), “it may be questioned whether successive revisions of earlier revisions are adequate for the needs of the present day. It is widely felt that what we require today is a completely new translation, based on the most accurate and up-to-date findings in all the relevant fields of knowledge—linguistic, textual, and historical—and carried out by men who themselves hear the voice of God speaking to them in Holy Scripture.” It is precisely this, a completely new translation, which is now in course of preparation under the direction of Dr. C. H. Dodd in Great Britain, and of which the New Testament is to appear next March. It is to be called The New English Bible. Dr. Bruce writes: “If through its words the readers hear the unmistakable Word of God speaking to their hearts, bearing witness to Christ, and making them ‘wise unto salvation’ through faith in Him, if use and experience prove to them that the New English Bible is a lamp to their feet and a light to their path, they will in due course give it a reception which will surpass the translators’ most sanguine hopes. The reign of the second Elizabeth will then be as illustrious an epoch in the history of the English Bible as the reign of her great namesake was.”

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