The New English Bible

Already The New English Bible is being hailed by some readers as a sure and swift successor to The King James Version, while others disapprove it on the ground that some important passages combine translation with objectionable interpretation.CHRISTIANITY TODAYfeatures this major appraisal of the New Testament translation by Dr. F. F. Bruce, Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis at University of Manchester. Note additional comments at the conclusion of the essay

—ED.

When the biblical versions associated with the name of John Wycliffe appeared towards the end of the fourteenth century, the leading authorities in the Church of England held a synod at Oxford, presided over by the Archbishop of Canterbury, which forbade anyone to translate any part of the Bible into English, or even to read such a translation, without the approval of his bishop or a provincial church council. When William Tyndale published his English New Testament in 1525, it was greeted with scathing condemnation by some men who were no mean judges in such matters; Sir Thomas More, for example, declared that Tyndale’s work was so bad that it could not be mended, for it is easier to make a new web of cloth than to sew up all the holes in a net. When the King James Version appeared in 1611, Dr. Hugh Broughton, one of the greatest Hebrew and Greek scholars in England, sent a message to the king to say: “I had rather be rent in pieces with wild horses than any such translation by my consent should be urged upon poor churches.… The new edition crosseth me. I require it to be burnt.” Nor were critical voices wanting when the British Revised Version appeared—the New Testament in 1881 and the whole Bible in 1885. Dean Burgon, no mean textual scholar and a master of English style, characterized it as “the most astonishing as well as the most calamitous literary blunder of the age” and declared that the revisers should receive for their unselfish labors “nothing short of stern and well-merited rebuke.” The reception which the Revised Standard Version received when it appeared is fresh in our memories; but that may be treated as a matter of domestic American concern with which a British writer should not meddle. One may conclude from this survey, however, that a good translation of the Bible is almost bound to be greeted with hostility at first.

The criticisms of the King James Version, the Revised Version, and the Revised Standard Version came from men who had not participated in the work of translation or revision. In the case of the New English Bible, so many biblical scholars in Great Britain and Ireland have taken part in producing it, and therefore feel themselves debarred from reviewing it, that there are not many left over who can undertake this task. I asked the convener of one of the translation panels recently who was going to play the part of Dean Burgon to the New English Bible; he suggested that I myself might like to assume that role. But I said that, having on occasion tried my hand at Bible translation, I did not feel disposed to deal harshly with the work of any other laborers in this field—even if their work deserved it, which I was sure the New English Bible would not!

The New English Bible is not a revision of earlier versions; it has been planned all along as a completely new translation from the original. This means that its reviewer must not ask certain questions which would be quite in place if he were dealing with a revision. For example, in reviewing the Revised Standard Version, which proclaims itself to be a revision of the editions of 1611, 1881–1885 and 1901, it would be quite legitimate to compare it with one or more of those earlier editions and ask: “Why have the revisers changed this and that?” But when the New English Bible varies not only in wording but in sense from the KJV, we should not ask: “Why have the translators changed this?” They have not changed anything; they have translated from the original text. We can, however, ask: “Why have they translated the original text thus?” Or: “Why have they chosen to translate this particular reading?” For a translator of the Bible has a twofold task. In view of the variety of readings exhibited by the manuscripts and versions at his disposal, he must repeatedly make up his mind which reading he is to adopt as the basis for his translation; and only then can he proceed with his task of translation. He must, in fact, be not only translator but something of a textual critic as well.

FROM AN ECLECTIC TEXT

The translators of the NEB like the revisers of the RSV, have made an eclectic text the basis of their work. The Introduction to the NEB points out that there is at present no critical text which would command the same general degree of acceptance as the text of the great uncial manuscripts (Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus) did in the days when the British RV and the ASV appeared. “Nor has the time come,” the Introduction continues, “in the judgment of competent scholars, to construct such a text, since new material constantly comes to light, and the debate continues. The present translators therefore could do no other than consider variant readings on their merits, and, having weighed the evidence for themselves, select for translation in each passage the reading which to the best of their judgment seemed most likely to represent what the author wrote.” The majority of New Testament textual critics would probably endorse this estimate of the present situation and of the translator’s responsibility in relation to the text.

DISCOVERING A ‘TIMELESS’ ENGLISH

What, then, of the actual work of translation? The translators, we are told, have aimed at a “timeless” English, something which would be genuinely English in idiom, avoiding archaisms and passing fashions of the day, readily understood by people of reasonable intelligence without being bald or pedestrian, more concerned with conveying a sense of reality than with preserving hallowed associations, accurate without being pedantic. To help them in the attaining of this goal, they enjoyed the collaboration of a panel of literary experts who examined each section of the translation to make sure that its style and diction were acceptable. One thing that the revisers of 1881–1885 overlooked was that if a version is to be suitable for use in public worship it must sound well. A preliminary survey of the NEB New Testament suggests that the translators have had considerable success in this regard. Here and there an individual reader will inevitably think that something could have been better expressed. One can understand why the prodigal son is said to have craved “the pods that the pigs were eating” (whereas the KJV calls them “the husks that the swine did eat”); but would it not have been more in accord with modern English usage to say “stomach” rather than “belly” when it is recorded that “he would have been glad to fill his belly” with them? Perhaps the KJV has exercised an unconscious influence, and no wonder. It does not appear that anything is gained by putting “prostitute” regularly where the older English versions have “harlot”; the former is the term used in the law court and the probationer’s office rather than in common parlance. But where the choice between words is largely a matter of taste, it is fruitless to argue about them.

The unit in translation is the clause or sentence and not the individual word; in this respect the translators have followed John Purvey, translator of the second Wycliffite version of 1395, and have adopted the opposite policy to that of the revisers of 1881–1885.

A USEFUL SAMPLE

The prologue to John’s Gospel in the NEB will provide a useful sample of their procedure:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

There appeared a man named John, sent from God; he came as a witness to testify to the light, that all might become believers through him. He was not himself the light; he came to bear witness to the light. The real light which enlightens every man was even then coming into the world.

He was in the world; but the world, though it owed its being to him, did not recognize him. He entered his own realm, and his own would not receive him. But to all who did receive him, to those who have yielded him their allegiance, he gave the right to become children of God, not born of any human stock, or by the fleshly desire of a human father, but the offspring of God himself. So the Word became flesh; he came to dwell among us, and we saw his glory, such glory as befits the Father’s only Son, full of grace and truth.

Here is John’s testimony to him: he cried aloud, ‘This is the man I meant when I said, “He comes after me, but takes rank before me”; for before I was born, he already was.’

Out of his full store we have all received grace upon grace; for while the Law was given through Moses, grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God; but God’s only Son, he who is nearest to the Father’s heart, he has made him known.

The older versions present us with a word-for-word rendering of verse 1 of this chapter: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The new version presents us with a “meaning-for-meaning” rendering; that is to say, the translators have asked themselves, “What does this sentence mean?” and have then set themselves to express that meaning in the best English they could find for the purpose. What is meant by the clause: “In the beginning was the Word”? “In the beginning” is probably a deliberate echo on the Evangelist’s part of the opening words of the book of Genesis. At that time, he wishes us to understand, when God created heaven and earth, the Word through whom He created them was already in existence. The new translators have conveyed the Evangelist’s purpose clearly by their rendering: “When all things began, the Word already was.” Whether the echo of Genesis 1:1 will be as clear in the New English Bible as it is in the older versions we cannot say until we see the Old Testament part of the work and examine its rendering of Genesis 1:1—and that will not be for some years yet.

The second clause of John 1:1 does not call for comment here, but the third clause makes us stop and think. “The Word was God” is the old-established translation of this clause, and evangelicals have been at pains to defend this translation against such forms as “the Word was divine” (which says less than the Evangelist intended) or even “the Word was a god” (which says something quite different from what the Evangelist intended). Is the Evangelist’s meaning better expressed by the New English Bible? “What God was, the Word was” could be ambiguous out of its context; for example, in terms of classical Christian orthodoxy it might be said that God was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; but clearly it is not true that the Word was Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. In the context, however, the statement that “what God was, the Word was” means that the Word was the perfect expression of all that God was—an idea which is repeated in several forms throughout the Gospel. That is what the new translators take the Evangelist to mean, I think, and that is what they intend to convey; but I am not sure that their intention will be immediately obvious to all readers. Prebendary J. B. Phillips has another way of rendering the same basic sense: “At the beginning God expressed himself. That personal expression, that word, was with God, and was God, and he existed with God from the beginning.” At the crucial point this rendering retains the statement that the Word or self-expression of God “was God”; and something may still be said on behalf of a rendering which keeps closer to a word-for-word translation here. There is, at any rate, no ground for thinking that the New English Bible has weakened the force of John’s witness; the translators would agree with Professor C. K. Barrett that “John intends that the whole of his gospel shall be read in the light of this verse. The deeds and words of Jesus are the deeds and words of God; if this be not true the book is blasphemous.”

The next thing that we notice in the NEB rendering of the Johannine prologue is that the translators have adopted the punctuation at the end of verse 3 which the revisers of 1881, 1901, and 1952 recorded in the margin. This punctuation, which has strong and early support, puts a period after “was not anything made,” and begins the next sentence: “That which hath been made was life in him.” This is the construction which the NEB renders: “All that came to be was alive with his life.” Here the crucial question is one of punctuation more than translation and on the whole the punctuation adopted in the text of KJV, RV, ASV and RSV seems preferable. The words as thus punctuated are translated in the margin of the NEB: “no single created thing came into being without him. There was life in him.…” (It may well be that this is the punctuation personally preferred by Professor C. H. Dodd, director of the NEB translation; at least this is what one could infer from a passage on page 318 of his book The Interpretation of the Fourth Gospel. But if that is so, it simply indicates that the new translation is a true joint-production, and that even the preference of the director could be outvoted.)

Key Texts In The New English Bible

Here are some choice NEB passages destined to be treasured by devout Bible students:

“Go forth to every part of the world, and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15).

“I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall wander in the dark; he shall have the light of life” (John 8:12).

“Set your troubled hearts at rest. Trust in God always, trust also in me” (John 14:1).

“There is no salvation in anyone else at all, for there is no other name under heaven granted to men, by which we may receive salvation” (Acts 4:12).

“Do all you have to do without complaint or wrangling. Show yourselves guileless and above reproach, faultless children of God in a warped and crooked generation, in which you shine like stars in a dark world and proffer the word of life” (Phil. 2:14 f.).

“Love keeps no score of wrongs; does not gloat over other men’s sins, but delights in the truth. There is nothing love cannot face; there is no limit to its faith, its hope, its endurance” (1 Cor. 13:6 f.).

Here are some potential centers of discussion on which evangelical debate is likely to focus:

“You are Peter, the Rock; and on this rock will I build my church …” (Matt. 16:18). The difficulty: Does the capitalization of “Rock” after Peter encourage objectionable interpretation?

“God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, that everyone who has faith in him may not die but have eternal life” (John 3:16). The difficulty: In view of prevailing American usage, will the “may” be taken as implying doubt? (Note also Acts 4:12, where the Greek requires “must.”)

“Every inspired scripture has its use for teaching the truth and refuting error, or for reformation of manners and discipline in right living” (2 Tim. 3:16). The difficulty: Do the translators unjustifiably break the force of “All Scripture is inspired” (KJV, RSV), departing from the principle on which they translate a similar grammatical construction in 1 Timothy 4:4 and Hebrews 4:13? (Compare Romans 15:4, “For all the ancient scriptures were written for our own instruction, in order that through the encouragement they give us we may maintain our hope with fortitude.”) The term “inspire,” moreover is introduced in a loose sense (cf. Phil. 2:13; 1 Th. 5:19). (But note 1 Peter 1:21, “For it was not through any human whim that men prophesied of old; men they were, but, impelled by the Holy Spirit, they spoke the words of God.”)

See Dr. F. F. Bruce’s comprehensive appraisal of the new translation for a discussion of its timid handling of the idea of propitiation.

—ED.

The remainder of the prologue illustrates the care which the translators have taken to express the full meaning of their text, and the considerable success which they have achieved. The rendering of John the Baptist’s testimony in verse 15 shows up clearly the two senses in which “before” is used (KJV, “preferred before me, for he was before me”), and makes the emphasis on our Lord’s pre-existence as unmistakable as could be desired.

A REPRESENTATIVE COMMITTEE

The fact that the translators were drawn from all the principal non-Roman denominations in Great Britain and Ireland (and from the two leading Bible Societies and the Oxford and Cambridge University Presses) can be taken as a guarantee of the theological and ecclesiastical impartiality of the NEB, the more so as the individual translators, irrespective of their church-manship, represent more or less that relative conservatism in theology which in America and Europe is commonly regarded as characteristic of the British.

WHAT OF PROPITIATION?

At the beginning of 1961 a specimen page of the new translation was widely published, reproducing the first chapter of I John and a few verses of the second chapter. Special attention was directed by many readers to the rendering of 1 John 2:2, where the word “propitiation,” appearing here in KJV, RV and ASV, is not replaced by “expiation,” as in RSV, but by a fuller phrase: “He is himself the remedy for the defilement of our sins, not our sins only but the sins of all the world.” In recent years there has been considerable discussion about the true meaning of the words which the older versions of the New Testament translate by “propitiation”; and in this discussion Professor Dodd himself has played an outstanding part. The term “propitiation” disappears from the NEB. In 1 John 4:10 the Father is spoken of as “sending the Son as the remedy for the defilement of our sins.” In Hebrews 2:17 Christ is qualified as “high priest before God, to expiate the sins of the people.” In Romans 3:25 similarly “God designed him to be the means of expiating sin by his sacrificial death.” The replacement of “propitiation” by other expressions might be justified on the ground that nowadays it is a technical theological term, not readily understood—in its biblical sense at least—by the majority of English speakers. In that case the translators might well endeavor to express its biblical sense by other means, and in the two passages in I John they have succeeded reasonably well in doing this. The statement that Christ is “the remedy for the defilement of our sins,” while it may not convey with complete precision the sense of the Greek word hilasmos, does make two positive points—that sin is a defilement from which we need to be cleansed, and that Christ is “God’s remedy for sin.” But it does not appear that “expiate” and “expiation” are a substantial improvement on “propitiate” and “propitiation,” either ideomatically or theologically. It is true that the Greek words so translated have a meaning in the Bible different from that which they have in pagan literature; their biblical meaning has been conditioned by their biblical context, in which “propitiation” is something which God himself provides for sinners. But if the Greek words have had their meaning conditioned by their biblical context, why can we not understand the English terms “propitiate” and “propitiation” as equally conditioned? According to the NEB, “God’s wrath rests upon him” who disobeys the Son (John 3:36), and “we see divine retribution revealed from heaven and falling upon all the godless wickedness of men” (Rom. 1:18). This wrath or retribution is God’s “strange work” (Isa. 28:21), something not congenial to his nature as is the mercy in which he delights; but when it rests upon men or falls upon their godless wickedness, how is it to be removed? This is the question which is answered by the statement in Romans 3:25 that God has appointed Christ to be a hilasterion “by his sacrificial death.” We require a rendering of hilasterion which brings this fact out, while emphasizing that it is God who provides it.

Nothing is easier, however, than to pick out renderings from a new translation and suggest that the sense might have been better expressed. The New Testament panel of translators are to be congratulated on the excellence of their achievement. It is not the reviews which appear on publication day or the day after that will decide the acceptance of the new version. That will be decided, over the months and years that lie ahead, by the people for whom it was prepared. We trust with the translators, “that under the providence of Almighty God this translation may open the truth of the scriptures to many who have been hindered in their approach to it by barriers of language.”

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

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