Imagens das páginas
PDF
ePub

"bishops," "deacons," etc. All non-conforming tendencies were thus guarded against. The authority of the Fathers, the analogy of Faith, and the opinions of learned men in the land, were to be sought for the determination of doubtful or obscure readings. No marginal notes were to torture the sense of the text; and brief explanations of difficult Hebrew and Greek words, with references to parallel passages alone were to find a place beside the simple version. The following translations were to be used in preference to the Bishops when they agreed better with the original — and in the following order of precedence: Tyndale's, Matthew's, Coverdale's, Cranmer's, the Genevan. "Every particular man of each company," so ran the phrase, was "to take the same chapter or chapters, and having translated or amended them severally by himself, when he thought good, all to meet together to confer what they had done, and to agree, for their part, what should stand;" i. e., in each company there would be from seven to ten independent versions, out of which would emerge one revised or re-translated text. "As one company despatched any one book in this manner they should send it to the rest to be considered of seriously and judiciously. If any company, on the review of the book so sent, should doubt or differ upon any place, to send them word thereof, note the places, and therewithal send their reasons; to which, if they consented not, the difference to be compounded at a general meeting of the chief persons of each company, at the end of the work." Every part of the Bible would thus be examined at least fourteen times distinctly, many parts fifteen times, and some seventeen. We can scarcely conceive of a plan which would secure a more faithful and thorough version. In 1607, the translators were diligently at work. Their delay in beginning is accounted for, first, by the death of one of the chief scholars of their number, Livelie, Hebrew Pi fessor a Cambridge; and, secondly, by the lack of funds -- which neither Church nortate freely contributed, and which the tentee of the edition, Rober; Barker, at last largely supplied.

In 1611 this Bible was printed in a large black letter folio,

with this title, "The Holy Bible, containing the Old Testament and the New; newly translated out of the original tongues, and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by his majesty's special commandment. Appointed to be read in the Churches." It was preceded by a dedication to the king, and a preface, showing the reasons for a new version, answering objections, describing the labors of the translators, explaining certain things peculiar to the translation, and concluding with an address to the gentle reader.

Thus introduced and commended to the public, the present version commenced its career. It is commonly called the authorized version, but the only authority for its circulation is found in the proceedings of the conference at Hampton Court, before James's coronation. No royal act or decree of Parliament made it the exclusively approved version. No decision of the convocation gave it the monopoly of the popular favor. The Genevan version in some ten editions was published for seven or eight years after 1611, and that too without prohibition. The appointment mentioned in the title referred only to the public assemblies of the people. The acknowledged superiority of the new version is the sole ground of its subsequent almost universal use.

We have now traced the course of events by which we became possessed of this admirable translation of the Scriptures. We have seen Wiclif battling with monkish corruption and papal error, and then from the retirement of Lutterworth sending forth to his unenlightened countrymen a defence of his opinions and a formidable weapon of controversy in his English version of the Bible. We have seen Tyndale, a refugee from England, leading, on the continent, in privation and peril, a "poure apostle's life," while he redeemed that glorious pledge made by him to the Romish Doctor, that he would cause the plough-boy to excel him in knowledge of the Scriptures. We have seen the fulfilment of his martyr's prayer,-"Lord, open the King of England's eyes," in the permitted publication and royal dedication of the subsequent translation of the entire Bible by his coadjutor, VOL. XV. No 58.

25

Miles Coverdale; in the royal license of Matthew's Bible; a reprint of his own and Coverdale's versions, and yet more in the printing under the authority of the English primate and with a preface and commendation from his hand, of the great Bible of Cranmer. We have seen the fruit of the labors and studies of the persecuted refugees of Geneva, and that of the zeal of the exiled Romanists of Rheims and Douay. We have seen how Episcopal dignity was borrowed to give weight to the project of Cranmer's successor, Parker; and finally we have seen as the ripened fruit of these years of varied culture, of storm and sunshine, gathering up into itself all that was worthy in less mature products, and possessing a richness and a beauty peculiar to itself and paralelled by no other, the version made by the order of King James.

We may pause for a moment before concluding, to notice its excellence. With the spiritual power and divine authority which it possesses in common with all other versions and with its inspired originals, we are not now concerned. Its diction and its correctness are what here invite remark. No one can be at all familiar with this version without being aware of the matchless simplicity, beauty, and purity of its diction.

The English Bible - it is peculiarly English. A curious and yet instructive analysis has been made of its style, in connection with the styles of fourteen eminent English writers, from Spencer to Johnson. That of our translation is by far the purest of them all; one-twenty-ninth only of its words are of other than English origin; while one-third of Gibbon's, and one-fourth of Johnson's, originally came from abroad. Conveying to us the most important truths, and designed to instruct the illiterate and uncultivated as well as the scholar, it employs those words and those classes of words which are in earliest, fondest and most frequent use. It shuns or rather knows not the language of philosophy and science, but uses those words which find a ready response in every English heart. Herein appears the wisdom of God in ordering its preparation at the period in which it was

Before

made. Our language was at that time settled. then its character was fluctuating; it then assumed a fixed form. Since then it has undergone some changes, and received some additions, which, though not rendering it less intelligible to scholars, have made it deviate somewhat from the simplicity and clearness and speciality of the popular speech. Had the Bible been translated at any other time, it would have been like some of the earlier versions, clothed in the forms of an obsolete tongue; or perhaps, like some modern paraphrases, decked out in the less simple and universally familiar garb of a Latin and French philosophical style. But it is translated in the tongue "that Shakspeare spake," a tongue which must ever be intelligible so long as the English people remain English.

It is to be observed, moreover, that the language of the Bible, its style, seems now irrecoverable. It is as though the speech consecrated by that noble use refused to be profaned by being employed to express either the wisdom or the folly of a later age. All the outcry against the faithfulness and the correctness of this version avails little. Increasing Biblical knowledge has indeed thrown brighter light on many passages, but it has not shown that grave and essential errors of translation exist.

The scholar can resort to the original, and if need be communicate to others the results of his studies; but it would throw the Christian world into inextricable confusion, it would destroy the universality of much of our existing literature almost as effectually as in the Dream in the Eclipse of Faith it was destroyed by the Bible's becoming a blank; it would annihilate the common dialect of the English and American Christian world, to substitute a new for our beloved old version of the Scriptures.

We may confidently hope that the Providence of God will never permit such a measure to be carried out. We may expect that the English Bible, which has comforted so many Christian, and converted so many unchristian, hearts, which has enlightened and guided so many erring intellects, which has been the rhetorical no less than the spiritual

teacher of such authors as Bunyan and Baxter and Addison and Wordsworth, will still teach and gladden and guide their successors to the end of time. And now we know of no fitter words with which to close this Article than those of one who, once familiar with this noble version, now in his alienation from the faith and the church of which it is the bulwark, thus in words of lamentation and unwilling praise bears witness to its power. "Who will not say that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible is not one of the great strong holds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert hardly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of

the national mind and the anchor of national seriousness.

The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representation of his best moments, and all that there has been about him of soft and gentle and pure and penitent and good speaks to him forever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing which doubt has never dimmed and controversy never soiled. In the length and breadth of the land there is not a Protestant with one spark of religiousness about him, whose spiritual biography is not in his Saxon Bible."

« AnteriorContinuar »