!iiiliii|l|l||:!;|!|ii|i!ll;iift "'■ \:mM CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BEQUEST OF WILLIAM P. CHAPMAN, Jr. Class of 1895 1947 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tlie Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924032340246 _ J?™*" University Library Do443 iSdo """iiiiMMiiiSiMiiiiiiilii^''''^ ""Y ''■ Pa'erson Smy olin 3 1924 032 340 246 DIAGRAM SHOWING HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE ist Century / MANUSCRIPTS 4th Century 9th Century Hth Century i^th Century l7th Century t9th Century REVISED M VERSION (i) Contents of Original Manuscripts (now lost) survive in the existing t^ANUSCRiPTS, Versions, and Fathers. {See p. lo. ) (2) The Latin Vulgate (a revision of the Old Latin Versions by comparison with Greek and Hebrew Maiuiscripts) is the source of our English Versions down to Tyndale. He first draws from niaitttscript sources but of modern date. ^3) The three sources — Manuscripts, Versions, and Fathers — are all combined for the first time in the recent Revision. ||ob) Wt #ot 0m ptile BY J. PATERSON ^SMYTH B.D., LL.D., LITT.D., D.C.L. Author of "The Bible in the Making," "Hoiu God Inspired the Bible^ ' ' ' The Ancient Documents and the Modern Bible, ' ' "How to Read the Bible, " "The Story oj St. Paul's Life and Letters,'" NEW YORK JAMES POTT & CO. 1926 Copyright, 1899 By JAMES POTT & CO. Copyright, 1912 By JAMES POTT & CO. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. SOURCES OF OUR BIBLE. PAGBS 1. The Old Record Chest. 2. Copyists' Errors. 3. Neces- sity of Revision. 4. Souices of Infonnation Open to Revisers. 5. Textual Criticism i-io CHAPTER II. ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. The Oldest Bibles in the World. 1. The Vatican Manu- script. 2. The Sinaitic Manuscript. 3. The Alex- andrian. 4. Palimpsests. 5. The Manuscript of Beza. 6. Cursive Manuscripts. 7. Old Testament Revision. 11-29 CHAPTER III. ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. I. Various Early Versions. 2. An ancient "Revised Bible." 3. How Revision was regarded fifteen cen- turies ago. 4. Advantage of this investigation. 3. Quotations from Ancient Fathers 30-41 CHAPTER IV. EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. I. The Bible Poet. 2. Eadhelm and Egbert. 3. The Monk of Yarrow. 4. A Royal Translator. 5. Cu- rious £jcpressions 42-56 ill CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. WrCUPFE'S VERSION. „ PASBS I. Crowth of the Language. 2. The Parish Priest of Lut- terworth. 3. The State of the Church. 4. The Bible for the People. 5. Wycliffe as a Reformer. 6. His Death. 7. His Bible. 8. Results of his Work 57^9 CHAPTER VI. TYNDALE'S VERSION. I. Printing. 3. The Renaissance. 3. William lyndale. 4. The First Printed New Testament. S- Clerical Opposition. 6. The Bible and the Church. 7. Two Types of Reformers. 8. Pakington and the Bishop. 9. Scene at St. Edwards. 10. The Death of Tyndale. II. The Tyndale Bible 80-111 CHAPTER VII. THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DATS. I. Three Years After. 2. Twenty Years After. 3. Fifty Years More Gone By 112-132 CHAPTER VIII. THE REVISED VERSION. I. Preparation for Reviaon. 2. The Jerusalem Chamber. 3. The Revisers at Work. 4. Claims of the Revised Bible. ■ s- Should it Disturb Men's Faith? 6. Genera! Remarks. 7, Conclusion I33-1S3 LIST OF ILLTJSTEATIONS. FACING Diagram Showing how we got our Bible Title Page Photograph of Ancient Greek Manuscripts lo Photograph op the Sdjaitic Manuscript 16 Photograph op the Codex Ephraem 22 Photograph of the Codex Bez^ 24 Photograph of iELFRic's Anglo-Saxon Bible 54 Photograph of Wycliffe's Bible 76 Photograph of Txndale's New Testament 108 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE CHAPTER I. SOURCES OF OUR BIBLE. L The Old Record Chest. II. Copyists' Errors. III. Necessity of Revision. IV. Sources of Information open to Reyisers. V. Textual Criticism. Let the scope of this book be clearly under- stood. The question How we got our Bible is a very wide one and the full answer should tell of the making of the Bible and the writers of the Books and the ancient historical material which they used and also how it happened that this par- ticular collection of books came to be separated from the other literature of the time and regarded as inspired and collected into a Bible. This part of the answer I have already tried to give in another book. The present treatise takes the answer at a later stage when the books were already completed and received as the inspired guide of the Church. It traces the story of the Bible from the early manu- 2 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. scripts of Apostolic days down to the last Revised Version which is in our hands to-day/ We begin by imagining before us the record chest of one of the early Christian churches, — say Jerusalem, or Rome, or Ephesus, — about 120 A. D., when sufficient time had elapsed since the completion of the New Testament writings to allow most of the larger churches to procure copies for themselves. In any one church, perhaps, we should not find very much, but if we collect to- gether the documents of some of the leading churches we should have before us something of this sort: ^The writer has issued a full Series! of books on the making of the Bible which should be read, as far as possible, in the order stated: I. Thb BiblB in thb Making. in the light of modern research. This is the book referred to on previous page. II. How Wb Got Oue Bibi,e. III. Tna Ancient Documents and the Modern Bibi,e., , An easy lesson for the people on textual criticism; with plates' and fac-similes. IV. How God Inspiked the Bibi,E. Thoughts for the present disquiet about Higher Criti- cism. V. How To Read the Bibi,E. Suggestions on reading the Divine Library. VI. The Story oe St. Paui,'s Liee and Letters. SOURCES OF OUR BIBLE. * 3 I. Some manuscripts of the Hebrew Old Testa- ment books. The reader -will keep in mind that the Old Testament book; ■were OTiginally written in Hebrew, those of the New Testament in Greek. II. A good many more of the Old Testament books translated into Greek for general use in the churches, Greek being the language most widely known at the time. This translation is called the Septuagint, or " Version of the Seventy," from an old tradition of its having been prepared by seventy learned Jews of Alexandria. It was made at different times, beginning somewhere about 280 B. c, and was the version commonly used by the Evangelists and Apostles. This accounts for the slight difference we sometimes notice between the Old Testament and their quotations from it, our Old Testa- ment being translated direct from the Hebrew. III. A few rolls of the Apocryphal Books, writ- ten by holy men in the Church, and valued for the practical teaching they contained. IV. Copies of the Gospels and the Acts, the Epistles of SS. Paul and Peter and John, and the Book of the Revelation. II. Now let us remember clearly that as we look into that old record chest of nearly 1800 years ago, we have before us all the sources from which we get our Bible. And remember further that these writings were 4 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. of course all manuscript, i. e., written by the hand, and that copies when needed had each to be writ- ten out, letter by letter, at a great expense of time and trouble, and of course, very often too at some expense of the original correctness. However careful the scribe might be, it was almost impos- sible, in copying a long and difficult manuscript, to prevent the occurrence of errors. Sometimes he would mistake one letter for another — sometimes, if having the manuscript read to him, he would confound two words of similar sound — sometimes after writing in the last word of a line, on looking up again his eye would catch the same word at the end of the next line, and he would go on from that, omitting the whole line between. Remarks and explanations, too, written in the margin might sometimes in transcribing get inserted in the text. In these and various other ways errors might creep into the copy of his manuscript. These errors would be repeated by the man that after- ward copied from this, who would also sometimes add other errors of his own. So that it is evident, as copies increased, the errors would be likely to increase with them, and therefore, as a general rule,^ THE EARLIER ANY MANUSCRIPT, THE MORE LIKELY IT IS TO BE CORRECT. ' This is only a general rule. Of course it is quite possible for a manuscript A. D. 1500 to be copied direct from one of A. D. 300, and therefore to be more correct than some a thousand years older. SOURCES OF OUR BIBLE. 5 The reader may easily test this for himself by copying a dozen pages of a book, then hand on the copy to a friend to recopy, and let him pass on to another what he has written, and so have the operation repeated through six or eight different hands before comparing the last copy with the original. It will be an interesting illustration of the danger of errors in copying. Even in printed Bibles, whose proofs have been carefully examined and reexamined, these mistakes creep in. To take two examples out of many : An edition published in 1653, reads i Cor. vi. 9, " Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God; " and the " Printer's Bible," much sought by book collectors, puts the strange anachronism in King David's mouth, " Printers have persecuted me without a cause " (Ps. cxix. 161). We know, of course, God might have miracu- lously prevented scribes and compositors from making these mistakes ; but it does not seem to be God's way anywhere to work miracles for us where our own careful use of the abilities He has given would suffice for the purpose. HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. III. [Although, owing to the special care exercised in transcribing the Scriptures,^ the errors would be in most cases of comparatively trifling importance, yet it is evident from what has been said about the growth of copyists' errors, that in the course of the centuries before the invention of printing, Bible manuscripts might easily have grown very faulty indeed. Therefore the printed Bibles, taken hastily from these modern and probably corrupt manuscripts, would need a thorough revision, and this revision would need to be repeated again and again, as facilities increased, till the Scriptures were as nearly as possible as they left the inspired writers' hands. But how is this revision to be accomplished ? Of course, if the original writings had remained, it would be quite a simple operation, as a careful comparison with them would at any time discover whatever had need of correction. But, it is hardly 'As an interesting instance of the care exercised in transcrib- ing important documents, Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, in the second century, thus writes in one of his own books : " Whosoever thou art who shalt transcribe this book, I charge thee with an oath by our Lord Jesus Christ, and by His glorious appearing, in which He cometh to judge the quick and dead, that thou care- fully compare what thou hast transcribed, and correct it accord- ing to this copy whence thou hast transcribed it, and thou transcribe this oath in like manner, and place it in thy copy." Farther on I shall have to notice the solemn reverential care bestowed by the Hebrew scribes on copies of the Old Testament. SOURCES OF OUR BIBLE. 7 necessary to say, the original writings have long since disappeared. Some of them, written on the common writing material of the day, — the papyrus paper referred to in 2 John, ver. 12, — ^very soon got worn out from use,^ others were lost or de- stroyed in the early Christian persecutions. In any case they have totally disappeared. How then is revision to be accomplished? In the absence of these original manuscripts, what sources of information are open to Bible revisers ? IV. For answer let us turn from the ancient record chest, whose contents are now irrecoverably lost, and imagine beneath some oaken library roof a vast mass of manuscripts, piled up before us in THREE separate heaps, — ^manuscripts of very varied kind — stained and torn old parchments — books of faded purple, lettered with silver — beau- tifully designed ornamental pages — bundles of fine vellum, yellow with age, bright even yet with the gold and vermilion laid on by pious hands a thou- sand years since — in many shapes, in many colours, in many languages, — thousands of old Scripture writings reaching back for 1500 years. 'Jerome tells of such a library in Cssarea, already partly destroyed within a century after its formation, and of the en- deavors of two presbjrters to restore the manuscripts by copjriag them on parchment. 8 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. This pile represents the great Biblical treasures stored up to-day in the various libraries of Europe — all the old copies at present remaining of the inspired Books. And here in this mass of old manuscripts is the material accessible to scholars for the purpose of Bible revision. In these piles we shall find three different classes of writings : ( i ) These faded parchments, with the crowded square lettering, are copies in the original languages of the different Scriptures con- tained in the old record chest. These are known as Biblical " manuscripts," for though all the early Scriptures are of course written by the hand, the name manuscripts has been by common consent of scholars appropriated to the copies in the origi- nal tongue. (2) But those farther on are evidently different in language, the writing, at least of the few whose pages are visible, being so very unlike the others. That open manuscript on the top, written all over in running lines and loops, is a Syriac translation, the two next are Coptic and Latin, and all these are ANCIENT versions, i. e., translations of the Bible into the languages of early Christendom, some of them representing the Scriptures of about fifty years after the death of St. John. (3) The contents of the third pile, though a good deal resembling the Biblical manuscripts in appearance, are not even books of the Scriptures SOURCES OF OUR BIBLE. 9 at all, but WRITINGS of the early Christian Fathers from the second to the fifth century. The use of these we shall see afterwards. The science that deals with this mass of evi- dence is called " textual criticism," a science which, though only in its infancy when our Authorized Version was issued, has reached in the present day a very high degree of perfection. Suppose then our revisers, men skilled in this study, are occu- pied on say a passage in the Epistle to the Ro- mans, desiring to present it as nearly as possible as it left the hands of St. Paul, how will they make use of this mass of evidence ? I. They will search for the very oldest Greek manuscripts in which the Epistle occurs, for, as we have already seen, the oldest are likely to be the most correct, and they will get as many as possible of them to compare them together for the elimi- nating any errors that may have crept in, for it is evident that if a number of copies are made of the same original, even should each of the copyists have erred, no two are likely to make exactly the same error, therefore a false reading in any one can often be corrected by comparison with the others. 10 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. II. Then they will examine the ancient versions, and see how the passage in question was read in Syriac and Latin and other ancient languages 1700 years ago. III. But what use can they make of the rest of the parchments — those writings of the early Christian Fathers ? A very important use. They search these carefully for quotations from this Epistle. These early Fathers quoted Scripture so largely in their controversies that It has been said if all the other sources of the Bible were lost, we could recover the greater part of It from their writings. The most important of them lived in the second, third, and fourth centuries, and as they of course quote from the Scriptures In use In their time, It is like going back sixteen hundred years to ask men, How did your Scripture render this passage of St. Paul? Unfortunately their quota- tions seem often made from memory, which a good deal spoils the value of their testimony. The sources of Information, then, open to revisers may be briefly summed up as — I. Manuscripts. II. Versions. III. Quota- tions from the Fathers.^ Each of these will be treated of more fully in the following chapters, ' See Diagram facing the title-page. Caxhmc^h NerKehiKp TOyC K.XIO 1 X NOM >(^X<|> eTTaicounjT rCKiiHc^peT ^-^ r CI* ^Qor Ji.eriA.vj'recoi x.P7co^^ec |if::::g(fciJ"-M-«— ■■ *. , ,: PHOTOGRAPH OF ANCIENT GREEK MANUSCRIPTS: (From Westwood's Pahograplua Sacra Pictona.) I. Scrap of a famous Greek Manuscript of Genesis, (Codex Geneseos Cottonianus). J. Portions of its writing, full size. J. Fac-simile of the Alexandrian Codex in the British Museum. i. A portion of a 9th Century Manuscript. i. iSeginning of 29th Psalm on P.ipyrus in the British Museum CHAPTER II. ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. The Oldest Bibles in the World. I. The Vatican Manuscript. II. The Sinaitic Manuscript. III. The Alexandrian. IV. Palimpsests. V. The Manuscript of Beza. VI. Cursire Manuscripts. VII. Old Testament Revision. Let us still keep imaged before our minds the triple pile of Biblical writings to be examined. We come first to the manuscripts, the copies '■ of the Scripture in the original tongues. Of the Greek there is quite a large number — more than 1500 — before us, and from the difference in their condition and general appearance one is inclined to suspect that they must vary a good deal in age, and therefore probably in value. The question of determining the age of a manuscript is a very intricate one; but it should make our inspection of these the more interesting if I briefly state a few easy marks to guide us : The form of the letters is the chief guide. The oldest and therefore most valuable are written in ■ The reader should keep this distinction clearly before him to prevent confusion. MANUSCRiPTS=copies in the original tongue. VER£ioNS=translations into other tongues. 9 11 12 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. capital letters, and without any division between the words, as if we should write NOWWHENjSWASBORNINBETHLEHEMOFJ. These are called uncial manuscripts. The mod- ern are written in a running hand like our writing, and are therefore called cursive. (It will be useful to remember these names, as they frequently occur in Bible commentaries, and in criticisms of the Revised Version.) Then again, initial letters, miniatures, and in general any ornamentation of manuscripts, marks them as of comparatively late date. Far the greater number of the manuscripts be- fore us are written in the cursive hand, many of them beautifully illuminated and ornamented with exquisite miniatures and initials. But we turn at once from these to their less attractive compan- ions, those few faded, worn parchments with the old uncial letters. Notice especially those three bound in square book form ; they are plain, faded- looking documents, with little about them to attract attention, but these three manuscripts are among the greatest treasures the Christian Church possesses — the oldest copies of the Bible in the world ! They are named respectively the Vatican, Sinaitic, and Alexandrian Manuscripts. They have been largely used in the recent Bible Revision, but they were not any of them accessible to ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 13 those -who prepared the Authorized Version in 1611. These three oldest manuscripts are curiously enough in possession of the three great branches of the Christian Church. The Alexandrian (called for shortness Codex A) belongs to Protes- tant England, and is kept in the manuscript room of the British Museum; the Vatican {Codex B) is in the Vatican Library at Rome; and the SiNAiTic {Codex Aleph), which has only lately been discovered, is one of the treasures of the Greek Church at St. Petersburg. These manuscripts show us the Bible as it ex- isted soon after the apostolic days. There has been a good deal of discussion about their age, which need not be entered on here ; but we shall not be far from the truth if we say roundly that they range from about 300 to 450 A. D. There- fore the oldest is about as distant in time from the original inspired writings as the Revised is from the Authorized Version. All the Greek manuscripts before this time seem to have perished in the terrible persecutions which were directed not only against the Christians themselves, but also and with special force against their sacred writings. U HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. The Vatican Manuscript. Each of these three manuscripts has its history. The most ancient, it is generally agreed, is the Vatican manu- script, which has lain at least four or five hundred years in the Vatican Library at Rome. One is much inclined to grudge the Roman Church the possession of this our most valuable manuscript; for the papal authorities have been very jealous guardians, and most persons capable of examining it aright have been refused access to it. Dr. Tre- gelles, one of our most eminent students of textual criticism, made an attempt; but he says they would not let him open the volume without search- ing his pockets, and depriving him of pens and ink and paper; the two priests told off to watch him would try to distract his attention if he seemed too intent on any passage, and if he studied any part of it too long they would snatch away the book. However, it has of late years become easily acces- sible through the excellent fac-similes made by order of Pope Pius IX., which may be seen in our chief public libraries. The manuscript consists of about 700 leaves of the finest vellum, about a foot square, bound together in book form. It is not quite perfect, having lost Gen. i.-xlvi., as well as Psalms cv.- ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 15 cxxxvii., and all after Heb. ix. 14 of the New Testament. The original writing must have been beautifully delicate and finely formed. There are only a few words left here and there by which to judge of this ; for from one end to the other, the whole manuscript has been travelled over by the pen of some meddlesome scribe of about the tenth century. Probably he was afraid of the precious writing fading out if it were not thus inked over; but if so his fears were quite groundless, for here are some of the words which he passed over (con- sidering them incorrect) remaining still perfectly dear and legible after the lapse of 1500 years. Each page contains three colums, and the writing is in capital letters, without any division between the words. This makes it less easy to read, but of course it was done to save space at a time when writing material was very expensive. To carry this saving further, words are written smaller and more crowded as they approach the end of a line, and for the same reason was adopted the plan of contracted words, which has often been the cause of manuscript errors. First, they cut off the final M's and N's at the end of a word, marking the omission by a line across the top, as if we should write Londo for London ; then they proceeded to the dropping of final syllables, and from that to the shortening of frequently recur- ring words, like the name Jesus or God. We 16 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. might fairly represent these peculiarities (which are common to all the early manuscripts) by writ- ing thus in English (Titus ii. ii, 12) : FORTHEGRACEOFS^BRInq.no SALVATION HATH APPEARED TOALLMNTEACHINGUSTHATDEN YINGUNGODLINESSANDWOR LDLYLUSTWESHOULDLIVESOB ERLYANDGODLYINTHISPRESENT EV I L WO R LD LOOK I NG FOR THAT One remark more before we lay it aside. It will be noticed that in the Revised New Testament the passage at the end of St. Mark's Gospel is printed in as in some degree doubtful, with a note in the margin that " the two oldest Greek manu- scripts omit these verses." Now this and the Sinaitic are the two manuscripts referred to, and if we could examine the manuscripts we should see that this one, while omitting the passage, curiously enough leaves a blank space for it on the page, showing that the scribe knew of its existence, but was undecided whether he should put it in or not. II. The Sinaitic Manuscript. There is no need of describing this celebrated manuscript, which on the whole very much resembles the other ; but the - r Q f. y ■-;■<■*. 5 x: S r. ? .0 ^ 3 p k-S-o S 2 f. 5 P ; ■< < S '3 ■< S i c - 1 c >-t^ S £ : >*'' V-S F-Z : 2 X ^ I i - - ^ 9 y i: - ^ = - ^' k = i'' • '; 2xS = ?i35^|>^n;L- - I- ^ J a t. m^, ■j:j -_;£_p ; 2 r c 3 ^ r5 5^ 5-^ ^12 3 ^S rri r* ^h ^ o a; H Ji CO X UJ Q O U ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 25 Dr. Westcott says " It is evident that it rests on some real incident." It occurs in St. Luke vi., between the fourth and fifth verses. It is in the midst of the Pharisee's disputes with Our Lord about the keeping of the Sabbath. For conveni- ence sake the Latin is photographed underneath the Greek instead of opposite it. The reader can easily follow the Latin on the photograph. quibus non licebat manducare si non solis sacerdotibus which it is not lawful to eat but for the priests alone. This is the end of v. 4 and then follows the interpolation : EODEM DIE TIDENS QUENDAM OPERANTEM SABBATO ET DIXIT ILLI Homo siquidem scis quod facis BEATUS ES. si AUTEM NE3CIS MALEDICTUS et trabaricator legis. The same day seeing A certain man working on the Sabbath He said to him Man if indeed thou knowest what thou art doing HAPPY art thou. But if thou knowest not thou art ac- cursed AND A transgressor OF THE LAW. VI. All that we have examined up to this date are of uncial type, which, as we have seen, is a mark of their antiquity. Of these Uncials we have altogether about a hundred. Of the more modern manuscripts, in the cursive 26 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. or running hand, there are more than 1500 acces- sible to scholars. It has been already remarked that it is quite possible for a comparatively mod- ern manuscript to possess a high value, as, for example, suppose a scribe of the fifteenth century had copied in running hand direct from the " Vati- can." For this and other reasons some of our Cursives are very important evidence. There is one, for instance, the " Queen of the Cursives," as it is called, which, for its valuable readings, ranks above many a far older Uncial, and there are four others, quite modern in date (twelfth to fourteenth centuries), wh^ch have been shown by Professor Abbott and the late Professor Ferrar, of Trinity College, Dublin,^ to be transcribed from one and the same ancient manuscript, which was probably little later than our Alexandrian Codex. If we remember that ten or twelve manuscripts, and these generally modern, are all we have for ascertaining the text of most classical authors, it will help us to understand what an enormous mass of evidence there is available for the purpose of Scripture revision. ' " Collation of Four Important Manuscripts," by W. H. Fer- rar, F.T.C.D., edited by T. K. Abbott, F.T.C.D. Dublin, 1877. ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 27 VII. The Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testament need occupy little time. It is rather startling to learn that the earliest Hebrew manuscripts in exist- ence date no earlier than about the tenth century, A. D., i. e., about the time of William the Con- queror! This is a grave disadvantage to the textual criticism of the Old Testament, more espe- cially since the Hebrew alphabet and method of writing have quite changed since the days of the prophets. The lack of early manuscripts here is, however, of less importance than would appear at first sight. As far as we can learn there seems to have been a gradual rough sort of revision of the Palestine manuscripts continually going on almost from the days of Ezra. About a thousand years ago this process of Hebrew Manuscript Revision came to an end, and thus at that early date the Hebrew Old Testament was made as nearly cor- rect as the best scholarship of the Jewish acad- emies could make it, after which the older man* scripts gradually disappeared.* The existing Hebrew manuscripts, then, though not very old, are of great authority, and all the more so owing to the reverence of Jewish scribes * For the story of the Hebrew manuscripts, see the author's *• The Old Documents and the New Bible." 28 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. for the Word of God, and the consequent careful^ ness of their transcription. So scrupulous were they that even if a manifest error were in the copy they transcribed from, they would not meddle with It in the text, but would write in the margin what the true reading should be ; if they found one let- ter larger than another, or a word running beyond the line, or any other mere irregularity, they would copy it exactly as it stood. They recorded how many verses in each book, and the middle verse of each, and how many verses began with particular letters, &c., &c. Such exactness, of course, very much lessened the danger of erro- neous copying, and makes our Hebrew Scriptures far more trustworthy than they could other- wise be. The reason then that there are so few changes in the Revised Old Testament, as compared with the New, is that we have probably less need and certainly less means of making any corrections.^ In fact, the chief grounds for undertaking Old Testament revision are the increased knowledge of Hebrew and of textual criticism, together with the changes through natural growth of the English language itself. We may add also, for their united evidence is very important, the more thor- *It is no reflection on the Old Testament revisers to suggest also that they could scarcely avoid being influenced in some degree by the strong feeling exhibited against the many changes in the New Testament portion. ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS. 29 ough study in the late years of the Septuagint and the Targums, together with the Vulgate and other ancient versions, to be described in the next chapter. CHAPTER III. ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. \ I. I. Various Early Versions. II. An Ancient "Revised Bible."* III. How Revision was regarded fifteen centuries ago. IV. Advantage of this investigation. V. Quotations from Ancient Fathers. We are to examine now our second pile — the Ancient Versions, i. e., the translations of the Bible into the languages of early Christendom long before the oldest of our present Greek manu- scripts were written. These were the Bibles used by men, some of whose parents might easily have seen the apostles themselves, and therefore it is evident that, even though only translations, they must often be of great value in determining the original text. There are the old Syriac Scriptures, which were probably in use about fifty years after the New Testament was written, a Version representing very nearly the language of the people among whom our Lord moved. Those discolored parch- ments beside them are Egyptian, Ethiopic, and 30 ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. 31 Armenian Versions, which would be more useful If our scholars understood these languages better; and the beautiful silver-lettered book, with its leaves of purple parchment, is the Version of Ulfilas, bishop of the fierce Gothic tribes about A. D. 350.^ Here are the " Old Latin," which, with the Syriac, are the earliest of all our Ver- sions, and the most valuable for the purpose of textual criticism. But what is this Version piled up in such enor- mous numbers, far exceeding that of all the others put together, some of its copies, too, ornamented with exquisite beauty? II. It is a Version which in these days of the English " Revised Version " should possess spe- cial interest for English readers — St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate, the great " Revised Version " of the ancient Western Church. This is its story. Toward the end of the fourth century, so many errors had crept into the " Old Latin " Versions that the Latin-speaking churches were in danger of losing the pure Scripture of the apostolic days. Just at this crisis, when scholars were keenly f eel- ^ Gibbons says : " He prudently suppressed the four books of Kings, as they might tend to irritate the fierce spirit of the bar- barians." 32 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. ing the need of a revision, there returned to Rome from his Bethlehem hermitage one of the greatest scholars and holiest men of the day, Eusebius Hieronymus better known to us as St. Jerome, and his high reputation pointed him out at once as the man to undertake this important task. Damasus, bishop of Rome, applied to him for that purpose, and Jefome undertook the revision, though he was deeply sensible of the prejudice which his work would arouse among those who, he says, " thought that ignorance was holiness." His revision of the New Testament was completed in 385, and the Old Testament he afterward trans- lated direct from the original Hebrew, a task which probably no other Christian scholar of the time would have been capable of. We shall better understand the value of his work if we remember that it is almost as old as the earliest of our pres- ent Greek manuscripts, and since Jerome of course used the oldest manuscripts to be had in his day, his authorities would probably have extended back to the days of the apostles. No other work has ever had such an influence on the history of the Bible. For more than a thousand years it was the parent of every version of the Scriptures ^ in Western Europe, and even now, when the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts are so easily accessible, the Rhemish and Douay Tes- ' See Diagram facing the title-page. ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. 33 taments are translations direct from the Vulgate, and its influence is quite perceptible even on our own Authorized Version. III. How do you think the good people of the fourth century thanked St. Jerome for his won- derful Bible? Remembering the prejudice which our Revised Version excited not many years ago, it is interesting to recall the story how the Re- vision of the old monk of Bethlehem was received. It was called revolutionary and heretical; it was pronounced subversive of all faith in Holy Scriptures; it was said to be an impious altering of the Inspired Word of God. In fact, for centu- ries after, everything was said against it that igno- rant bigotry could suggest to bring it into dis- repute. The Christians of that day had their old Bible, which they venerated highly and believed to be quite correct, and probably the sound of its sentences was as musical in their ears, who could associate them with the holiest moments of their lives, as that of our beautiful Authorized Version is in ours. But St. Jerome fought his battle, perhaps with more temper than was necessary,^ insisting that no 'Thus, -writing to Marcella, he mentions certain poor crea- tuies (homunculos), who studiously calumniate him for his cor- 34 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. amount of sentiment could be a plea for a faulty Bible, and that the most venerable translation must give way if found to disagree with the origi- nal text. It is instructive to us to see how completely the tide had turned at the time of the council of Trent, a thousand years later. Men had then got as attached to the version of St. Jerome as those of the fourth century had been to its predecessors. In fact, they seem almost to have forgotten that it was only a translation. It is the version of the Church, they said, and in her own language; " Why should it yield to Greek and Hebrew manu- scripts, which have been for all these hundreds of years in the hands of Jewish unbelievers and Greek schismatics?" Well, how did they act? They decreed in council that the old Vulgate should be regarded as the standard text, and to this day, with all the progress in textual research, the Roman Church has held to that decision. An amusing exhibition of the feeling at the time is a passage in the preface to the Compluten- recting 'vrords in the Gospels. " I could afford to despise them," he says, " if I stood upon my rights ; for a lyre is played in vain to an ass. If they do not like the water from the pure fountain- head, let them drink of the muddy streams ; " and again, at the close of the letter, he returns to the attack of those " bipedes asellos" (two-legged donkeys). "Let them read, 'Rejoicing in hope, serving the time;' let us read, 'Rejoicing in hope, serving the Lord; ' let them consider that an accusation should not under any circumstances be received against an elder; let us read, ' Against an elder receive not an accusation ; but before two or three witnesses,'" &c, (Ep. 38). ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. 35 sian Polyglot Bible, where the Hebrew and the Greek and the Latin Vulgate were printed in par- allel columns side by side, the venerable old Vul- gate being In the middle, which the editors with grim humor compared to the position of our Lord between the two thieves at the crucifixion! Of course they did not mean any slight to the original Scriptures, but their prejudice led them to suspect, or to fancy they had a right to suspect, that the Jews and Greeks might have corrupted the manu- script copies. IV. This glance at the Ancient Versions will be suf- ficient for our purpose. There is a large number now accessible to scholars, and every year the study of them Is increasing. In passing, I would point to this part of our subject to illustrate the advantage indirectly resulting from the investiga- tion of questions suggested by our New Revision. For here we find that at a time when some scepti- cal writers would have us believe our New Testa- ment books were scarcely written, they had been translated and copied and re-copied In the lan- guages of early Christendom; commentaries and harmonies of the Gospels had been written; a list of the books had been prepared (of which we have still a portion called the Muratorian Frag- 36 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. ment), and they were regarded in all arguments between Christians of the time as referees having divine authority. All this will be seen still more clearly after we have briefly glanced at the third source of information open to revisers : The Quotations in Early Christian Writers. The quantity of these writings is great, but they have been up to this time very imperfectly examined. In spite of the disadvantages of the quotations being often fragmentary, and sometimes — as will be seen in the examples — ^made loosely from memory, they are yet of great value in deter- mining the text of ancient Bibles, some of them going back to the days of the original New Testa- ment writings. Let us turn over a few of them at random, taking the earliest in preference. (a.) Here is the Epistle of Barnabas, which Doctor Tischendorf found bound up with his Sinaitic Manuscript. It was supposed, though without good reason, to have been written by St. Paul's companion; but certainly it is not much later than his date. Notice these expressions: "Beware, therefore, lest it come upon us as it is written, ' There be many called but few chosen ;' " again, " Give to him that asketh thee." And ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. 37 farther on he says, " that Christ chose as His apostles men who were sinners, because He came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repent- ance." (b.) This next is an Epistle by Clement, one of the early bishops of Rome, whom ancient writers unhesitatingly assert to be the Clement mentioned by St. Paul in Phil. iv. 3. This letter is a very valuable one, and Irenasus, who was bishop of Lyons a little later, says of it, " It was written by Clement, who had seen the blessed apostles and conversed with them, who had the preaching of the blessed apostles still sounding in his ears and their tradition before his eyes." The epistle was addressed to the Church of Corinth, and Dio- nysius, bishop of Corinth about 170 A. D., bears witness " that it had been wont to be read in his church from ancient times." Here are a few expressions found in it: "Remembering the words of the Lord Jesus which He spake, teaching us gentleness and long-suffering; for He said, ' Be merciful, that ye may obtain mercy; forgive, that it may be forgiven unto you; as ye give it shall be given unto you; as ye judge ye shall be judged; with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you.' " And again, " Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, ' Woe to the man by whom offences come; it were better for him that he had 38 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. not been born than that he should offend one of My elect. It were better for him that a millstone should be tied about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depths of the sea, than that he should offend one of My little ones.' " (c.) Of about the same date is this book, the Shepherd of Hermas, by some conjectured to be the Hermas of Rom. xvi. 14. Here we have ref- erence to the confessing and denying of Christ, the parable of the seed sown, the expression, " He that putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth adultery," &c., &c. (d.) St. Ignatius became bishop of Antioch about forty years after the Ascension. Here are a few quotations from him: " Christ w'as bap- tized of John, that all righteousness might be ful- filled in Him." " Be ye wise as serpents in all things, and harmless as a dove." " The Spirit is from God, for it knows whence it cometh and whither it goeth." (e.) The martyr Polycarp was a disciple of St. John, and is thus spoken of by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, who in his youth had seen him : " I can tell the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and taught, and his going out and coming in, and the manner of his life, and how he related his conver- sations with John and others who had seen the Lord, all which Polycarp related agreeably to the Scriptures." Of this old martyr we have an ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. 39 epistle remaining, and though it is a very short one, it contains nearly forty clear allusions to the New Testament books, some of which are valu- able for critical purposes. (/.) Those old parchments lying beside Poly- carp's Epistle, are the " Apologies," by Justin Martyr, and his " Dialogue with Trypho," writ- ten about the year 150. They contain very inter- esting quotations, though unfortunately they seem often quoted from memory, and therefore lose much of their value. This is only what we might expect. " When we think it strange," says Dr. Salmon,^ *' that an ancient father of Justin's date should not quote with perfect accuracy, we forget that in those days, when manuscripts were scarce and concordances did not exist, the process of finding a passage in a manuscript (written pos- sibly with no spaces between the words) was not performed with quite as much ease as an English clerg3mian writing his sermon, with a Bible and Concordance by his side, can turn up any text he wishes to refer to, and yet we should be sorry to vouch for the verbal accuracy of all the Scripture citations we hear in sermons at the present day." The following are a few of Justin's quotations : " I gave you power to tread on serpents and scor- pions, and venomous beasts, and on all the power •"Introd. New Testament," p. 82. 40 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. of the enemy." " Give to him that asketh, and from him that would borrow turn not away ; for if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what new thing do ye? Even the publicans do this. Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where robbers break through ; but lay up for your- selves treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt." For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for it? " And again, " Be ye kind and merciful, as your Father also is kind and merciful, and maketh His sun to rise on sinners, and the righteous and the wicked. Take no thought what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on; are ye not better than the birds and the beasts? and God feedeth them. Take no thought, therefore, what ye shall eat or what ye shall put on, for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But seek ye the kingdom of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you. For where his treasure is, there is the mind of man." On account of the double object in view, I have selected only writers of the second century to illus- trate the use of the " Quotations." More impor- tant for purposes of criticism, though later in date, are those thick manuscripts further on, the works of Origen and Clement of Alexandria early in the ANCIENT VERSIONS AND QUOTATIONS. 41 third century, and in the fourth Basil, and Augus- tine, and Jerome the great reviser, and many others, whose writings in large quantity are avail- able for criticism of the Bible. CHAPTER IV. EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. I. The Bible Poet. II. Eadhelm and Egbert. III. The Monk of Yarrow. IV. A Royal Translator. V. Curious Ex- pressions. Thus we have seen the form in which the Scrip- tures existed in the age soon after that of the apostles, and found the threefold line of evidence available at the present day for the purpose of Bible Revision — (i.) Greek and Hebrew manu- scripts; (2.) Ancient Versions ; and (3.) Quota- tions from the then existing Scriptures in the works of early Christian writers. And now that we are to trace the connection of these with our present English Bible, it becomes necessary for our purpose to ask, with the triple pile of parchments before us, how much of this material was accessible a thousand years ago, when the history of our English Bible begins. For it is evident that the value of a Scripture version at any period depends on the value of the old manuscript material accessible, and the ability of the men of that day to use it. For answer we take from the centre pile those 43. EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. 43 few faded worn-looking copies, portions of the Yulgate and older Latin versions, and place them on the one side.^ Those are the Scriptures which have come down to us from the monasteries of ancient England, and as we compare side by side this handful of old parchments with the great mass of writings from which it has been drawn, we are comparing together the sources of the earliest and latest English Versions — of the Anglo-Saxon Scriptures of a thousand years since, and the Revised Bible which is in our hands to- day.'' The growth of the English Bible, which took place in the meantime, we are now briefly to trace.* * There were also many -works of the early Christian Fathers, but as no one then thought of using them for purposes of textual criticism, we need not take them into account. ' On page facing the title I have tried to show by a diagram the gradual increase in the sources of our English Bible. 'Here comes a temptation to an Irish writer. Is he bound tot start from the eighth century, when the earliest known transla- tions from these manuscripts were made? May he not go back a little further, and let rise the historic memories called up by those manuscripts themselves? May he not indulge a little in the " Irish pride of better days " (the only source of pride to poor Ireland in the present), and picture the noble libraries of Durrow and Armagh, to which England probably owes her earliest Scriptures — when St. Columb carried his manuscripts to lonely lona in the days of the glory of the Irish Church, when , Ireland was the light of the Western World, and Irishmen went forth from the "Island of Saints" to evangelize the heathen English? At any rate it seems worth spending a few sentences to point out that not from Rome, but from the ancient Irish Church, did England chiefly derive her Christianity, and probably her earliest Scriptures. What seems best remembered in connection with the question, is the famous scene of Gregory in the slave- market at Rome, admiring the beautiful English children — " not 4 44 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. Though England had no complete Bible before Wycliffe's days, attempts were made from very early times to present the Scriptures in the lan- guage of the people, and the story of these ancient translations from the Latin manuscripts before us, forms certainly one of the most interesting though not most important portions of the history of the English Bible. It Is now 1 200 years since, on a winter night, a poor Saxon cowherd lay asleep in a stable of the famous Abbey of Whitby. Grieved and dispirited, he had come in from the feast where his masters. Angles, but angels,'' said he, " if they were only Christians " — and the consequent sending of the Abbot Augustine to England with a band of Christian missionaries. It needs to be pointed out that, according to our best historians, this Roman mission soon lost its early ardor, penetrating little further than Kent, where it originally landed, and that the conversion of England, which had become completely pagan under Saxon rule, was for the most part left to the missionaries of the Irish Church. From St. Columb's monastery at Zona the Irish preachers came, and travelled over the greater part of the country. Aidan, their leader, went through the wilds of Yorkshire and Northumbria with King Oswald as his interpreter, a former student of lona — while Chad and Boisil led their little bands of missionaries through the centre of the heathen land, returning at stated periods to Lindisfarne, where Aidan had fixed his episcopal see. And not England only owes a debt to the Irish Church. As far off as the Apennines and the Alps the traces of her enthusiastic missionaries are found, and " for a time it seemed as if the course of the world's history was to be changed, as if the older Celtic race, that Roman and German had swept before them, had turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors, as if Celtic and not Latin Christianity was to mould the destinies of the churches of the West." (Green, History of the English People.) EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. 45 and some even of his companions, during the amusements of the night, had engaged in the easy, alliterative rhyming of those simple early days. But Caedmon could make no song,^ and his soul was very sad. Suddenly, as he lay, it seemed to him that a heavenly glory lighted up his stable, and in the midst of the glory One appeared who had been cradled in a manger six hundred years before. " Sing, Caedmon," He said, " sing some song to me." " I cannot sing," was the sorrowful reply, " for this cause it is that I came hither." " Yet," said He who stood before him, " yet shalt thou sing to me." " What shall I sing? " " The beginning of created things." And as he listened, a divine power seemed to come on him, and words that he had never heard before rose up before his mind.^ And so the 'Being at the feast, -when all agreed for glee sake to sing in turn, he no sooner saw the harp come toward him, than he rose from the board and returned homeward." — Account of Ceedmon in Belle's Eccl. Hist. 'The words that came to the sleeper's mind are recorded by King Alfred. They begin: " Now must we praise the grandeur of Heaven's kingdom; the Creator's might, and his mind's thought; glorious father of men, The Lord the Eternal, ■who formed the beginning," &c, ftc. 46 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. vision passed away. But the power remained with Casdmon, and in the morning the Saxon cow- herd went forth from the cattle-stalls transformed into a mighty poet 1 Hilda the abbess heard the wondrous tale, and from one of those Latin manuscripts she trans- lated to him a story of the Scriptures. Next day it was reproduced in a beautiful poem, followed by another and another as the spirit of the poet grew powerful within him. Entranced, the abbess and the brethren heard, and they acknowledged the " grace that had been conferred on him by the Lord." They bade him lay aside his secular habit and enter the monastic life, and from that day forward the Whitby cowherd devoted himself with enthusiasm to the task that had been set him in the vision. " Others after him strove to com- pose religious poems, but none could vie with him, for he learned not the art of poetry from men, neither of men, but of God." In earnest passion- ate words, which yet remain, he sung for the sim- ple people " of the creation of the world, of the origin of man, and of all the history of Israel ; of the Incarnation, and Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, and His Ascension; of the terror of future judgment, the horror of hell pains, and the joys of the kingdom of heaven." ^ ^ Some account of Caedmon from Bede's Eccl. Hist., translated into_Angh)-Saxon by King Alfred." — Published by the Society of Antiquaries, London. EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. 47 Though his work has of course no right to rank among Bible translations, being merely an attempt to sing for the ignorant people the substance of the inspired story, yet we venture to give a brief extract, translated into modern English, telling of the appearance of Christ to His disciples after the resurrection: " What time the Lord God from death arose so strongly was no Satan armed though he were with iron all girt round that might that great force resist; for he went forth the Lord of angels, in the strong city, and bade fetch angels all bright and even bade say to Simon Peter that he might on Galilee behold God eternal and firm, as he ere did. Then as I understand, went the disciples together all to Galilee, inspired by the Spirit, The holy Son of God, whom they saw HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. were the Lord's son. Then over against the disciples stood the Lord Eternal, God in Galilee, so that the disciples thither all ran Where the eternal was, fell on the earth, and at his feet bowed, thanking the Lord that thus it befell that they should behold the creator of angels. Then forthwith spake Simon Peter and said, Art thou thus, Lord, with power gifted? We saw thee at one time when they laid thee in loathsome bondage, the heathen with their hands. That they may rue when they their end shall behold hereafter. • • • • He on the tree ascended and shed his blood, God on the cross through his Spirit's power. Wherefore we should at all times give to the Lord thanks in deeds and works EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. 49 for that he us from thraldom led home up to Heaven, where we may share the greatness of God." ^ II. About the time of Caedmon's death, early in thft eighth century, the learned Eadhelm, bishop of Sherborne, was working in Glastonbury Abbey translating the Psalms of David into Anglo-Saxon, and at his request, it is said, Egbert, bishop of Holy Island, completed about the same time a version of the Gospels, of which a copy is still preserved in the British Museum. III. But the names of Eadhelm and Egbert are over- shadowed by that of a contemporary far greater than either. It was a calm peaceful evening m the spring of 735 — the evening of Ascension Day — and in his quiet cell in the monastery of Jarrow an aged monk lay dying. With labored utterance he tried to dictate to his scribe, while a group of fair- haired Saxon youths stood sorrowfully by, with tears beseeching their " dear master " to rest. ^ Thorpe's " Caedmon's Paraphrase." — Society of Antiquaries, London, 1832. 50 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. That dying monk was the most famous scholar of his day in Western Europe. Through him Jarrow-on-the-Tyne had become the great centre of literature and science, hundreds of eager stu- dents crowding yearly to its halls to learn of the famous Baeda. He was deeply versed in the liter- ature of Greece and Rome — ^he had written on medicine, and astronomy, and rhetoric, and most of the other known sciences of the time^— his " Ecclesiastical History " is still the chief source of our knowledge of ancient England; — but none of his studies were to him equal to the study of religion, none of his books of the same importance as his commentaries and sermons on Scripture. Even then as he lay on his deathbed he was feebly dictating to his scribe a translation of St. John's Gospel. " I don't want my boys to read a lie," he said, " or to work to no purpose after I am gone." And those " boys " seem to have dearly loved the gentle old man. An epistle has come down to us from his disciple Cuthbert to a " fellow reader " Cuthwin, telling of what had happened this Ascension Day. " Our father and master, whom God loved," he says, " had translated the Gospel of St. John as far as ' what are these among so many,' when the day came before Our Lord's Ascension. " He began then to suffer much In his breath, EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. 51 and a swelling came in his feet, but he went on dic- tating to his scribe. ' Go on quickly,' he said, ' I know not how long I shall hold out, or how soon my Master will call me hence.' " All night long he lay awake in thanksgiving, and when the Ascension Day dawned, he com- manded us to write with all speed what he had begun." Thus the letter goes on affectionately, describ- ing the working and resting right through the day till the evening came, and then, with the setting sun gilding the windows of his cell, the old man lay feebly dictating the closing words. " There remains but one chapter, master," said the anxious scribe, " but it seems very hard for you to speak." " Nay, it is easy," Bede replied; " take up thy pen and write quickly." Amid blinding tears the young scribe wrote on. " And now, father," said he, as he eagerly caught the last words from his quivering lips, " only one sentence remains." Bede dictated it. " It is finished, master! " cried the youth, rais- ing his head as the last word was written. "Ay, it is finished! " echoed the dying saint; " lift me up, place me at that window of my cell where I have so often prayed to God. Now glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy 52 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE". Ghost ! " and with these words the beautiful spirit passed to the presence of the Eternal Trinity. IV. Our next translator is no less a person than King Alfred the Great, whose patriotic wish has been so often quoted, " that all the freeborn youth of his kingdom should employ themselves on noth- ing till they could first read well the English Scripture." ^ A striking monument of his zeal for the Bible remains in the beginning of his Laws of England. The document is headed " Alfred's Dooms," and begins thus: "The dooms which the Almighty Himself spake to Moses, and gave him to keep, and after our Saviour Christ came to earth, He said He came not to break Or forbid, but to keep them." And then follow the Ten Commandments, in the forcible simple Anglo-Saxon terms, the first part of the ancient laws of England : Drihten waes sprecende thses word to Moyse and thus cwaeth : Ic earn Drihten thy God. Ic the sit gelxdde of Aegypta londe and of heora theowdome. The Lord was speaking these •words to Moses and thus said: I am the Lord thy God. I led thee out of the land of Egypt and its thralldom. ' At least so it is quoted, though the last words " Englisc ge-writ araedan " quite as probably mean " to read English •writing." See Eadie's Bibl. Hist., i. 13. EARLY ENGLISH VERSIONS. 53 Ne lufa thu othre fremde godas ofer me. • * • » • Ara thinum f aeder and thinre medei tha the Drihten sealde the, that thu sy thy leng lib- bende on eorthan. Ne slea thu. Ne stala thu. Ne llge thu deamunga. Ne saege thu lease gewitnesse with thinum nehstan. Ne yrilna thu thines nehstan yifes mid unrihte. Ne wyrc thu the gyldene godas ohthe seolfrene. Love thou not other strange gods ever me. • • • • • Honor thy father and thy mother vihom the Lord gave thee, that thou be long living on earth. Slay not thou. Steal not thou. Commit not thou adultery. Say not thou false luitnes* against thy neighbor. Desire not thou thy neigh- bor's inheritance •with unright. Wort not thou the golden gods or silvern. Here is the Lord's Prayer of King Alfred's time, and side by side with it the Lord's Prayer in early English three hundred years afterward: Uren Fader dhis art in heofnas, Sic gehalged dhin noma, To cymedh dhin ric. Sic dhin uuilla sue is in heofnas and in eardho, Vren hiaf ofer uuirthe sel vs to daeg, And forgef us scylda urna. Sue uue forgefan sculdgun yrum. And no inleadh vridk in cost- nung al gefrig vrich from ifle. Fader cure that art in heve, l-halgeed be thi nome, I-cume thi kinereiche, Y-iBorthe thi viylle also it in hevene so be on erthe. Our iche-days-bred gif us to-day. And forgif us oure gultes. Also we forgifet oure gul- tare, And ne led oius notuth into fondyngge, Auth ales o errors ; ^ and at the close of his sermon he hurley the copy which he held into a great fire that blazed before him. Sir Thomas More, whose influence was so deservedly great in England, followed up the attack. " To study to find errors in Tyndale's book," he said, " were like studying to find water in the sea." It was even too bad for revising and amending, ' for it is easier to make a web of new cloth than it is to sew up every hole in a net." ^ Tyndale indignantly replied to this attack ; and cer- tainly his opponent does not show to advantage in the argument, his sweeping charge narrowing itself down at the last to the mistranslation of half a dozen words. Such attacks, made from different pulpits throughout the land, were much more effective than the previous stupid measures adopted against the Bible, chiefly because the people could seldom hear the refutation. But this was not always so. Tyndale had many sympathizers in the Church who wanted the open Bible in England, and they as well as Tyndale defended the book when they could, and generally with success. ' " There is not so much as one i therein," says Tyndale, " if it lack the tittle over its head, but they have noted and number it to the ignorant people for a heresy." 'More's animus against Tyndale is amusingly shown in his description of the translation of Jonah — "Jonas made out by Tyndale — a book that whoso delyte therein shall stande in peril that Jonas was never so swallowed up by the whale as by the delyte of that booke a mannes soul may be swallowed up by the Devyl that he shall never have the grace to get out again." ♦ TYNDALE'S VERSION. 101 In 1529 Latimer had preached at Cambridge his celebrated sermons " On the Card," which attracted a good deal of attention, arguing in favor of the translation and universal reading of Holy Scripture. The friars were enraged, and the more so as his reasoning was so difficult to answer. At length they selected a champion. Friar Buck- ingham; and certainly, if he may be taken as a type of the friars of his day, the Reformers' sneers at their ignorance were not without grounds.^ A Sunday was fixed on which he was to demolish the arguments of Latimer, and on the appointed day the people assembled, and a sermon against Bible translation was preached which to us now must read more like jest than sober argument. " Thus," asked the preacher with a triumphant smile, " where Scripture saith no man that layeth his hand to the plough and looketh back is fit for the kingdom of God, will not the ploughman when he readeth these words be apt forthwith to cease from his plough, and then where will be the sowing and the harvest? Likewise also whereas the baker readeth, ' A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump,' will he not be forthwith too sparing in the use of leaven, to the great injury of our '"They said there was a new language discovered called Greek, of which people should beware, since it was that which produced all the heresies; that in this language was come forth the New Testament, which was full of thorns and briars; that there was another new language too, called Hebrew, and they who learned it were turned Hebrews." — Hody, De TexHbus Bibl, 102 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. health. And so also when the simple man reads the words, ' If thine eye offend thee pluck it out and cast It from thee,' incontinent he will pluck out his eyes, and so the whole realm will be full of blind men, to the great decay of the nation and the manifest loss of the King's grace. And thus by reading of the Holy Scriptures will the whole realm come into confusion." The next Sunday St. Edward's Church was crowded to the doors, for the report had gone abroad that Latimer was to reply to the Grey Friar's sermon. At the close of the prayers the old man ascended the pulpit, and amid breathless silence the sermon began — such a crushing, scath- ing rebuke as Buckingham and his party never recovered from in Cambridge. One by one the arguments were ridiculed as too foolish for a really serious reply. " Only children and fools," he said, " fail to distinguish between the figurative and the real meanings of language — ^between the image which Is used and the thing which that image Is intended to represent. For example," he continued, with a withering glance at his oppo- nent, who sat before the pulpit, " If we paint a fox preaching in a friar's hood, nobody imagines that a fox is meant, but that craft and hypocrisy are described, which so often are found disguised in that garb." It was evident, too, that many of the people TYNDALE'S VERSION. 103 sympathized with the Reformers in such contests. Day by day it became clearer now that the tide of public opinion in England was setting too strongly to be resisted in favour of a " People's Bible." In spite of all opposition the book was being every- where talked about and read. " It passeth my power," writes Bishop Nikke, complaining to the Primate, " it passeth my power, or that of any spiritual man, to hinder it now." There was no room for questioning about it. The path of the Bible was open at last. Nor king nor bishop could stay its progress now. Over England's long night of error and superstition God had said, " Let there be light 1 " and there was light. X. But the Light-bringer himself did not see that day. For weary years he had laboured for it, a worn, poverty-stricken exile in a far away German town, and now when it came his heroic life was over — the prison and the stake had done their work. His enemies were many and powerful in England, and Vaughan, the royal envoy, had been instructed to persuade him to return. But Tyn- dale refused to go. " Whatever promises of safety may be made," he said, " the king would never be able to protect me from the bishops, who 104 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. believe that no faith should be kept with heretics." It is only fair to say that there is not the slightest evidence that the English bishops had anything to do with Tyndale's death in "Germany. The traitor by whose means he was taken was a villain named Phillips, a clergyman of very plausible manners, who contrived to win the confidence of the unsuspecting exile, " for Tjmdale was simple and inexpert in the wily subtleties of the world." He confided in Phillips as a friend, lent him money when he wanted it and utterly refused to listen to his landlord's suspicions about the man. At length, their plans being ripe, Tyndale was enticed some distance froKi his house, seized by Phillips' lurking assistants, and hurried to the dun- geons of the Castle of Vilvorden. It is pitiful to read of the poor prisoner there, in his cold and misery and rags, writing to the governor to beg " your lordship, and that by the Lord Jesus, that if I am to remain here during the winter, you will request the procureur to be kind enough to send me from my goods which he has in his possession a warmer cap, for I suffer extremely from a per- petual catarrh, which is much increased by this cell. A warmer coat also, for that which I have is very thin ; also a piece of cloth to patch my leg- gings — my shirts too are worn out. . . . Also that he would suffer me to have my Hebrew Bible and Grammar and Dictionary." TYNDALE'S VERSION. 105 There was no hope of escape from the first. He knew that the clerical influence in England was too strong against him to hope for any help in that quarter. Long ago he had said with foreboding, " If they burn me also, they shall do none other thing than I look for," and now his foreboding was to be realized. On Friday the 6th October, 1536, he was strangled at the stake and then burned to ashes, fervently praying with his last words, " Lord, open the King of England's eyes," a prayer which was nearer to its answer than the heroic martyr deemed. There is no grander life in the whole annals of the Reformation than that of William Tyndale — none which comes nearer in its beautiful self- forgetfulness to His who " laid down His life for His sheep." Many a man has suffered in order that a great cause might conquer by means of him- self. No such thought sullied the self-devotion of Tyndale. He issued his earlier editions of the New Testament without a name, " following the counsel of Christ which exhorteth men to do their good deeds secretly." " I assure you," said he to Vaughan, the envoy of the king, " if it would stand with the king's most gracious pleasure to grant a translation of the Scripture to be put forth among his people like as it is put forth among the subjects of the emperor here, be it the translation of whatsoever person he pleases, I shall imme- 106 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. diately make faithful promises never to write more nor abide two days in these parts after the same, but immediately repair unto his realm, and there humbly submit myself at the feet of his royal majesty, offering my body to suffer what pain or torture, yea, what death his grace wills, so that this be obtained." Poverty and distress and misrepresentation were his constant lot; imprisonment and death were ever staring him in the face ; but " none of these things moved him, neither counted he his life dear unto him " for the accomplishment of the work which God had set him. No higher honour could be given to any man than such a work to accomplish, and among all the heroes of the Reformation none worthier of that honour could be found than William Tyndale. XI. And now we have to tell of the translation itself. As we have seen already, all the earlier English versions were but translations of a trans- lation, being derived from the Vulgate or older Latin versions. Tyndale for the first time goes back to the original Hebrew and Greek,^ though ' See Diagram facing the title-page. Besides Erasmus' Greek Testament, Tyndale had also before him the Latin Vulgate and Erasmus' Latin translation of the New Testament It is said too that he used Luther's German Bible. TYNDALE'S VERSION. 107 the manuscripts accessible in his time were not of much authority as compared with those used by our recent revisers. And not only did he go back to the original languages seeking for the truth, but he embodied that truth when found in so noble a translation that it has been but little improved on even to the present day. Every succeeding version is in reality little more than a revision of Tyndale's; even our present Authorized Version owes to him chiefly the ease and beauty for which it is so admired. " The peculiar genius," says Mr. Froude, "which breathes through the English Bible, the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the grandeur, unequalled, unap- proached in the attempted improvements of mod- ern scholars — all are here, and bear the impress of the mind of one man, and that man William Tyndale." The New Testament was the work to which he chiefly devoted himself, bringing out edition after edition as he saw anything to be improved. Of the Old Testament he translated only the Penta- teuch, the Historical Books, and part of the Prophets. The margin contains a running comment on the text, and some of the notes rather amusingly exhibit his strong anti-Papal and anti-clerical feel- ing. He has a grim jest in the margin of Exod. 108 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. ^°°^ii- 3 Si " The Pope's bull slayeth more than Aaron's calf." On Lev. xxi. 5 he comments, " Of the heathen priests, then, our prelates took the example of their bald pates ; " and where the account is given, Exod. xxxvi. 5, &c., of the for- bidding the people to bring any more offerings for the building of the tabernacle, he has this note on the margin, " When will the Pope say Hoo 1 (hold!) and forbid an offering for the building of St. Peter's Church? And when will our spirit- uality say Hoo I and forbid to give them more land? Never until they have all." Many of his quaint expressions have been altered in succeeding versions, not always, per- haps, for the better. Here are a few as specimens taken almost entirely from the New Testament: Gen. xxxix. 2 — " And the Lorde was witE Joseph, and he was a luckie felowe." Matt. xxvi. 30 — " When they had said grace." Mark vi. 27 — " He sent forthe the hangman." Rev. i. 10 — " I was in the Sprete on a Son- daye." Matt, xxvii. 62 — " The daye that foloweth Good Fridaye." I Cor. xvi. 8 — " I will tarry at Ephesus til Wit- sontyde." Acts xiii. 15 — "The rulers of the synagogue sent to them after the lecture, saying. If ye have any sermon to exhort the people, say on." f^ .t *^ = '^^ ^ c; r-, ^ — «-i ^ *-^ ? »-. & »<, ♦S*-" 5 Ji'*_ ^jH ofM rs X'^ia c c C ii g »Q\ IK. _ ^ = 5 t - „ -t: ,»• "* "^ ■?'-»•& a. Lpwa^ ■<> i P* .J auitb, tbat be scbulbe ftnowlecbe witb flDari? witb cbilb spousib wi^f to bi^m. Sotbli? it was bon wbanne tbei weren tbere tbe baijes weren fulfilleb tbat sbe scbulbe bere cbilb. Hnb sbe cbilbibe ber tlrste born sone anb wlappibe bi^m in clotbis anb putteb h^m in a craccbe, for tber was not place to bi^m in tbe comi^n stable. TYNDALE'S VERSION. Ill Specimen from Tyndale. (Luke ii. i-ii.) •fcit foloweb in tboosc baijcs tbat tbcrc voente oute acommaunbmentfromEuguete tbe jemperour tbat all tbe woorlbe abulDe be valueb. ZYiiQ tan^nge voas firet eye* cute^ wben Si^renus voas leftenaunt in Siria. Hn& even? man wente fn to bis awne sbire toune tbere to be tareb. Hnb Josepb also ascenbeb from (Balilc oute of a cite calleb IFlasaretb, unto 3ewri?, into a cite of Bavib wbicb is calleb Betbleem, because be was of tbe bousse anb linage of 2)avib, to be tareb witb fiDari? bis webbeb wi^fe, wbicb was witb cbilbe. Hub it fortuncb wbile tbe^ tbere were ber ti^me was come tbat sbe 6bulbe be bel^vereb. Hub sbe brougbt fortbe ber first begotten sonne anb wrappeb bijm in swabbli^nge clotbes, anb laijeb bijm in a manger be <^5usc tbere was no roume for tbem witbin in tbe bostrep. CHAPTER VII. THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE's DAYS. I. Three Years After. II. Twenty Years After. III. Fifty Years More gone by. " Lord, open the King of England's eyes 1 " Pity that William Tyndale, as he gasped forth his dying prayer, could not have lifted even a little way the veil that hid from him the future of England. I. Three Years After. In every parish church stands an English Bible, whose frontispiece alone is sufficient to tell of the marvelous change that has taken place in the meantime. The design is by Holbein. In the first com- partment the Almighty is seen in the clouds with outstretched arms. Two scrolls proceed out of His mouth to the right and to the left. On the former is the phrase, " The word which goeth forth from me shall not return to me empty, but shall accomplish whatsoever I will have done." 112 THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 113 The other is addressed to King Henry, who is kneeling in the distance bareheaded, with his crown lying at his feet — " I have found me a man after mine own heart, who shall fulfil all my will." Henry answers, " Thy word is a lantern unto my feet." Immediately below is the King, seated on his throne, holding in each hand a book, on which is written " The Word of God." This he is giving to Cranmer and another bishop, who, with a group of priests, are on the right of the picture, saying, " Take this and teach; " the other, on the opposite side, he holds out to Cromwell and the lay peers, and the words are, " I make a decree that in all my kingdom men shall tremble and fear before the Living God;" while a third scroll, falling downward over his feet, speaks alike to peer and prelate — "Judge righteous judgment; turn not away your ear from the prayer of any poor man." In the third compartment Cranmer and Crom- well are distributing the Bibles to kneeling priests and laymen, and at the bottom a preacher with a benevolent and beautiful face is addressing a crowd from a pulpit in the open air. He is appar- ently commencing his sermon with the words, " I exhort, therefore, that first of all supplications, prayers, thanksgivings, be made {(dt all men, for kings " — and at the word " kings " the people are 114 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. shouting, " Vivat Rex! " children who know no Latin lisping, " God save the King! " while at the extreme left a prisoner at a jail window is joining in the cry of delight as If he too were delivered from a worse bondage.^ This was the so-called " Great Bible " of 1539, the first English " Authorized Version." It was indeed a marked change that had passed over England. The Reformation was gaining ground among clergy and laity, Henry had openly broken with the Pope, and there seemed no dispo- sition anywhere to oppose the desire for a " Peo- ple's Bible." But the opposition to William Tyndale still remained. His writings had already been pub- licly condemned, and the men who had condemned him and placed a ban upon his works were re- solved that his Bible should never be the Bible of England. Yet this " Great Bible," the Authorized Ver- sion of the nation, was virtually Tyndale's I This is how it came about. Already in these three years three different versions had appeared in England. Within a few years after the appear- ance of Tyndale's New Testament the Church of England had wakened to the needs of the time and carried in Convocation, 1534, a petition for ^This description is taken from Mr. Froude's History of Eng- land, where, however, the frontispiece is erroneously said to belong to an edition of the Coverdale Bible. THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 115 an English translation of the Scriptures. We may well believe that the influence of Tyndale's Ver- sion had a good deal to do with this improved atti- tude. In 1535, the very year of Tyndale's impris- onment, came the Bible ^ of Myles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, the man who after Tyndale has played the most prominent part of any in the history of the English Bible. Cover- dale was a man of very different stamp from his great predecessor. He had neither his ability nor strength of character, nor was he, like him, fitted by a lifelong study for his task as a translator, and the difference comes markedly out in the work pro- duced by each. But it is only fair to say, too, that he was quite conscious of his defects, that he did the work before him to the best of his ability, " seeking it not, neither desiring it," but feeling " Sometimes called the " Treacle Bible," from its rendering of Jer. viii. 33, "Vs tbCtC nO trfacle in ©flea&V Here are some other curious expressions: — Gen. viii. ii — "The dove bare an olire leafe in her nebbe." Joshua ii. ii — "Our heart had fayled us, neither is there good stomacke in any manne." Judges ix. S3 — " And brake his brain-panne." Job V. 7 — " It is man that is born to misery like as a byrd for to flee." Acts s. 8 — " Ther widowes were not looked vpon in the daylie handreaching." In original edition Queen Anne is referred to as the king's "dearest juste -wyfe and most virtuous princesse." A copy now In the British Museum has this inscription, but " Ane " is changed to Jane, thus JAne. The other copies have, some Ane, some Jane, while some actually leave the space blank, as if the editor were unable to keep pace with Henry's rapid change of wives. 116 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. that his country needed it done, and modestly regretting that no better man was there to do it. Coverdale was a man of sympathetic nature and fine literary instinct and the attractive English of his translation has considerably influenced the lan- guage of the Authorized Version. His Bible makes no pretence to be an original translation; it is " translated out of Douche and Latin into English," with the help of " five sundry interpre- ters " (i. e., translators), and the chief of these " interpreters " is evidently William Tyndale, whom, in the New Testament especially, he closely follows. The following year (1537) appeared "Mat- thews' Bible." ^ which was really prepared by John Rogers, one of the early Reformers, after- ward martyred in Queen Mary's reign. His known opinions and his connection with Tyndale accounts for the suppression of his real name as likely to injure the circulation of the book. This work was Tyndale's translation pure and simple, all but the latter half of the Old Testament (which is taken, with some alteration, from Coverdale's Bible) ; and one feels pleased for the old exile's sake, though his honor was given to others, that Archbishop Cranmer should " like it better than any translation heretofore made," he " would rather see it licensed by the king than re- ' In it the Song of Solomon is entitled " SoIomon'B SSalaBca." THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 117 ceive £i,ooo," and " if they waited till the bishops should set forth a better translation they would wait," he thinks, " til the day after doomsday." '■ It is not easy to understand how it escaped detec- tion as the work of Tyndale, especially as it con- tained many of those strong anti-clerical notes by which Tyndale's version gave such ofFence. Shortly after appeared " Taverner's Bible," * which was little more than an edition of Mat- thews' with its more violent polemical notes toned down or omitted. None of these versions were satisfactory. Coverdale's was but a second-hand translation, and Matthews' was only in part derived from the originals, besides which the controversial notes were against its success. So it came to pass that the Great Bible was set on foot by the Church. Archbishop Cranmer and some of the chief advisers of the king had set their hearts on having a translation that would be really worthy of its position as a National Bible. Myles Coverdale was selected to take charge of * " Craniner's Remains and Letters," p. 344. Parker Society. ' Little is known of bim. The description in Fuller's " Church History," chap. ii. p. 459, is bertainly not flattering — " Surely preaching must hav« run very low if it be true what 1 read that Mr. Tavernour of Water Eaton, in Oxfordshire, gave the seholars a sermon at St. Mary's with his gold chain about his neck and his sword by his side, beginning with these words, "Arriving at Mount St. Mary's in the stony age where I now stand, I have brought you some fine biscuits baked in the oven of diarity and carefully conserved for the chickens of the Church, Ae sparrows of the Spirit, the sweet swallows of salvation." 118 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. the work, and he proceeded to Paris with the king's printer, that the book might be brought out in the best possible style. But the Inquisitor- General got notice of the project, and the result was a repetition of the episode of Tyndale at Cologne, only that Coverdale fared better than his great predecessor, for though his Bibles were all seized by the " Lieutenant Criminall," he car- ried off the printing-press, the types, and the prin- ters themselves to complete the work in England. It was published in April, 1539, and was " author- ized to be used and frequented in every church in the kingdom." ^ The reader who wants a speci- men of its style has but to turn to the Psalms in his Prayer-Book or the " Comfortable Words " in the Communion Service, which are taken un- changed from the Great Bible. It has another point of interest in connection with the Revised Version. It indicated some texts as doubtful by printing them in small type, and among them was the celebrated passage i John v. 7, 8, which the recent revisers have omitted altogether." But more important to notice is the fact that the book is really no new translation. It may be described as a compilation from Matthews' and ^ When Henry was asked to authorize it, " Well," said he, "but are there any heresies maintained thereby?" They an- swered that there were no heresies that they could find main- tained in it. " Then in God's name," said the King, " let it go forth among our people." "See forward pagel4l. » THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 119 Coverdale's Bibles — or better still, perhaps, as a revision of Matthews' by Coverdale; and since, as we have seen, Matthews' was almost entirely Tyndale's version, the Great Bible was really little more than a revised edition of Tyndale ! Thus had the old martyr triumphed. These men had opposed him to the very day of his death, and now here was his Bible in their midst, though they knew it not, authorized by the king, commended by the clergy, and placed in the parish churches for the teaching of the people ! And as if to mark the change with all the emphasis that was possible, an inscription on the title-page told that " it was oversene and perused at the com- mandement of the King's Highness by the ryghte reverende fathers in God, Cuthbert bishop of Duresme (Durham), and Nicholas bishop of Rochester." Who, think you, reader, was Cuth- bert of Duresme? None other than Cuthbert Tonstal, his untiring opponent, the bishop who had turned him discouraged from his door, who had bargained with Pakington to purchase the Bibles, who had hurled into the flames from the pulpit of Paul's Cross the translation which now went forth with his own name on its title page. 120 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. 11. Twenty Years After. It is the day of Elizabeth's entry into London, and the streets are bright with waving banners and gay dresses of the citizens struggling to get closer to the royal procession, and shouting with joy as they behold their young queen. There is more in those shouts than the mere gaiety of a holiday crowd. It is a glad day for many in England. The dark reign of Mary is over, with its imprison- ments and martyrdoms, and the men of the Refor- mation are looking forward hopefully to the future. There are those in that crowd who have lived for years in constant dread — ^there are those who have had to fly for their lives, some of them companions of the exiles at Geneva, waiting to send word to their comrades abroad how it should fare in England. Now the shputing has ceased. There is a pause in the long line of banners and plumes and glitter- ing steel. The procession has just arrived at " the little Conduit in Chepe," where one of those pageants, the delight of our forefathers, is pre- pared. An old man in emblematic dress stands forth before the queen, and it is told Her Grace that this is Time. " Time," quoth she, " and Time it was that brought me hither." Beside him THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 121 stands a white-robed maiden, who is introduced as " Truth, the daughter of Time." She holds in her hand a book on which is written " Verbum veritatis," the Word of truth, an English Bible, which she presents to the queen. Raising It with both her hands, Elizabeth presses it to her lips, and then laying it against her heart, amid the enthusiastic shouting of the multitude, she grace- fully thanks the city for so precious a gift. It was a good omen for the future of the Bible, which had been almost a closed book in the pre- ceding reign. And within three months It was fol- lowed by one still more significant. The Reform- ers who had fled to Geneva returned to their homes, bearing with them a new version of the Bible, the work of the best years of their banish- ment,^ and the dedication of the book was ac- cepted by Elizabeth. This was the first appearance in England of the famous Geneva Bible, the " Breeches Bibl g." as It was afterward called, from Its rendering of Gen- esis ill. 7, where Adam and Eve " sewed fig-tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches." ^ It was the most popular Bible that had ever appeared in England, and for sixty years It held 'Myles Coverdale was one of them. ' It was really only one edition published by Barker that con- tained this reading, which was also the reading of Wycliffe's Bible. 122 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. its own against all rivals, for a time contesting the ground even with our own Authorized Version. It was both cheaper and less cumbrous than the " Great Bible " of Cranmer, as well as being a much more careful and accurate work, though, like most of its predecessors, it was more a revision than a translation, being chiefly based on Tyndale. It contained marginal notes, which were considered very helpful in dealing with obscure passages of Scripture, though, as might be expected from Geneva, they were sometimes of a strongly Calvinistic and anti-church bias.* These notes should possess a special interest for us, for, as we shall see afterward, we have partly to thank them for our Authorized Version of to-day. Some other of its peculiarities are worth notice. It was the first Bible that laid aside the old black letter for the present Roman type. It was also the first to recognize the divisions into verses, and the first to omit the Apocrypha. It omits the name of St. Paul from the Epistle to the Hebrews, and it uses italics for all words not occurring in the original. * Take for example the note on Rev. ix. 3. The " locusts that oame out of the bottomless pit " are explained as meaning "false teachers, heretics, and worldly subtil prelates, with Monks, Friars, Cardinals, Patriarchs, Archbishops, Bishops, Doctors, Bachelors and Masters of Artes, which forsake Christ to maintain false doctrine." THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 123 The history of the dark troublous days of oppo- sition to the Bible knd persecution to its promoters ceases forever (let us hope) with the issue of the Geneva Bible. III. Fifty Years More gone by. How Tyndale's heart would have swelled at the sight I A king of England himself is directing an English Bible translation I In January, 1604, a conference of bishops and clergy had been held in the drawing-rooms of Hampton Court Palace, under the presidency of King James himself, to consider certain alleged grievances of the Puritan party in the Church, and among other subjects of discussion was rather unexpectedly brought up that of the defectiveness of the two current translations of Scripture. England had at that time three different ver- sions. The Genevan was the favorite of the peo- ple in general ; a rival version, called the Bishop's Bible, which had been brought out some eight years after, was supported by ecclesiastical au- thority; while the " Great Bible " of Henry VIII. 124 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. Specimens. 23D Psalm. Coverdale's, 1535. Great Bible, 1539. Cbc Xor&e is mis sbepbetae V can want notbing. 1be fedetb me in a gieene pae^ ture and ledetb me to a f reeb watet. "fee quiclienetb mg 0oule and btingetb me fortb in tbe wa^e of rigbteeous^ neee lot bis names salte. ^bougb IT sbulde wallie now in tbe vallcs of tbe ebadowe of deatb set H feare no euell fot tbou are wttb me, tbg etaffe and tbs sbepebofie comfotte me. Ubou ptepareet a table before agai^net mine enes mtes tbou anogntest mg beaDe witb osle and fullest mg cuppe full. ®b let tbe louingxftgndnes and mercg folovve me all tbe daises off mg igfe tbat II mage dwell in tbe bouse off tbe Xotd for euer. Zbe Xorde is mg sbepberde tberefore can V lacKe notbs ing. "be sbal fede me in a grene pasture and leade me fortb besgde g« watirs of coforte. 1be sbal conuert mg soule and bring me fortb in g' patbes of rigbteousnes for bis names satie. JSea tbougb V wallte tborowe g< vallege of g*^ sbadowe of deatb f wgl fear no euell for tbou art vot me : tbg rod and tbg staffe comfort me. tibou sbalt prepare a table before me agagnst tbem tbat trouble me: tbou bas anogntcd mg bead w/ ogle and mg cup sbal be ful. :iJ3ut louing Itgndnes and mercg sbal folowe me all tbe dages of mg Igfe and H wgll dwel in g' bouse ot g* Jtorde for euec. THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 125 Specimens. 23D Psalm. Genevan Bible, 1560. 1. The Lord is my shepheard I shall not want. 2. Hee maketh mee to rest in greene pasture and leadeth mee by the still waters. 3. He restoreth my soule and leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His Names sake. 4. Ye though I walk through the valley of the shadowe of death I will feare no euill for thou art with me: thy rodde and thy staffe they comfort me. 5. Thou doest prepare a table before me in the sight of mine adversaries; thou dost anoynt mine head with oyle and my cup runneth over. 6. Doubtlesse kindnesse and mercy shall follow mee all the dayes of my life and I shal remaine a long season in the house of the Lord. Bishops' Bible, i$6S. I. God is my shephearde therefore I can lacke nothyng: he wyll cause me to repose my- selfe in pasture full of grasse and he wyll leade me vnto calme waters. •2. He will conuert my soule; he wyll bring me foorth into the pathes of righteousnesse for his names sake. 3. Yea though J walke through the valley of the shad- owe of death I wyll fear no euyll; for thou art with me, thy rodde and thy staffe be the thynges that do comfort me. 4. Thou wilt prepare a table before me in the presence of myne aduersaries; thou has anoynted my head with oyle and my cup shalbe brymme f ul. 5. Truly felicitie and mercy shal folowe me all the dayes of my lyfe: and I wyll dwell in the house of God for a long tyme. 126 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. might still be seen chained to a stone or wooden desk in many of the country churches. But none of these was likely to be accepted as the Bible of the English nation. The Great Bible was anti- quated and cumbersome, the Genevan, though a careful translation and convenient for general use, had become, through the Puritan character of its notes, quite the Bible of a party; while the Bishops' Version, a very inferior production, neither commanded the respect of scholars nor suited the wants of the people. There was, therefore, plainly a need for a new version, which, being accepted by all, should form a bond of union between different classes and rival religious communities. Yet when Dr. Reynolds, the leader of the Puritan party, put forward such a proposal at the Conference, it was very coldly received, Bancroft, bishop of London, seeming to express the general feeling of his party when he grumbled that " if every man had his humor about new versions, there would be no end of translat- ing." Probably the fact of the proposal having come from the Puritans had also some effect on this conservatism of the bishops; in any case it seemed that the project must fall through for want of their support. But if the bishops in the palace drawing-room that day thought so, they soon found that they had literally " calculated without their host." There THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 127 was one man in that assembly who looked with special favour on the new proposal, and that man was the royal pedant who presided. A Bible translation made under his auspices would greatly add to the glory of his reign, besides which, to a man whose learning was really considerable, and who was specially fond of displaying it in theo- logical matters, the direction of such a work would be very congenial. And if a further motive were needed, it was easily found in his unconcealed dis- like to the popular Geneva Bible. The whole tone of its politics and theology, as exhibited in the marginal notes, was utterly distasteful to James, as he plainly showed soon after in his directions to the new translators, for " marry withal, he gave this caveat, that no notes should be added, having found in those which were an- nexed to the Geneva translation some notes very partial, untrue, seditious, and savoring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits." Two of these notes especially vexed him. In 2 Chron. xv. 1 6 it is recorded that Asa " removed his mother from being queen, because she had made an idol in a grove"; and the margin con- tains this comment, " Herein he showed that he lacked zeal, for she ought to have died," a remark probably often remembered by the fanatics of the day in reference to the death of James's mother, the Queen of Scots. There was another note which 128 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. rather amusingly clashed with the grand Stuart theories of the divine right of kings to be above all law and to command implicit obedience from their subjects. In the passage in the first chapter of Exodus describing the conduct of the Hebrew midwives, who " did not as the king of Egypt com- manded, but saved the men-children alive," the margin declares " their disobedience to the king was lawful, though their dissembling was evil." " It is false," cried the indignant advocate of kingly right; "to disobey a king is not lawful; such traitorous conceits should not go forth among the people." But, however men may smile at the absurdities of James, which in some measure led to the new translation, there can be no question as to the wis- dom shown in his arrangements for carrying out the work. Fifty-four learned men were selected impartially from High Churchmen and Puritans, as well as from those who, like Saville and Boys, represented scholarship totally unconnected with any party. And in addition to this band of ap-' pointed revisers, the king also designed to secure the cooperation of every Biblical scholar of note in the kingdom. The Vice-Chancellor of Cam- bridge was desired to name any fit man with whom he was acquainted, and Bishop Bancroft received a letter from the king himself, directing him to " move the bishops to inform themselves of all THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 129 such learned men within their several dioceses as, having especial skill in the Hebrew and Greek tongues, have taken pains in their private studies of the Scriptures for the clearing of any obscuri- ties either in the Hebrew or the Greek, or touch- ing any difficulties or mistakings in the former English translations, which we have now com- manded to be thoroughly viewed and amended, and thereupon to earnestly charge them, signify- ing our pleasure therein, that they send such their observations to Mr. Lively our Hebrew reader in Cambridge, or to Dr. Harding, our Hebrew reader in Oxford, or to Dr. Andrews, Dean of Westminster, to be imparted to the rest of their several companies, that so our said intended trans- lation may have the help and furtherance of all our principal learned men within this our king- dom." An admirable set of rules was drawn up for the instruction of the revisers, directing amongst other things that the Bishops' Bible should be used as a basis, and departed from only when the text re- quired it; that any competent scholars might be consulted about special difficulties ; that differences of opinion should be settled at a general meeting; that divisions of chapters should be as little changed as possible, and marginal references should be given from one scripture to another; and last, but by no means least, that there should 130 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. be NO MARGINAL NOTES, except for the explana- tion of Hebrew and Greek words. This simple rule did probably more than anything else to make our Authorized Version the Bible of all classes in England, binding us together as a Christian nation by a tie which the strife of parties and the war of politics has since been insufficient to sever. Had the opposite course been adopted, we should now have probably the Bibles of different religious bodies competing in unseemly rivalry, each reflect- ing the theological bias of the party from which it came. Never before had such labour and care been expended on the English Bible. The revisers were divided into six companies, each of which took its own portion, and every aid accessible was used to make their work a thorough success. They carefully studied the Greek and Hebrew; they used the best commentaries of European scholars; the Bibles in Spanish, Italian, French, and German were examined for any help they might afford in arriving at the exact sense of each passage; and when the sense was found, no pains were spared to express it in clear, vigorous, idiomatic English. All the excellences of the previous versions were noted, for the purpose of incorporating them in the work, and even the Rhemish (Roman Cath- olic) translation was laid under contribution for some expressive phrases which it contained. THE BIBLE AFTER TYNDALE'S DAYS. 131 " Neither," says Dr. Miles Smith, in the preface, " did we disdain to revise that which we had done, and to bring back to the anvil that which we had hammered, fearing no reproach for slowness nor coveting praise for expedition;" and the result was the production of this splendid Authorized Version of which Englishmen to-day are so justly proud. For more than two centuries English Protestant writers have spoken of it in terms of almost unani- mous praise — its " grace and dignity," its " flow- ing words," its " masterly English style." Even a Roman Catholic divine, Dr. Geddes (1786), declares that " if accuracy and strictest attention to the letter of the text be supposed to constitute an excellent version, this is of all versions the most excellent." And an almost touching tribute is paid it by one who evidently looked back on it with yearning regret, after having exchanged its beauties for the uncouthness of the Romanist ver- sions. " Who will say," writes Father Faber, " that the uncommon beauty and marvellous English of the Protestant Bible Is not one of the great strongholds of heresy in this country? It lives on the ear like a music that can never be for- gotten, like the sound of church bells, which the convert scarcely fcftows how he can forego. Its felicities seem often to be almost things rather than words. It is part of the national mind, and 132 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. the anchor of the national seriousness. Nay, it is worshipped with a positive idolatry, in extenua- tion of whose fanaticism its intrinsic beauty pleads availingly with the scholar. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of childhood are stereotyped in its verses. It is the representative of a man's best moments ; all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good speaks to him for- ever out of his English Bible. It is his sacred thing, which doubt never dimmed and controversy never soiled ; and 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." CHAPTER VIII. THE REVISED VERSION. I. Preparation for Revision. II. The Jerusalem Chamber. III. The Revisers at Work. IV, Claims of the Revised Bible. V. Should it Disturb Men's Faith? VI. General Remarks. VII. Conclusion. While fully appreciating the beauty and excel- lence of his Authorized Version, the reader who has thus far followed this little sketch will scarcely require now to ask, Why should we have needed a new revision? He will have seen that the whole history of the English Bible from Tyndale's days is a history of growth and improvement by means of repeated revisions. Tyndale's first New Testament (1525) was revised by himself in 1534, and again in 1535. In Matthews' Bible it appeared still more im- proved in 1 5 3 7 . The Great Bible (1539) was the result of a further revision, which was repeated again in the Genevan (1560), the Bishops' (1568), and still more thoroughly in our splendid Authorized Version (1611), which latter is itself one of the best proofs of the value of Bible revision. 133 134 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. He will have seen also (to recapitulate here for greater clearness) — (i.) that in the present day we have access to a treasury of ancient manu- scripts, versions, and quotations such as the schol- ars of King James's day had never dreamed of; (2.) that the science of textual criticism, which teaches the value and the best methods of dealing with these documents, has entirely sprung up since ; (3.) that our scholars are better acquainted with the Sacred Languages, and able to distinguish delicate shades of meaning which were quite lost on their predecessors ; and (4.) lastly, that owing to the natural growth of the English language itself many words in the Authorized Version have become obsolete, and several have completely changed their meaning during the past 300 years. This last is more important than people think. More than 200 words have thus quite changed their meaning, e. g., carriages, comfort, common, conversation, damnation, let, malice, mortify, prevent, &c. ; also phrases such as " take no thought," &c. Sometimes the change of meaning is of very serious consequence. Take, for ex- ample, the word damnation which now conveys to us the idea in every case of doom to a Hell of unending torment and unending sin. The English word did not mean that some centuries ago. The original Greek word means to judge or sometimes to Judge adversely, to condemn, and the old THE REVISED VERSION. 135 English word " damn " meant that and no more. There is an interesting example in the Wycliffe Bible in the passage about the woman taken in adultery, St. John viii. lo. Jesus says, " Woman, hath no man damned thee? " " No man. Lord." " Neither do I damn thee." That is to say, the English word damn at that time only meant con- demn, without saying to what one was condemned'. But words are dangerous things if not carefully watched, owing to this tendency to change their meaning as a language grows. For example, " He that believeth not shall be damned " would, three or four hundred years ago, have correctly expressed the meaning of the Greek. Not so to-day. The English word " damned " has taken on a darker meaning. Therefore we must sub- stitute for it the word " condemned." So that on account of this change of meaning as a language grows, if for no other cause, revision at certain periods will always be needed. For all these reasons then the duty is laid upon our Biblical scholars which Tyndale In his first preface imposed on those of his own day, " that if they perceive in any place that the version has not attained unto the very sense of the tongue or the very meaning of Scripture, or have not given the right English word, that they should put to their hands and amend it, remembering that so is their duty to do." 136 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. About the beginning of the last century the appearance of several partial revisions by private individuals indicated the feeling in the minds of scholars that the time for a new Bible Revision was at hand. As years went on the feeling grew stronger, and leading men in the Church were pleading that the work should not be long delayed. During the past 250 years, they urged, great stores of Biblical information have been accumu- lating; ^ our ability to use such information has been greatly increased; and it is of importance to the interests of religion that that information should be fully disseminated by a careful correc- tion of our received Scriptures. Dr. Tischendorf's discovery at Mount Sinai still further intensified this feeling; and so it created little surprise when, on the loth February, 1870, Bishop Wilberforce * Fully 200 years ago the way began to be prepared for our present revision by several criticisms and attempts at correction of the Authorized Version. It soon became clear, however, that such attempts were premature in the then state of information as to the Original Scriptures, and scholars began to direct their attention rather to the laying of the foundation for a revision in the future by collecting and examining Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, together with the various early versions and quota- tions from the Fathers. Toward the close of the eighteenth cen- tury Kennicott and De Rossi had published the results of their examination of several hundred Hebrew manuscripts; and in more recent times the same service was rendered to the Greek by Drs. Tischendorf, Tregelles, Scrivener, and others, whose way had been prepared by many distinguished predecessors. Besides, there was the work of a long series of commentators in investi- gating the meaning of the Sacred Writers, so that, on the whole, a very valuable foundation for revision existed by the middle of the present century. THE REVISED VERSION. 137 rose in the Upper House of the Southern Convo- cation to propose, " That a committee of both Houses be appointed, with power to confer with any committee that may be appointed by the Con- vocation of the Northern Province, to report on the desirableness of a revision of the Authorized Version of the New Testament, whether by mar- ginal notes or otherwise, in all those passages where plain and clear errors, whether in the Greek text adopted by the translators, or in the transla- tion made from the same, shall on due investiga- tion be found to exist." After the enlarging of this resolution so as to include the Old Testament also, it was adopted by both Houses. 11. Four months later, on a summer day toward the close of June, 1870, a distinguished company was assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber in West- minster Abbey. In that room in days long gone by the first of the Lancastrian kings breathed out his weary life. Beneath those windows sat the " Assembly of Divines " when the iU-fated Charles ruled in England; here the Westminster Confession was drawn up; and here too, under the auspices of William of Orange, was discussed the great 138 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. Prayer-Book Revision of 1689, intended to join together Churchmen and Dissenters. But no memory of that ancient chamber will eclipse in the future that of the work for which these men were assembled on that summer after- noon, for the Bible Revision had at length been begun, and this was the appointed New Testa- ment Company. At the centre of the long table sat the chairman, Bishop EUicott, and around him the flower of our English scholarship. There were Alford and Stanley and Lightfoot, intently studying the sheets before them on the table. Westcott was there, and Hort and Scrivener — ^names long famous in the "history of textual criticism — Dr. Eadie of Scotland, and the Master of the Temple, and the venerable Archbishop Trench of Dublin, with many other scholars no less distinguished than they. Different religious communities were repre- sented — different schools of thought — different opinions on matters closely connected with the work in hand. This is one of the great securities for the fairness of the New Revision. Whatever other charges may be brought against it, that of bias, even unconscious bias, toward any set of theological views is quite out of the question where Baptist and Methodist and Presbyterian and Churchman sat side by side in the selected com- pany of Revisers. And, as if to make this assur- * THE REVISED VERSION. 139 ance doubly sure, across the Atlantic a similarly constituted company was preparing to cooperate with these to criticize the work and suggest emendations, so that on the whole nearly a hun- dred of the ripest scholars of England and America were connected with the New Revision. III. And now let us watch the Revisers at their work. Before each man lies a sheet with a column of the Authorized Version printed in the middle, leaving a wide margin on either side for suggested alterations, the left hand for changes in the Greek text, and the right for those referring to the English rendering. These sheets are already cov- ered with notes, the result of each Reviser's pri- vate study of the passage beforehand. After prayers and reading of the minutes, the chairman reads over for the company part of the passage on the printed sheet (Matt. I. 18-25), and asks for any suggested emendations. At the first verse a member, referring to the notes on his sheet, remarks that certain old manu- scripts read " the birth of the Christ " instead of " the birth of Jesus Christ." Dr. Scrivener and Dr. Hort state the evidence on the subject, and after a full discussion it is decided by the votes of the meeting that the received reading has most 10 140 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. authority in its favor; but, in order to represent fairly the state of the case, it is allowed that the margin should contain the words, " Some ancient authorities read ' of the Christ.' " Some of the members are of opinion that the name " Holy Ghost " in same verse would be better if modern- ized into " Holy Spirit," but as this is a mere question of rendering, it is laid aside until the textual corrections have been discussed. The next of importance is the word " firstborn " in ver. 25, which is omitted in many old authorities. Again the evidence on both sides is fully stated, and the members present, each of whom has already pri- vately studied it before, vote on the question, the result being that the words " her firstborn " are omitted. And now, the textual question being settled, the chairman asks for suggestions as to the rendering, and it is proposed that in the first verse the word " betrothed " should be substituted for " es- poused," the latter being rather an antiquated form. This also is decided by vote in the affirma- tive, and thus they proceed verse by verse till the close of the meeting, when the whole passage, as amended, is read over by the chairman. Four years afterward we glance at their work again. They have reached now the First Epistle General of St. John, and the sheets lying before them contain part of the 5th chapter. No ques- THE REVISED VERSION. 141 tion of importance arises till the 7th verse Is reached — 7. " For there are three that bear record [in heaven^ — the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. 8. And there are three that bear witness in earth], the Spirit, and the Water, and the Blood, and these three agree in one " — when it is proposed that that part of the passage which we have here placed in brackets be omitted as not belonging to the original text. Time was when such a suggestion would have roused a formidable controversy ; '■ but textual criticism has greatly progressed since then, and the question is not considered by the Revisers even to need discussing. The evidence is as follows : — The passage occurs in two modern Greek manu- scripts — one of them in the library of Trinity Col- lege, Dublin — in one or two Ancient Versions of comparatively little value, and many modern copies of the Vulgate; besides which it is quoted by a few African Fathers, whose testimony, on the whole, is not of much weight in its favor. Against this are to be set the following facts : — (i.) Not a single Greek manuscript or church les- son-book before the fifteenth century has any trace of the passage. This in itself would be sufficient evidence against it. (2.) It is omitted in almost every Ancient Version of any critical value, includ- ^ Upwards of fifty books, pamphlets, ice., written on the subject are mentioned in Home's Introduction. 142 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. ing the best copies of the Vulgate (St. Jerome's Revised Bible) ; and (3.) no Greek Father quotes it even in the arguments about the Trinity, where, it would have been of immense importance if it had been in their copies. There is other evidence against it also; but it must be quite clear, even from this, that the passage only lately got interpo- lated into our Greek Testament, and never had any right to its place in the English Bible.^ The Revisers therefore omit it from the text. But the reader must not think that this descrip- tion represents the amount of care bestowed on the work. After this first revision had been com- pleted, of a certain portion, it was transmitted to America and reviewed by the American commit- tee, and returned again to England. Then it underwent a second revision, takiiig into account the American suggestions, and was again sent back to America to be reviewed. After these four revisions it underwent a fifth in England, chiefly 'Erasmus (see page gj), not finding the words in any Greek manuscript, omitted them from the first two editions of his Greek Testament, which was chiefly the authority that our translators used. But as they had long stood in the Latin Vulgate, an outcry was at once raised that he was tampering with the Bible. He insisted that no Greek manuscript contained the passage ; " and," said he at last, when they pressed him, " if you can show me even a single one in whicli they occur, I will insert them in the future." Unfortunately they did find one, the manuscript of Montfort, which is now in the library of Trinity College, Dublin, but is evidently no older than about the fifteenth century. The words had got into it probably from some corrupt Latin manu- script; and on this slight authority Erasmus admitted them into his text. THE REVISED VERSION. 143 with a view of removing any roughness of render- ing. And there was yet a sixth, and in some cases even a seventh revision, for the settling of points that we need not enter on more fully here. So that we may have every confidence that the changes made, whatever their merits, at least were made only after the most thorough consideration. And so the work went on, month after month, and more than ten years had passed, and some of the most eminent of those who sat that summer day in the Jerusalem Chamber were numbered among the dead, when, on the evening of Novem- ber II, 1880, the New Testament Company assembled in the church of St. Martin-in-Fields for a special service of thanksgiving and prayer — " of thanksgiving for the happy completion of their labors — of prayer that all that had been wrong in their spirit or action might mercifully be forgiven, and that He whose glory they had humbly striven to promote might graciously accept this their service, and use it for the good of man and the honour of His holy Name." Four years afterward the Old Testament Com- pany finished their work, and on May 5th, 1885, the complete Revised Bible was in the hands of the public. 144 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. IV. Its reception has been disappointing. The pub- lic have largely failed to appreciate its great merits and its great value. But perhaps it is too soon yet to judge. For many years after its first appearance our present Authorized Version had to encounter fierce opposition and severe criticism — Broughton, the greatest Hebrew scholar of the day, wrote to King James that he " would rather be torn asunder by wild horses than allow such a version to be imposed on the Church," ^ — and yet in the end it won its way and attained a position that no version before or since in any country has attained. Whether the New Version will equally succeed, or whether, as is the general opinion, it will need a revision before being fully received, remains yet to be seen. But in any case it should get a fair, unprejudiced reception. Dr. Bickersteth teUs of a smart young American deacon who thought to crush it on its first appearance by informing his people that " if the Authorized Version was good enough for St. Paul it was good enough for him," " In fifteen verses of Luke iii., he says, the translators have fif- teen score of idle words to account for in the Day of Judgment. With Archbishop Bancroft, who took the lead in the work, he is especially indignant. He believes that by and by King j'ames, looking down from Abraham's bosom, shall behold Bancroft in the place of torment. THE REVISED VERSION. 14S and it is to be feared that with many people who are less ignorant there is sometimes a similar spirit exhibited. Now let us remember that, whatever the merits or demerits of the book, it is at least entitled to respect as an earnest attempt to get nearer to the truth, and to present to English-speaking people the results of two centuries of study by the most eminent Biblical scholars. And remember, too, that no previous revision has ever had such advantages as this. Not to speak of the valuable manuscripts available, " upon no previous revision have so many scholars been engaged. In no previous revision has the cooperation of those engaged on it been so equally diffused over all parts of the work. In no pre- vious revision have those who took the lead in it shown so large a measure of Christian confidence in those who were outside their own communion. In no previous revision have such effective precau- tions been created by the very composition of the body of Revisers against accidental oversight or against any lurking bias that might arise from natural tendencies or ecclesiastical prepossessions. On these accounts alone, if on no other, this Revision may be fairly said to possess peculiar claims upon the confidence of all thoughtful and devout readers of the Bible." 146 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. V. It was objected by some, when this Revision was first proposed, that it would be dangerous to unsettle men's faith by showing them that the old Bible they so reverenced contained many passages wrongly translated, and some even which had no right to a place in it at all. It is pleasant to see that we have got more common sense to-day. It would be a sad case indeed if men's faith were ta depend on their teachers keeping from them facts which they themselves have long since known — acting, to use Dean Stanley's scathing comparison, like the Greek bishops at Jerusalem, who pretend at Easter to receive the sacred fire from heaven, and though they do not profess to believe personally in the supposed miracle, yet retain the ceremonial, lest the ignorant multitudes who believe in it should have their minds dis- quieted. Far better to do what has been done — fear- lessly make any changes that were necessary to remove the few superficial flaws in our Bible, and try to teach men the grounds on which such changes were made. Our faith is given to the words of the inspired writers. It is no disparage- ment to them if we discover that fallible men in collecting and translating these words have some- THE REVISED VERSION. 147 times made mistakes, and it is certainly no honour to the words which we profess to reverence if we knowingly allow these mistakes to remain uncor- rected. When King James's translation was offered there was no such fear of unsettling men's faith, for the men of that day had already four or five different Bibles competing for their favour, and so they easily distinguished between an Inspired Original and the English versions of that original, one of which might easily be better than another. Rightly understood, this Revision should be rather a ground for increased confidence, showing us how nearly perfect we may consider our English Bible already, when we find that this thorough criticism and the investigation of material collect- ing for the past two hundred years has left un- changed every doctrine which we found in our Old Version, while it certainly is helping us to under- stand some of them more clearly than we ever did before. VI. A few remarks on the New Revision itself will dose this chapter. The Revisers refer to their work under the heads of Text, Translation, Language, and Marginal Notes. Whatever may be thought of their corrections 148 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. of the Text {L e., the original Hebrew and Greek) , the reader is already in a position in some measure to judge of the sources of information accessible to them and of their fitness to make such corrections. As to Translation and Language, perhaps there is foundation for the charge, against the New Testament Company at least, of having dis- regarded the first rule laid down for them by Con- vocation, " to introduce as few alterations as pos- sible into the text of the Authorized Version." But before condemning them it is only fair to read their explanations in the Preface. It is also charged against them that their English is not as smooth and graceful as that of the Old Version to which we were accustomed. That is true. But this at least will be universally allowed, that if we have lost in smoothness and beauty of diction, we have greatly gained in point of accuracy. A scru- pulous attention to the force of the Greek article, the different tenses of verbs, and the delicate shades of meaning in particles and prepositions, will account for many of the minor changes, which, though they may seem at first sight trifling and unnecessary, will often be found to affect seri- ously the meaning of a passage. The Revisers also claim to have avoided the practice, adopted in the Authorized Version, of translating for the sake of euphony the same Greek word by different THE REVISED VERSION. 149 English words. For example, we have comforter and advocate — eternal and everlasting — count, and impute, and reckon ^ — as respectively render- ings of the same Greek word, while, on the other hand, to take only one example, the word " ordain " represents ten different words in the original Greek. The result of such a practice is, that the English reader, using a Concordance or the marginal references of his Bible to compare passages where the same word occurs, is some- times misled and frequently loses much useful information. In such cases the Revisers have sacrificed ele- gance to accuracy of translation, though, of course, that is not a sufficient plea, unless it can be shown that elegance and accuracy cannot here go together. The Marginal Notes contain much valuable information, and often throw fresh light on the translation in the text. But it is to be regretted that in a book intended for indiscriminate circula- tion the Revisers have used one class of these notes rather unguardedly. When such expres- sions are found as " Some manuscripts read the passage thus," " Some ancient authorities omit * In Rom. iv., Authorized Version, these three verbs are usetf to represent one Greek verb. Let the reader turn to the Revise{> Version, where the word " reckon " is used throughout the chap- ter, and he will see how much Sl Paul's argument has gained iii clearness though perhaps the passage in reading does not sound qaite as well as before. 150 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE, these words," &c., the reader who understands the state of the case sees nothing disturbing in the fact that out of a large number of authorities examined some few should vary from the reading found in all the others. Such readers the Revisers seem to have had in view. They did not enough think themselves into the position of the plain simple men and women who have never heard of such matters, and on whom one cannot help fearing, from the frequent repetition of such notes, they are likely to have a disturbing effect which is In reality quite unwarranted. A very valuable improvement is the arrange- ment of the text into paragraphs adapted to the subject. The continuity of thought is not, as in our Authorized Version, interrupted by frequent and often very injudicious breaks into verses, while yet the facilities for reference are retained by the numbering of the old division in the margin. The printing of the Poetical Books in proper metrical form may be considered, too, a decided advantage. They were directed also to revise the headings of chapters, and it would certainly be an advantage if this were well done, adapting it to the paragraph system. But there is much force in their reason for leaving it undone. It involved in many cases expressions of theological opinion which could not fairly find a place in the Bible. Indeed, Jewish readers have had to complain of THE REVISED VERSION. 151 the Old Testament chapter headings in the Authorized Version, that when the prophets speak of sin it is always the sin of the Jews, but when of glory and of holiness, it is the glory and holi- ness of the Church. On the whole, whatever the imperfections of the Revised Bible, and whatever its fate may be in the future, we may at the very least claim a present position for it as a most valuable com- mentary to the readers of the Authorized Version, placing them as nearly as an English version can do on the level with the reader of the original tongues. VII. But this is not to be the last stage in the history of the English Bible. Through all these centuries its language has grown in beauty, in clearness, in expressiveness, with the growth of the national life and thought and religion. It is more than any other a " National Bible," growing as the nation grew. The German Bible is the work of one man, Luther. The English Bible is the work of many generations of Englishmen. Csedmon and Alfred, Bede and Wycliffe, Tyndale and Coverdale, handed on the torch from one generation to another, and from Wycliffe's day at least handed on the words and phrases and forms of expres- 152 HOW WE GOT OUR BIBLE. sion which have largely influenced the making of the English language. The history of the book is interwoven with the national history of freedom and independence and personal religion. There- fore it is to us of the Anglo-Saxon race not only the Word of God but also and essentially our National Book. But we have not yet produced our best. This Revised Version of 1880 is not our last word. It ought to have been a great success. It had more in its favour than any previous version. And yet we have to say, after thirty years, that the old Authorized Version, with all its defects, is still holding the ground, going out every year in quan- tities a hundred times greater than those of the Revised Version. The Old Version holds the ground not only by the familiarity of its language but by its wonderful charm. It is universally accepted as a literary masterpiece, as the noblest and most beautiful book in the world. The New Version is more accurate, more scholarly, more valuable. But it avails not. It lacks the literary charm. The ver- dict of the people is, " The old is better." On the whole we may assume that far into the twentieth century the Authorized Version will still remain the popular Bible. The version that is to supersede it will come some day, but when it does it will have more than accurate scholarship. It THE REVISED VERSION. 153 will have in some degree at least the literary charm and beauty which for 300 years has brought the whole English world under the spell of the old Bible. And now we have followed the story of the Bible from the old record chest of Ephesus 1 800 years ago to the Revised Version which is in our hands to-day, and it is hoped that the question has been in some measure answered, How we got our Bible. Let the story help us to value our Bible more. It is not without purpose that God has so wonder- fully inspired and preserved His message; it is not without purpose that He raised up His work- ers to search out the precious manuscripts from the dusty libraries of convent and cathedral, to collect and compare then together with such toil and care, and then to render into clear, graceful English for us the very message which He sent to earth thou- sands of years since to comfort and brighten human life. " Other men indeed have laboured, and we have entered into their labours." May it please Him who has so preserved for us His Word to grant us all " increase of grace to hear meekly that Word, and to receive it with pure affection, and to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit " ! THE END.