Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 60:238 (Apr 1903)
Article: The Latest Translation Of The Bible
Author: Henry M. Whitney

BSac 60:238 (April 1903) p. 342

The Latest Translation Of The Bible

Henry M. Whitney

V. The Question Of Modernness, In The Light Of Two Recent Examples

The present is not the only time when elaborate attempts have been made to put the New Testament into a thoroughly modern form, but it certainly is the time when such attempts have seemed to be the result of a general demand, and have therefore been most seriously taken. The “Twentieth Century”1 version is not the only recent attempt of its kind. We may say of it, in passing, that the twenty or more Britons who made it have well kept the secret of their identity, that the vacancies in their ranks have been promptly filled, that their work has been very severely criticized, and, with reservations, pretty warmly commended, and that they are pledged by their preface to try to make all possible improvement in a future edition,

The only other version having the same ideals and having achieved any degree of prominence is “the American Bible,”2 but it is much less generally or intimately known. It is like the “Twentieth Century” in trying to be thoroughly modern and idiomatic in diction and in structure, in taking very great liberties with the text, in

BSac 60:238 (April 1903) p. 343

occasional felicities that would have been clear gain to either the English or the American Revision, and in equally numerous and much more prominent infelicities marring the total effect. Indeed, for better or worse, it has borrowed from the “Twentieth Century” a good many points. It differs from the other in endeavoring to utilize the resources of the printer and the binder for the production of an attractive book: —under the influence of opinions expressed by Richard G. Moulton, it is made up into five light, handy, prepossessing little volumes, with cloth or morocco binding; it differs in having many typographical errors; it differs in having a large amount of notes; it differs in laying great emphasis upon such passages of the New Testament as seem to many critics to belong in the field of “wisdom-literature,” and therefore to need to be printed in some distinctive way. In commenting on this work we shall not refer to the earlier issues through which the translator felt his way to his maturest thought, his latest choice.

As to the general question of a version of the New Testament in the English of the day, we hold certain things to be true: —

1. The first is that, as we have said, the making of such versions is now the result of a quiet but strong popular demand. It is a part of the disposition to “prove all things,” when men want to know how th...