Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 66:263 (Jul 1909)
Article: The Latest Translation Of The Bible
Author: Henry M. Whitney

BSac 66:263 (July 1909) p. 467

The Latest Translation Of The Bible

Henry M. Whitney

There has been a great deal of general commendation of the American Revision, but there has been very little statement of reasons, very little judgment of details. Just as the publishers of dictionaries or encyclopedias give out many letters of prominent men who prefer their work, and many newspaper-commendations of an entirely general character, betraying entire ignorance of the real quality of the work and leaving one altogether in doubt as to the departments in which, if in any, the work excels, so the publishers of the American Revision tell us what professors and what religious newspapers think it better than its predecessors, with little or no indication of the respects in which their Revision is a gain.

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate three classes of cases: (1) those in which the American Revision has made a change for the better, as compared with the English Revision;

(2) those in which it has made a change for the worse; and

(3) those in which it should make a further change. Wherever we quote in parallel columns, the column at the left is. from the English Revision; the one at the right is the American form. Where there is a single form, it is, unless otherwise indicated, from the American text. The cases used are, of course, what have been found by only one casual reader, but they are not all that this reader has found. None of the examples given have appeared before in this series of papers.

BSac 66:263 (July 1909) p. 468

1. Cases Of Improvement

We may begin by illustrating one general point by a series of verses: —

Lev. 6:7: The priest shall make atonement for him before Jehovah; and he shall be forgiven concerning whatsoever he doeth so as to be guilty thereby.

Ps. 102:7: I watch, and am become like a sparrow
That is alone upon the housetop.

Prov. 9:3: She hath sent forth her maidens;
She crieth upon the highest places of the city.

If the reader will look at these verses in the English Revision, he will be on the track of an unfortunate influence that affected that work, namely, an undue regard for the athnahh, which is the primary divider of a verse in the Hebrew punctuation. In the sense in the, passage from Leviticus, in the form in the other two passages, the English Revision appears greatly at disadvantage. A still more marked case is in Zech. 11:16 (E. R.), where “neither shall he feed that which is sound” is, on acc...