Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 68:271 (Jul 1911)
Article: The Latest Translation of the Bible
Author: Henry M. Whitney

BSac 68:271 (July 1911) p. 405

The Latest Translation of the Bible

Henry M. Whitney

XI. Concerning Idiom Transferred

A department of knowledge not yet fully appreciated by those who have made versions of the Bible in English is that of the transfer of idiom from tongue to tongue. For our present purposes it may be divided into manifest transfer from Hebrew through Greek into English and transfer from Greek to English where the connection with Hebrew is doubtful or unknown.

1. An excellent illustration of the former is in Rev. 5:6

These are pretty far apart in the picture that they give, and which is right? The English Revision gives no sign that any one conceives of the possibility of an optional form. The “Twentieth Century,” though often exceedingly perspicacious, made no discovery here. We have found in no version of the New Testament, except the American, any hint that the passage can have any but the old well-known sense — or lack of sense.

BSac 68:271 (July 1911) p. 406

Yet Professor William H. Green, in his “Chrestomathy,” so early as 1863, had, by note upon Gen. 1:4, said that the key to the sense of the double use of μέσος in Rev. 5:6 is to be found in the Hebrew use of bēn. For instance, Gen. 1:4 reads, literally, “between the light and between the darkness”; 1:14 reads, “to divide between the day and between the night”; the English sense being “between light and darkness,” “between day and night.” Similar forms may be found in the original of Gen. 1:18; 26:28 (“betwixt us and betwixt thee”); Ex. 11:7; Josh. 22:25, and so on. In each of these cases the meaning is plain and necessary; in each of them the Septuagint has a form essentially the same as that which is found in the Greek of Rev. 5:6. The conclusion is irresistible that