Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 82:328 (Oct 1925)
Article: Doctor Moffatt’s New Translation Of The Bible
Author: Parke P. Flournoy

BSac 82:327 (July 1925) p. 462

Doctor Moffatt’s New Translation Of The Bible1

Parke P. Flourney

This new and quite remarkable translation of the whole Bible, the Old Testament published, the first volume in 1924 and the second in 1925, together with the New Testament published in 1913, in a single volume, is the work of one man, and is “a fresh translation of the original, not a revision of any English version” (VII).

To appreciate it fully, he says, “depends to some extent upon the willingness of the reader to detach his mind for the time being from time-honoured associations” (Ibid).

Dr. Moffatt is, doubtless, conscientious and thoroughly honest in intention; and the reader soon finds that these “time-honoured associations” are not to be allowed to influence the translator’s judgment.

In the Preface, he tells his readers: “To the best of my ability I have tried to be exact and idiomatic.” He seems to have accepted the conclusions of what is called the German higher criticism, if not primo morsu, yet with the fullest conviction of their correctness. Few, if any, scholars in England have more fully given themselves to the study of these questions, and to teaching others how to study them. He has lectured to theological students in Great Britain and America, in England as Professor of New Testament Greek and exegesis, in Oxford University, and in Scotland as Professor of Church History in U. P. Free Church College, Glasgow; and at Yale University, in our own country.

As to the position he takes in these theological instructions and lectures, we may judge from the following:

BSac 82:327 (July 1925) p. 463

“I have been obliged as an honest translator to distinguish one or two strata which have been fused and confused in the traditional text. Thus it is known to most people that the first five or six books of the Old Testament were compiled from several sources. One is a Judahite narrative (J), the other originating in Northern Israel (E).”

Dr. Moffatt’s object is to make the Bible speak to the people of the present time, not in the ancient English of Shakespeare’s contemporaries, but in that used in our homes, in our shops, on our streets and in all our daily intercourse. This, no one can deny, is a praiseworthy aim in the translator.

It is impossible for one who feels that the space he can rightly occupy is limited, to deal in detail with the many peculiarities in this work. After the issue of the first volume concluding with Esther, others have already noted the use of new terms for a number of old ones with which we have been familiar from childhood, and so...