only two forms of speech. How then is it the purpose of God that it should be communicated to those many families of mankind to whom those two languages are unknown tongues? By a series of renewed inspirations?-by ever-recurring gifts of prophecy?-by miraculous interpretations?-or by the faithful and diligent use of natural gifts, and of knowledge acquired by industry-by men of God, who love God's Word, and desire to make it accessible to every child of man on the face of the broad earth? Clearly this latter is the method designed by God. And since this method necessarily involves some amount of uncertainty, I infer, without any manner of doubt, that God sees it better for His Church, which He loves, that such a measure of uncertainty should exist; that there should be constant room for the diligence and zeal of His people struggling upwards towards perfection; that there should be in this direction, as in so many others, a constant employment of gifts in some members for the good of the whole body; that there should be exercise for the humility of the teacher and the docility of the taught; and that the great mind of the Church should constantly be raised above the narrow servility of the letter to the wider and holier freedom of the spirit.

It follows from this view that it is the duty of each national Church to provide for its members the most faithful translation possible of the original revelation of Holy Scripture. Her power to do so does not spring from "the plenitude of her Apostolic power;" there is no such thing in the Church of God as a supernatural authority to translate Hebrew or Greek into English, or any other tongue, or to correct the press; but we believe that with the guidance and blessing of Almighty God sought in prayer, and by the careful use of all the appliances within their reach, Christian men of competent learning and ability may arrive, gradually, progressively, as new helps are provided, at a more exact knowledge of the meaning of all Holy Scripture, and at a more exact representation of that meaning in the language of their own people.

II. To assist in arriving at this more exact representation of the meaning of Holy Scripture, was the task which the Old Testament Revision Company accepted at the hands of the Convocation of Canterbury, and which they have fulfilled to the best of their ability. They began their undertaking with a very high estimate of the excellence of the Authorised Version, and I believe they ended it with a higher estimate still. The scholarly acquaintance of the translators of 1611 with the Hebrew language, their thorough mastership of the noble English tongue, and their elevation of thought and expression to the level of the grand sentiments which they were dealing with, became only the more apparent the more closely their work was scrutinised. But we knew that it was only a human work, itself the result of revision upon revision, and still susceptible of improvement. With reverence, therefore, with the tenderness of love, but without any superstitious fear of substituting human learning for divine inspiration, we entered upon our task. That task, let me repeat it, was to represent, in good English, as exactly as we could, the meaning of Holy Scripture, wherever the Authorised Version had failed, or seemed to us to have failed, in doing so. What determined any particular rendering was not the influence it might have in favouring orthodox doctrine, or its bearing upon Church views, or any other views, but the opinion of the

company that it was the best and truest expression in English of the Hebrew words before them. We acted as translators and not as prophets. Not we, but the Hebrew writers, were responsible for the orthodoxy, or the morality, or the piety of the sentiments delivered by Our responsibility was confined to expressing in good English

the natural meaning of the Hebrew words.

Our helps in arriving at that meaning were the following:First, and chiefly, sound philology; such knowledge of the Hebrew tongue and of kindred Semitic languages, as the company possessed, aided by the scholarship of the best commentators, ancient and modern, English, German and French, as well as Hebrew, Greek, and Latin.

Secondly, the traditional interpretations of the ancient Rabbinical schools. In determining the meaning of unknown words, and in cases where the voice of philology is uncertain, these traditional interpretations have a certain weight, and they were not neglected by us.

Thirdly, the ancient versions, of which the most important are the LXX., the Peshito (or Syriac), and the Vulgate. To which I ought to add the Targums. Each of these ancient versions and paraphrases is a witness of the judgment of the most learned men, in the time when they were made, as to the meaning of the passages with which they were dealing. And though complicated questions often arise as to the text which those translators had before them, and its identity with the present Hebrew text, and though occasionally there are manifest signs of incompetency in the translators, and in no case can they be looked upon as infallible, still they are an important factor in the sum total of our resources for arriving at the truth, and can never be neglected with impunity.

Fourthly, as applicable to a limited number of passages, there are the quotations by our Lord and the Apostles in the New Testament out of the Old Testament Scriptures. At first sight it might appear that the meaning assigned to a passage out of the Law, or the Psalms, or the Prophets, by our Saviour, or by an Apostle, was a conclusive proof of the true meaning of such a passage, and an infallible guide to the modern translator. But a little consideration will show that the matter is not so simple as our first thoughts would suggest.

There are in the New Testament upwards of six hundred quotations from the Old Testament.* These are for the most part taken from the Version of the LXX. If in all these passages the LXX. exactly represented the Hebrew text, and the New Testament quotations exactly followed the Alexandrian Version, no doubt the translator would have a very cogent argument to impel him to an identical translation. But this is far from being the case. In some of the passages quoted the LXX. reading is quite different from the Hebrew text. Take, as a familiar example, the quotation from Hos. xiii. 14 in 1 Cor. xv. 55.

אֶהִי דְבָרַיִךְ מָזֶת אֶהִי קָטָבְךָ שְׁאוֹל: There the Hebrew text has

"O death I will be thy plagues, O grave I will be thy destruction (Authorised Version). But the LXX. has που ἡ δίκη σου θάνατε ; ποῦ TO KÉνTρOV σou adn; which St. Paul follows in the main. "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" The difference, if

Gough on the quotations in the New Testament.

the Authorised Version is right, arising from the LXX. having read where, for the Hebrew reading I will be. In such a case the New Testament quotation is no guide to the right translation of the Hebrew text. Again, in Gen. xlvii. 31, we read that "Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head." by: But the LXX. have ìnì rò ἄκρον τῆς ῥάβδου αὐτοῦ, upon the top of his staff and the writer to the Hebrews (Heb. xi. 21) follows them in this rendering. They read Ta staff for a bed.

In Gen. xlvi. 27 we read "All the souls of the house of Jacob which came into Egypt were three score and ten." But the LXX. read, "Seventy-five souls; " and in accordance with the LXX. St. Stephen says, Acts vii. 14, "Joseph called his father Jacob to him and all his kindred, three score and fifteen souls."

We do not render y praise in Psalm viii. 2, because, our Lord in quoting it follows the LXX., and says "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise" (Matt. xxi. 16), instead of ordained strength.

We do not render in Ps. xix. 4, "their voice" (ip) instead of their line, because St. Paul follows the LXX. in reading ỏ 40óyyos aùtív in Romans x. 18; neither do we render

in Ps. xl. 6 (mine ears hast Thou opened) a body hast Thou prepared me, because the LXX. Version, σwμа karηpríow μoi, is quoted in Heb. x. 5, and reasoned upon.

The quotation from Hos. xiv. 3, kapñòv xɛdéwv in Heb. xiii. 15 does not decide the question whether the prophet wrote

; fruit פְּרִי

calves, or

nor do we translate Isa. lix. 20 with the LXX. ἀποστρέψει ἀσεβείας ἀπὸ Ἰακωβ He shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob, because St. Paul thus quotes the words in accordance with the LXX., and not in accordance with the Hebrew text, them that turn from transgression in Jacob. And, to give but one more out of many examples, because our Lord, in the synagogue of Nazareth, as St. Luke reports His words, read kaì rupdoïs áváßdeķv, recovering of sight to the blind, as the rendering of in Isa. lxi. 1, we do not feel it a duty to forsake the rendering "the opening of the prison to them that are bound," which is that of the Authorised Version.

Obviously, then, the authority of the quotations in the New Testament must be used with extreme caution in determining the proper rendering of the Hebrew text. It is true that there are cases in which their authority has a just weight. In such a passage, e.g., as Fs. xvi. 10, where there is a doubt in some minds whether the word rendered "corruption" may not mean rather "pit,"-but where philological reasons are in favour of the meaning corruption," the additional

*

The Revised Version takes to be another form of, and renders it "where" instead of "I will be."

authority of the LXX., and the evidence from St. Peter's and St. Paul's quotations of it (Acts ii. 27, 31 ; xiii. 33-37), that it was the received interpretation among the Jews, seem to decide the question; and so corruption stands in the Revised Version. And this is the general principle upon which the revisers have acted. They have endeavoured to decide mainly on philological grounds, but in all doubtful cases have given full weight to the authority of tradition, of the Versions, and the New Testament quotations.

And here, perhaps, it may be well to say one word as to the marginal readings, which have received some unfriendly criticisms. The marginal readings, in many cases, represent those renderings of the text which seemed to the company to have a certain amount of reasoning in their favour. They are alternative renderings, judged by the company not to be the best renderings, but still having a sufficient show of authority, and a sufficient amount of philological support, to entitle them to a second place in the revision. If the company had excluded all such alternative readings, and especially if they had excluded them on the plea that though they were supported on philological grounds by eminent Hebrew scholars, they did not square with doctrinal prepossessions, they would have been acting the part, not of "interpreters, but of prophets." Other uses of the margin are noted in the Preface to the Revised Version, and need not here be repeated.

III. I now pass on to point out a few passages in which changes have been made, either important in themselves, or likely to arrest the attention of the reader.

; I do not think that

(1) The first is that which occurs six times in the first chapter of Genesis, where, instead of "the evening and the morning were the first-second-third-day," we read "and there was evening, and there was morning, one day, a second day, a third day, etc.-and-the sixth day." I confess that I do not like the alteration. I do not think that "one day" is here the right English for the use of the indefinite article in verses 8, 13, 19, 23 (a second, a third, a fourth, etc.), and of the definite article in ver. 31 "the sixth" marks any intelligible difference of meaning in English, nor do I think that the rendering in the Revised Version (there was evening, and there was morning) gives any material variation of sense from the Authorised Version, while it is much less idiomatic English.

(2) 1 Sam. xiii. I stood in the Authorised Version, "Saul reigned one year; and when he had reigned two years over Israel," so and so. Now, by no possibility could the Hebrew words bear the meaning here ascribed to them. The marginal note in the Revised Version says truly that the Hebrew text has "Saul was a year old when he began to reign." The Hebrew words cannot possibly mean anything else. And as we know that that is not true we are also quite sure that it is not the proper reading. The Revised Version inserts in a bracket, and in italics, the numeral thirty, which is found in some various readings appended to the Roman or Vatican edition of the LXX., and is a very probable statement of Saul's age at his accession to the throne. But the revisers thought themselves unable to correct the latter half of the verse, which tells us that Saul "reigned two years over Israel," a statement quite as embarrassing as that which makes him one year old at his accession.

The truth is that the verse in question, which is entirely wanting in the LXX., occurs thirty-eight times in the historical Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. It is the annalists' technical formula prefixed to the reign of each king, to which was sometimes added the name of the Queen mother. In the case of Saul, the first King, this formula would probably be wanting in the original annals of his reign, but would be added later when the whole history was made up into one book as we now have it. Possibly the proper numerals were never inserted. A special reason for the insertion of the formula, besides the desire to make Saul's reign uniform with that of the other Kings, may be found in the fact that the events related in the thirteenth chapter and onward all belong to about the last ten years of Saul's reign. The earlier events are included in the formula.

What however concerns us now is to note the important correction of the first half of this verse, and to show how the correction of the second half, necessary, obvious, and certain as it is, did not fall within the scope of the revisers' work, which was to translate the text of the Hebrew, and not to correct it.

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(3) Turn next to 2 Sam. i. 18, where in the Authorised Version we read, "Also He bade them teach the children of Israel the use of the bow," a statement which everybody must feel to be untrue, and utterly irrelevant if it was true. Nor can the grammar be justified by Hebrew usage. But in the Revised Version we read, And He bade them teach the children of Israel the song of the bow;" that beautiful song in which the generous Psalmist celebrated the bow of his fallen friend, and which he would have the children of Israel commit to memory for a perpetual monument of the prowess of the king and his brave and gentle son just as Moses taught the children of Israel the words of his song, that it might be a lasting witness against them (Deut. xxxi. 19, 22). Here, sentiment, fact, and grammar are all harmonised by the change.

(4) In Exod. xii. 36 the Authorised Version has-" They lent unto them such things as they required," where the word "lent" implies a promise on the part of the Israelites to repay what they borrowed. The following words, " and they spoiled the Egyptians," seems thus to approve an act of successful dishonesty in borrowing and not paying. But the Hebrew word merely means, "they let them have what they asked;" and so accordingly the Revised Version has it. In like manner, in 1 Sam. i. 28, where the Authorised Version has "I have lent him to the Lord," etc., the Revised Version has " I have granted him to the Lord," i.e., I have let the Lord have him, which is otherwise expressed by Hannah herself in ver. 11-"I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life," where there can be no question of repayment.

(5) Let us now turn to the familiar and important passage in Isa. ix. It is not too much to say that the Authorised Version of ver. 1—When at the first He lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her," etc., is quite devoid of sense, neither is it the natural and obvious rendering of the Hebrew. The Revised Version, "In the former time He brought into contempt the land of Zebulon and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time hath He made it glorious," and so on, is both a literal version of the Hebrew, and