BIBLE, REVISION OF THE ENGLISH VERSION OF. 



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of Job, when the persecution that had driven 

 him from Oxford and from England culmi- 

 nated in demanding his death. Tyndale is vir- 

 tually the pioneer of English Biblical transla- 

 tion. His scholarship, fidelity, and courage 

 combined to bring upon his name lasting hon- 

 or. The great value of his work is proved by 

 the fact that all succeeding versions, including 

 that of King James, were based upon and large- 

 ly drawn from it. These successive versions 

 named often from some special incident of 

 translation or publication may in fact be re- 

 garded as but a series of revisions. Cover- 

 dale's, indeed, published in 1535, has the dis- 

 tinction of attaining that completeness which 

 Tyndale's work failed of through his martyr- 

 dom. Matthew's Bible (a nom de plume for 

 John Rogers) followed in 1537; Oranmer's (or 

 the "Great Bible") in 1539; the Genevan in 

 1557-'60; and the Bishop's Bible in 1568. All 

 of these were revisions, sometimes but slight- 

 ly modified, of Tyndale, who thus stands the 

 coryphaeus in English Biblical translation, his 

 work, in its time, ranking among the great 

 works of the greatest reformers, and, in its 

 quality, judged by the highest modern stand- 

 ards, a model of simplicity and beauty. All 

 these had prepared the way for the work that 

 was to constitute an epoch in the history of 

 the English Bible, which appeared in 1611 

 under the auspices of King James I. Uniting 

 the labors of forty men, it was made with a 

 care befitting the greatness of the undertaking, 

 and, as the " Authorized Version," has for 

 more than two hundred and fifty years held 

 its place as the accepted Bible of the Eng- 

 lish-speaking race. Its high excellences, how- 

 ever, were not unattended by many imperfec- 

 tions, due alike to the unsettled state of the 

 original text and the infancy of critical and 

 exegetical scholarship, to the lack of a clear con- 

 ception of the exact functions of translation, 

 to the unsettled and fluctuating condition of 

 our language, and finally to a failure properly 

 to adjust and harmonize the work of the dif- 

 ferent translators imperfections which only 

 .time, a maturer scholarship, and riper taste 

 could remove. Yet, in spite of defects, the 

 work appealed alike to the intellect of the 

 scholar and to the hearts of the people. It 

 rapidly supplanted all earlier versions, and has 

 continued, with no rival claimant, in public 

 and private use among English Protestants un- 

 til the appearance of the revision just complet- 

 ed in 1881 and 1885. 



For this result the times, especially during 

 the last quarter of a century, have been rap- 

 idly ripening. Critical scholarship has been 

 settling the sacred text with unhoped-for ra- 

 pidity ; grammatical and exegetical labors have 

 been clearing up its meaning; and naturally 

 a growing desire has been felt that our excel- 

 lent version should receive the benefit of this 

 progress, in the removal of errors and obscuri- 

 ties, and the bringing of the whole up to the 

 level of our best modern scholarship. The 



year 1856 was signalized by distinct movements 

 looking to this end. There were introduced 

 both into the Convocation of Canterbury and 

 into Parliament proposals to petition the sov- 

 ereign for the appointment of a royal com- 

 mission for " receiving and suggesting amend- 

 ments in the authorized version of the Bible." 

 The result, indeed, proved that neither the 

 clerical nor the lay mind was yet prepared 

 for a step of such grave importance. Yet 

 private enterprise had more successful results. 

 An appeal was made by the Rev. Ernest Haw- 

 kins, Secretary of the Society for the Propa- 

 gation of the Gospel, to some excellent schol- 

 ars ; and five clergymen Henry Alford, C. J. 

 Ellicott, John Barrow, W. H. G. Humphrey, 

 and G. Moberly met at his request for a ten- 

 tative effort in revision. They published suc- 

 cessively revisions of the Gospel of John, of 

 the Epistle to the Romans, of those to the Co- 

 rinthians, and of those to the Galatians, Ephe- 

 sians, Philippians, and Colossians, with schol- 

 arly prefaces explaining the principles and 

 difficulties of the work. These small volumes 

 introduced the subject to the public under very 

 favorable auspices. They gave practical proof 

 how scholarly accuracy and thoroughness might 

 be united with the most reverent conservatism, 

 and thus at once stimulated hope and allayed 

 prejudice. The work was warmly commend- 

 ed, passed through several editions, and, as a 

 familiar book in the hands of Biblical stu- 

 dents, aided to prepare the public mind for a 

 general and decisive movement. 



In America, meanwhile, the publications of 

 the American Bible Union, organized in 1853, 

 were giving expression to the popular feeling 

 of the need of Biblical revision. Some of its 

 tentative publications were indeed unfortunate, 

 scarcely evincing an adequate sense of the deli- 

 cacy and responsibility of the work ; but oth- 

 ers, from distinguished scholars like Drs. Co- 

 nant and Hackett, were of unquestionable and 

 acknowledged excellence. 



In 1859 Archbishop Trench published a small 

 but important work " On the authorized ver- 

 sion of the New Testament in Connection with 

 some Recent Proposals for its Revision." This 

 aided to prepare the way, and formed, an intro- 

 duction to the like later works of Bishop El- 

 licott in 1870 and Prof. Lightfoot in 1871 ; 

 these latter, indeed, accompanying the formal 

 opening of the revision movement, but natu- 

 rally adding force to the current that alike in 

 the Establishment and the dissenting churches, 

 was setting powerfully in its favor. These three 

 works of Trench, Ellicott, and Lightfoot were 

 published together in New York in 1873, un- 

 der the editorship of Dr. Philip Schaff, and 

 may now be consulted with much profit by 

 students of the original New Testament Script- 

 ures. From 1857 to 1869 no formal steps were 

 taken in the direction of revision. But the 

 exegetical study of the Scriptures was pursued 

 with great diligence, and the critical labors of 

 scholars like Tregelles and Scrivener, and espe- 



