GO 



E. J. SEWELL, ESQ., ON THE 



versions were seen side by side. The old translations possessed one 

 great advantage in that they were usually the work of one man. 

 Luther's Bible was a case in point, and WyclinVs was generally 

 assumed to be such, though latterly it had been thought that 

 WyclinVs Bible was the work of a Committee. 



Professor Margoliouth said that translators were in the main 

 careful and conscientious in reproducing the meaning of the 

 original. But sometimes they allowed themselves to give a para- 

 phrase rather than a literal translation, and under such circum- 

 stances an expression or phrase might be used which conveyed an 

 idea not in the original, and that idea was sure to be taken up. 

 Thus he had himself in translating Aristotle used the word "torso." 

 The phrase was not in the original, but his translation had given 

 rise to the impression that it was. The older translations tended to 

 be verbal. Thus there were five or six Syriac versions and each 

 was more faithful than its predecessor, so much so that the original 

 Greek texts could be largely restored from the last versions. But 

 at the same time the later versions became more clumsy and to 

 some extent unintelligible ; there seemed no way of avoiding the 

 dilemma ; if the translation was absolutely literal it would not suit 

 an ordinary audience ; if the translation were free it might be 

 misunderstood and be cited as a support for doctrines which were 

 not in the original. Thus the expression concerning Joseph in the 

 Psalms, "the iron entered into his soul," was graphic and powerful, 

 but it was not in the original : the passage simply meant that he 

 was put into chains. There seemed but one solution, a double 

 translation, one for scholars and one for the people; that for 

 scholars should be absolutely literal, since scholars could under- 

 stand it. 



One fact had not been alluded to by the Lecturer which, never- 

 theless, was much felt by Biblical scholars. In several places in the 

 New Testament, in many more in the Old Testament, we had no 

 certain knowledge of the meaning of the text. In many cases we 

 find words that occur but once only. There is no known method 

 of discovering the meaning of a word unless it is told elsewhere. 

 Other sources of information are therefore eagerly seized upon. 

 Thus in the ninth and tenth centuries the Jews thought that they 

 could get help from Arabic, since that was a kindred language. 

 Much more recently Assyrian has been referred to for a similar 



