the night perish, which said. In the sublime address of Jehovah to Job, in the 39th and 40th chapters, we find several verses in our version which fail to give the sense of the original. In the description of the war horse, chapter 39th and 24th verse, it is said, "Neither believeth he that it is the sound of the trumpet." If belief can be ascribed to a horse, it is the very thing which he believes, for he has heard the sound of the trumpet often enough before. The primary sense of the verb translated believeth is, to be firm, and adopting this we have this sense: Neither can he stand still at the sound of the trumpet. Virgil, in describing the war horse, says, "When the arms clash he knows not how to stand still."

In Job xl, 19, in the description of the hippopotamus, it is said in our version, "He that made him can make his sword to approach unto him." The translation now almost universally adopted by the critics is, "His maker gives him his sword," or tusk.

In Job xl, 23, "Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not; he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth." This gives no congruous sense. The translation adopted by Fürst, Conant and others, is—

"Lo a river swells, he is not afraid;

Fearless, though Jordan rushes to his mouth."

In Daniel ii, 5, "The king answered and said to the astrologers, The thing is gone from me." From the heading of the chapter, "Nebuchadnezzar forgetting his dream," etc., we infer that the Authorized Version understood by the thing, the dream, and that the king had forgotten his dream; but in that case it would not have troubled him. The true reason of the king's requiring them to tell the dream is given in verse 9th:

"Tell me the dream, and I shall know that ye can show me the interpretation thereof." The Chaldee word, translated in our version thing, is the same word, translated, verse 9, word, and also in chapter iii, 28, the king's word. It should then have been translated, The word has from me.

gone

In Daniel vii, 9, "I beheld till the thrones were cast down," it should be exactly the reverse-were set up. So Gesenius, Fürst and others, as in Jeremiah i, 15: "They shall set every one his throne," or seat; and in Apocalypse iv, 2, "Behold, a throne was set in heaven.”

In 1 Kings x, 28, in our translation it is said, "Solomon had horses brought out of Egypt, and linen yarn: the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a price." The context refers to the manner in which Solomon obtained horses by importation from Egypt. The word translated linen yarn is elsewhere translated gathering together, Gen. i, 10, and is applied in this verse to merchants and to horses. It should be translated, "And the company of the king's merchants fetched each drove at a price."

Much of force is lost in our translation by not observing the rule that where the same word occurs in . the same context in the original it should be translated by the same word. There are so many cases where this rule is violated in our version that it is difficult to make a selection. In Isaiah xxviii, 15-19, where mention is made of "the overflowing scourge passing through," this is repeated four times in the original, with great emphasis. In our version the word translated pass through in verses 15, 18, is translated goeth forth in verse 19, and also pass over. The 20th verse would gain much in impression if translated, "As often as it

passeth through it shall take you; for morning by morning shall it pass through, by day and by night." In the 17th verse our version makes judgment, or justice, not the measure, but the thing to be measured. The meaning is that God would deal in strict justice. “I will make judgment for a line and righteousness for a plumb line." In the 20th verse the translation might be improved, "For the bed is too short to stretch one's self, and the covering too narrow to wrap one's self.”

The translation of the whole chapter is unsatisfactory. To go back to the first verses, the chapter opens with a woe denounced against Samaria, the capital of Ephraim, and alludes to its situation on a hill, at the head of a rich valley. "Woe to the crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim, and to the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley." Verse third: "The crown of pride of the drunkards of Ephraim shall be trodden under foot; and the fading flower of his glorious beauty, which is on the head of the fat valley, shall be as the first ripe fruit before the summer; which he that seeth, while it is yet in his hand, eateth up." If one will take the pains to compare the new translation of the fourth verse with the English version, he will see how much is gained.

In Isaiah vi, 13, our translation mistakes the meaning of the original. It contains a threatening of repeated judgment, but closes with a gracious promise, "And though there be left in it a tenth, it shall again be consumed; as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose trunk remaineth, when they are felled, so its trunk shall be a holy seed."

The space allowed us precludes the specification of any more passages, which might be greatly improved

by a reverential and well considered revision, which shall amend the errors and supply the defects of our version. The lack of consistency in it, which cannot fail to strike every one engaged in the laborious yet most interesting task of unifying the translation of the same word in the original, wherever it occurs, and the sense permits it, will, we hope, be remedied by the Committee meeting in the same place. While the received interpretation of some texts may thus have to be given up, other texts, brought out into a new light, will take their place, and the gain will be greater than the loss. No one need fear that "the mingled tenderness and majesty, the Saxon simplicity, the preternatural grandeur" of our Authorized Version will suffer an eclipse in the Revision.

8

THE NEW TESTAMENT TEXT.

THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GREEK TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT FROM WHICH OUR COMMON ENGLISH VERSION WAS MADE, AND OUR PRESENT RESOURCES FOR ITS CORRECTION.

BY PROF. EZRA ABBOT, D.D., LL.D., CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

It is an unquestionable fact that the Greek text of the New Testament from which our common English version was made contains many hundreds of errors which have affected the translation; and that in some cases whole verses, or even longer passages, in the common English Bible are spurious. This fact alone is sufficient to justify the demand for such a revision of the common version as shall remove these corruptions. Why, when so much pains is taken to obtain as correct a text as possible of ancient classical authors-of Homer, Plato, or Thucydides-should we be content with a text of the New Testament formed from a few modern manuscripts in the infancy of criticism, now that our means of improving it are increased a hundred-fold? Why should the mere mistakes of transcribers still be imposed upon unlearned readers as the words of evangelists and apostles, or even of our Lord himself?

The statements that have just been made require illustration and explanation, in order that the importance of these errors of the received text may not be exaggerated on the one hand or under-estimated on the other. We will consider, then

I. THE NATURE AND EXTENT OF THE DIFFERENCES OF TEXT IN THE GREEK MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.-The manuscripts of the New Testament,