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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (Oct. 14, 1962)
PAZO lets you be active in comfort Good or Bad? Bible Week, especially as scholars drastically revise the Old Testament Eusebius Sophronius Hieronymus, known to us as St. Jerome. His first Latin translation gave Pope Damaaus the Gospels. Other sections followed, out when the Pope died, Jerome departed for Palestine, and for the next 84 years he worked on his Latin Old Testament The result was a translation which became the celebrated "Vulgate" version of the Catholic faith. It served the Christian world without challenge for more than 1,000 years. Roughly 1,000 years after St. Jerome ended his labors, England's scholars and squires were growing restless. King Henry VIII was fighting bitterly with Rome. Learned men were objecting to religion imposed by the state. One was a priest named William Tyndale. He resolved that common people should have the right to learn for themselves of Christ's teachings without need to depend on Latin guidance. In the home of a friend, he worked for six months at the task of translating the New Testament into English. By that time he saw that the translation could not be completed in England. Taking with him the books needed for the translation, Tyndale sailed in the spring of 1524 for the Continent. Volumes he printed in Worms early in 1526 were carried back to England, and the king's clergy reported that Tyndale was publishing sedition. Avengeful bishop of London took steps to stop the spread of the Scriptures in English. Possession of a Tyndale New Testament was pronounced a crime! Agents of the bishop went to Europe and bought all the copies they could find. One night, thousands were heaped before St. Paul's Cathedral in London and burned. In the free city of Antwerp, Tyndale continued to translate the Old Testament and to print and preach against a state religion until 1536, when he was strangled to death and burned at the stake for translating the Bible into English! But the hunger of Englishmen for Bibles could not be quenched. Miles Coverdale brought out an edition in 1535, the first complete Bible printed in English. On the strength of this work, he was asked to edit other editions, notably the Great Bible of 1539, authorized by the King. Tyndale's dying prayer, "Open the King of England's eyes," had been answered. A powerful 17th-century group, who called themselves Puritans, initiated almost by accident the beloved King James Version. When King James I was en route to his coronation, they waylaid his coach and demanded a meet ing because "things are amiss with the church." He sum moned them presently to Hampton Court, his red-brick castle on the Thames, where the Puritans complained about the old Bible. "We need a rendering in a way of speech that is universally comprehended," they said. This point was the only one with which James I could agree, so he appointed 54 learned men to create a new Bible. They worked at the universities of Oxford, Cam bridge, and Westminster. Their pay was free board and room, yet they labored seven years to complete it. A professor reviewing it for the king wrote, "I had rather be rent to pieces with wild horses than any such translation should be urged upon poor churches . . . The new edition crosseth me. I require it to be burnt." Only when the clergy began to use the King James Ver sion in their pulpits did it gain acceptance. Audiences found themselves memorizing its verses and grand ca dences, and singing its beautiful phrases. Finally, in a swelling tide, the King James Version introduced in 1611 became the world's most popular book. Several years earlier, English Catholics, who had re jected their monarch's order to abandon their religion, began to work on an English translation of their own at the French towns of Douay and Rheims, to which they had fled. We know their work today as the Douay Version of the Old Testament and the Confraternity re vision of the Rheims New Testament. With the king James and Douay Bibles, the English-speaking world had two authorized Bibles. Sure ly, men would now be satisfied. But times change, words grow obsolete, mistakes are revealed, and earlier manu scripts are discovered. New readers could not know that the "neezings" of King James were modern sneezes, that his "reins" referred to our kidneys, or that, in certain in stances, his "by and by" meant immediately. In the second half of the last century, work on the great revisions of our time got under way. England's Re vised Version in the 1880s was followed by the American Version. At mid-20th century, the Revised Standard Ver sion was published. Finally, came the New English Bible. Instead of going to earlier English sources, the trans lators acted as if there had never been a previous trans lation. Their sources were all the earliest extant texts, plus the then recently discovered Dead Sea Scrolls. Similarly, the American Catholic Biblical Association has published a volume which translates 18 books of the Old Testament into current idiom, the first of a five volume series based on Hebrew and Greek manuscripts. Regardless of whose translation it is, however, some of the new words and phrases will sound harsh to ears accus tomed to the music of older versions. Time will tell which is superior. Will it be: "Consider how the lilies grow in the fields," as in the New English Bible, or "Consider the lilies of the field how they grow" of the King James Version? Will it be the New English Bible's "Come to me, all whose work is hard, whose load is heavy; and I will give you relief"; or the King James': "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest"? Precisely how the Old Testament will be revised by NEB scholars is not known. We do know, however, that words like "virgin," "Jehovah," and "leprosy" will dis appear from the forthcoming volume, and "thou," "thee," "doth" and "saith" will be eliminated except where char acters speak to God. Scholars explain that "virgin" and "leprosy" are inaccurate translations of the original Greek and Hebrew, and "Jehovah" is a made-up word of the 16th century. In considering Bible revisions we should remember one thing no matter how the original truths of the Bible are translated, their power is the important thing. When dedi cated men change the words of the Bible, their purpose is not whimsical or irreverent; rather, it is to make the great messages clearer and more understandable to the greatest number of people. i Research finds new fast way to 1 shrink hemorrhoids without surgery ffi Recoil t research reveals fast new way to shrink hemorrhoid tissues, Sj stop pain and Itching all without g; surgery. 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