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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.
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