Savannah morning news. [volume] (Savannah) 1868-1887, 1881-05-23
The Revised New Testament.

It has been known for several years that
board of distinguished scholars and
clergymen had been organized to revise
both the Old and New Testaments. and
much interest has been felt by the Chris
tian world in regard to the changes to
be made in the text of the sacred writ
ings. The board have concluded their
revision of the New Testament, that
of the Old Testament being yet incom-
plete, and on Friday last some four
hundred thousand copies of the English
eoltion of the revised New Testament
were distributed to the booksellers.
The article which we print
on another page purports to give the
principal changes made by the revisers.
Whether these changes viii be regarded
as an improvement of the authorized
version, or whether the new version will
be accepted by all denominations OF
Christians, time will determine. In Eng
land the revision has not been received
with universal approval, and able critics
have condemned many of the changes
made In the text as capricious and in
bad taste. A writer in the London
Standard, reviewing the revised Tesla
ment, says:
Whatever scholars may think of the
labors of the reviewers, the impression
produced upon the public mind is one of
disappointment and dissatisfaction. 1t
is deeply to be regretted that the revisers,
judging by the work just published,
have apparently forgotten the conditions
under which the task was entrusted to
them. 1t is obvious that a great many
alterations adopted have been approved
by reasons of mere literary criticism,
which make us rather skeptical as to
infallibility or even the good taste of the
revisers. Where no material change in
sense or substance of the authorized YER
sion has been shown to be required by
the revisers for the proper con-
struction of the original, they have
nevertheless thought themselves justified
in mending the English and improving
the grammar of passages which have
struck deep root in the hearts and memo
ries of English people. One word has
been substituted for another at the whim
of the New Testament company, as
moods and lenses have been shifted
about to satisfy some pedantic scheme
of syntactical symmetry Sentences
treasured up in the popular mind and
enriched beyond description by pathetic
associations of hundreds of years, have
been tortured and cruciied into precise
grammatical accord with the latest re-
finement of critical labor, as will be seen
upon comparison of the early manuscript
texts, and thus been robbed of all its true
value.
Tne writer then points out the posi-
ton held by the Scriptures among the
English speaking people: ''They have
been known by them, and loved by
them, for centuries, he says, land it is
rash and reckless to shake this noble
growth of centuries by attempting to
harmonic it with the correctness of
self-opinionated scholarship, or regulate
it by the doubtful standard of taste
accredited by motley combination of
theologians and professors. Even
the Lords Prayer, which every Eng
lish speaking child learns to lisp
at its mothers knee has not been spared. |
Revisers have handled it as bold COM
mentator might handle the VIGOROUSLY
corrupt chorus in Eumenides or the Vac |
ch8. st. Paul's praise of charity was
unequaled in its own kind for urging,
and why the eloquence in the old version |
is mangled and made irrecognizable by
the senseless substitution of the word |
Glove" for Charity" The meaning is
really obscured rather than elucidated by
this change, while the music of the SEN
tence is irretrieyably lost. Alterations of
the diction of the old version involving
no gain in sense. or scarcely perceptible
one, swarm in the revised edition, and in
almost every instance it is impossible not
to feel that the original translators, how
ever inferior to those of the present. revis-
ers in precise and exhaustive scholarship,
textural or general, they were infinitely
their superiors in the rare and precious
art of writing musical and masculine
English prose. Had they purged the
sacred text of errors which had crept
into it, and placed where it was neces-
sary the variorum readings in the mar
gin, they would have performed useful
and accessible work. But in the effort
to attain dry and merely mechanical
accuracy of expression, they have so re-
vised the noblest book in the English
language as to deprive it of much of its
beauty, and they have destroyed the
manuscript of its historical associations