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used in this country in giving expression to our everyday thoughts and feelings.

For while it must be admitted that King James' translation has been deservedly held in very high estimation by the most competent of critics, as well as by the people as a whole, yet it is now coming to be realized more and more as the years roll round, that it is not filling the need of the rising generations. This feeling was given most forcible expression to in the putting forth of the Revised Version of 1881. It is now being given expression to in the various private translations of different parts of the Bible which are issuing from the press. It will be brought to a triumphant culmination when the results of all these many and various efforts are gathered up into one great effort, and we have a translation of the whole Bible which is the product of the latest and best Christian scholarship, and meets the needs of the great body of well educated and thoughtful Christian minds.

The Revised Version of 1881 cannot do this. It cannot do it because it is not a modern translation. Nor does it pretend to be. As the revisers themselves say in their introduction: "Our task was revision, not re-translation. " And this was according to one of the rules of the Convocation of Canterbury under which they acted, and in which it was distinctly stated that "we do not con

template any new translation of the Bible, or any alteration of the language, except where in the judgment of the most competent scholars such change is necessary." And even then it is as distinctly stated that where such necessary changes are made they must be made in "the style of the language employed in the existing version."

In other words, the Revised Version not only does not use modern English, it distinctly avoids its use. It does not render accurately the tenses of the verbs in many instances, just because of its fixed purpose to retain an expression in harmony with its predecessor. It often fails to translate the original into modern idiomatic English for the

same reason.

Again.

It is not enough to think of the New Testament as written in Greek. If it was written in Greek it was written, with the exception of S. Luke, by Jews. And S. Luke, as well as the others, gave expression to the product of Jewish surroundings and environment. The New Testament Greek, then, must always be thought of as Greek spoken by a Jew. Hebrew images abound in it. Hebrew idioms are to be found everywhere. New Testament Greek not only conveys its thought to us in Greek figures of speech, it conveys it also in Hebrew figures of speech. Its writers not only ex

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press themselves in Greek idioms, they express themselves in Hebrew idioms. King James' Version and the Revised Version, following it, time and time again, transfer both the Hebrew and Greek idioms into English, instead of translating them into their equivalent modern English idioms. For this reason the Revised Version cannot become acceptable as a modern up-to-date translation, even if we say nothing about its archaic use of words and phrases otherwise unfamiliar to our modern ears.

Both the Revised Version and King James' Version, then, are very often nothing more than a transliteration of the original, instead of being a translation. The theory of verbal inspiration seems to have hampered the revisers as well as the King James' translators. And yet such a theory militates against any translation at all, as well as against such a translation as is now being called for, and such a translation as can alone satisfy the hearts of studious and thoughtful Christian men.

Such a translation will not be a servile word for word translation. "A faithful translator," as the Poet Horace has so well asserted, "will not make a word for word translation." For every language has its own peculiar and, so to speak, domestic genius. For the purpose of rendering the true meaning of a foreign phrase, therefore, it is often necessary to modify the order of the words, the form of

the phrase, and the whole expression of it. In other words, A word for word translation often obscures the meaning of the original instead of translating it truly.

As a writer in the Sunday School Times well says: "No living language is stationary. Part of it is dying, and part of it is either attaching new meanings to old words or gaining a new vocabulary. What was in many expressions plain English to Wyclif was obsolete to Tyndale, and what was plain to Tyndale was obsolete to King James' revisers. If King James' Version were printed today just as it was first issued, it would be understood only by antiquarians. If this is true of successive centuries in the same country, it is equally true of different countries with the same tongue in the same century. The American use of words differs largely from the English. So it will hardly be denied that spellings and meanings that are foreign to us and make the Bible harder to be understood in America, ought to be replaced by spellings and words that are usual and clear with us. There is no good reason why our Bible should contain words which cannot be found in our best school dictionaries.

The Bible in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek was, by deliberate choice, written in the language of the The writers had a large vocabulary

plain people.

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at hand, but they all chose the plain, strong words

of their people.

Translators and revisers should strive to make the Bible as clear to their people as the original writers made it to their people. There is no sufficient excuse for preserving words or usages in the Bible that cannot be understood by intelligent people not trained in antiquarian lore."

As the New York Churchman in a leading editorial well says: "The modern world is searching the Scriptures with an intensity that no previous generation has shown. Everywhere there is zeal to examine the testimony, to cross-question the witnesses, to get at the message from above that men everywhere feel is there. The world has the zeal, and more and more it is becoming a zeal according to knowledge. There may be eddies here and there, delusions of literal interpretation, but the main current is unmistakable. Bibliolatry is being replaced by a more rational and a more spiritual attitude of mind, by a more reasonable service."

What is to be found in the following pages, then, is an attempt at a faithful translation of St. Paul's letters. It is not a “literal” or “verbal” translation, on the one hand, nor is it a paraphrase, on the other.

With the Poet Horace and the