On the Authorized Version of the New Testament - In Connection with Some Recent Proposals for Its Revision

ON THE AUTHORIZED VERSION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 1858 PREFACE. A WORD or two, which is all that I have to say by way of preface, will not refer so much to the book as to the form of the book. Were the materials of this little volume to be disposed over again, I should cer tainly prefer to follow in their disposition that sim pler arrangement which Professor Scholefield adopted in his Hints for an Improved Translation of the New Testament. He has there followed throughout the order of the books of Scripture and, as these passed in succession under his review, he has made such ob servations as seemed to him desirable, without at tempting any more ambitious arrangement. After I had advanced so far as to make it almost impossible to recede, I found continual reason to regret that I had chosen any other plan. I am not, indeed, with out the strongest conviction that a book, well and happily arranged on the scheme of rather bringing subjects to a point, and considering together matters which have a certain unity in themselves, both ought to be, and would be, more interesting and instructive than one in which the same materials were disposed in such a merely fortuitous sequence. But this ar rangement is very difficult to attain. I can not charge myself with having spared either thought or pains in striving after it but am painfully conscious how little has been my success, and how unsatisfactory the re sult. Some things, indeed, already, as they escape the confusion of MS., and assume the painful clear ness of print, I see might be in fitter place than they are but much refuses still to group itself in any sat isfying combination. This acknowledgment is not made with the desire to anticipate andavert the cen sure which this fault in the composition of the book, to speak nothing of other more serious faults, may deserve but only to suggest that a better and happier distribution, though doubtless possible, was yet not so easy and obvious as one who had never made the endeavor to attain it might perhaps take for granted. WESTMINSTER, June 24, 1858. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS PAGE 9 CHAPTER II. ON THE ENGLISH or THE AUTHORIZED VERSION 19 CHAPTER III. ON SOME QUES IONS OF TRANSLATION 49 CHAPTER IV. ON SOME UNNECESSARY DISTINCTIONS INTRODUCED 65 CHAPTER V. ON SOME REAL DISTINCTIONS EFFACED 84 CHAPTER VI. ON SOME BETTER RENDERINGS FORSAKEN, OR PLACED IN THE MARGIN 97 CHAPTER VII. ON SOME ERRORS OF GREEK GRAMMAR IN OUE VERSION . . . .113 8 CONTENTS. CHAPTER VIII. ON SOME QUESTIONABLE RENDERINGS or WORDS... PAGE 135 CHAPTER IX. ON SOME WORDS WHOLLY OR PARTIALLY MISTRANSLATED.. 148 CHAPTER X...