ENGLISH VERSIONS

British and Foreign Bible Society, which has been one of the principal agents in the circulation of the Scriptures throughout the world, decided never in future to print or circulate copies containing the Apocrypha; and this decision has been carried into effect ever since.

34. So tar as concerned the translation of the Hebrew and Greek texts which lay before them, the work of the authors of the AV, as has been shown above, was done not merely well but excellently. There were, no doubt, occasional errors of interpretation; and in regard to the OT in particular the Hebrew scholarship of the age was not always equal to the demands made upon it. But such errors as were made were not of such magnitude or quantity as to have made any extensive revision necessary or desirable even now, after a lapse of nearly three hundred years. There was, however, another defect, less important (and indeed necessarily invisible at the time), which the lapse of years ultimately forced into prominence, namely, in the text (and especially the Greek text) which they translated. As has been shown elsewhere (Text of the NT), criticism of the Greek text of the NT had not yet begun. Scholars were content to take the text as it first came to band, from the late MSS which were most readily accessible to them. The NT of Erasmus, which first made the Greek text generally available in Western Europe, was based upon a small group of relatively late MSS, which happened to be within his reach at Basle. The edition of Stephanus in 1550, which practically estabUshed the 'Received Text ' which has held the field till our own day, rested upon a somewhat superficial examination of 15 MSS, mostly at Paris, of which only two were uncials, and these were but slightly used. None of the great MSS which now stand at the head of our list of authorities was known to the scholars of 1611. None of the ancient versions had been critically edited; and so far as King James' translators made use of them (as we know they did), it was as aids to interpretation, and not as evidence for the text, that they employed them. In saying this there is no imputation of blame. The materials for a critical study and restoration of the text were not then extant; and men were concerned only to translate the text which lay before them in the current Hebrew, Greek, and Latin Bibles. Nevertheless it was in this Inevitable defectiveness of text that the weakness lay which ultimately undermined the authority of the AV.

35. The Revised Version (1881-1895). The textual article above referred to describes the process of accumu-lation of materials which began with the coming of the Codex Alexandriuus to London in 1625, and continues to the present day, and the critical use made of these materials in the 19th century; and the story need not be repeated here. It was not until the progress of criticism had revealed the defective state of the received Greek text of the NT that any movement arose for the revision of the AV. About the year 1855 the question began to be mooted in magazine articles and motions in Convocation, and by way of bringing it to a head a small group of scholars [Dr. ElUcott, afterwards bishop of Gloucester, Dr. Moberly, head master of Winchester and afterwards bishop of SaUsbury, Dr. Barron, prin-cipal of St. Edmund's Hall, Oxford, the Rev. H. Alford, afterwards dean of Canterbury, and the Rev. W. G. Humphrey; with the Rev. E. Hawkins, secretary of the S.P.G., and afterwards canon of Westminster, as their secretary] undertook a revision of the AV of Jn., which was published in 1857. Six of the Epistles fol-lowed in 1861 and 1863, by which time the object of the work, in calling attention to the need and the possibility of a revision, had been accomplished. Meanwhile a great stimulus to the interest in textual criticism had been given by the discovery of the Codex Sinaiticus, and by the work of Tischendorf and Tregelles. In Feb. 1870 a motion for a committee to consider the desirable-ness of a revision was adopted by both Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury; and definite motions in

ENGLISH VERSIONS

favour of such a revision were passed in the following May. The Convocation of York did not concur, and thenceforward the Southern Houses proceeded alone. A committee of both Houses drew up the lists of revisers, and framed the rules for their guidance. The OT com-pany consisted of 25 (afterwards 27) members, the NT of 26. The rules prescribed the introduction of as few alterations in the AV as possible consistently with faith-fulness; the text to be adopted for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating, and when it differs from that from which the AV was made, the alteration to be indicated in the margin (this rule was found impracti-cable) ; alterations to be made on the first revision by simple majorities, but to be retained only if passed by a two-thirds majority on the second revision. Both companies commenced work at Westminster on June 22, 1870. The NT company met on 407 days in the course of eleven years, the OT company on 792 days in fifteen years. Early in the work the co-operation of American scholars was invited, and in consequence two companies of 15 and 16 members respectively were formed, which began work in 1872, considering the results of the EngUsh revision as each section of it was forwarded to them. The collaboration of the Enghsh and American companies was perfectly harmonious; and by agree-ment those recommendations of the American Revisers which were not adopted by the EngUsh companies, but to which the proposers nevertheless wished to adhere, were printed in an appendix to the pubUshed Bible. PubUcation took place, in the case of the NT, on May 17, 1881, and in the case of the canonical books of the OT almost exactly four years later. The revision of the Apocrypha was divided between the two English companies, and was taken up by each company on the completion of its main work. The NT company dis-tributed Sirach, Tob., Jud., Wisd., 1 and 2 Mac. among three groups of its members, and the OT company ap-pointed a small committee to deal with the remaining books. The work dragged on over many years, involv-ing some inequalities in revision, and ultimately the Apocrypha was published in 1895.

36. In deaUng with the OT the Revisers were not greatly concerned with questions of text. The Masso-retic Hebrew text available in 1870 was substantially the same as that which King James' translators had before them; and the criticism of the LXX version was not sufficiently advanced to enable them safely to make much use of it except in marginal notes. Their work consisted mainly in the correction of mistrans-lations which imperfect Hebrew scholarship had left in the AV. Their changes as a rule are slight, but tend very markedly to remove obscurities and to improve the intelligibiUty of the translation. The gain is greatest in the poetical and prophetical books (poetical passages are throughout printed as such, which in itself is a great improvement), and there cannot be much doubt that if the revision of the OT had stood by itseU it would have been generally accepted without much opposition. With the new version of the NT the case was different. The changes were necessarily more numerous than in the OT, and the greater famiUarity with the NT pos-sessed by readers in general made the alterations more conspicuous. The NT Revisers had, in effect, to form a new Greek text before they could proceed to translate it. In this part of their work they were largely in-fluenced by the presence of Drs. Westcott and Hort, who, as will be shown elsewhere (Text of the NT), were keen and convinced champions of the class of text of which the best representative is the Codex Vaticanus. At the same time Dr. Scrivener, who took a less advanced view of the necessity of changes in the Received Text, was also a prominent member of the company, and it is probably true that not many new readings were adopted which had not the support of Tischendorf and Tregelles, and which would not be regarded by nearly all scholars acquainted with textual criticism as preferable to

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