Chinese nor English,) and compromise the matter by writing YAH ; (128) while the papers
have since held ont hopes that the scruples of converted neophytes m China are about to
dialect, so restricted in its barbarous jargon that
its vo ables implying civilisation are borrowed from the Araiic, (129) a Missionary, who
1 * 7 the “ f L three Chapters of Genesis” into the native tongue,, can find no more
■i £{ _-q fy fU n-n MoOIGNIAZIMOONQO. (130) And, ID AW6-
TLACATZmTIMTLATI.ACOU.I; W W V * -
7 , heart experience “ Repentance” until his mind has perceived the meaning of
SCIIIWELENDAMOWITCHEWAGAN. (131) B u t, we apologize for the digression.
During the second half of the sixteenth century, the frail hedge planted around the popfor
knowledge. At the Convocation of Hampton Court, in 1603, those measures were
I p t t d that have placed the Mile before the, people. Far, far, be it from us to un der-
1 11,» II Treat Fact ” — still farther to contest its vast educational utility. Would that
ical literature of the Hebrews would be elevated infinitely beyond its present scientific est
¿ i o n bTsuch free comparisons; but not so its % « “ authorized translation, and
that is the onlv point for which these paragraphs contend.
În thTyears 1603-11, then, our Forty-seven Translators had before their eyes g S
English translations of the Old Testament. They possessed,
mttes first printed in 1462, and revised in the Sextme edition of 1590, and the Olmmtm
in 1592 • together with numerous editions of the Greek Septuagint, both printed and mann-
“ i t T i e f c r i lo a ! apparatus was copious enough wherewith to study the Origin
Hebrew Text which lay before them in a variety of editions, more or less accurate, print
between the years 1488 and 1661 ; besides Jewish Manuscripts. I f to their H j g M H
taowledge of Latin and Greek, had been added a littleUebrew of the genuine school wh
S i t very easily have been imported from the Continent, their version would have b
better - but the confession of ignorance to themselves was as irksome, as to
bette , __ completed their labors without the contemporary aids witta
T 7 i T “ Ï j e s ^ S eCommand” has consecrated them for „two hundred
and' forty-two years. “ Undoubtedly, the présent version is sufficient to all purpos«
of piety" ; (132) our part is to show th a tit has long ceased to be adequate to the requu
7 7 eefms01therefore, considering the facilities they enjoyed, and still more the many t j
disdained that errors so tremendous as those which modern criticism exposes should h «
been backed by orthodoxy with praises less extravagant; because,
cations for the tank being M multiplicity o f _ f o r e i g n v e r s i o t o , without that ÿscr.
nating criterion, could but augment the multiplicities of their ■ J
The earlier English versions, if here and there superior to readings adopted by the * Ï
Seven were radically defective, owing to the same natural causes that precluded th p
S a a direct translation from the Hebrew in 1611 ; viz. ;_small g S g g O
with the vocabulary and grammar of the language itself. Fuller, for^ instance g g
poor Tyndal rendered the Old Testament from the Latin, “ as his friends
had no skRle in Hebrew” ; and the same authority ex p la in s that the reason why k g ^
(128) Dr. Botoing : in. London Literary Gazette. ii SiiS ® ISIS L i G a l l a t i n . Trans. Amer. Ethiwlogical Soc.; New York,' 1 8 4 5 ; 1. ppK| 3 5 .
t23fiSsSi^lSSiS?S1m “ ■«* *• ■HWI this mention, hut a review in any newspaper is much at its authors service.
appointed Fifty-Four Translators was because “many and great faults” were already notorious
amid the earlier translations. I
The Samaritan text was unavailable to them for two reasons; one, that no copy had
reached Europe until 1623, or twelve years later than the publication of king James’s vers
io n ; (134) the other, that those whose Hebraical accomplishments were so slender could
have elicited nothing, from any cognate Oriental idiom. It is superfluous, therefore, to
speculate' upon what philological feats our Forty-Seven might have performed through Samaritan
contexts.
As the oldest of all “ printed” books, a . d . 1462, the Latin Vulgate must have riveted the
attention of men whose reverence for the invention induced them to carry the antiquity of
moveable types back to the age of Job (xix. 23; ubi supra). With the numerous Latin versions,
(135) made prior to St. Jerome, from the Greek, our translators did not trouble
themselves; nor need we, because this first of Hebraists among the Fathers declares__
“ For the most part, among the Latins, there are as many different Bibles as copies of the
Bible; for every man has added or subtracted, according to his own caprice, as he saw fit.”
To.remedy this evil, Jerome completed a retranslation of the Old Testament, directly
from the Hebrew, between the years 385 and 405. (136) His contemporaries loudly protested
against such profanity, lest it should sacrilegiously disturb that bibliolatry with
which Christian communities then regarded the Septuagint; but, about 605, Pope Gregory
invested it with respectability, by adopting its lections along with the old Italic version.
The consequence was that the monastic scribes, having equal authority for either, began to
correct the first by the second indiscriminately; and succeeded in fusing them both so inextricably
into one, that the emendations of Alcuin in the ninth, of Lanfranc in the eleventh,
and of Nicolaus in the twelfth centuries, failed to establish any uniformity among manu~
scripts which, in the words of Roger Bacon, “ every reader alters to suit his own whim.”
Such was the state of the Latin version current until the sixteenth century, when Stephens
undertook to castigate its errors in his printed editions: Clarius, in the meantime, submitting
a schedule of 80,000 mistakes for the edification of the Council of Trent. However,
on the unlettered side, fanciful substitutions; on that of scholarship, ruthless expurgations;
impelled Sixtus V. to volunteer, the office of “ proof-reader:” and, in 1589, a copy
of the Vulgate issued from the Vatican, wherein “ eaque res quo magis incorrupte perfice-
retur, nostra nos ipsi manu correximus: ” | e., the Vicar of God corrected the press himself.
Alas! Such Condescension only made the innumerable faults of that edition “ notorious
as ludicrous. Bellarmine luckily hit upon a plan to correct the errors, and save the
infallibility of the Pontiff.” New recensions were efecuted, “ quod vix incredibile vide-
batur,” in nineteen days; and the year 1592, during the apostolic vicarage of Clement VIII.,
brought out a standard Papal copy, wherein the odium of all errors patent in the former
Pope’s edition was charged upon the “ printer’s devil.”
This Romanist finality abounds with misinterpretations if collated with the Hebrew Text-
and when placed before the Forty-Seven, some ten years after its appearance, could only
have served to lead them more astray; even if the fear of Papistry did not prevent adoption
of such of its readings as attracted rather their fancy than their septi-quadrigentesimal 3
criticisms. Consequently, the Divine Afflatus did not penetrate into king James’s version
through the Vulgate; which fact renders nugatory, as regards the Latin language, any
inference derivable from their Preface in favor of the peculiar sanctity of this among the
“ Original Sacred Tongues” whence “ one more exact translation” was by them made,
erhaps some streams of the apostolic imponderable reached our translators by transmis-
sion through the Greek ?
At least three, and probably more, printed editions of the Greek Septuagint (137) were
procurable by our Translators in the year 1603; independently of such manuscripts as they
“ ay have consulted; from the number of which last must be deducted the Coiex-Alexan-
(134) Kennicott; Dissert. Gen.; p. 475.
(135) De Wette: i. pp, 183-191.
(136) Ibid.; i. p. 2 5 7 . seq.
(137) De Wette : i. pp. 81-82.