Thomas Leishman-- Our Ageless Bible

8/12/2019 Thomas Leishman-- Our Ageless Bible

1/168

W:: :0wm^


2/168

'

UNIVERSITYOF FLORIDALIBRARIES

COLLEGE LIBRARY


3/168


4/168

Digitized by the Internet Archivein 2011 with funding from

LYRASIS Members and Sloan Foundation

http://www.archive.org/details/ouragelessbiblefOOIeis


5/168

OUR AGELESSBIBLE


6/168

By Thomas Linton LeishmanWhy I Am a Christian ScientistThe Bible Handbook (with Arthur T. Lewis)


7/168

OUR AGELESSBIBLEFrom Early Manuscripts to Modern Versions

byTHOMAS LINTON LEISHMAN

THOMAS NELSON & SONSEdinburgh NEW YORK Toronto


8/168

Third Printing, December 1963

Copyright, 1939, by W. A. Wilde CompanyCopyright, 1960, by Thomas Linton Leishman

Library of Congress Catalog No.: 60-7293All Rights Reserved Under International and Pan-American Conventions.Published in New York by Thomas Nelson & Sons and Simultaneously inCanada by Thomas Nelson & Sons (Canada) Ltd.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA


9/168

To My Wife


10/168


11/168

Preface

The Bible, which through the centuries hasoutstripped all publishing records, besides providing a ruleof life and action for millions of sincere readers of widelyvarying religious convictions, may justly be viewed as abook of universal interest and importance, not to be ig-nored by those who claim no connection with eitherChristian church or Jewish synagogue.Loved and venerated through the ages, its words and

message have been zealously perpetuatedoften in theface of vilification, imprisonment or even deathwhetherby word of mouth, or by laborious hand copying, untilwith the invention of printing by movable metal type itwas honored by being the first complete book thus pro-duced. Since that time it has never been off the press insome language or edition.The story of its preservation, transmission and transla-

tion is an intensely interesting one, and the object of thisbook is to provide a brief but accurate record of the heri-tage and history of our ageless Bible, from the earliest

7


12/168

8 PREFACEknown manuscripts down to the translations most widelyused in our own day.The majority of the articles which formed the basis ofthe original edition of this volume were copyrighted,

having already appeared in print, and the author againwishes to express his appreciation for permission to re-publish them together with additional material.

Since the work first appeared, there have been remark-able evidences of progress and discovery in the wide fieldsof Biblical translation and research, and this extended andrevised edition takes account of such developments, withspecial reference to the significance of the Revised Stand-ard Version Bible, and of the discovery of the Dead SeaScrolls. Its scope does not permit of extended treatmentof the subject in hand, but reference is made to other morelengthy and often more specialized works in the course ofthe text, while a carefully selected Bibliography providesfurther guidance for those wishing to pursue the study ingreater detail.The renewed close examination of the Book of Books

and of many of its numerous manuscripts and versions intheir historical and linguistic setting, entailed in the prepa-ration of this new edition, has brought ever increasinginterest and enlightenment to the author and it is sincerelyhoped that these will be shared by the reader.

THOMAS LINTON LEISHMANGreenwich, ConnecticutJanuary, 1960


13/168

Contents

Preface 7I. Manuscripts and Versions of the Old Testa-ment 11

The Ancient Hebrew Manuscripts and Their Char-acteristicsThe Origin of the Septuagint, and ItsTranslatorsThe Value of the SeptuagintThe Sa-maritan Version and Its ImportanceThe Versionsof Aquila, Symmachus and Theodotion.

II. The Language of the New Testament 27The Greek of the New TestamentAramaic, Jesus'Mother TongueThe Aramaic Logia of MatthewThe Translator's Debt to the Papyri.

III. The Manuscripts of the New Testament 41The Form and Writing of the Early New TestamentManuscriptsThe Sinaitic ManuscriptThe VaticanManuscriptThe Alexandrian ManuscriptThe Cod-ices of Ephraem and of Beza.

IV. Early Latin and Syriac Versions 55The Old Latin VersionThe VulgateEarly SyriacVersionsThe Peshitta Syriac Version.

V. The Task of the Biblical Translator 679


14/168

10 CONTENTSVI. Early Versions in English 77

The Earliest English VersionsJohn Wycliffe and HisBibleWilliam Tyndale and His BibleCoverdale'sBible.

VII. From Coverdale to the King James Version 91Matthew's Bible and the Great Bible Taverner'sBible and the Breeches Bible The Bishops' Bibleand the Rheims-Douai Bible.

VIII. The Authorized or King James Version 101King James and the Authorized VersionThe Sourcesof the Authorized VersionThe Translators of theAuthorized VersionThe Triumph of the AuthorizedVersion.

IX. The Revised Version and Other ModernRenderings Prior to 1940 113The Revised VersionThe American Standard Ver-sionOther Modern Versions Prior to 1940.

X. The Revised Standard Version 123XI. The Dead Sea Scrolls 139

Bibliography 153

Index 155


15/168

CHAPTER ONE

Manuscripts and Versionsof the Old Testament


16/168


17/168

CHAPTER ONE

THE ANCIENT HEBREW MANUSCRIPTSAND THEIR CHARACTERISTICS

In order to gain some appreciation of theproblems which confront the student of the original He-brew manuscripts of the Old Testament, it is well thatone should pause to consider some of their peculiar char-acteristics. Most scholars are agreed that, as originallycomposed, the Old Testament books were devoid of punc-tuationthe letters being set down continuously, that is,without any division between the words or even betweenthe sentences. When we bear in mind that at this earlyperiod the Hebrew language consisted solely of conso-nants, it becomes evident that difficulties of interpretationmight readily present themselves. It is as though a veryfamiliar passage from our English Bible (Deut. 33:27)were set down as follows: thtrnlgdsthrfgndndrnthrth-vklstngrms. This might appear to present an all but in-superable obstacle to a correct understanding of what hadbeen said, since, in any language, a given series of conso-nants generally represents many different words according

13


18/168

14 OUR AGELESS BIBLEto the vowels which are added to it, and the way in whichthe letters are grouped; though we may well rememberthat while certain systems of shorthand practically dis-pense with the use of vowels, those who are acquaintedwith these systems can read the characters with ease andaccuracy. Nevertheless, as time went by, the Jews them-selves began to realize the disadvantages and ambiguitiesinherent in their method of writing.Two of the earliest steps taken in attempting to remedy

the difficulty seem to have been the introduction of whatare known as vowel-letters which were simply certainHebrew consonants arbitrarily selected to represent themore important vowel soundsand the leaving of a spacebetween each word. These were definite aids towards thesimplification of the text, but still there were no vowels inthe usual sense of the term.At length, about the seventh or eighth century a.d., there

arose a famous school of Jewish scholars later known asthe Masoretes. This word is derived from the Hebrewterm Masorah, meaning tradition, and these men weredescribed as Masoretes ( Traditionalists ) because theyintroduced an ingenious and elaborate system of vowel-signs which standardized the traditional pronunciationof what the Bible writers had set down many centuries be-fore. The Masoretes, however, feeling that the consonantsalone constituted the original and inspired text, and shouldnot be in any degree displaced to make way for the newvowels, added their minute vowel-signs and punctuation


19/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 15marks above, below, and sometimes within the basic con-sonants. Then, too, these men felt that they were thedivinely appointed guardians of the sacred text, and forthat reason they studied and copied it with the utmostcare, in a sincere and praiseworthy effort to preserve it in-tact for future generations. With this end in view theyenumerated such details as the exact number of words inevery book, and the middle word of each book, notingcarefully any peculiarities of orthography that these, too,might remain unchanged, while they added in the marginvarious notes as aids to the reader or translator.

Passing from the work of the Masoretes, who did somuch to preserve and to clarify the text of the earlier partof our Bible, we turn to inquire as to the nature and dateof the Hebrew manuscripts now in our possession. We stillhave many manuscripts of the New Testament which datefrom the early centuries of our era, being thus separatedfrom the original autographs of the evangelists and apos-tles by a comparatively short period of time; but the situ-ation with regard to the Hebrew manuscripts of the OldTestament is very different.The latest Old Testament book seems to have been com-

pleted shortly before 150 B.C., yet until the discovery of theDead Sea Scrolls in our own day (see Chapter XI), theearliest Hebrew manuscripts extant went back no furtherthan the tenth, or possibly the ninth century a.d., manycenturies later than all the more important codices of theNew Testament. Moreover, while there is a very large


20/168

16 OUR AGELESS BIBLEnumber of slight variations between the different Greekmanuscripts, the manuscripts of the Hebrew Bible whichhave been preserved for us as a result of the labors of theMasoretesand even most of the Dead Sea Scrolls, datingfrom up to a thousand years earlierexhibit a surprisinglyclose similarity even in points of detail.Both these phenomenathe absence until 1947 or later

of early Hebrew manuscripts and the remarkable uni-formity of those we haveseem to be largely due to theancient Jewish custom of destroying manuscripts whichshowed any evidences of imperfection, whether due simplyto wear and tear, or to variation from the approved andauthorized text. Furthermore, there is no doubt that theintense reverence of the Hebrew people for their sacredwritings, and the meticulous care with which they havealways sought to copy them, have contributed to thepreservation of these writings in a form which, we maywell believe, approximates closely to what was originallypenned by the prophets and poets, the priests and his-torians, of ancient Israel.

THE ORIGIN OF THE SEPTUAGINT, ANDITS TRANSLATORS

During the five or six centuries immediately precedingthe birth of Jesus, large numbers of Jews left Palestineand settled at various points throughout the then knownworld. This migratory movement had started with the


21/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 17enforced sojourn of the Hebrew people in Babylon, while,as the years went by, numerous Jewish colonies sprang upin Cyprus and in Asia Minor, in Greece and in Italy, andparticularly by the Nile. Many of those who now lived inEgypt had originally been brought there as prisoners ofwar, while others had chosen to settle in that region infurthering their business enterprises. Eventually therecame to be a very large and prosperous Jewish populationespecially in and around Alexandria near the mouth of theNile. Those Jews who had been born in Egypt very nat-urally learned the use of Greek, which was fast becomingthe language of commerce and of daily intercourse inAlexandria and Rome, as well as in Athens and Corinthand the Hebrew so dear to their ancestors was virtually adead language as far as these Jewish expatriates wereconcerned. However, they retained their love for theHebrew religion, and there arose among them an ever-increasing desire for a version of the Jewish Bible in theGreek to which they were accustomed. That desire at lengthbore fruit in the preparation of the famous Greek trans-lation commonly described as the Septuagint a wordwhich is derived from the Latin term septuaginta, meaningseventy the approximate number of those who are saidto have carried out the rendering; hence its identifyingsymbol LXX.

Tradition provides us with a more picturesque, if insome respects less historical explanation of the inceptionof this famous translation. An early writer relates that a


22/168

18 OUR AGELESS BIBLEcertain Ptolemy Philadelphia, ruler of Egypt in the thirdcentury B.C., was desirous of obtaining a rendering of theHebrew Bible for his library at Alexandria, and that hesent to Eleazar, the high priest of the temple at Jerusalem,to obtain a copy of the Jewish Scriptures together withseventy-two competent scholars, six to be selected fromeach of the twelve tribes of Israel. The record continuesthat as an expression of gratitude to Eleazar and hiscountrymen for complying with these requests, the Egyp-tian monarch agreed to purchase the release of no fewerthan one hundred thousand Jewish captives who werethen living in his dominions, a statement which, of itself,plainly points to the residence in Egypt of a very largeJewish population. It is further stated that a certainDemetrius Phalerus, one of King Ptolemy's advisers, con-ducted the seventy-two chosen translators to a small islandnear the mouth of the Nile, and that there he wrote downthe renderings on which they agreed.

This account of the origin of the Septuagint helps toexplain the undoubted veneration with which that im-portant version of the Old Testament was regarded froma very early period. Moreover, there is general agreementamong scholars that it was indeed commenced in Egyptduring the third century B.C., and completed either thenor during the following century under the auspices of oneor more of the kings of that period, while the fact remainsthat the underlying necessity for its publication is surelyto be sought in the practical requirements of the Greek-


23/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 19speaking Jewish colonists who lived there in such largenumbers.

THE VALUE OF THE SEPTUAGINTSince the Septuagint, the origin of which has just been

considered, is one of the sources most constantly studiedby the conscientious translator of the Old Testament inour own day (see page 71) it is fitting that the studentof the English Bible should know something both of itssignificance and of its value as a witness to the originaltext of the Jewish Scriptures.One of the prime points in favor of this version is that

it was based on very ancient Hebrew manuscriptsmanu-scripts earlier even than a majority of those found amongthe Dead Sea Scrolls. It is true that the text of the Septua-gint itself has suffered in the course of its transmissionthrough the centuries and that those who originally pre-pared it often manifestly misunderstood the sense of theHebrew original; nevertheless, there are many instancesin which the Greek translation suggests what may well bethe true meaning of words or sentences which seem to havebeen incorrectly transcribed in the Hebrew text as wehave it today ( see pages 71f . ) . Then, too, the Septuaginttranslators often preserve words or phrases which wereevidently represented in the very early Hebrew manu-scripts from which they made their rendering, but havesince been inadvertently omitted.


24/168

20 OUR AGELESS BIBLEFor example, the Septuagint version of Isaiah 9: 6 con-

tains a phrase which is lacking in the ordinary Hebrewtext, and which appears to have been overlooked by com-mentators. The concluding portion of that verse may beliterally translated from the Greek: I will bring peaceupon the princes, and health by him ; and since the re-mainder of the passage is universally accepted as foretell-ing the mission of the Messiah, we are surely justified inassuming that the Septuagint has rescued from oblivion astriking prediction of the healing activity taught andpracticed by Christ Jesus (cf. Matt. 4: 23; 10: 1, 8.).

It is a significant historical fact that when the NewTestament writers introduced quotations from the JewishScriptures, we find that in a great many cases they givethese quotations word for word from the Septuagint with-out undertaking to provide a fresh rendering from theoriginal Hebrew; and even when they do not cite theGreek version directly, the influence of its phraseology isclearly apparent.

Moreover, it may be recalled that in the early centuries,as in modern times, Hebrew was a language which was notwidely known outside Palestine, but when the Septuagintscholars provided the Old Testament in Greek (whichmay almost be described as the English of the ancientworld), they made available to the people of many landsthe great teachings and prophecies of the Hebrew Scrip-tures, thus preparing the way for the acceptance of themessage of Christ Jesus, who came not to destroy, but to


25/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 21fulfill the Law and the Prophets (cf. Matt. 5: 17). GreekJudaism with the Septuagint, writes Professor Deissmann,ploughed the furrows for the gospel seed in the Westernworld (New Light on the New Testament, page 95);while Dr. Angus affirms that, in his judgment: The Sep-tuagint version of the Old Testament is, next to the NewTestament, the most world-historic book ( Environment ofEarly Christianity, page 158 )

THE SAMARITAN VERSION AND ITS IMPORTANCEIn the days of Nehemiah, that is during the fifth century

B.C., one Manasseh, grandson of Eliashib, the Jewish highpriest, married Nicaso, the daughter of the Samaritanleader Sanballat ( cf . Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, XI,viii, 2). Since even at that early date the Jewish authori-ties were strongly opposed to the Samaritans on bothpolitical and religious grounds (II Kings 17: 24, 34; Ezra4: 4f.; Neh. 4: 1-8), Manasseh's action led to his summaryexpulsion from the priesthood (Neh. 13: 28). Thereupon,he and his father-in-law, Sanballat, established a rivaltemple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria, and there Manassehexercised the priestly functions which had been denied himon Mount Zion. Moreover, it is now generally acceptedthat when he left Jerusalem, he took with him a copy ofthe sacred Hebrew Torah or book of the law usuallydescribed in English as the Pentateuch (Genesis toDeuteronomy) and this became the only sacred Scripture


26/168

22 OUR AGELESS BIBLEof the Samaritan community, being now commonly knownas the Samaritan Pentateuch. The Samaritans, then, formore than twenty-three hundred years, have accepted onlythese five books, and take no account of the remainder ofthe Hebrew Bible, including the Prophets, Psalms andother writings.One of the interesting characteristics of this Samaritan

version is that it retains to this day an early and primitiveform of Hebrew script which seems to date from the timewhen the original manuscript was first removed fromJerusalem by Manassehwhereas the Hebrew Scripturesas preserved by the orthodox Jews are written in the so-called square or Assyrian Hebrew characters whichare still in use. Tradition has it that this Assyrian writ-ing was first introduced by Ezra, in the fifth century B.C.,though there seems no doubt that the change was notactually completed until somewhat later.At Nablus (the ancient Shechem) in Samaria there is

a colony of about two hundred Samaritans, who stillcherish in their synagogue two manuscripts of great an-tiquity, written in the archaic Hebrew characters, and eachcomprising the Book of the Law by which their ancestorslaid such store. The older of the two is enclosed in a caseof wrought silver and gold, and in the course of a con-versation with the present writer, the Samaritan high priestclaimed that it was no less than 3,579 years old True, it isreputed to bear an inscription to the effect that the scribewho wrote this copy completed his task in the thirteenth


27/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 23year of the settlement of the children of Israel in the landof Canaan, but the genuineness of this note is disputed.The second manuscript, the one now generally shown tovisitors, is kept in a silver case and is said to have beenin existence for some 2,000 years. While one may feel in-clined to question the extreme antiquity, and exact dating,especially of the earlier of the two manuscripts, the his-torical importance of both copies remains unquestioned.

A study of this Samaritan Version, as it has come downto us, makes plain its defects, as well as its virtues. Itsmain significance lies in the fact that it represents an in-dependent witness to the text of the Pentateuch as itexisted at an early period, since we may justly assume thatthe continued and increasing enmity between the Jews andthe Samaritans (cf. John 4: 9) would prevent any com-parison or harmonization of their sacred writings; and itis encouraging to find that despite this independent trans-mission of the Hebrew and Samaritan editions of thefirst five books of our Bible, they remain in substantialagreement.The chief defect of the Samaritan Version is that in

places it seems to have been altered in an attempt tosimplify difficult passages, or even for frankly controversialreasons. For example, where our English translation (basedupon the Hebrew text) records that an altar was to bebuilt upon Mount Ebal (Deut. 27: 4), the Samaritan Ver-sion substitutes a reference to Mount Gerizim, apparently


28/168

24 OUR AGELESS BIBLEin an effort to justify the erection of the Samaritan templeon that particular site.Changes such as these warn us to be on our guard

against accepting the sole witness of the Samaritan Penta-teuch in preference to the Hebrew text; but the SamaritanVersion is of real importance when it corroborates the sug-gestions of other early versions, such as the Greek orSyriac, so adding its testimony to the cumulative evidencein favor of, or against, the wording of any given passage.

THE VERSIONS OF AQUILA, SYMMACHUS,AND THEODOTION

Despite the very real importance, and general accept-ance of the Septuagint, prepared in Egypt about the thirdcentury B.C., there were other scholars who, in the succeed-ing centuries, undertook the provision of alternative Greekrenderings of the Hebrew Scriptures. Three of these trans-lations are worthy of note, and are associated with thenames of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion.The earliest, and in some respects the most significant

of these three versions is that of Aquila, who is supposedto have written about a.d. 150. The orthodox Jews of his.day were decidedly prejudiced against the Septuagint,feeling, apparently, that its translators did not abide sukficiently closely by the details and idiom of the Hebrew.In seeking to obviate any criticism of this sort, Aquila,himself a student of the famous Rabbi Akiba, provided a


29/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 25rendering which is on the whole amazingly literalsomuch so that it is often conspicuously lacking in literarystyleand yet this very literalism is of abiding value, sinceit clearly suggests the original Hebrew words which Aquilahad before him. An interesting tradition informs us thatin his youth, Aquila had been partly converted to Chris-tianity, but on suffering a stern reprimand from the Chris-tian authorities because of his persistence in unorthodoxbeliefs, he became an ardent supporter of Judaism, pro-ducing his Greek version of the Old Testament with a viewto upholding Jewish orthodoxy and offsetting the influenceof the Septuagint which has sometimes been called theBible of the Early Christians, because of their constantreferences to that translation. Some find evidence of thissupposed polemical bias in the fact that though the GreekChristos ( Christ ) is admittedly synonymous with theHebrew Mashiach ( Messiah ), Aquila goes out of his wayto translate Mashiach by some other Greek word. What-ever his purpose may have been, we know that his render-ing won great popularity among the Jews.What little information has come down to us with re-

gard to the background of Symmachus is somewhatcontradictory, for while Eusebius affirms that he was anEbionite ( a kind of semi-Christian ), Epiphanius wouldhave us believe that he was a Samaritan who became anorthodox Jewsurely an unlikely transformation In anyevent, he prepared a Greek version of the Old Testament


30/168

26 OUR AGELESS BIBLEtowards the close of the second century a.d. The mostoutstanding characteristic of Symmachus' work is that hesucceeds in giving a masterly rendering of the Hebreworiginal in good idiomatic Greekindeed he seems to havebeen equally conversant with both languages. The chiefdefect of his otherwise fine rendering is that in certain sec-tions he is apt to paraphrase rather than to translate thetext before him.

Theodotion, who hailed from Ephesus, has been vari-ously described as an Ebionite and as a proselyte toJudaism, and in his approach to the problem of providinga translation of the Old Testament, he differed somewhatfrom his predecessors. He adhered much more closely tothe Septuagint than did either Aquila or Symmachus; andhe may be said to have provided a comprehensive revisionof that famous Alexandrian version rather than a new trans-lation.

Each of these three writers, then, played his individualpart in making known the Jewish Scriptures in the lan-guage of the New Testament; and their work is still ofvalue to the Biblical scholaryet, first and last, the Sep-tuagint rightfully retains its position as the most outstand-ing Greek version of the Old Testament produced in theearly centuries, or, for that matter, in any age.


31/168

CHAPTER TWO

The Languageof the New Testament


32/168


33/168

CHAPTER TWOTHE GREEK OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

The language of the New Testament longconstituted a perplexing problem to the Biblical scholar,for while the earliest extant manuscripts were undoubtedlywritten in Greek, it was equally obvious that this Greekcould not be said to conform strictly to classical standards.Those who had been trained to study and use the highlypolished phrases and elaborate construction favored bysuch classic authors as Euripides and Plato were at a loss toaccount for a certain bluntness of expression, a homelinessand seeming irregularity of form and of sentence structurecharacteristic of all, or nearly all, of the New Testamentwriters; and, for a time, it became the custom to condemnthe style, grammar and vocabulary of the apostles andevangelists, or, at the best, to make excuses for them. Itwas assumed that New Testament Greek constituted astrange and indeed a unique dialect, and that its departurefrom the literary models then approved was due either tothe admittedly humble origin of its writers, or to the factthat they were unconsciously influenced by Aramaic, which

29


34/168

30 OUR AGELESS BIBLEmost of them had known since childhood. Other criticswent further, bluntly affirming that the language of theNew Testament was simply bad Greek. However, of lateyears, and especially during the last few decades, archaeo-logical discovery has come forward to play its part in vindi-cating the authors of the New Testament.About the turn of the century, very ancient papyrus

manuscripts began to be unearthed in increasing numbers,particularly in Egypt, where the dry sand had aided intheir preservation for almost two thousand years. More-over, as the work of deciphering these first, second andthird century fragments proceeded, it became increasinglyevident that they were inscribed with the very same kind ofGreek which is used in the books of the New Testament(see pages 36f. ). Then, too, the subject matter of theseEgyptian manuscripts was of considerable interest, forthey were not elaborate essays or treatises, but intenselyhuman documents, consisting chiefly of personal, social andbusiness correspondence of that bygone age.Thus it was proved that New Testament Greek, so far

from being an isolated phenomenon, as had been supposed,was simply the language or dialect almost universally usedin the early centuries of our era. It was the graphic homelvspeech of everyday life. It had not, and had never claimedto possess, the rigid accuracy beloved of the pedant, butexhibited that peculiar vividness which comes from dailyconversational use. So, when the evangelists and apostlesrecorded for all ages the truths of the Christian revelation,


35/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 31they were not using what had long been regarded as theonly legitimate language of literature, but were settingdown the story of the Gospel and of its development in thefamiliar colloquial Greek of the day, known among scholarsas the Koine (or, more fully, Koine dialektos), that is, thedialect Common to the people as a whole. The use ofthis type of Greek contributes not a little to the remarkablyclear and effective presentation of the teachings of Chris-tianity. The New Testament in Greek, like our familiarAuthorized Version, was the book of the people, and an-nounced its message of salvation and of healing withmatchless simplicity and forthright directness, in a tonguewhich all could understand.

ARAMAIC, JESUS MOTHER TONGUEDuring the centuries immediately preceding the birth

of Jesus, Hebrew, as a spoken language, gradually fell intodisuse, being displaced by the more colloquial dialectknown as Aramaic. Evidence of this gradual change is tobe found even in the days of Nehemiah, who lived about450 B.C., for when the Book of the Law was published, it issupposed by scholars that it was first read in Hebrew, butthat when the readers gave the sense, and caused [thepeople] to understand the reading (Neh. 8:8) they weretranslating it into Aramaic for the benefit of those who wereunfamiliar with the more literary language. In the book ofActs ( 1 : 19 ) the typically Aramaic place name Aceldama


36/168

32 OUR AGELESS BIBLEgiven to the field purchased by Judasis said to be inthe proper tongue of all the dwellers at Jerusalem ;and if Jerusalem itself, the very center of Jewish orthodoxy,deigned to accept Aramaic thus wholeheartedly, its usethroughout Palestine may surely be taken for granted.

Aramaic, then, was the mother tongue of Jesus, andthe greater part of his teaching was undoubtedly deliveredin that language, though the fact remains that the Gospelsas they have come down to us are written in Greek.Scholars have long sought a rational explanation of thisphenomenon. Some contend that these Gospels, whetherin whole or in part, were originally composed in Aramaicand later rendered into Greek; though others, while ad-mitting that the Master ordinarily spoke Aramaic, feel thathis sayings were first recorded in Greek, since that tonguewas understood by many living in Palestine, while, furtherafield, it was used almost everywhere, and so would formthe natural medium for the propagation of a universalgospel. Jesus himself doubtless used Greek in his occa-sional interviews with Gentiles (e.g., Mark 7: 26; John12: 20ff. ) but there seems no doubt that Aramaic remainedhis basic mode of expression.Fragments of the original Aramaic employed by the

Master are still to be found in the Gospels, and these briefrecords of the very words of the great Teacher are of not alittle significance, since it would seem that in each instancethey are incorporated in the Gospel story at a particularlydramatic moment, or as expressing some especially deep


37/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 33emotion. When Jesus raised Jairus' daughter from the deadhe cried: Talitha cumi ( Little girl, arise : cf. Mark5:41); while after sighing deeply on being confrontedwith one who was deaf and had an impediment in hisspeech, the Saviour of men cured him with a word,Ephphatha ( Be opened : cf. Mark 7: 34).

It is but natural that one of Jesus' last sentences on thecross should also have been recorded in his native Aramaic:Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?words which have usuallybeen taken as a quotation from Psalm 22: 1, and have beenrendered: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?(Mark 15: 34). However, Galilean Aramaic differedslightly from that employed in Jerusalem (cf. Matt.26: 73), and since some of the bystanders understood Eloias meaning Elias instead of My God (Mark 15: 35) itmay very well be that they also failed to grasp the signifi-cance of the words which followed. A contemporaryAramaic scholar, George M. Lamsa, suggests the followinginteresting rendering for the phrase under discussion, MyGod, My God, for this I was kept, in other wordsThiswasmy destiny (My Neighbor Jesus, page 136 ) ; as thoughthe Master were pointing out that in some respects thecrucifixion constituted the crowning event of his career,being the inevitable prelude to the resurrection and subse-quent ascension.


38/168

34 OUR AGELESS BIBLE

THE ARAMAIC LOGIA OF MATTHEWThe early Christian writer Papias, who lived during thesecond century a.d., is quoted by Eusebius as asserting

that: Matthew . . . wrote the Logia in the Hebrew dialectthat is, in Aramaicbut each one interpreted [or 'trans-lated'] them as he was able (cf. Eusebius: EcclesiasticalHistory, III, 39 ) . Now the word logia means literally or-acles or sayings, but is constantly employed in a morerestricted sense with special reference to the sayings ofChrist Jesus. It was long supposed that Matthew's Logiawas simply another name for the canonical Gospel whichbears his name, and which, on this hypothesis, was firstwritten in Aramaic and afterwards translated into Greek.More recent researches, however, have led a majority ofscholars to the conclusion that Matthew's Gospel was nottranslated from an Aramaic original, but was quite clearlya Greek composition, as Dr. McNeile expresses it; and theconsensus of opinion now is that the Logia mentionedin Eusebius' volume formed a document dealing brieflywith the Master's activities and discoursesprepared byMatthew in the colloquial Aramaic ordinarily used byJesus and his disciplesand that after a time it appearedin various Greek versions or translations, as Eusebiussuggests.

It is considered one of the chief sources which wereemployed by Matthew himself, and also by Luke, whenthey composed their Gospels; indeed the collection is often


39/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 35briefly designated as Q (the initial letter of the Germanword Quelle or source ) , thus suggesting its basic impor-tance.That it antedated all four of our canonical Gospels is

now generally conceded, but in fixing the actual time ofits composition there is less unanimity of opinion. In anycase it seems to have been contemporary with the earlierepistles of Paul.There is now general agreement among scholars that theGospel of Mark, besides being the shortest of the four

narratives of Jesus' ministry, was also the first to be written,and that Matthew and Luke, writing some years later,employed two main sources: namely, Mark's Gospelwhich is incorporated almost entirely by both these evan-gelistsand the Logia, which may be said to consist es-sentially of those Gospel passages which are common toboth Matthew and Luke, but are not found in Mark.The nature and extent of such parallel passages can

readily be seen by consulting any Harmony of the Gos-pels, in which identical or closely similar paragraphs areprinted in parallel columns. As far as can be ascertained,Q was far from being a formal document; it was a note-book rather than a biography, being very loosely put to-gether, with little attempt at presenting a definite sequenceof statements or events. Thus, while Matthew usuallygroups these in accord with subject matter, Luke tends toplace them in chronological order. Despite the fact thatour direct knowledge of Matthew's notebook is all too


40/168

36 OUR AGELESS BIBLEscanty, this in no way detracts from its vital importance,for it is justly considered as having formed one of theprimary sources of our canonical Gospels.

THE TRANSLATORS DEBT TO THE PAPYRIAn examination of the text of the New Testament shows

plainly that it contains many words which are entirelyunknown in what is commonly called classical Greek. Formany centuries, the translations offered for such terms weremainly conjectural, owing to the fact that scholars had notbeen able to discover manuscripts composed in the morecolloquial Greek used by the New Testament writers-manuscripts which could provide illuminating parallels tothe unfamiliar words and idioms which perplexed thetranslators of the Bible. Even as late as 1863, this con-stituted a very real problem, for in that year Bishop Light-foot, one of the most noted Biblical scholars of his day, isreported to have said to his class at Cambridge University:If we could only recover letters that ordinary people wroteto each other without any thought of being literary, weshould have the greatest possible help for the understand-ing of the language of the New Testament generally. Sincethese words were spoken, the hope which they express hasbeen fulfilled.

Since the closing years of the nineteenth century in-numerable papyrus fragments have been brought to light,mainly in Egypt, and it is evident that as a rule their preser-


41/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 37vation has been due to accident rather than to design, formany of them were unearthed in the rubbish heaps ofruined cities. They lay no claim to be literature in theusual sense of that word, for most of them are brief per-sonal and business notes or letters; nevertheless they areof vital interest to the student of the Bible. Not only do theypresent a vivid picture of the lives and problems of men,many of whom were contemporaries of Jesus and hisapostles, but they provide the translator with a means ofdiscovering the usage and idiom of words and phraseswhich hitherto had been known only from the New Testa-mentjust as Dr. Lightfoot had foreseen.The practical use of these papyri in clarifying Biblical

passages can best be suggested by the examination of a fewconcrete examples.

In the midst of a passage expressing gratitude for theconstant financial support supplied by the Philippians,Paul writes: I have all, and abound (Phil. 4: 18Author-ized Version); but the statement is even more definitewhen we learn from the papyri that in the apostle's day theverb rendered have was used idiomatically in the senseof to sign a receipt for. Hence Dr. MiUigan translates:I give you a receipt in full for all things, and abound( Here and There Among the Papyri, page 69 )The same apostle tells us that Abraham's faith was im-

puted to him for righteousness (Rom. 4: 22); but howmuch more vivid the meaning becomes when we realizethat in the papyri the verb translated impute meant


42/168

38 OUR AGELESS BIBLEsimply to put down to one's account The patriarch'sfaith, then, was credited to his account as righteousness.Then when Peter is supposed to speak of the trial

[dokimion] of your faith as much more precious than ofgold.... (I Pet. 1:7), the papyri suggest rather thegenuineness of your faith, since in them the word doki-mion refers to the result of any test, rather than to the testitself.One of the most striking examples of the help afforded

to the translator by these early fragments of papyrus is tobe found in I Peter 2: 2, where our Authorized Versionhas the peculiar phrase, the sincere milk of the word ;and the Revised Version suggests, milk which is withoutguile. Now each of these renderings represents an attemptto translate the Greek word adolos, which is apparentlycompounded of a- ( not or without ) and dolos ( whichusually means guile ), although it is surely evident thatthe apostle did not intend to refer to guileless milk Anexamination of the business letters found among the papyriprovides the solution of this problem, since they show thatthe farmers and merchants of the first and second centuriesof our era regularly employed the term adolos in a specialsense, as describing grain which was unadulterated free from sticks, chaff and other foreign matteror withreference to foodstuffs which were pure. Thus it seemsclear that Peter was using an idiom well known to his con-temporaries, and was simply referring to the pure milk of


43/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 39the word, or, as the Revised Standard Version has it, thepure spiritual milk.

Still another passage which has been clarified by refer-ence to the papyri is to be found in Romans 15: 28, wherePaul is writing of the collection which has been madeamong the Gentile churches for the benefit of the poorsaints which are at Jerusalem (verse 26), and he writesto the Romans (according to the rendering of the KingJames Version ) : When ... I have . . . sealed to them thisfruit, I will come by you into Spain. There was consider-able doubt as to the exact significance of the verb sealedas used in this context, until a clue was provided in a lettercomposed in the second century a.d. by a woman whowrote to a friend, evidently regarding seed for her garden:If you come, take out six artabae of vegetable-seed, seal-ing it in the sacks ... in order that they may be ready(Milligan, Here and There Among the Papyri, page 73).Thus it would appear that Paul was about to seal up thegift entrusted to his care, that it might be ready to bedelivered intact to the church at Jerusalem.

In First Corinthians 1: 7f. we read that our Lord JesusChrist . . . shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye maybe blameless ; but the word rendered confirm is used inmany papyrus documents in a technical sense to imply thegiving of security guaranteed by law. (Cf. Deissmann,Bible Studies, pages 104ff.) So Dr. Moffatt suggests: Hewill guarantee that you are vindicated.Thus it is evident that the papyri, long hidden in the dry


44/168

40 OUR AGELESS BIBLEsands of Egypt, have already proved of great value both totranslators and readers of the New Testament, as they seekto grasp the original sense of these and many other pas-sages, and it is probable that as our knowledge of suchpapyrus documents increases, they will continue to throwlight upon the meaning of the apostolic writings.


45/168

} CHAPTER THREE

The Manuscriptsof the New Testament


46/168


47/168

CHAPTER THREE

THE FORM AND WRITING OF THE EARLYNEW TESTAMENT MANUSCRIPTS

While we do not now possess any of theoriginal autograph manuscripts penned by the evangelistsand the apostles, or recorded for them by their secretaries(cf. Rom. 16: 22; I Pet. 5: 12), there is every reason tosuppose that these precious documents were sheets or rollsof papyrus, closely resembling in form the earliest copiesnow extant. This papyrus ( a term which in the course oftime was modified to form our English word paper ) wasformed by preparing long ribbon-like strips cut from thepith of the papyrus reed which grew in profusion by thebanks of the Nile, and placing these strips vertically sideby side, covering them with a similar arrangement ofhorizontal stripsthe two layers being held in place bymeans of a light glue mixed with water from the Nile. Thewhole was then placed under pressure and dried, and whenits surface had been smoothed and polished, the resultantsheet formed a very serviceable writing material.The manufacture of papyrus was very far from being a

43


48/168

44 OUR AGELESS BIBLEnew art even in the days of the apostles, for there is still inexistence a papyrus document which is considered by ex-perts to date from at least 3,500 b.c. Under favorable cir-cumstances, then, papyrus was exceedingly durable, butthe vital interest of the Gospels, the Epistles, and otherbooks which ultimately went to make up what we know asthe New Testament, led them to be so eagerly read that itis supposed that the earliest manuscripts simply wore outthrough constant handling, being replaced by carefullytranscribed copies.The pens employed in writing these ancient documents

were fashioned from reeds, while the ink commonly usedwas formed of a mixture of soot and gum diluted withwater. Primitive though this type of ink may appear, itsays much for its permanence that letters dating from theNew Testament period or earlier, and since unearthed inEgypt, can still be read with little difficulty.We learn from early records that papyrus was ordinarily

sold in sheets measuring from 9 to 11 inches in height, andfrom 5 to 5/2 inches in width, and for such a brief note asthe Second Epistle of John, a single sheet would doubtlessbe sufficient. In the case of a more lengthy letter, such asthe Epistle to the Romans, the writer would naturallyfollow the custom of his day by purchasing a number ofsheets, glued together side by side so as to form a longstrip which could be rolled up for the sake of convenience.Scholars have calculated that the Epistle to the Romans,if inscribed with Greek writing of average size, would re-


49/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 45quire the use of a papyrus roll eleven feet, six inches, inlength, while the Gospel of Luke would extend to some-thing like thirty-one feet (see Kenyon's Handbook to theTextual Criticism of the New Testament, page 30 )

.

It is evident that such lengthy rolls of papyrus wouldnot be altogether convenient, especially when one wishedto find any particular passage, so eventually they gaveplace to papyrus or parchment books, consisting of leaveslaid one upon another and bound together after the styleof a modern volume. A manuscript book of this type isusually described as a codex, and the most famous andcomplete of the Greek manuscripts which we now possessare of this form, including the Sinaitic, Vatican, Alexan-drian and Bezan codices and others, on which our presentknowledge of the text of the New Testament is chieflybased.

THE SINAITIC MANUSCRIPTOf all the famous Greek manuscripts of the Bible, the

Sinaitic Manuscriptor Codex Sinaiticus, as it is calledby scholarshas probably the most romantic history, be-sides being in the front rank in historical importance. Inthe year 1844, a renowned Biblical scholar named Teschen-dorf, while visiting the Monastery of St. Catherine onMount Sinai, happened to notice a basket filled with oldsheets of vellum which were being used from time to timeto feed the fire, and on closer examination he found to his


50/168

46 OUR AGELESS BIBLEamazement that the basket contained more than a hundredleaves from a very ancient Greek Bible, later called theCodex Sinaiticus. Some of these leaves he was allowed toretain, being cheerfully informed that many similar pageshad already been burned, but he could then learn no newsconcerning the fate of the remainder of the manuscript,and it was not until fifteen years later, in 1859, during afurther visit to the monastery, that he was unexpectedlyshown the rest of the book which he found to contain thecomplete New Testament in addition to much of the OldTestament and of the Apocrypha. His joy at the fulfillmentof his hopes may readily be imagined, especially in view ofthe fact that in recalling the scene, he wrote: I knew thatI held in my hand one of the most precious Biblical treas-ures in existence. After much negotiation, the monksagreed to present the manuscript to the then Czar of Rus-sia, and it remained in the great library at Leningrad untilthe close of 1933, when it was purchased by the Britishnation from the Soviet government, and may now be seenin the British Museum in London.

So much, then, for the vicissitudes of the manuscriptduring the past century. With regard to its original prepa-ration, there remains some degree of uncertainty, but thegeneral consensus of opinion among scholars is that it datesfrom the fourth century a.d. Now early records show thatabout the year a.d. 331 Constantine, the first Christian em-peror, wrote to Eusebius the historian, then Bishop ofCaesarea in Palestine, asking that he arrange for the prepa-


51/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 47ration of fifty manuscript copies of the Holy Scriptures inGreek, to be inscribed on prepared parchment in a legiblemanner ... by professional transcribers thoroughly prac-ticed in their art ( Eusebius, Life of Constantine, IV, 36 )These Bibles were to be based upon the evidence of stillearlier manuscripts preserved at Caesarea, which possessedone of the most famous and comprehensive Biblical li-braries then in existence. Without describing in detail thereasons adduced by scholars, it may be noted that manyof them hold that two of Constantine's fifty Bibles are stillin existencenamely the Sinaitic Manuscript now underconsideration and the Vatican Manuscript which will bediscussed in the next section.

Important though the Sinaitic Manuscript now is as ahistorical document, its interest to the student of the textof the New Testament is perhaps even more vital. It is truethat we possess fragmentary New Testament manuscriptswhich appear to date from as far back as the beginning ofthe second century, but the Codex Sinaiticus is the earliestmanuscript now extant providing us with the completeNew Testamentthe book of Revelation and parts of theEpistles being now lacking from its sister manuscript, theCodex Vaticanus.

THE VATICAN MANUSCRIPTAs we have already seen, it would appear that the Vati-can Manuscript ( or Codex Vaticanus ) was, like the Codex


52/168

48 OUR AGELESS BIBLESinaiticus, prepared about the middle of the fourth centurya.d., probably at the instance of the Emperor Constantine,who, on his conversion to the Christian Faith, was eager tospread the message of the Bible among his subjects. It is,however, of interest to note that Westcott and Hort, andother scholars, are inclined to consider the Vatican Codexas the more important of the two, contending that it repre-sents more than any other the original text of the NewTestament.The Codex Vaticanus, as its name implies, is preserved

in the archives of the Vatican at Rome, and we know it tohave been there before the year 1475, the date of the firstofficial catalogue of the papal library. At that time, how-ever, few scholars knew of its existence, and none realizedits vital importance. It was still at Rome when our Author-ized Version of the Bible was prepared in England, butunfortunately the King James translators did not haveaccess to this priceless Biblical treasure. Two centurieslater, in the year 1809, the manuscript appeared in Paris,having apparently been carried off from Italy with otherprecious records, as the spoils of war, during one of Napo-leon's campaigns. During its sojourn in Paris it was ex-amined by a professor from Tubingen, who seems to havebeen the first to recognize its early date, and to realizesomething of its real importance. Eventually it was re-turned to the Vatican library, where for many yearsscholars were not permitted to give it the minute and ac-curate consideration it deserved, and it was not until almost


53/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 49the close of the nineteenth century that a photographicedition of the text made it available for study throughoutthe world.An examination of these photostatic copies shows that

the manuscript was written in Greek capital letters, withthree columns to a page, and it is interesting to find thatpunctuation in the modern sense is practically nonexistent,while, as a rule, there is no division between the words andseldom between the sentences. The verse divisions, sofamiliar to us from our modern Bibles, were not introduceduntil some twelve centuries after the preparation of thismanuscript.

Originally, the Vatican Codex contained the whole Biblein Greek, but much of the Old Testament is now wanting,as is a portion of the Newnamely the Pastoral Epistles ofPaul, the book of Revelation, and the latter part of theEpistle to the Hebrews. Nevertheless, the value of theVatican Manuscript can scarcely be overestimated, for notonly does it bring us back to the middle of the fourth cen-tury a.d., but it is regarded, like the Codex Sinaiticus, ashaving been based, in turn, upon the best second centurymanuscripts then available.Among the many interesting readings preserved for us

by this early document is one which would seem to stressthe importance of the active participation of the Master'sfollowers in the wonderful works which he accomplished.When he was about to cure the man who had been bornblind, he said, according to the Vatican Manuscript: We


54/168

50 OUR AGELESS BIBLE[not I ] must work the works of him that sent me (John9:4).

THE ALEXANDRIAN MANUSCRIPTWhile the Sinaitic and Vatican codices already discussed

are generally regarded as being both the earliest and themost valuable of the New Testament manuscripts whichhave been preserved to this day practically in their en-tirety, the Codex Alexandrinus comes next in order ofimportance. Like the other two it was originally a manu-script of the whole Bible, written in Greek, and though theOld Testament portion is still almost complete, certainsections of the New Testament have unfortunately beenlost, including the greater part of the Gospel of Matthew,two leaves from that of John, and three from SecondCorinthians. One of the unique characteristics of this codexis that after the book of Revelation we find the First Epistleof one Clement of Rome, a fact which reminds us that thisletter was highly esteemed by the early church and camenear to being accounted among the canonical, or sacred,Scriptures of the New Testament. This same manuscriptalso contains fragments of a Second Epistle of Clement,which is, however, considered of lesser importance. An-other point of interest is that the order of the books in theCodex Alexandrinus varies somewhat from that to whichwe are accustomed, in that the epistles of Paul immediatelyprecede the book of Revelation, instead of following thebook of Acts.


55/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 51The facts concerning the origin and early history of this

famous manuscript are decidedly obscure. In the year1628, one Cyril Lucar, patriarch of Constantinople (nowIstanbul), presented the codex to Charles I of Britain,and shortly after the foundation of the library of the BritishMuseum in 1753, it was placed there for safekeeping, andnow rests beside the Codex Sinaiticus in the manuscriptroom. As Cyril had formerly been patriarch of Alexandriain Egypt, there is good reason to suppose that it was therethat he became possessor of this ancient codex, and forthis reason it is called the Alexandrian Manuscriptitsbrief designation, for purposes of reference, being theletter A. On the flyleaf of the book, Cyril himself re-corded the tradition then current concerning its prepara-tion, to the effect that it was written by the hand ofThecla, an Egyptian woman of noble birth . . . shortly afterthe council of Nicaga (which took place in a.d. 325). Itis true that a further note, penned in Arabic some threeor four centuries before Cyril's time, similarly ascribes thepreparation of the manuscript to Thecla the martyr, butit is now the considered judgment of scholars that it musthave been prepared about the middle of the fifth centurya.d., rather than early in the fourth, as suggested by thepatriarch.A further interesting point concerning the Codex Alex-

andrinus is that it was the first of the great Greek Biblicalmanuscripts to receive any real study and recognition, forit will be recalled that though the Codex Vaticanus had


56/168

52 OUR AGELESS BIBLElain in the archives of the Vatican since before 1475, it wasnot until the early nineteenth century that its vital impor-tance began to be recognized, while the discovery of theCodex Sinaiticus came several decades later still. Had theAlexandrian Manuscript reached England some twentyyears sooner than it actually did, it would doubtless havebeen made available to the scholars who prepared ourAuthorized Version, yet, even without its aid, they suc-ceeded in giving to the world that inimitable renderingwhich we know so well.

THE CODICES OF EPHRAEM AND OF BEZAThe Codex of Ephraem, often designated by the letter

C, now rests in the National Library at Paris, though itmay have come originally from Egypt. It is what is calleda palimpsesta word which by its derivation implies thatwhich has been wiped [or rubbed-out] again. The justiceof this description becomes readily apparent when we con-sider the vicissitudes through which this codex, like otherearly writings, has passed. In the Middle Ages, vellum orparchment was somewhat costly, and it was not unusual foran impecunious writer to wash off or otherwise delete, asfar as possible, the writing of an ancient manuscript, after-wards proceeding to use the parchment a second time.This is the fate which befell the Codex of Ephraem, whichonce contained the whole Bible. It is thought to have beenprepared originally in the fifth century a. d., and we still


57/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 53find in it traces of every New Testament book with theexception of II John and II Thessalonians; though, in thenature of the case, it is not surprising that its script isnow only faintly discernible, for in the twelfth century, thetreatises of one Ephraem the Syrian ( after whom the codexis named ) were written over what remained of the originaltext, and often obliterated it entirely.

Unlike the Sinaitic, Vatican and Alexandrian Manu-scripts, which preserve the New Testament complete, oralmost complete, the Bezan Codex, which is marked forreference by the letter D, now contains only the Gospelsand the book of Acts, together with a few verses fromIII John. It is named after one of the sixteenth-centuryreformers, Theodore de Beze (or Beza), who in 1581 pre-sented it to the University of Cambridge where it still is.He stated that he had found it in a monastery at Lyonsin France, and though its earlier history is veiled in obscu-rity, it is now generally supposed to date from the sixthcentury a. d., thus forming a decidedly early witness tothe text of the New Testament. In it the Gospels are notset down in the order familiar to us, for Matthew andJohn appear first, presumably because they were num-bered among the twelve apostles, while Luke comes next,and Mark last of all. Another unusual characteristic of theBezan Codex is that it is the earliest of the more impor-tant Biblical manuscripts to be written in both Greek andLatinthe Greek text being inscribed in a single column


58/168

54 OUR AGELESS BIBLEon each left hand page, with the Latin rendering facing it.Then, too, it contains a number of noteworthy variationsfrom the other early manuscripts, and indeed it is the onlycodex extant which inserts after Luke 6: 4 the incident ofa man who was working in his field on the Sabbath day,and was addressed by Christ Jesus in the following termsO man, if thou knowest what thou doest, happy art thou,but if thou knowest not, thou art cursed and a transgressorof the law. The same manuscript, after relating how thebody of Jesus was placed by Joseph of Arimathaea in thetomb which he had provided (Luke 23: 53), adds thatthere was set before the sepulchre a stone so great thattwenty men could hardly roll [it]. While there is somequestion as to the authenticity of the variations and addi-tions recorded by D, they at least represent a very earlytradition, and are thus of deep interest to the student.


59/168

CHAPTER FOUR

Early Latinand Syriac Versions


60/168


61/168

CHAPTER FOUR

THE OLD LATIN VERSION

As Christianity spread westward from Pal-estine and became more and more firmly rooted in thefarflung dominions of the Roman Empire, it was but nat-ural that the need should arise for renderings of the Biblein Latin, the official language of that empire, and, as aresult, there came into existence a number of translationsof varying significance which are commonly grouped to-gether under the general title of the Old Latin version.

Writing of them at considerable length in an article inHastings' Dictionary of the Bible ( Vol. Ill, page 47 ) , Prof.H. A. A. Kennedy refers to their unique value and theirhigh antiquity, and contends that they are of primaryimportance for determining the text of the New Testa-ment. These words of praise surely justify us in examin-ing for a few moments these early Latin renderings, beforewe proceed to consider the more widely known versionusually described as the Vulgate.

In Italy itself, the focal point of the Roman rule, Greekand Latin seem to have been equally well known during

57


62/168

58 OUR AGELESS BIBLEthe early centuries, especially among the upper classes,and because of this, there was at first no special demandfor a Latin translation of the Bible, which was alreadywidely circulated in Greek. In North Africa, however,where Roman rule had been firmly established since about145 b. cand where there was from early times a largeand growing Christian populationthere was a differentsituation, for there Latin was used almost exclusively.Thus there is general agreement among scholars that thefirst Latin renderings of the Scriptures appeared not inAsia or in Europe, but in Africa; and it is thought thatsuch translations began to appear not later than a. d. 150;while the famous Christian writer Cyprian, who livedabout a. d. 250, seems to quote from a more or less com-plete Latin translation of the New Testament which wascurrent in Africa in his day. Such representatives of theOld Latin as are still extant are not composed in par-ticularly good or idiomatic Latin; rather they providealmost slavishly literal translations of the Greek original.But what they lose in literary style is more than offset bythe fact that the extreme literalness of these renderingsoften enables us to deduce the very words of the earlyGreek manuscripts on which they were based. This is per-haps the most outstanding service rendered by the OldLatin Version.

Before long Old Latin translations appeared in Eu-rope, some of them independently, others being more inthe nature of adaptations of the African renderings, as


63/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 59shown by the occasional retention of provincial idiomstypical of the Latin dialect of North Africa. All suchversions had their place in spreading a knowledge of theScriptures, but it is to Jerome that we owe the productionof the truly monumental rendering to which we now turn.

THE VULGATETowards the close of the fourth century, a certain Da-masus, then Bishop of Rome, decided that it was of prime

importance for the spread of Christianity that someoneshould prepare a more standard version of the Bible inLatin, which would improve upon, and ultimately super-sede, the various Old Latin texts, which were clearlyin need of revision. The man whom Damasus forthwithappointed to carry out this important task was his secre-tary, Eusebius Hieronymuspopularly known as Jeromeone who appears to have been well fitted to undertakethis work, for he had a good Latin style and had studiedGreek assiduously for many years, while he possessed anadequate knowledge of Hebrew.The version which Jerome at length gave to the world

is now known as the Vulgatea term which derives fromthe Latin vulgata, meaning common, and which wasapplied to it because it was intended to be, and eventuallybecame, the commonly accepted Latin version of theScriptures.

Jerome's work was not entirely that of a translator. In


64/168

60 OUR AGELESS BIBLEproducing his version of the New Testament, he seemssimply to have revised, rather cursorily, certain of theOld Latin texts which were then in use, and it may beobserved that even this somewhat timid revision arouseda storm of criticism among the conservatives of the day.As regards the Old Testament, however, his work providesmuch greater evidence of originality. It is true that thePsalms as they now appear in the Vulgate represent, likethe New Testament, a revision rather than a fresh transla-tion, but Jerome's rendering of the other books of theOld Testament was made direct from the Hebrew itself,and consequently is of much wider importance from ahistorical and literary standpoint.The Vulgate in its present form also contains the books

which are known to Protestants as the Apocrypha. Thisterm, commonly applied to books of doubtful inspirationor authority, is far from being a modern one, for it wasused by Jerome himself in his original preface to the Vul-gate, where he lists the very books now found in theAuthorized or King James Version of the Old Testament,adding that whatever is beyond these is to be placedamong the Apocrypha, and that such apocryphal booksare not in the Canon. At the insistence of some of hisfriends, however, he finally agreed to revise earlier rend-erings of Judith and Tobit, with the result that thesetwo books came to be included in his version during hislifetime; but the remaining apocryphal books were not


65/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 61inserted until long after his passing, being then taken fromthe Old Latin Version.The Vulgate is of great historical importance, because

for about a thousand yearsup to the time of the Refor-mationit was the chief Bible of the Christian world,while at the Council of Trent (1545-1563) it was recog-nized as the authentic and authorized Bible of the RomanCatholic Church.

In fact, it was the Vulgate which a century earlier( about 1450 ) had been presented by John Gutenberg, theinventor of printing by movable metal type, as the firstBible, and apparently the first complete book, to be printedby this now familiar process.

EARLY SYRIAC VERSIONSWhile the manuscripts of the New Testament, as they

have come down to us from the early centuries of our era,are uniformly written in Greek, the facts that Christ Jesushimself knew Aramaic and made a practice of using it inhis teachings are sufficient to arouse the student's interestin the latter language. Indeed there seems to be a grow-ing sentiment in favor of the view that the Gospel writings,whether in whole or in part, were originally publishedin Aramaic, and some would go still further, assuming,though with much less probability, that the whole of theNew Testament was composed in this dialect, being latertranslated into Greek. However this question may be finally


66/168

62 OUR AGELESS BIBLEsettled, if indeed it can be settled at this late date, it isat least evident that the Christians of Syria, and of otheineighboring provinces to the east and northeast, wouldprefer to study the New Testament in some form of Ara-maic, rather than in the less familiar Greek. Evidentlywith a view to satisfying this need, a Syrian scholar namedTatian composed what is called the Diatessaron (literallyby four ), which consists of passages from the bookscomposed by the four Gospel writersthis materialbeing so grouped as to provide a connected narrativeof the Master's ministry. This version, dating from thesecond century a. d., was prepared in Syriac ( or EasternAramaic ) which has been described as a sister dialectof the Aramaic of Galilee, the dialect spoken there byour Lord and the twelve (Jennings, Lexicon to the SyriacNew Testament, page 5 ) , while the same writer adds thatthe one differs only slightly from the other.While in some respects the most interesting of the earlier

Syriac versions is this Diatessaron, since it is the earliestknown harmony of the four Gospels, reference may herebe made to two ancient Syriac manuscripts which havecome into prominence during the last hundred years or so.One of these was unearthed in the Nitrian Desert in

Egypt and eventually reached the British Museum inLondon, where it was examined about 1842 by a scholarnamed William Cureton, being thenceforth described asthe Curetonian Syriac Version. It preserves for us frag-ments of a translation of the Gospels, and while the manu-


67/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 63script appears to date from the fifth century of our era,there is little doubt that it records a rendering which hadbeen made some three centuries earlier, possibly abouta. d. 150.

Then, just fifty years after Cureton's discovery, Mrs.Agnes Smith Lewis was pursuing some researches in theMonastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinaithe same mon-astery in which some decades earlier the great SinaiticCodex of the Old and New Testaments had come to light( see pages 45f . ) and there she found an early Syriac man-uscript which has since been known as the Lewis Syriacor the Sinaitic Syriac. Like the Codex of Ephraem, it was apalimpsest ( see page 52 ) , but the greater part of the par-tially obliterated writing could still be deciphered, and itwas found to be a translation of the Gospels lacking onlysome eight pages of being complete. While the date of themanuscript itself is by no means certain, it, too, is thoughtto represent a rendering first made in the second centurya. d.; indeed some authorities have referred to it as theoldest translation ever made of the Gospels into Syriac( cf . Robinson, Where Did We Get Our Bible? page 98 )or even as the earliest translation of the Four Gospelsinto any language (Agnes S. Lewis, Old Syriac Gospels,page v ) . Among other interesting points it records a varia-tion from the familiar rendering of John 8: 57 ( Thou artnot yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham? )in that it has . . . hath Abraham seen thee?


68/168

64 OUR AGELESS BIBLE

THE PESHITTA SYBIAC VERSIONDespite the undoubted significance and antiquity of

the early Syriac versions, to some of which reference hasjust been made, by far the best known of the variousrenderings used by the Syrian church in the course of theearly centuries is referred to as the Peshitta, and it stillremains the standard Syriac version of the Scriptures. ThePeshitta was for the Syrian church what the Vulgate wasfor the church of Rome, and like the Vulgate, it was arendering of the whole Bible; indeed the terms Peshittaand Vulgate are virtually synonymous, both implyingthat the version so described was commonly used andaccepted in its own particular fieldwhile peshitta couldalso be rendered simple, easily understood.The man who is credited with the preparation of the

Peshitta is a certain Rabbula, Bishop of Edessa during thefirst half of the fifth century a. d. The version which heprepared or sponsored laid no claim to being a completelynew translation; it was simply a revision of the earlierSyriac renderingsa revision made on the basis of theGreek manuscripts to which Rabbula and his friends hadaccessbut, despite this limitation, it is of very consider-able importance because of its wide use among theAramaic-speaking Christians of the East, through manycenturies. One of its chief peculiarities is that it omitsboth the book of Revelation, and four of the lesser EpistlesSecond Peter, Second and Third John, and Judethough


69/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 65we learn from an examination of previous Syriac versionsthat these five books were used by members of the Syrianchurches.

Professor Thomas Nichol has referred to the Peshittarendering of the New Testament as careful, faithful andliteral while he joins with other Syriac scholars in bear-ing tribute to the simplicity, directness, and transparencyof its style (International Standard Bible Encyclopaediapage 2884), and indeed it has earned for itself the proudtitle of Queen of the Versions ( ibid. )


70/168


71/168

CHAPTER FIVE

The Taskof the Biblical Translator


72/168


73/168

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TASK OF THE BIBLICAL TRANSLATOR

No doubt this question has arisen in the mindof many a Bible student on noting the varying render-ings of the same passage given by different translators:On what basis, or by what criterion, does the translatorevaluate any given passage of Hebrew or Greek, as thecase may be, before he seeks to express it in his nativetongue? In short: How does he consider and test the au-thenticity of that particular section? This is a fair question,and one which may well hold our attention for a fewmoments.

It is almost a truism that one of the most importanttasks of the Biblical scholar, and an essential preliminaryto translation, is to discover, as far as may be, what wasoriginally written by such men as Amos or Jeremiah inthe Old Testament, Matthew or Paul in the New; andthis particular branch of study is commonly described asLower or Textual Criticismthe task of reconstructingthe original text of the Bibleas distinguished from theso-called Higher Criticism, which seeks to find out why

69


74/168

70 OUR AGELESS BIBLEand when and where certain books or passages were com-posed. Criticism is, of course, used here in its legitimateand helpful sense of careful, considered judgment.Now one of the primary steps in seeking to determinethe authenticity of any passage is, very naturally, to com-pare such manuscripts of the original as are now extant;and in applying this rule to the Hebrew of the Old Testa-ment, we are faced by the rather curious fact, that a largemajority of the existing manuscripts agree with one an-other almost word for word. At first sight this might seemto be a great advantage, but on further study of the subjectit becomes plain that this apparent unanimity is indeedonly apparent, and that in all probability such manuscriptsas dared to disagree with the commonly accepted textwere destroyed at an early period (cf. page 16). This issomewhat unfortunate, for there are passages in the ortho-dox text, as we might describe it, which appear to havebeen incorrectly copied and which might well be correctedby comparison with the variant texts, had they been pre-served. In these circumstances, the student of the OldTestament in the original studies each verse in connectionwith its context, bearing in mind the fact that, as firstwritten, the Hebrew script appears to have been set downwithout vowels and generally, without division betweenwords and sentences ( see page 13 ) . In fact, the authentic-ity of an Old Testament passage is established, not somuch by the comparison and evaluation of different manu-scripts, as by estimating the congruity of such a passage


75/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 71with the apparent style, purpose, and method of the writerof the rest of the book.Then in view of the surprising uniformity of the avail-

able Hebrew manuscripts, the witness of the Septuagintis called in to dispute or corroborate the findings alreadymade. Thus when the Septuagint translation of any versepresupposes a Hebrew text identical with that acceptedby the Jewish scholars, the probability is very strong thatwe have the correct reading; but if the Greek gives onemeaning and the Masoretic Text another, the scholargoes back to what were apparently the original consonantsand seeks to determine how the confusion arose, besidesconsidering the witness of other early versions.For example: In the Authorized Version rendering of

Psalm 15: 4, we read: He that sweareth to his own hurt,and changeth not ; but the Septuagint and Syriac Versionsoffer the interesting alternative rendering. . . . to hisfriend [or neighbor], bringing out the sense: He whomakes a promise 'to his friend' and does not go back onit. The variation here is due to the fact that the conso-nants found in the original Hebrew

(yirt? ) can be ren-

dered either to his hurt or to his friend according tothe vowels presupposed by the translator.The scholar has always to consider the possibility of

slips in the copying of the original manuscripts due tothe similarity in sound or in appearance of many of theHebrew letters. For instance: We are accustomed to therendering of Psalm 91: 13: Thou shalt tread upon the


76/168

72 OUR AGELESS BIBLElion' and adder ; but the Greek and Syriac versions suggestthe reading bnr ( z-ch-l- asp ) instead of ^rw (sh-ch-1-lion ), an emendation which may well be correct, andwhich is apparently favored by Dr. Moffatt who suggeststhe rendering reptiles.

Students of the various English translations of the OldTestament are sometimes disturbed by the divergence be-tween them. It is true that in many passages translatorsdiffer considerably in their concept of the sense, owingpartly to their doctrinal presuppositions, and largely, aswe have seen, to the peculiar nature of the Hebrew lan-guage and the fact that the books were written upwardsof two thousand years ago. But may we not rather marvelat the remarkable agreement on the main points of thereligion and history of Israel? The translations offered bymodern scholars are, surely, to be welcomed, not indeedas superseding the pellucid English and majestic cadencesof the Authorized Version, but rather as supplementing it,and casting further light upon the pages of the Old Testa-ment, the only Bible known to the Founder of Chris-tianity.

Turning to the New Testament and its translation, weencounter a problem which differs somewhat from thatwhich is presented to students of the Hebrew Bible. There,as we have observed, the manuscripts are almost discon-certingly similar, but here the translator has to deal witha very large number of Greek manuscripts which, whileagreeing with one another in their main outlines, do show


77/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 73considerable divergence in matters of detail. In this casethe question at once arises as to the method or methodsby which the translator is to weigh the evidence for oragainst any particular reading when manuscript opinion,if one may call it so, seems to be so divided.

In ordinary circumstances it is not only inconvenient,but virtually impossible, for the student to have beforehim exact copies of all the chief manuscripts which havesurvived to the present day. For this reason, certain edi-tions of the Greek text are now published with footnotesin which each leading manuscript is represented by a letteror symbol, preceded by the reading found in that manu-script or group of manuscripts. As has already been sug-gested, the earliest more or less complete manuscripts ofthe New Testament which we now possess are the CodexSinaiticus which is known by the symbol K ( Aleph the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet), and the CodexVaticanus ( B ), both of which appear to date from themiddle of the fourth century of our era. Then follow theAlexandrian manuscript ( A ), the Codex of Ephraem( C ), and the Bezan manuscript ( D ), dating evidentlyfrom the fifth or sixth century a. d. (see Chapter III). Itoften happens that two or more of these important codiceswill agree in giving a certain reading, while the majorityof the later manuscripts reject it. In such a case, scholarsgenerally consider that the early witness of these few out-standing codices outweighs the evidence of the majority.An example of the application of this rule may be drawn


78/168

74 OUR AGELESS BIBLEfrom Revelation 22: 14, where we read, in the words ofthe Authorized Version, Blessed are they 'that do hiscommandments' (Greek: poiountes tas entolas autou)which is the text favored by most of the later manuscripts.However, we find that here the Sinaitic and Alexandriancodices and a few other authorities have . . . they 'thatwash their robes' (Greek: plunontes tas stolas auton),a reading which is followed by the Revised StandardVersion and the Twentieth Century New Testament, aswell as by other modern translators such as Dr. Weymouth(fifth edition), and Professors Goodspeed and Moffatt.Incidentally, it is readily apparent that it would be quiteeasy for a scribe to confuse plunontes tas stolas auton withthe similar appearing poiountes tas entolas autou.Another criterion used by translators is that if there is

a choice between two readings, one of which is apparentlysimple and obvious and the other not so immediately easyto understand, the harder reading is usually to be pre-ferred, since, if the scribe were making any change in hiscopying, his tendency would surely be towards attemptedsimplification of the passage, rather than vice versa. Thewords just cited from Revelation 22: 14 again provide acase in point, since the reference to the blessedness ofthem that wash their robes may at first seem strangethough, as a matter of fact, Revelation 7: 14ff. appears toexplain this figure of speech.What are known as the Ancient Versions ( see ChapterIV)which include early translations of the New Testa-


79/168

OUR AGELESS BIBLE 75ment into Latin, Syriac, Ethiopic, Armenian and otherlanguagesare often of service in any attempt to recon-struct the original text, for one can generally deduce fromthem the Greek words from which the early translatormade his rendering, and thus gain that much more evi-dence for or against the reading which we have assumedto be correct from our comparison of the manuscripts.

Then, too, further evidence is to be found in the Biblicalquotations made by early Christian writers, such as Igna-tius and Clement of Alexandria in the second century a. d.,and Origen and Cyprian in the thirdwriters who pre-sumably had access to very early Greek manuscripts andwhose statements are therefore worthy of careful con-sideration.

It is by the use of methods such as these that the con-scientious translator and student of the original languagesof our Bible considers and tests the authenticity of thevarious passages, in an effort to determine as nearly aspossible the actual words and phrases set down by theBiblical writers many centuries before our time.

It should be borne in mind that it is only within thepast century that some of the earliest and most importantof the existing Biblical manuscriptsnotably the Sinaiticand Vatican codiceshave become readily available toscholars, who weigh with the greatest care the new evi-dence thus presented. In short, it seems that modern re-search in the fields of Biblical language and archaeology,and in kindred subjects, has done much to bridge the gap


80/168

76 OUR AGELESS BIBLEof the almost two thousand years which separate us fromthe original documents penned by the disciples of theMaster, and the still greater period of time which haselapsed since the preparation of the books of the OldTestament. It also seems that we are now in an increas-ingly favorable position to reconstruct the original text ofthe Bible and to render it accurately and idiomatically intothe language of today.


81/168

CHAPTER SIX

Early Versionsin English


82/168


83/168

CHAPTER SIX

THE EARLIEST ENGLISH VERSIONS

The first, and for long the only version of theBible known in England was the Latin Vulgate, and con-sequently knowledge of the Scriptures made little or noheadway among the common folk. Yet as early as the closeof the seventh century a. d. some portions of the Biblebegan to appear in the vernacular. One of the earliest ofthose who contributed to this development was Caedmon,a cowherd who lived near the famed Abbey of Whitby, inYorkshire. Despite his humble birth and seeming lack ofculture, he longed to express himself in verse, and the storygoes that in a vision he heard a divine voice which badehim sing the beginning of created things. Thus inspired,he sang the story of creation, following this with songsrecounting many of the chief narratives of the Old andNew Testaments. While Caedmon's rendering was a freeparaphrase rather than a translation, it none the lessprepared the way for the Bible in the common tongue.

Then, one Aldhelm, a contemporary of Caedmon, iscredited with a translation of the Psalmsbut the most

79


84/168

80 OUR AGELESS BIBLEoutstanding translator in this early period was the Vener-able Bede, a monk who lived at the Northumbrian mon-astery of Jarrow-on-Tyne. Unlike Caedmon, Bede was afamous scholar and his Ecclesiastical History is still aclassic, while Bible commentaries, books on astronomy,rhetoric and other subjects, came from the pen of thisprolific writer. But to the student of the English Bible,his last work forms his most memorable accomplishment,for shortly before his passing he decided to leave theGospel of John in early English as a legacy to his students.It seemed for a time as though he would not be able tocomplete the final chapter, but eventu

Thomas Leishman-- Our Ageless Bible

Documents

Transcript of Thomas Leishman-- Our Ageless Bible