THE REVISED TESTAMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IX, Issue 433, 29 July 1881, Page 20

THE REVISED TESTAMENT.

(From the Tablet.') Thk Revised Anglican Version of the New Testament was published on Tuesday, and is being bought up with great eagerness in thia country, while three ship-loads of it are on their way to America. The daily papers have been full of criticisms, not uninteresting, and on the whole favourable, but sometimes, it seems to us, rather unreasonable, and based on a want of familiarity with the original text and its rhythm. But there is one feature of the new translation which has, not unnaturally, escaped their notice, and to this we desire to call attention. This is the decided approximation, in a multitude of places, to the rendering of the Catholic Vulgate. Here are a few of them. The famous mistranslation in I. Cor,, ii., 27, by which, in the authorised Anglican version, it was apparently intended to exclude Communion in one kind, is corrected, and now reads, '• Whoever shall eat the bread or drink the cup," instead of " and," as for- . merly. In the Angelic Salutation, St. Luke i., 28, the text still reads, ' Thou that art highly favoured," but the alternative reading, ■ '■ endued with grace," is given in the margin. In the hymn of the anjrels at the Nativity, the famous difference of readings is settled by the revisers in accordance with the Vulgate, for instead of " on earth peace, good will towards men," we have now, " on earth peace among men in whom he is well pleased," — the Greek original being given in the margin as " men of good pleasure" — which shows that the j revisers adopt as the true reading en anthropois eudokias, the original I oE -hominibus bonae voluntatis," instead of en, anthropois eudohia, on ! which the old authorised version, " good will towards men" is based. In the version of the Lord's Prayer contained in the 11th chapter of St. Luke, the new Revision almost exactly follows the Vulgate and the Rheims translation, differing thus extensively and materially from i the former Anglican version, while the new version of the prayer in St. Matthew omits, as the Catholic versions do, the doxology at the end. Many other instances might also be adduced, in which the translation is assimilated to that of Rheicos — the meaning, however, being often not materially affected — as for instance, " He that is mighty hath done to me great things (" fecit mihi magna gui potens est" j instead of "hath magnified me," and "hath visited and wrought , redemption for His people" (visitavit et fecit redemptionem populo suo") instead of " hath visited and redeemed His people." All which tends to show — as the revisers have not taken the Vulgate as a guide, but have, nevertheless, in so many instances reverted to its renderings and forms of expression — bow great is the value of St. Jerome's ! veision, and of the translations based upon it.