GENERAL PREFACE TO THE NEW TRANSLATION.
This work, in its present form, is not to be considered as intended to come into competition with the ordinary use of the commonly received English Version of the Holy Scriptures, but simply as a strictly "literal and idiomatic" rendering of the Original Hebrew and Greek Texts. For about twenty years—fully half his life-time—the Translator has had a desire to execute such a work, and has been engaged in Biblical pursuits tending to this end more or less exclusively; and now, at last, in the good providence of God, the desire has been accomplished. How far he has been able to carry out the just principles of Biblical Translation, founded on a solid and immoveable foundation, time alone will tell, and for this he confidently waits. As these principles are to some extent new, and adhered to with a severity never hitherto attempted, and as the Translator has perfect confidence in their accuracy and simplicity, he proceeds at once to state them distinctly and broadly, that not merely the "learned," but the "wayfaring man" need not err in appreciating their value.
There are two modes of translation which may be adopted in rendering into our own language the writings of an ancient author: the one is, to bring him before us in such a manner as that we may regard him as our own; the other, to transport ourselves, on the contrary, over to him, adopting his situation, modes of speaking, thinking, acting—peculiarities of age and race, air, gesture, voice, &c. Each of these plans has its advantages, but the latter is incomparably the better of the two, being suited—not for the ever varying modes of thinking and acting of the men of the fifth, or the tenth, or the fifteenth, or some other century, but—for all ages alike. All attempts to make Moses or Paul act, or speak, or reason, as if they were Englishmen of the nineteenth century, must inevitably tend to change the translator into a paraphrast or a commentator, characters which, however useful, stand altogether apart from that of him, who, with a work before him in one language, seeks only to transfer it into another.
In prosecuting the plan thus adopted, a literal translation was indispensable. No other kind of rendering could place the reader in the position contemplated, side by side with the writer; prepared to think as he does, to see as he sees, to reason, to feel, to weep, and to exult along with him. His very conception of time, even in the minor accidents of the grammatical past, present, future, are to become our own. If he speaks of an event as now passing, we are not, on the logical ground of its having in reality already transpired, to translate his present as if it were a past; or if, on the other hand, his imagination pictures the future as if even at this moment present, we are not translators but expounders, and that of a tame description, if we take the liberty to convert his time, and tense—the grammatical expression of his time—into our own. King James' translators were almost entirely unacquainted with the two distinctive peculiarities of the Hebrew mode of thinking and speaking, admitted by the most profound Hebrew scholars in theory, though,from undue timidity, never carried out in practice,viz.:—
I. That the Hebrews were in the habit of using the past tense to express the certainty of an action taking place, even though the action might not really be performed for some time. And
II. That the Hebrews, in referring to events which might be either past or future, were accustomed to act on the principle of transferring themselves mentally to the period and place of the events themselves, and were not content with coldly viewing them as those of a bygone or still coming time; hence the very frequent use of the present tense.
These two great principles of the Hebrew language are substantially to be found in the works of Lee, Gesenins, Ewald, &c.; but the present writer has carried them out in translation much beyond what any of these ever contemplated, on the simple ground that, if they are true, they ought to be gone through with. While they affect very considerably the outward form of the translation, it is a matter of thankfulness that they do not touch the truth of a single Scripture doctrine—not even one.
Every effort has been made to secure a comparative degree of uniformity in rendering the original words and phrases. Thus, for example, the Hebrew verb נתן, nathan, which is rendered by King James' translators in sixty-seven different ways (see in the subsequent page, entitled 'Lax Renderings,') has been restricted and reduced to ten, and so with many others. It is the Translator's ever-growing conviction, that even this smaller number may be reduced still further.
It has been no part of the Translator's plan to attempt to form a New Hebrew or Greek Text—he has therefore somewhat rigidly adhered to the received ones. Where he has differed, it is generally in reference to the punctuation and accentuation, the division of words and sentences, which, being merely traditional, are, of course, often imperfect. For an explanation and vindication of these differences, the reader is referred to the "Pocket Commentary," which is designed to supplement the present volume.
The Translator has often had occasion to regret the want of a marginal column to Insert the various renderings of passages where he has been unable to satisfy his own mind—he has, however, cast the chief of these into an appendix, under the title, "Additions and Corrections," and still more elaborately in the supplementary volume.
Edinburgh, 10th Sept. 1862.
