Translations of the Bible
By John Fox
The recent action of a Roman Catholic priest, at Irvington, N. Y., seems likely to lead to results quite beyond his calculation. He will have served both his own church and Protestantism, if what he has written to Miss Gould awakens Christians of every name to reconsider the relative place and value of the English versions of the Bible. Still more is it to be desired that the true position of Romanism and Protestantism with reference to the Bible in all languages should be clearly understood. There is a true sense in which it may be said that the Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants. Would to God it were true of Roman Catholics in equal measure. But in spite of Father Early’s easy assurances, historical fact establishes the negative. It is quite true that individuals, and sometimes even high ecclesiastics, have sought a better way than that which prevails in the Roman Church ordinarily, and especially since the Council of Trent. The prohibitions and restrictions with which that council hedged up Bible reading were practically prohibitive of any large use of it by the common people. Even scholars were forbidden by its decrees to read versions of the Old Testament made by “heretics,” unless they obtained permission of the bishop, and no scholar was allowed to read such versions of the New Testament under any circumstances. This was the culmination of a succession of precedent deliverances, the sum total effect of which was to make the Bible very largely an unknown book to the mass of the people. For instance, as early as 1080 the king of Bohemia asked Pope Hildebrand if he might have the offices and prayers of the church performed in Slavonian, which was then the common language of the north of Europe. The pontiff replied indignantly refusing, on the ground that it was the will of God that his Word should be hidden lest it be despised if read by every one. In 1220 the Council of Toulouse, held under the presidency of Romanus, cardinal and pope’s legate, forbade the laity even to possess any of the books of the Old or New Testaments, except perhaps the Psalter, and having any of these translated into the vulgar tongue was strictly forbidden. It is noteworthy that this is the council that first established the Inquisition, whose horrid cruelties, continuing for centuries, deluged Europe with blood, and left a scar on the face of the world, which time has not yet obliterated. This hideous institution aimed inter alia at the suppression of Bible reading on any large scale in the vernacular language. The reason for all this is plain. Free Bible reading means private judgment. This Rome denies always. It is all very well to say, as Roman apologists are fond of doing, that they simply desired to keep the Bible in the custody of the church, and secure correct translations under proper ecclesiastical guarantees. This is doubtless an admirable ideal, but has it been sincerely followed by the authorities of the Roman Catholic12Church? The whole of history refutes so monstrous and absurd a claim. Our English Version is a case in point. Father Early avers—and doubtless believes—that the Protestants had no Bible before the reign of Henry the VIII. Why had they none? Whose fault was it that they had none? It might be said that there were not many Protestants to have any Bible, but there were multitudes of people in the Roman Church groaning under the intolerable bondage of a corrupt priesthood, who earnestly desired to read the Bible for themselves. How much aid were they given by pope or prelate? Apparently Father Early has never heard of John Wycliffe, one of the greatest of the schoolmen, a master of Baliol College, who has had no superior since in his intellectual acumen, his heroic courage, and the extent of his influence. The Protestants—that is, the Lollards of his day—had his translation of the Bible more than a century before Henry the VIII. It could not be printed, and was not until long after his death, by reason of the same intolerant spirit which modern apologists for Rome exhibit, even while they deny that it ever existed. He succeeded, however, in giving his translation a considerable circulation in manuscript, and we need not rehearse here how his body was dug up and burned, and his ashes cast into the Swift, a neighboring brook. “And thus,” as quaint Thomas Fuller wrote, “this brook hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas; they into the main ocean. And thus the ashes of Wycliffe are the emblems of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over.” Then came William Tyndale, a century and more later, who took up the noble task that Wycliffe had begun, and laid the foundation of our English Bible. Is it necessary to tell over again the heroic story of his struggles and his sufferings, of whom the world was not worthy,—how his Bibles were burned, and he was hounded through the earth, and at last suffered at the hands of the Roman Catholic authorities at the stake, for the offense of putting the Bible into a language that the people could understand? These are facts, so well known that it ought to be unnecessary to restate them. One might as well deny that the American colonies revolted from Great Britain in 1776, as deny the dreadful truth that pope and council and Inquisition have persecuted to the death men and women for daring to translate or to read God’s holy Word. Nevertheless, it ought not to be forgotten that there has been a better side to Roman Catholic practise. The Douay, or Rheims, Version, illustrates this. It was made under the auspices of the Roman Catholic College at Douay, and at Rheims, under the leadership of Cardinal Allen, an English scholar, for the avowed purpose of supplanting the heretical versions, which it bitterly denounces in the preface. The publication of such a version under papal authority, may, therefore, fairly be quoted as an evidence of the occasional acceptance by Rome of Protestant practise different from her own. There is, however, one sentence in the preface to the Douay Version which betrays the animus with which the work was undertaken: “Perhaps indeed it would have been more desirable that the Scriptures had never been translated into barbarous tongues. Nevertheless, at the present day when either from heresy or other causes, the curiosity of men—even of those who are not bad—is so great, and there is often also special need of the Scripture in order to refute our opponents—that it is better there should be a faithful and Catholic translation than that men should use a corrupt version to their peril or destruction.” Here we have the essence of the Roman Catholic position, stated by its most intellectual exponents. It may be summed up thus: Never translate the Scriptures into the “barbarous tongues,” unless you are driven by your Protestant adversaries to do so. If to this were added the further rubric, Never allow even your own translation more than a very limited circulation, the case would be fairly stated. In proof of the justice of the latter assertion, we may cite the testimony of the editor of the Tablet,—a Roman Catholic periodical,—who mournfully confessed, in a somewhat recent issue, that whereas the American Bible Society had issued the year before one million five hundred thousand copies of the Scriptures, careful investigation had satisfied his mind that the Catholic Church in America had not bought in a year twenty-five thousand copies of their own Bible. If they have bought so many, it is probably in excess of the average for the last thousand years. The meager circulation of the Scriptures in Roman Catholic countries is undoubtedly due to the general attitude which has been taken by the ecclesiastical authorities. Our King James Version—whether in its original form, as published in 1611, or in what may fairly be called its Revised form, as now published both in England and America—is a monument to the heroic patience of the Protestant saints, who from Tyndale’s day onward, pushed forward the perfecting of an adequate translation. Protestants indeed had no publicly recognized version before the time of Henry VIII, and that monarch himself, whom Romish apologists now sneer at, at first forbade the circulation of Tyndale’s Version. But after Tyndale came Coverdale, with his Bible, 1538-1553, and then Matthew’s, which is to be believed to have been the work of John Rogers (also burned to death at Smithfield in 1537), and then Taverner’s in 1539, and then the “great Bible” also in 1539, and Whittingham’s in 1557, and then the wonderful Genevan Version in 1560, and the Bishop’s Bible in 1568—a glorious linguistic pedigree for the great classic masterpiece of 1611. The breadth of scholarship, the faithfulness to the letter and spirit of the inspired originals, the masterful comprehension of the labors of preceding translators, have extorted reluctant homage, even from our Catholic opponents, in favor of the King James Version—a veritable king it is among books and among translations. It is worthy of special mention at this time that the Catholic, or Douay, Version, exercises recognizable influence upon the King James Version. An Irish scholar, Dr. Carlton, of Dublin, has recently drawn out in considerable detail the influence of the Rheims, or Douay, Version, on our English Version. The revisers of 1881 in their preface refer to the evident traces of the influence of the Catholic Version on King James. This was as it ought to have been. It is fully congruous with the spirit of Protestantism, and, alas, as clearly opposite to the spirit which usually dominates the Catholic Church. The Douay scholars unfortunately made their translation from the Latin Vulgate. A translation of a translation can never compete with one from the original. But they were scholars, conversant with the Greek of the New Testament, at least. They found it impossible to shake off the defects of the Vulgate altogether, and the flavor of Roman Catholic doctrine is unmistakable in their work. Within the limits of such an article, it is impossible to go more into detail. The naive confession quoted above from the preface of the Douay Version, is often sadly illustrated in the experience of our modern Bible societies. Rome makes no vernacular translations ordinarily except when she is forced to do so by an aggressive evangelizing Protestantism; then she does. This is true in Italy, where after papal denunciation leveled at Bible societies, the papacy itself has come to Protestant ground in so far that they have organized a Bible Society—a society that is of St. Jerome, that has made a fairly good New Testament vernacular version in Italian, and circulated it at cheap prices in Italy. “Shades of the Inquisition,” avenge the outrage! In Brazil similar things have been attempted in Portuguese, and in France also some time ago. The preface to the Italian translation refers to Protestants as our “separated brethren.” God be praised for such a sign of the return of some Roman Catholics to the ancient practise of giving the Bible to all that be of the household of faith. May our “separated brethren” of the Church of Rome be led to give up Bible burning as they have been compelled to give up the burning of Bible translators. Meanwhile let Protestants put into our hands, who are charged in the Bible Society with this work, on behalf of all the churches, a larger support to enable us to give the Book to the people of every tribe and tongue.—John Fox, D. D., Secretary of the American Bible Society, in the New York Observer.