p. 11 | The Inspired Word

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 28, 1907

The Inspired Word

THE following article by the Rev. W. C. Sherman on the inspiration of the Scriptures, appeared in the Sacramento (Cal.) Star of December 5, and we publish it in the belief that it will be of interest to the generality of our readers:—

EDITOR STAR: I have received a letter asking me to give, through the columns of your paper, a few facts with reference to 2 Tim. 3:16, and the Revised Version’s translation thereof. This I do, and leave the readers to form their own conclusions.

The only true and justified translation is: “All or every scripture is given by inspiration of God (literally, God breathed), and is profitable for doctrine,” etc. One scholar has said: “This passage stands like an angel with a drawn sword in the path of every mad prophet who would seek to deny the plenary inspiration, infallibility, and supreme authority of God’s word, in order to make room for his ‘criticism.’”

This great text has been translated by the revisers: “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable,” etc. The two are utterly inconsistent and irreconcilable. The revision is wrong. It was riddled by many bullets from the best scholars on earth when it appeared as an old perversion of the text long ago rejected, and the Geneva and King James versions of it were held to be the true renderings. Dr. S. P. Tregelles, that crowned scholar, the latchet of whose shoes few, if any, of our present-day scholars are worthy to unloose, says concerning the futile attempts to set aside the received rendering of this verse: “In the year 1839 I called it much misspent labor and false criticism, and so I advisedly call it still.” But the revisers themselves have condemned and repudiated their own translation. They have not been bold enough to follow it in other texts where the form and the construction are identical with those of 2 Tim. 3:16. Lawyers call this “confession and avoidance.” I can give at least eight cases of this kind, and, so far as I can recall, this is the only passage in which they have deliberately violated all laws of Greek grammar and syntax. The defense made at the time, that “it is difficult to tell whether the adjective ‘inspired’ belongs to the subject or the ‘predicate,’ that is, comes before the verb ‘is’ or after it,” is a weak one. The position of the adjective, and the construction, settle this. There is not a solitary instance in any classic author or in the New Testament, where two adjectives, as “inspired and profitable,” connected by a conjunction, as these are, and either both belonging to the subject or both belonging to the predicate, are violently sundered, and the conjunction manipulated into a senseless “also.” So says a great American scholar, and so declared the greatest English scholar.

Again: native-born Greeks who understood their own tongue and how to translate it are against the revisers. Clement, of Alexandria, says: “The apostle calls the Scriptures inspired of God.” Origen, a critic: “Every scripture is theopneustic and is profitable.” Gregory of Nyassa: “Every scripture is, by Paul, said to be inspired of God.” Chrysostom: “Every scripture is, by the apostle, said to be inspired of God.” So also Theodoret, Basil, Cyril. As another has said: “When Greek fathers unite to translate their own language for us, modesty would require us to sit at their feet.” Again: many years ago Bishop Middleton challenged the production of a solitary instance, in the compass of the whole Greek language, where the division of the two adjectives standing and connected as these two in 2 Tim. 3:16, could be found and justified. Dr. John Pye Smith sought to do this and dismally failed, as Dr. S. P. Tregelles showed, and that challenge still stands unanswered. Yet in the face of this, our revisers do this very thing.

Again: the rendering is made in violation of the “rules” agreed upon by the committee of revision. The rule was “to make no new translation except where necessity required it.” Now, if the two translations of this 2 Tim. 3:16, as found in the margin and the text, are equivalent, then no “necessity” required a new translation. If they are not equivalent, then fidelity to the text demanded the new rendering, but the old should have no place in the margin. Yet they placed it there.

Bishops Moberly and Wordsworth and Archbishop Trench, of this committee, have expressly disclaimed any responsibility for the revisers’ rendering of 2 Tim. 3:16. The Bishop of St. Andrews openly condemned it, and so have others of the committee. Such a scholar as Dean Burgon called it “the most astonishing as well as calamitous literary blunder of the age,” and Dr. Scrivener, a prince among critics, said: “It is a blunder such as makes itself hopelessly condemned.” In the face of such facts, we may be pardoned for still believing that “every scripture is God-breathed and profitable.” “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of.” “Yea, let God be true,” etc. Isa. 2:22; Rom. 3:4.