A New Bible | AdventAI

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jun 11, 1896

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 22, No. 23.

A New Bible.

Much has been made by a prominent daily paper on the coast of a “New Bible Which Upsets Many Old Teachings.” The article thus begins:—

“For the first time in the history of the world the task of translating the books of the Holy Scriptures from the original Hebrew to modern English has been undertaken without fear, without prejudice, with no attempt either to strengthen the cause of religion or to serve the purposes of unbelief, and with no guiding light save the lamp of knowledge. It has been undertaken by forty of the most eminent scholars in the world, who have devoted their lives to the study of the history, the languages, and the manners of all the ancient peoples whose writings and monuments could throw light upon the Old and the New Testament.”

But the fact is (1) that these forty men each translate but one book, rarely more than one man to one book, and the whole to be supervised by one editor. At the best we have the authority for any one portion of the Scriptures of only two or at the most three men, while in the Revised Version we have the weight of authority of the united learning of the revisers.

2. What reason have we to believe that Prof. W. R. Harper, Prof. E. L. Curtis, Rabbi Montefiore, Prof. C. A. Briggs, Prof. Paul Haupt, and any of the others engaged in the work, should translate without prejudice, etc., any more than the able men who gave us the Revised Version, or many other learned men who have translated the word? Are not the translators of this “New Bible” subject to the common passions and prejudices of men?

3. As an instance of this wonderful light Professor Haupt’s rendering and notes of Eccl. 11:9 to 12:8 are given in which the first line of 12:1 is rendered, “Remember thy wife in the days of thy vigor.” By what authority the Hebrew word bara is rendered wife we are not told. It is everywhere translated, create, make, or in words kindred in meaning. By what authority is the word rendered Creator in Isa. 40:28 and 43:15, rendered wife in Eccl. 12:1. No version or commentator, Catholic, Protestant, or Jew, so far as we know, questions the Hebrew original bara.

4. In speaking of this passage our enthusiastic “New Bible” man says:—

“Had this line, however, been rightly translated [in our common versions], the utter absurdity and lack of meaning of the subsequent text would immediately have challenged the attention of the most casual reader.”

“It was in the notes of Professor Haupt’s translation that I found what it [the subsequent text] all meant.”

And what does the text mean, according to Professor Haupt?—Simply what it is said to mean by nearly all expositors who have written upon the subject. It is a series of beautiful and striking figures illustrating man’s decline and death.

5. Another piece of this wisdom is that the words translated “redeemer” and “saviour” in the Old Testament do not imply “a redemption and saving that is promised to man in the next world; to redeem means to free or to deliver, and to save means to liberate or to rescue.” And yet this is just what Christ does; he frees from sin, delivers from its power, liberates from sin’s captivity, and rescues from the hand of the enemy. What is meant by Hos. 13:14 if not ultimate redemption? Prejudice against the atonement we suppose has no place here!

The principal change we anticipate in the new translation will be a change of style to modern English, and a fanciful display of scholarship in printing and notes.