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New English [1970], THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE (OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS; CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE) [word count] [B16000]. To look up a word in a dictionary, select the word with your mouse and press 'd' on your keyboard.
Title page
Title page
Title page
Title page
PREFACE TO THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE In May 1946 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland received an overture from the Presbytery of Stirling and Dunblane, where it had been initiated by the Reverend G. S. Hendry, recommending that a translation of the Bible be made in the language of the present day, inasmuch as the language of the Authorized Version, already archaic when it was made, had now become even more definitely archaic and less generally understood. The General Assembly resolved to make an approach to other Churches, and, as a result, delegates of the Church of England, the Church of Scotland, and the Methodist, Baptist, and Congregational Churches met in conference in October. They recommended that the work should be undertaken; that a completely new translation should be made, rather than a revision, such as had earlier been contemplated by the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge; and that the translators should be free to employ a contemporary idiom rather than reproduce the traditional ‘biblical’ English. In January 1947 a second conference, held like the first in the Central Hall, Westminster, included representatives of the University Presses. At the request of this conference, the Churches named above appointed representatives to form the Joint Committee on the New Translation of the Bible. This Committee met for the first time in July of the same year. By January 1948, when its third meeting was held, invitations to be represented had been sent to the Presbyterian Church of England, the Society of Friends, the Churches in Wales, the Churches in Ireland, the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the National Bible Society of Scotland: these invitations were accepted. At a much later stage the hierarchies of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Scotland accepted an invitation to appoint representatives, and these attended as observers. The Joint Committee provided for the actual work of translation from the original tongues by appointing three panels, to deal, respectively, with the Old Testament, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament. Their members were scholars drawn from various British universities, whom the Committee believed to be representative of competent biblical scholarship at the present time. Apprehending, however, that sound scholarship does not necessarily carry with it a delicate sense of English style, the Committee appointed a fourth panel, of trusted literary advisers, to whom all the work of the translating panels was to be submitted for scrutiny. It should be said that denominational considerations played no part in the appointment of the panels. The Joint Committee issued general directions to the panels, in pursuance of the aims which the enterprise had in view. The translating panels adopted the following procedure. An individual was invited to submit a draft translation of a particular book, or group of books. Normally he would be a member of the panel concerned. Very occasionally a draft translation was invited from a scholar outside the panel, who was known to have worked specially on the book in question. The draft was circulated in typescript to members of the panel for their consideration. They then met together and discussed the draft round a table, verse by verse, sentence by sentence. Each member brought his view about the meaning of the original to the judgement of his fellows, and discussion went on until they reached a common mind. There are passages where, in the present state of our knowledge, no one could say with certainty which of two (or even more) possible meanings is intended. In such cases, after careful discussion, alternative meanings have been recorded in footnotes, but only where they seemed of sufficient importance. There is probably no member of a panel who has not found himself obliged to give up, perhaps with lingering regret, a cherished view about the meaning of this or that difficult passage, but in the end the panel accepted corporate responsibility for the interpretation set forth in the translation adopted. The resultant draft was now remitted to the panel of literary advisers. They scrutinized it, once again, verse by verse, sentence by sentence, and took pains to secure, as best they could, the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the Bible, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, law, rhetoric or poetry. The translation thus amended was returned to the translating panel, who examined it to make sure that the meaning intended had not been in any way misunderstood. Passages of peculiar difficulty might on occasion pass repeatedly between the panels. The final form of the version was reached by agreement between the translators concerned and the literary advisers. It was then ready for submission to the Joint Committee. Since January 1948 the Joint Committee has met regularly twice a year in the Jerusalem Chamber, Westminster Abbey, with four exceptions during 1954–5 when the Langham Room in the precincts of the Abbey was kindly made available. At these meetings the Committee has received reports on the progress of the work from the Conveners of the four panels, and its members have had in their hands typescripts of the books so far translated and revised. They have made such comments and given such advice or decisions as they judged to be necessary, and from time to time they have met members of the panels in conference. Of the original members of the panels most have happily been able to stay with the work all through, though some have been lost, through death or otherwise, and their places have been filled by fresh appointments. The Committee has warmly appreciated the courteous hospitality of the Dean of Westminster and of the Trustees of the Central Hall. We owe a great debt to the support and the experienced counsel of the University Presses of Oxford and Cambridge. We recognize gratefully the service rendered to the enterprise by the Reverend Dr G. S. Hendry and the Reverend Professor J. K. S. Reid, who have successively held the office of Secretary to the Committee. To those who have borne special responsibility, as Chairmen of the Joint Committee, we owe more than could readily be told. Dr J. W. Hunkin, Bishop of Truro, our first Chairman, brought to the work an exuberant vigour and initiative without which the formidable project might hardly have got off the ground at all. On his lamented death in 1950 he was succeeded by Dr A. T. P. Williams, then Bishop of Durham and subsequently Bishop of Winchester, who for eighteen years guided our enterprise with judicious wisdom, tact, and benign firmness, but who to our sorrow died when the end of the task was in sight. To both of these we would put on record the gratitude of the Committee and of all engaged in the enterprise. If we embarked on mentioning the names of those who have served on
the various committees and panels, the list would be a long one; and if
we mentioned some and not others, the selection would be an invidious
one. There are, nevertheless, three names the omission of which would be
utterly wrong. As Vice-Chairman and Director, Dr C. H. Dodd has from
start to finish given outstanding leadership and guidance to the project,
bringing to the work scholarship, sensitivity, and an ever watchful eye.
Professor Sir Godfrey Driver, Joint Director since 1965, has also brought
to the work a wealth of knowledge and wisdom; to his enthusiasm, tenacity
of purpose, and unflagging devotion the whole enterprise is greatly
indebted. Professor W. D. McHardy, Deputy Director since 1968, has
made an invaluable contribution particularly, but by no means exclusively,
in the sphere of the Apocrypha. It is right that the names of these three
scholars should always be associated with The New English Bible. Our
debt to them is incalculably great.
DONALD EBOR:
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION This translation of the New Testament was undertaken with the object of providing English readers, whether familiar with the Bible or not, with a faithful rendering of the best available Greek text into the current speech of our own time, and a rendering which should harvest the gains of recent biblical scholarship. It is now some three centuries and a half since King James's men put out
what we have come to know as the Authorized Version. Two hundred and
seventy years later the New Testament was revised. The Revised Version of
the New Testament, which appeared in 1881, marked a new departure
especially in that it abandoned the so-called Received Text, which had
reigned ever since printed editions of the New Testament began, but which
the advance of textual criticism had antiquated. The Revisers no longer
followed (as their predecessors had done) the text of the majority of manuscripts,
which, being for the most part of late date, had been exposed not
only to the accidental corruptions of long-continued copying, but also in part
to deliberate correction and ‘improvement’. Instead, they followed a very
small group of manuscripts, the earliest, and in their judgement the best,
of those which had survived. During the years which have passed since their
time, textual criticism has not stood still. Manuscripts have been discovered
of substantially earlier date than any which the Revisers knew. Other important
sources of evidence have been either freshly discovered or made more
fully available. Meanwhile the methods of textual criticism have themselves
been refined and estimates of the value of particular manuscripts have
sometimes been reconsidered. The problem of restoring a form of text as near
as possible to the vanished autographs now appears less simple than it did to
our predecessors. There is not at the present time any critical text which
would command the same degree of general acceptance as the Revisers' text
did in its day. Nor has the time come, in the judgement of most scholars, to
construct such a text, since new material constantly comes to light, and the
debate continues. The present translators therefore could do no other than
consider variant readings on their merits, and, having weighed the evidence
for themselves, select for translation in each passage the reading which to
the best of their judgement seemed most likely to represent what the author
wrote. Where other readings seemed to deserve serious consideration they
have been recorded in footnotes. In assessing the evidence, the translators
have taken into account
three sources of evidence are collectively referred to as ‘witnesses’. A large
number of variants, however, are such as could make no appreciable difference
to the meaning so far as it could be represented in translation, and these have
been passed over in silence. The translators are well aware that their judgement
is at best provisional, but they believe the text they have followed to be
an improvement on that underlying the earlier translations. This text can now
be read in The Greek New Testament, edited by R. V. G. Tasker (Oxford and
Cambridge University Presses, 1964).
So much for the text. The next step was the effort to understand the
original as accurately as possible, as a preliminary to turning it into English.
The Revisers of 1881 believed that a better knowledge of the Greek language
made it possible to correct a number of mistranslations in the older version,
though in doing so they were somewhat limited by the instruction ‘to
introduce as few alterations as possible...consistently with faithfulness’.
Since their time the study of the Greek language has no more stood still than
has textual criticism. In particular, our knowledge of the kind of Greek used
by most of the New Testament writers has been greatly enriched since 1881
by the discovery of many thousands of papyrus documents in popular or
non-literary Greek of about the same period as the New Testament. It would
be wrong to suggest that they lead to any far-reaching change in our understanding
of the Greek of the New Testament period, but they have often
made possible a better appreciation of the finer shades of idiom, which sometimes
clarifies the meaning of passages in the New Testament. Its language
is indeed in many respects more flexible and easy-going than the Revisers
were ready to allow, and invites the translator to use a larger freedom.
Our task, however, differed in an important respect from that of the
Revisers of 1881. They were instructed not only to introduce as few alterations
as possible, but also ‘to limit, as far as possible, the expression of such
alterations to the language of the Authorised and earlier English Versions’.
The present translators were subject to no such limitation. In accordance
with the original decision of the Joint Committee they were to make the
attempt to use consistently the idiom of contemporary English to convey the
meaning of the Greek.
The older translators, on the whole, considered that fidelity to the original
demanded that they should reproduce, as far as possible, characteristic
features of the language in which it was written, such as the syntactical order
of words, the structure and division of sentences, and even such irregularities
of grammar as were indeed natural enough to authors writing in the easy
idiom of popular Hellenistic Greek, but less natural when turned into
English. The present translators were enjoined to replace Greek constructions
and idioms by those of contemporary English.
This meant a different theory and practice of translation, and one which
laid a heavier burden on the translators. Fidelity in translation was not to
mean keeping the general framework of the original intact while replacing
Greek words by English words more or less equivalent. A word, indeed, in
one language is seldom the exact equivalent of a word in a different language.
Each word is the centre of a whole cluster of meanings and associations, and
in different languages these clusters overlap but do not often coincide.
The place of a word in the clause or sentence, or even in a larger unit of
thought, will determine what aspect of its total meaning is in the foreground.
The translator can hardly hope to convey in another language every shade of
meaning that attaches to the word in the original, but if he is free to exploit
a wide range of English words covering a similar area of meaning and association
he may hope to carry over the meaning of the sentence as a whole. Thus
we have not felt obliged (as did the Revisers of 1881) to make an effort to
render the same Greek word everywhere by the same English word. We have
in this respect returned to the wholesome practice of King James's men, who
(as they expressly state in their preface) recognized no such obligation.
We have conceived our task to be that of understanding the original as
precisely as we could (using all available aids), and then saying again in our
own native idiom what we believed the author to be saying in his. We have
found that in practice this frequently compelled us to make decisions where
the older method of translation allowed a comfortable ambiguity. In such
places we have been aware that we take a risk, but we have thought it our
duty to take the risk rather than remain on the fence.
In doing our work, we have constantly striven to follow our instructions
and render the Greek, as we understood it, into the English of the present day,
that is, into the natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary
speech. We have sought to avoid archaism, jargon, and all that is either
stilted or slipshod.
It should be said that our intention has been to offer a translation in the
strict sense, and not a paraphrase, and we have not wished to encroach on the
field of the commentator. But if the best commentary is a good translation,
it is also true that every intelligent translation is in a sense a paraphrase.
The line between translation and paraphrase is a fine one. But we have had
recourse to deliberate paraphrase with great caution, and only in a few
passages where without it we could see no way to attain our aim of making the
meaning as clear as it could be made. Taken as a whole, our version claims
to be a translation, free, it may be, rather than literal, but a faithful translation
nevertheless, so far as we could compass it.
For this edition, the translation of the New Testament has been given a
careful revision, in which account has been taken of numerous criticisms and
suggestions which have come in from various quarters. It is hoped that the
modifications introduced, mostly in minor details and seldom reflecting any
substantial change of view about the meaning of a passage, will be found to be
in the direction of improvement.
In the course of revision, consideration has been given to passages from
the Old Testament quoted in the New. These have now been harmonized
with the present version of the Old Testament, where this seemed desirable,
and practicable. But the quotations are in Greek, and the Greek is by no
means always an exact equivalent of the Hebrew. Where it is not, we have
deemed it our duty to render the Greek as it lay before us, and not to attempt
to reproduce the underlying Hebrew. On this point there has been consultation
between representatives of the Old and the New Testament panels.
The translators are as conscious as anyone can be of the limitations and
imperfections of their work. No one who has not tried it can know how
impossible an art translation is. Only those who have meditated long upon
the Greek original are aware of the richness and subtlety of meaning that may
lie even within the most apparently simple sentence, or know the despair
that attends all efforts to bring it out through the medium of a different
language. Yet we may hope that we have been able to convey to our readers
something at least of what the New Testament has said to us during these
years of work, and trust that under the providence of Almighty God this
translation may open the truth of the Scriptures to many who have been
hindered in their approach to it by barriers of language.
C.H.D.
MARGINAL NUMBERS
The conventional verse divisions in the New Testament date only
from 1551 and have no basis in the manuscripts. Any system of
division into numbered verses is foreign to the spirit of this
translation, which is intended to convey the meaning in continuous
natural English rather than to correspond sentence by sentence
with the Greek.
For purposes of reference, and of comparison with other translations,
verse numbers are placed in the margin opposite the line
in which the first word belonging to the verse in question appears.
Sometimes, however, successive verses are combined in a
continuous English sentence, so that the precise point where a
new verse begins cannot be fixed; occasionally in the interests of
clarity the order of successive verses is reversed (e.g. at John 4.7,8).
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