The first edition of the new revision bore the date of 1611. The printing of the Bishops' Bible was soon stopped, but the Genevan Bible con tinued to be used until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when King James' version gained general acceptance, and has so continued to be the Bible of the more than a hundred mil lions of English-speaking people. The beauty of its style has drawn praises from men of most diverse tastes. NIr. Huxley says: "It is writ ten in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of mere literary form." Dr. F. William Faber says: "It lives on the ear like a music that can never be forgotten, like the sound of church-bells, which the convert hard ly knows how he can forego. Its felicities often seem to be almost things rather than mere words. It is part of the national mind and the anchor of national seriousness. The memory of the dead passes into it. The potent traditions of child hood are stereotyped in its verses. The power of all the griefs and trials of a man is hidden beneath its words. It is the representative of his best moments; and all that there has been about him of soft, and gentle, and pure, and penitent, and good speaks to him for ever out of his English Bible." Rev. Dr. Krauth, one of the Revisers, writes: "The Bible of t6t1 encountered prejudices and overcame them: it had rivals great in just claims and strong in possession, and it displaced them; It moved slowly that it might move surely ; the Church of England lost many of her children, but they all took their mother's Bible with them, and, taking that, they were not wholly lost to her. It more and more melted indifference into cordial admiration, secured the enthusiastic approval of the cautious scholar, and won the artless love of the people. It has kindled into fervent praise men who were cold on every other theme. It glorified the tongue of the worshiper in glorifying God. and by the inspiration indwelling in it, and the inspiration it has imparted, has created English literature." Rev. NIr. Walden beautifully says: "The Eng lish Bible, in its present form two hundred and sixty years old in this year of grace, given to the public whet: Shakespeare, and Bacon, and Ra leigh, and Ben Jonson, and Drayton, and Beau mont, and Fletcher were living to read and ad mire, the richest formation of that great and plas tic era of our language, the 'bright consummate flower' of saintly labor and scholarly genius, the wonder of literature, coming down with the works of Shakespeare, and, like them, preserving to us the wealth and force of the Saxon tongue—our mother English in its simplicity and perfect beauty—the picturesque structure of an age now long gone by, already gray with antiquity, in whose familiar forms of speech the voices of our fore fathers and kindred linger, and the inspiration of the Almighty seems to speak as with the majesty of an original utterance,—the English Bible has impressed itself with an almost overpowering au thority upon the Christian heart of to-day, and is looked upon, in many cases, as if it were the actual production of the ancient scribe, and its pages arc read and pondered over as if they con tained the ultimate and unalterable expression of Divine truth." It is hard to realize, without stopping to reflect, how long the King James' Version has been domi nant. Its revisers were at their work when Jamestown, which claims the honor of being the oldest English settlement in America, was founded. The completed work was published in full nearly ten years before the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth Rock. in Massachusetts. Nearly the whole of American history has been written while the English Bible has remained unchanged. Shakespeare, Milton. Bacon. Bun•an. Newton. have added imperishable treasures to English literature. Two centuries and a half of scholar ship have been concentrated upon every phase of the divine Word. The time for a revised version of the Scriptures, therefore, came in the fullness of time.
(11) The Revised Version. In the preface to the Revised Version the translators say: The revision of the Authorized Version was undertaken in consequence of a resolution passed by both houses of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury, as has been fully explained in the Preface to the Revised Version of the New Testament, which was first published in May, iSSi. When the two companies were appointed
for carrying out this work, the following general principles, among others, were laid down by the revision committee of convocation for their guid ance: •(i) To introduce as few alterations as possible into the text of the Authorized Version con sistently with faithfulness.' '(2) To limit, as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language of the Author ized and earlier English versions.' '(.I) That the text to be adopted be that for which the evidence is decidedly preponderating; and that when the text so adopted differs from that from which the Authorized Version was made, the alteration be indicated in the margin.' '(7) To revise the headings of chapters and pages, paragraphs, italics, and punctuation.' In order to show the manner in which the Old Testament company have endeavored to carry out their instructions. it will be convenient to treat the subjects mentioned in the foregoing rules in a somewhat different order.
It will be observed that in Rule 4 the word 'Text' is used in a different sense from that in Rule i, and in the case of the Old Testament de notes the llebrew or Aramaic original of the sev eral books. In this respect the task of the re visers has been much simpler than that which the New Testament company had before them. The Received, or, as it is commonly called, the Massorctic Text of the Old Testament Scriptures has come down to us in manuscripts which are of no very great antiquity, and which all be long to the same family or recension. That other recensions were at one time in existence is prob able from the variations in the Ancient Versions, the oldest of which, namely the Greek or Septua• gint, was made, at least in part, some two cen turies before the Christian era. But as the state of knowledge on the subject is not at present such as to justify any attempt at an entire reconstruc tion of the text on the authority of the Versions, the revisers have thought it most prudent to adopt the Massoretic Text as the basis of their work, and to depart from it, as the Authorized Translators had done, only in exceptional With regard to the variations in the Massoretic Text itself, the revisers have endeavored to trans late what appeared to them to he the best reading in the text, and where the alternative reading seemed sufficiently probable or important they have placed it in the margin. In sonic few in stances of extreme difficulty a reading has been adopted on the authority of the Ancient Versions, and the departure from the Massoretic Text re corded in the margin. In other cases, where the versions appeared to supply a very probable though not so necessary a correction of the text, the text has been left and the variation indi cated in the margin only.
In endeavoring to carry out as fully as possible the spirit of Rules t and 2, the revisers have borne in mind that it was their duty not to make a new translation, limit to revise one already ex isting, which for more than two centuries and a half had held the position of an English classic. They have therefore departed from it only in cases where they disagreed with the translators of 1611 as to the meaning or construction of a word or sentence ; or where it was necessary for the sake of uniformity to render such parallel pas. sages as were identical in Hebrew by the same English words, so that an English reader might know at once by comparison that a difference in the translation corresponded to a difference in the original; or where the language of the Author ized Version was liable to be misunderstood by reason of its being archaic or obscure ; or finally, where the rendering of an earlier English version seemed preferable, or where by an apparently slight change it was possible to bring out more fully the meaning of a passage of which the trans lation was already substantially accurate.
The New Testament revision was completed in 188o, just 50o years after the first English trans lation of the whole Bible by \Vycliffe. By 1887 the whole Bible was revised. About one hun dred of the ablest scholars of all denominations on both continents assisted in the laborious work of translation.