The New English Bible: Truth in Bureaucratese

THE NEW ENGLISH BIBLE: NEW TESTAMENT. A new English translation prepared and directed by representatives of the Baptist Union of Great Britain and Ireland, The Church of England, The Church of Scotland, The Congretional Union of England and Wales, The Council of Churches for Wales, The London Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends, The Methodist Church of Great Britain, The Presbyterian Church of England, The United Council of Christian Churches and Religious Communions in Ireland, The British and Foreign Bible Society, and The National Bible Society of Scotland. New York, 1961, Oxford University Press and Cambridge University Press. 447 pp. 4.95.

is how you should pray:

Our father in heaven,

Thy name be hallowed;

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

earth as in heaven.

us today our daily bread. [a]

give us the wrong we have done,

we have forgiven those who

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

is how you should pray:

Our father in heaven,

Thy name be hallowed;

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

earth as in heaven.

us today our daily bread. [a]

give us the wrong we have done,

we have forgiven those who

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

Our father in heaven,

Thy name be hallowed;

Thy kingdom come,

Thy will be done,

earth as in heaven.

us today our daily bread. [a]

give us the wrong we have done,

we have forgiven those who

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

us today our daily bread. [a]

give us the wrong we have done,

we have forgiven those who

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

give us the wrong we have done,

we have forgiven those who

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

we have forgiven those who

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

have wronged us.

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

And do not bring us to the test,

save us from the evil one."

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

[b]

Or: our bread for the morrow. Some witnesses add: For thine kingdom and the power and lory, for ever. Amen.

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

The Lord's Prayer from the English Bible.

ticism of the English Bible is as hoary as the Book itself. the year that the King ' (or Authorized) Version app, Dr. Hugh Broughton, an nt biblical scholar, wrote in anger to a harried court of

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

late Bible ... was sent to me sure: which bred in me a sad- that will grieve me while I it is so III done. Tell His that I would rather be rent ces with wild horses, than any translation by my consent be urged upon poor churches. e new edition crosseth me. it to be burnt.

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

New English Bible: New ent has bred in this reviewer sadness: much of it is very . All too often the transla crossed the fine limits of propriety; all too often have abandoned the rhythm he power of the Authorized for the jingle, the lifeless of bureaucracy, the quick and thoughtless uglyness of the contemporary idiom. I presume it will be accepted by the Protestant churches of this country; I hope it will be zealously neglected.

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,

The King James Version is, undeniably, one of the glories of the English language. Its prose, as Herbert Read has noted, exemplifies "all the characteristics of a true narrative style--correctness, economy and speed." Its rhythms are supple, pleasing and forceful--ranging from the near hexameters of Isaiah's cry, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning!" (Isa. xiv: 12) to the bold anapests of the song of Moses, "My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distill as the dew." (Deut. xxxii, 2). And then the publication of the Authorized Version came at a time when the English language itself was expanding at a truly violent rate.

OLD VERSION ARCHAIC

Since then--and particularly during the course of this century, the English vocabulary has again effervesced, and much of the beautiful language of the King James Version is archaic, some of it confusingly so. Similarly, the continuing discovery of earlier and more authentic manuscripts (the so-called "Received Text" of the Authorized Version was little more than a compromise reading of the best available source of the period) has exposed a number of textual inaccuracies in the KJV.

The latter of these inedequacies had perhaps become apparent as early as 1698, the year that Sir John Vanbrugh's The Provoked Wife first appeared:

Belinda: Ay, but you know we must return good for evil.

Lady Brute: That may be a mistake in the translation.

At any rate, by the middle of the last century both these shortcomings were quite painfully obvious--sufficiently so to prompt the Church of England to undertake (in 1870) a general revision of the scriptures. In company with the Church of Scotland and various dissenting sects (John Henry Newman was obliged to decline an offer to participate), the Church of England eventually produced the Revised Version of 1881. If the RV, as it was inevitably and almost immediately called, failed to arouse any considerable enthusiasm, this was in part the fault of the Church itself, which had given the Revisers a very limited authority. They were instructed to introduce "as few alterations as possible" into the text of the King James Version, limiting "as far as possible, the expression of such alterations to the language" of the early English bibles. Certain glaring mistranslations were tidied up, but the various obscure archaisms still remained sacrosanct.

Clearly, a further and more general revision was needed. And, since the Church itself was as yet unwilling to undertake the enterprise, many individual churchmen in the tradition of Erasmus did as best they could by themselves. In 1902, R. F. Weymouth brought out his The New Testament in Modern Speech; and in 1913 came James Moffatt's The New Testament: a New Translation. More recently Msgr. Ronald Knox--in 1945--and Dr. J. B. Phillips--in 1947--have published servicable and entirely adequate individual translations.

REVISED STANDARD VERSION

In this country, the collective action of the American Standard Bible Committee has produced the by now widely used Revised Standard Version of the New Testament, a competent and often exciting version. But, unlike the New English Bible (a project the English Protestant churches finally determined upon in 1946) the Revised Standard Version--is not a completely new translation. In essence, it is the revision of a revision; and, for all its merits, it is still enmeshed in a tangle of Authorized archaisms.

The NEB (a necessary abbreviation that the Times Literary Supplement finds "horrid" because it smacks of Lenin's New Economic Policy), for all its faults, certainly is not. The format and typography announce a complete break with the past. The text is set in prose paragraphs, with chapter and verse numbers, those arbitrary designations placed parenthetically in the margins. The type face, mirabile dictu, is both handsome and legible--a feat unmatched in bibles since the first edition of Johannes Guttenberg.

And as a translation, the NEB is both sound and helpful. The various mistranslations of the King James Version have been tidled up. "No more do you put new wine into old wine-skins; if you do, the skins burst, and then the wine runs out and the skins are spoilt," makes a good deal more sense than the traditional reading.

So also the NEB on the first chapter of St. John:

When all things began, the Word already was. The Word dwelt with God, and what God was, the Word was. The Word, then, was with God at the beginning, and through him all things came to be; no single thing was created without him. All that came to be was alive with his life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines on in the dark, and the darkness has never quenched it.

Aside from a poorly chosen verb in the last line, this is unquestionably an admirable translation. In translating many individual words and phrases, however, the churchmen have been swept up by a fury of innovation: the Greek phrase en archel, to take a single instance, is variously rendered as "at the beginning" (this is quite correct) and, this is translationese, as "When all things began." And the Authorized Version's literal transliteration of St. Paul's "Death is swallowed up in victory" has become "Death is swallowed up; victory is won!"

OLD-TIME GANGSTERS

I am told that the New English Biblemen wanted to change the accurate and acceptable "den of thieves" to "gangsters hideout" but were afraid the phrase lacked permanency; they settled instead for "robbers' cave." Such a re-reading is undoubtedly a conscious break with the past; it is also wanton destruction.

Despite its abuse, this conscious break with the past must stand as the NEB's most conspicuous excellence; it gives the new translation an undeniable modernity and immediacy; and this, of course, has been one of the chief aims of the churchmen who prepared it. In 1951, Dr. C. H. Dodd, General Director of the whole project, as well as convener of the panel of New Testament translators, promised that the New English Bible "is to be genuinely English in idiom, such as will not awaken a sense of strangeness or remoteness." In the same manner, the Introduction, published with the New Bible, announces that the language of the text is "the current speech of our own time":

In doing our work, we have constantly striven to . . . render the Greek, as we understood it, into the . . . natural vocabulary, constructions, and rhythms of contemporary speech. We have sought to avoid archalsms, jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod.

Furthermore, every sentence has been "scrutinised" by a group of literary advisers, who "took pains to secure the tone and level of language appropriate to the different kinds of writing to be found in the New Testament, whether narrative, familiar discourse, argument, rhetoric, or poetry."

Professor Dodd and his fellow translators have aimed at objects in an airy height; but despite the no doubt earnest efforts of those literary advisers, the language of the New English Bible: New Testament is all that the churchmen have sought to avoid.

BALANCED DESTROYED

The NEB's rendering the Lord's Prayer, which prefaces this review, is the most conspicuous example of the poetry of the new version. In the main, it parallels the Authorized translation--and in doing this, it seems at first reading successful. But the suppleness and delicate ballance of the King James lines has been brutally destroyed.

The last lines ("evil one," etc.) are painfully close to that brilliant parody of a modern translation of the Twenty-third Psalm by William Harlan Hale, currently the managing editor of Horizon:

The Almighty has taken me under the pastoral care; I won't be needy.

He encourages me to relax in unspoiled dairy country;

He steers me to out-of-the-way lakes.

He gives a life to my spirit.

He leads me into highways of good citizenship so that I may identify with him.

Yes, though I drive through low lying areas that adversely affect my chances of survival,

I don't worry for you are on my side;

Your guidance assures me with the feeling I can implement it. . . .

And, indeed, even apart from the slangy horrors of the final lines, this is not poetry at all, but a very abrupt, unmelodious and quite ugly species of prose. Perhaps this is the prayer best suited to the twentieth century, a prayer that harried man can blurt between mouthfuls of morning coffee.

MRS. MURPHY'S CHOWDER

So much for the New English Bible's poetry. Instances of "jargon, and all that is either stilted or slipshod" are even more numerous. Matthew's account of Pilate's altercation with the Jews is given overtones of "Mrs. Murphy's Chowder": "Why, what harm has he done?" Pilate asked; but they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!" The sayings of Jesus become jingles ("If your right eye leads you astray,