The Bible, Re-Revised Version

Such is the prestige of the King James Bible that any later translations seem as absurd and outrageous as rewriting Shakespeare. Worse, in fact, for Shakespeare is mere literature, and to many millions of Protestant Americans the Bible is the Word of God.

This week a group of U.S. scholars, whose learning excludes them from suspicion of counterfeiting Revelation, brought out a Revised Standard Version of the New Testament.* Its appearance was timely, the translators felt, for "men need the Word of God in our time and hereafter as never before."

If the men of today failed to heed divine guidance, they could no longer plead textual obscurity.

The new translation, sponsored by 40 denominations, embodied eight years of work by nine revisers, headed by Dean Luther A. Weigle of Yale Divinity School. Translators compared Greek texts discovered since the last revision (1901), used a new understanding of Biblical Greek gleaned from papyri dug up in Egypt in the last 50 years.

The new version would please those who want accurate scholarship, phrased so that it would read well aloud. It would disappoint those who expected debate. Said a collaborator: "Out of the thousands of variant readings in the manuscripts, none has turned up thus far that requires a revision of Christian doctrine."

Simplicity v. Glory. This was not the first major effort of U.S. Protestants to meet present-day deficiencies of the King James version. The American Standard (1901), which sold by the million, profited from three centuries of Biblical scholarship and discovery of new texts which followed the King James version (1611), which was itself a revision of elder versions, not a new translation. But its English was awkward--its translators mauled the English language by following the Greek literally, like a dull schoolboy rendering Homer.

The new edition has sought the simplicity and clarity of the King James version without its often obscure Elizabethan quaintness. Gone are "thee" and "thou" except where God is addressed. Gone are such phrases as "is come," "would fain," such words as "divers" and "privily."

Comparative samples (Mark 10:14) m all three versions:

P: King James: "But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, 'Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.' "

P: American Standard: "But when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, forbid them not; for to such belongeth the kingdom of God."

P: Revised Standard: "But when Jesus saw it he was indignant, and said to them, 'Let the children come to me, do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of God.'"

"We have lost something of beauty," admits Collaborator Walter Russel Bowie of Union Theological Seminary. He cites the King James's "There were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field," which now becomes "In that region there were shepherds out in the fields," and sighs: "It is as though for a moment a glory seems to fade."

*Thomas Nelson & Sons; $2. A Revised Old Testament is scheduled for 1950.

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