Chapter 17
English Bibles in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

At the turn of the century a quiet revolution went on in the field of lexicography. The secular papyri that the archaeologists were discovering in Egypt illuminated many a Greek NT word so that the dictionaries of the Greek NT had to be revised. Also, the discovery of vast bodies of Semitic literature, such as the Canaanite tablets at Ugarit, gave Hebrew scholars new understandings for the vocabulary of the OT.

Moreover, with the discovery of the papyri it was recognized that the NT was written in everyday speech. This meant that the Bible could (indeed, should) be published in modern vernaculars. It is then not irreverent to translate the Hebrew and Greek testaments into everyday English; the Bible was not designed to be a masterpiece of prose or poetry, but to communicate God’s message to man.

With the discovery of biblical papyri, such as Chester Beatty and Bodmer, it became even clearer than it had already been that the text on which the AV was based called for considerable improvement. So then, better lexicons and a sounder Hebrew and Greek text, combined with the recognition that the Bible should be translated into everyday speech, caused a shift in Bible translation. Let us now turn to some of these modern speech versions.

I. THE TWENTIETH CENTURY NEW TESTAMENT

One of the pioneer modern speech versions was The Twentieth Century New Testament. No one knew who had done the translating until some fifty years later when the names of some twenty men who worked on this project came to light. In 1933 the records of the secretary of this group of translators were deposited in the John Rylands Library in Manchester. Without this information no one would ever have known the names of these people who devoted approximately fourteen years of labor to produce this NT.¹

Evidently it grew out of a concern to make the Bible plain to young people. Some of the translators were ministers, others were lay people, but none of them were what one might call linguistic experts. Devotion to their task somehow made up in part for their lack of expertise. They did, however, consult experts at a number of points.

The translators worked at home and collaborated by mail. The committee was divided into five groups, each with an assigned portion of the NT to translate. Each person’s translation was circulated among the group members for examination. Each of the five groups elected one of its members to the revision committee that prepared the final draft. Changes could be made only by a two-thirds vote. Before printing, a committee went over the translation once more to check for English idiom.

This version was published in parts between 1898 and 1901, and after another revision, the final edition appeared in 1904 both in London and New York. The preface states that the purpose of the translation was “to enable Englishmen to read the most important part of the Bible in that form of their own language which they themselves use.”

There are some very vivid phrases in this version. Paul is accused of being a “public pest” (Acts 24:5); judgment is described as “the Bar of God” (Rom. 14:10); rudimentary teachings are described as “the very alphabet of the Divine Revelation” (Heb. 5:12). The rendering of “saints” by the phrase “Christ’s people” anticipates the New English Bible. Even alliteration occurs: “dulled by debauches or drunkenness” (Luke 21:34).²

What was novel about this NT was that the books were arranged in chronological order with brief introductions. I recall as a youth purchasing this NT at Eatons for twenty-five cents and being struck by the odd arrangement of the books.

Moody Press issued a reprint of this version in 1961 and restored the books to the traditional order, omitted the introduction to the books, and made numerous changes, presumably for the benefit of the American readers.

This English Twentieth Century New Testament was a pioneer in the movement to translate the Scriptures into current speech.³

II. WEYMOUTH’S NEW TESTAMENT

One of the scholars who was consulted from time to time by the translators of the Twentieth Century New Testament was Richard Weymouth (1822-1902), a distinguished classical scholar. He was a British Baptist layman who had published an edition of the Greek NT in 1862. His many years of teaching had impressed on his mind the need for giving people a Bible in current English, and when he retired he decided to translate his Greek NT into modern English.

He died before The New Testament in Modern Speech came off the press in 1903. In the preface he explains that he has no desire to supplant the standard English versions, nor to produce a version to be used for public reading in church. Rather he hoped to supplement other versions, by giving the sense of the Greek as accurately and naturally as he could in present-day English. Present-day English for Weymouth meant the avoidance of colloquialisms on the one hand, and “society” classical English on the other.⁴ As a scholar he naturally tried to be as precise as possible in transferring nuances of the Greek to the English. Extensive footnotes explain some of his renderings.

Several editions were published in the years following 1903. The first major overhaul was made in the fourth edition, published in 1924. The fifth and final edition was prepared by James Robertson of Aberdeen, and published in 1929. It was also published in the United States in 1943.

The familiar petition for forgiveness in the Lord’s Prayer reads, “Forgive us our shortcomings, as we also have forgiven them who have failed in their duty towards us.” Interestingly, the Twentieth Century translators gave the two denaria of the Good Samaritan as “four” shillings, but Weymouth reduced it to “two” shillings. (Monetary terms are notoriously difficult to translate because their buying power changes from time to time.) Instead of the AV’S, “In whom we have redemption by his blood,” (Eph. 1:7), Weymouth has, “It is in Him, and through the shedding of His blood, that we have deliverance.” Perhaps Weymouth failed to appreciate fully the Semitic background of many of the Greek words of the NT. This seems obvious in his rendering of eternal life by “the life of the ages.” In a later edition this was changed.

Several other attempts were made at the beginning of the century to translate the NT into modern English, in fact Ferrar Fenton published the entire Bible in modern English in 1903. All these versions, however, were eclipsed by the translation efforts of the Scotsman, James Moffatt.

III. THE MOFFATT VERSION

James Moffatt (1870-1944) was a brilliant Scottish scholar who was born and educated in Glasgow. During the fifteen years of his parish ministry he continued his scholarly pursuits and in 1901 published The Historical New Testament, for which St. Andrews

James Moffatt, the Scottish educator who taught in Glasgow and at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is known for his translation of the Moffatt Bible and his work on the RSV

University awarded him a Doctor of Divinity degree. He held professorships at Oxford, Glasgow, and from 1927 to 1939, at Union Theological Seminary, New York.

While at Oxford, in 1913, he published his first edition of The New Testament: A New Translation. This was not a revision of his earlier work, but a new translation. By the time Moffatt had done the OT, in 1924, he was professor at Glasgow. In 1928, after he moved to America, the one-volume edition of his version appeared, A New Translation of the Bible ⁵

So popular did Moffatt’s version become that generally in the years between the two world wars when people spoke of a modern speech translation they had Moffatt in mind. Even in America his version became so popular that on one occasion when he was scheduled to give a lecture in a certain city a billboard announced, “Author of Bible to lecture tonight.”

Moffatt realized the complexity of his task. He knew that he would have to translate for two kinds of readers: those who knew the original languages and those who did not. Also, he was aware of the fact that a translator appears more dogmatic than he really is. A preacher or commentator can suggest alternatives, but the translator has to decide on one rendering and thereby lay himself open to criticism.

Moffatt gives three reasons why the AV was no longer satisfactory: (1) its archaic language, (2) the advance made in the study of the vocabulary and syntax of the NT since 1611, (3) new manuscript evidence.

In his attempt to provide a new translation he deliberately avoided the use of other English versions, although he confesses that his memory of other versions did play tricks on him at times.

What made the Moffatt Bible so popular was the freshness of its language. Let us pick out a few examples. The mother of Moses put the babe into “a creel made of papyrus reeds…daubed over with bitumen and pitch” (Exod. 2:3). Noah’s ark becomes a “barge.” The wealthy of Samaria are described as “lolling on their ivory divans, sprawling on their couches, dining off fresh lamb and fatted veal, crooning to the music of the lute, lapping wine by the bowlful…with never a single thought for the bleeding wounds of the nation” (Amos 6:4ff).

Some renderings betray a Scottish background. Among the musical instruments played at the dedication of Nebuchadnezzar’s image are the bagpipes (Dan. 3:10), and when David danced before the Lord he wore a linen kilt (2 Sam. 6:14).

In the NT, too, there are some striking readings. While Martha is troubled about many dishes, Mary is said to have chosen “the better dish.” Titus is enjoined by Paul to give Zenas” a hearty send-off,” and a bishop must not be “addicted to pilfering” (Titus 1:7).

First Corinthians 13 catches the readers’ eye in almost any version, but Moffatt gives it a new lustre: “Love makes no parade; gives itself no airs; is never rude, never selfish, never irritated, never resentful; love is never glad when others go wrong, love is gladdened by goodness, always slow to expose, always eager to believe the best, always hopeful, always patient.”

Moffatt’s Bible became so popular that the Moffatt Bible Commentary was later based on this version. He participated in the early stages of the RSV project, and when on one occasion he objected to a certain rendering, he was reminded that it came straight from the Moffatt version. He still refused to accept it, because the RSV, as he explained, had a different purpose to achieve.⁶

However, Moffatt’s version also has its weaknesses. In the OT he frequently “improved” on the Hebrew text, and here and there throughout the Bible he rearranged verses and adopted readings which were not well-established. For example, he took Genesis 2:4a, which he translated, “This is the story of how the universe was formed,” and made them the opening words of Genesis. Paul’s advice to Timothy to take a little wine for the sake of his stomach is put into the footnotes. The sacred name Yah weh is rendered as “The Eternal"; the Word that was in the beginning is left in Greek, so that John’s Gospel begins, “The Logos existed in the very beginning.”

Some readers thought Moffatt was just too colloquial. The Song of Songs reads at 1:3, “The girls are all in love with you,” and Proverbs 22:6, “Train a child for his proper trade”—a rendering that lacks the moral overtones of the Hebrew text. One critic thought that there were plenty of good Christians to be found who would dislike Moffatt as undignified and otherwise unwelcome. However, judged by the sales, it was eminently popular. It invaded Sunday schools, youth clubs, and even church services.

The story is told of a young minister in Scotland who visited an aged member of his flock and read to her from Moffatt’s Bible. “That is very nice,” she said, “but now, won’t you read a bittie of the Word of God before you go?”⁷

Many editions of Moffatt’s Bible came from the press after its first publication in 1926. In 1935 Moffatt put out his revised and final edition. He was translating the Apocrypha in 1944 and had just completed the Wisdom of Solomon 3:1, “But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them,” when he passed away. In 1949 a concordance of the Moffatt Bible was published.

IV. AN AMERICAN TRANSLATION

Edgar J. Goodspeed (1871-1962)⁸ was one of the most eloquent advocates of modern speech versions. He had begun the study of Greek as a boy and after attending Chicago, Yale, and European universities, he became professor of NT at the University of Chicago. In 1920 he presented a paper at the New Testament Club of the University in which he criticized the three leading modern speech versions of the time: The Twentieth Century New Testament, Weymouth, and Moffatt. In the discussion that followed, Dr. Chase, one of Goodspeed’s colleagues, suggested that since he found so many flaws in these versions perhaps he

Edgar J. Goodspeed was a leading scholar in the study of Greek papyri. He translated the New Testament into the American idiom and served on the original RSV New Testament Committee.

should produce one of his own. Amid the laughter that followed a representative of the University of Chicago Press took the suggestion seriously, with the result that Goodspeed was invited to translate the NT into modern English. He was reluctant at first, but on the encouragement of his wife he finally consented. It was time, he thought, that American readers who had depended so long on versions made in Great Britain, have a version that was truly American in English.

Like Moffatt, Goodspeed found his familiarity with existing versions an obstacle, since he did not wish simply to reproduce what others had already done. Remembering that the NT books were written to be read in public, he wanted his translation to serve a similar purpose, and so on occasion he would read a few pages of his version when called on to speak at the divinity school chapel.

He called his new version An American Translation. It was published by the University of Chicago Press in 1923. Also, it appeared in serial form in the Chicago Evening Post and in twenty-four other newspapers throughout the United States and Canada.

Although it was a very smooth translation there was considerable criticism of it at the beginning—if for no other reason that that Goodspeed taught at the University of Chicago, known for its liberal theology. The Chicago Tribune came out with the headline: “Monkeying With the Bible.” The New York Times criticized him for substituting “lamp” for “candle” and “peck-measure” for “bushel” and so forth. It even suggested that if he had gone “the whole hog he would have written electric light instead of lamp.” Actually Tyndale was the culprit, for he introduced “candle” into the English Bible, since that’s what England burned in Tyndale’s day. “Lamp” is in fact the correct rendering.

The London Telegraph prayed, “Heaven preserve us from Chicago professors.” The St. Louis Globe-Democrat volunteered: “It is as much of an anachronism to put the gospels in colloquial American terms today as it would be to put pants on the twelve apostles.” The Columbia Record also objected to the elimination of “candles” from the Bible and thought that Goodspeed might as well have given Ruth a McCormick Harvester in place of a scythe (the critic did not know that she had a sickle, not a scythe).

The Indianapolis Star had this: “Nothing stops his devastating pen. He has even abbreviated the Lord’s Prayer” (the critic had read Goodspeed’s translation of the Lucan version of the Lord’s Prayer, which is shorter than Matthew’s). This critic went on to suggest that Chicagoans, if they ever thought of praying, didn’t have time to pray anyway. He concluded. “It is a petition that in its present wording has been held sacred for nearly 2000 years, for the King James translators are said to have made no changes” (as if the King James Version were the original).

Within a matter of weeks after the publication of the NT, the University of Chicago Press asked Goodspeed to do the OT also. Goodspeed, however, handed this assignment over to a colleague in the OT Department, J. M. P. Smith. Smith, then, with the help of several graduates of the University, published the OT in 1927. In 1931 the two were combined in one volume to form: The Bible—An American Translation. Eventually the Apocrypha were also added.

By now English-speaking Bible readers were getting accustomed to modern speech versions, and it would take us too far if we were to mention all the independent efforts to translate the Bible into current English. Not only Protestants but Roman Catholics also caught the vision of letting God’s Word speak in today’s English. Ronald Knox was such a translator.

V. THE KNOX TRANSLATION

English-speaking Roman Catholics generally used no other English Bible but the Douai-Rheims-Challoner version, which by the beginning of the twentieth century was full of archaisms.

In 1939 the Catholic hierarchy granted Ronald Knox, an Oxford don, permission to translate the NT from the Latin Vulgate into modern English. Knox was born into an Anglican family and was educated at Eton and Oxford. He was a brilliant student of the classics and a writer of vigorous prose and detective novels.⁹ At age twenty-nine he converted to Catholicism, and in 1939 he began to apply his literary skills to the translation of the NT into English. This new translation was published in 1945. He then went on to do the OT also, and it was published in 1949. Later he quipped that this period of translation had involved a sentence of nine years at hard labor. He confesses that during these years the Bible was his sole occupation: he “ate, lived, and breathed the Bible.”

Knox had a great flair for words and his translation has received great acclaim. His approach to the biblical text was to ask: “How would an Englishman have said this?” Knox wanted to translate in such a fashion that readers would not even be aware of the fact that they were reading a translation. In Job 7:15 the AV reads, “And so my soul chooseth hanging"; Knox has, “the rope for me,” “He leadeth me by still waters,” becomes, “leads me out to the cool water’s brink.” The Song of Songs in the AV begins: “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth; Knox reduces that to a few terse words, “A kiss from the lips!” First Corinthians 13:12 reads: “At present, we are looking at a confused reflection in a mirror; then, we shall see face to face.”

Because he translated from the Vulgate, this Latin version has affected his style. And since he did not translate from the Hebrew and the Greek, one cannot go to Knox’s version for help in determining the precise sense of the original.¹⁰ Even the names of the books are in their Vulgate form: Chronicles is Paralipomena (which is really what the Greek Septuagint has), Hosea is Osee, and so it goes.

The footnotes are generally explanatory, although some emphasize Catholic doctrine. In Matthew 12:46-50, where Jesus’ brothers are mentioned, the footnote explains: “Since it is impossible for anyone who holds the Catholic tradition to support that our Lord had brothers by blood, the most common opinion is that these ‘brethren’ were his cousins.” A footnote to 1 Corinthians 3:10-15 endorses the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory.

While Knox did a brilliant piece of translation work, his version suffers from the fact that it is a translation of a translation. And since Catholics, about the time when Knox finished his work, were given the freedom to translate from the original Hebrew and Greek, versions such as the Jerusalem Bible and the New American Bible have eclipsed Knox’s Bible, particularly in America.

While we are on the other side of the Atlantic, let us look at another modern speech version published in England, done in this case not by a Catholic scholar, but by an Anglican priest.

VI. PHILLIPS’S VERSION

During World War II, J. B. Phillips was in charge of a flourishing group of young people in southeast London. In the terrible days of the German Blitz he used to read selections from Paul’s epistles at the close of their meetings at Youth Club. To his great disappointment he noticed that these young people couldn’t make head or tail of the AV. These were young people who were not familiar with “Bible English” because they had not been brought up in the church, and to whom “I couldn’t care less” was a more familiar expression than “the Lord is my Shepherd.”¹¹

Phillips’s passion to make biblical truths comprehensible to these young people stimulated him to make fresh translations of Paul’s letters and read these to them. He was richly rewarded when he noticed the positive response to his translations.

This might have remained a parochial experiment had not C. S. Lewis entered the picture. Phillips had written him and enclosed a copy of his newly translated letter to the Colossians, and Lewis replied: “Thank you a hundred times. I thought I knew Colossians pretty well, but your paraphrase makes it far more significant. It was like seeing a familiar picture after it’s been cleaned…I hope very much you will carry out your plan of doing all the epistles.”¹²

Phillips followed his advice and in 1947 there appeared Letters to Young Churches, with an introduction by C. S. Lewis, In 1952 he completed the Gospels, and in 1955 Acts (The Young Church in Action), and in 1957 the Book of Revelation. The entire NT was published in 1958 and a revised version of it in 1972.

Phillips laid down five principles that were to guide him in his translation: (1) the language must be that which is commonly spoken; (2) the translation should expand, if necessary, to preserve the original meaning; (3) the letters should read like letters, not theological treatises; (4) the translation should “flow”; (5) the value of the version should lie in its “easy-to-read” quality. The format was to be that of a modern book, without verse and chapter divisions.

Phillips confesses that he himself was transformed in the process of translating the NT, for the material was strangely alive. When he did Acts he felt “like an electrician re-wiring an old house, without being able to turn the mains off.”¹³

While the version is what may be called a paraphrase, it is supreme among the modern English parases

The late Canon J. B. Phillips, known for his translation of the New Testament.

of the NT. Just when a translation should be called a paraphrase is hard to say, for all translation is in one sense a paraphrase. And so “gird your loins” becomes “tighten your belts,” “utterly astounded” becomes “scared out of their wits” (Mark 6:51). “To hell with your money” (Acts 8:19) sounds a bit vulgar, but that is in fact what Peter said. “O you dear idiots of Galatia,” is striking, to say the least (Gal. 3:1). At times Phillips seems to overstep the bounds of translation and to invade the field of interpretation too deeply. When the command to greet one another with a holy kiss, becomes a “handshake all round,” and when “to give over to Satan” becomes “to expell from the church,” we wonder whether that should not have been left to the interpreter.

At first blush we may get the impression that Phillips’s style is colloquial, but on further reading we find that it is in fact a literary style. There are expressions that the man of the street would not understand. What are “palpable frauds” (Titus 1:6) and “invidious distinctions” (James 2:9)? Would the average reader know what it means to be “dilatory” (2 Peter 3:8)? There is also a Britishism here and there that American readers may find strange (Jesus and his disciples walk through the “cornfields,” instead of “grainfields,” Matt. 12:1).

Phillips did not anticipate the favorable reception his version would get and for this reason he revised it in 1972, when he noticed that some readers were taking his translation to be authoritative. In this revision, he explains, he has curbed his youthful enthusiasms and has brought the English into closer conformity with the Greek text. Also, in this revised version, he switched over from the Greek text of Westcott and Hort to that of the United Bible Societies. Perhaps it is not always as spicy as the first edition, but it is a bit more accurate.

For people who haven’t grown up with the church and who are interested in reading the NT, PHILLIPS is certainly one of the best. Such readers may come to confess with C. S. Lewis: “If this book had come into my hands when I first seriously began to try to discover what Christ was, it would have saved me a great deal of labor.”

Phillips went on to do the OT, but only Four Prophets (1963) were published before his death.

By the middle of the twentieth century, organizations and denominations took it in hand to provide the churches with revisions of former versions or with new translations. The private modern speech versions had paved the way for such major undertakings but, as we will see, such major revisions and translations did not discourage private individuals from attempting to put God’s Word into man’s language.

Chapter 17English Bibles in the First Half of the Twentieth Century