THE BIBLE IN THE LIFE OF TO-DAY
THIS lecture must differ at two points from those which have preceded it.In the first place, the other lectures have dealt entirely with facts.This must deal also with judgments.In the earlier lectures we have avoided any consideration of what ought to have been and have centered our interest on what actually did occur.We especially avoided any argument based on a theory of the literary characteristics or literary influence of the Bible, but sought first to find the facts and then to discover what explained them.It might be very difficult to determine what is the actual place of the Bible in the life of to-day.Perhaps it would be impossible to give a broad, fair judgment.It is quite certain that the people of James's day did not realize the place it was taking.It is equally certain that many of those whom it most influenced were entirely unconscious of the fact.It is only when we look back upon the scene that we discover the influence that was moving them.But, while it is difficult to say what the place of the Bible actually is in our own times, the place it ought to have is easier to point out.That will involve a study of the conditions of our times, which suggest the need for its influence.While we must consider the facts, therefore, we will be compelled to pass some judgments also, and therein this lecture must differ from the others.
The second fact of difference is that while the earlier lectures have dealt with the King James version, this must deal rather with the Bible.For the King James version is not the Bible.There are many versions; there is but one Bible.Whatever the translators put into the various tongues, the Bible itself remains the same.There are values in the new versions; but they are simply the old value of the Bible itself.It is a familiar maxim that the newest version is the oldest Bible.We are not making the Bible up to date when we make a new version; we are only getting back to its date.A revision in our day is the effort to take out of the original writings what men of King James's day may have put in, and give them so much the better chance.There is no revised Bible; there is only a revised version.Readers sometimes feel disturbed at what they considerthe changes made in the Bible.The fact is, the revision which deserves the name is lessening the changes in the Bible; it is giving us the Bible as it actually was and taking from us elements which were not part of it.One can sympathize with the eloquent Dr.Storrs, who declared, in an address in 1879, that he was against any new version because of the history of the King James version, describing it as a great oak with roots running deep and branches spreading wide.He declared we were not ready to give it up for any modern tulip-tree.There is something in that, though such figures are not always good argument.Yet the value to any book of a worthy translation is beyond calculation.The outstanding literary illustration of that fact is familiar.The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam lay in Persian literature and in different English translations long before Fitzgerald made it a household classic for literary people.The translator made the book for us in more marked way than the original writer did.In somewhat the same way the King James version gave to the English-speaking people the Bible; and no other version has taken its place.
Yet that was not a mistaken move nearly forty years ago, when the revision of the King James version was proposed and undertaken.Thirty years ago (1881) it was completed in what we ordinarily call the Revised Version, and ten years ago (1901) the American form of that Revised Version appeared.Few things could more definitely prove the accepted place of the King James version than the fact that we seem to hear less to- day of the Revised Version than we used to hear, and that, while the American Revised Version is incomparably the best in existence in its reproduction of the original, even it makes way slowly.In less than forty years the King James version crowded all its competitors off the field.The presence of the Revised Version of 1881 has not appreciably affected the sales or the demand for the King James version.In the minds of most people the English and the American revisions stand as admirable commentaries on the King James version.If one wishes to know wherein the King James version failed of representing the original, he will learn it better from those versions than from any number of commentaries; but the number of those to whom one or other of the versions has supplanted the King James version is not so large as might have been expected.
There were several reasons for a new English version of the Bible.It was, of course, no indignity to the King James version.Those translators frankly said that they had no hope to make a final version of the Scriptures.It would be very strange if in three hundred years language should not have grown by reason of the necessities of the race that used it, so that at some points a book might be outgrown.In another lecture it has been intimated that the English Bible, by reason of its constant use, has tended to fix and confirm the English language.But no one book, nor any set of books, could confine a living tongue.Some of the reasons for a new version which give value to these two revisions may be mentioned.
1.Though the King James version was made just after the literary renaissance, the classical learning of to-day is far in advance of that day.The King James version is occasionally defective in its use of tenses and verbs in the Greek and also in the Hebrew.We have Greek and Hebrew scholars who are able more exactly to reproduce in English the meaning of the original.It would be strange if that were not so.
