The New Testament, an American Translation/the Riverside New Testament
by . Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1923. 12mo. x + 481 pp. $3.00.
Translated by . Ballantine. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co. 1923. 12mo. x+499 pp. $3.00.
‘THE Bible — a book much read by our forefathers,’ says a recent essayist. The occasion for these latest translations of the New Testament is ‘the general neglect of the world’s greatest book displayed by the present generation.’ The justification for continuing the making of more books of this sort is to be sought and found in recent and extensive discoveries of Greek papyri of the first and second centuries, which have proved beyond doubt that the Greek of the New Testament was not that of the classics but that of homely everyday usage. Hence a fresh skepticism as to the appropriateness of the ‘Grand Style’ of the King James Version and the inevitableness of these scrupulously faithful efforts to mediate more accurately the mood, manner, and content of the original.
Echoes of the Authorized Version are more frequent and audible in Dr. Ballantine’s work than in that of Professor Goodspeed. The latter has had the full courage of his unconventional convictions, and of the two volumes his is by far the more contemporary in its format and vocabulary. For this reason, if for no other, it is the more arresting.
The appropriateness of the informal vernacular style is felt vividly in the rendering of such an intimate original as the Epistle to Philemon, or in the salutations which conclude a Pauline Epistle. ‘Remember me to that veteran Christian, Apelles. . . . Erastus, the city treasurer, and our brother Quartus wish to be remembered to you.’ But this same style seems less appropriate when the thought has in the original, or has assumed in the minds of Christians, a certain elevation of mood. So Peter says to Jesus on the
Mount of Transfiguration, ‘Sir, it is fine for us to be here.’
There are certain problems inherent in every attempt to translate the New Testament with a view to bringing the minds that made the original into closer contact with the mind of a later time, which cannot be escaped by any translation, however accurate. These problems are the ultimate problems, so far as Christianity is concerned, and mark the limits of the usefulness of any and all translations, however accurate and suggestive.
The Greek New Testament, in its most significant content, the teaching of Jesus, is itself a translation. Jesus presumably spoke Aramaic, not Greek. When we have recovered, in so far as is humanly possible, the mood of the Greek of the Gospels we are still once removed from the words and intonations of their central figure.
So far as the other writings are concerned, much of the difficulty is created not by the stately Jacobean English of the King James Version but by the remote ideas and the devious logic of the argument. So, for example, the gnarled thought of the third chapter of Galatians defies any direct translation into the terms of modern thought and speech, and is not appreciably helped in any new version. Nor does the wild imagery of the Apocalypse fare much better. The King James translators are not alone to blame for the obscurity of statements as to such matters. The difficulty antedates 1611, and no accurate translation can render such logic and such imagery intelligible or congenial to the modern, lay mind.
Hence, these translations will probably be read with far more interest by those who already know their New Testament well in previous translations or in the original than by those who have no interest whatsoever in the New Testament. The Kingdom of Heaven still remains the Kingdom of Heaven. The Son of Man is still the Son of Man. The ‘Logos,’ faute de mieux, is still the ‘Word.’ And even the best translation bequeathes and must bequeathe these terms as untranslated mysteries to the reader. It is not to be hoped that Professor Goodspeed and Dr. Ballantine can catch and hold permanently the interest of careless Gallios who are lost to the Authorized Version. The ultimate problem is one of the interpretation of these major ideas of the New Testament to the mind of to-day, and that is not the office of the translator of a text.
These scholarly and significant works, therefore, are commended unreservedly to all constant readers of the New Testament and will be welcomed with gratitude. For the rest, Papini and his kind, perhaps, must do what no translator can do or professes to do — catch the attention and fire the imagination of those who have forgotten to ‘remember Jesus Christ.’
WILLARD L. SPERRY.
These reviews will be reprinted separately in pamphlet form. Copies may be had by any librarian, without charge, on application to the Atlantic Monthly, 8 Arlington St., Boston. For ten or more copies there is a charge of one cent per copy.