THE following letter by the Rev. John R. Mackay, M.A., Inverness, appeared in the Northern Chronicle of the 7th November:—
BROADSTONE PARK, INVERNESS, 29th October, 1906.
SIR,—Few things could be of more vital interest to Highlanders than the question concerning which Major Cameron tells us the Directors of the National Bible Society of Scotland must shortly come to a decision. The question is as to whether the Revised Gaelic Bible or the version in common use shall be the people’s Gaelic Bible of the future. As one who is convinced that to substitute the Revised for the version in common use would be to inflict an injury on the Gaelic-speaking people, I crave your indulgence this week again that I may at some length discuss the points at issue.
The English Revised Version has not become popular. It is not very long since one read that the Oxford Press issues ten copies of the Authorised Version for every one copy it issues of the Revised. The Trinitarian Bible Society does not circulate the Revised English Version at all. Neither does the National Bible Society of Scotland. No doubt the fact that, as literature, the English Revised Version is not comparable to the Authorised Version has had something to do with this; but that is not the essential fact in explanation of the failure. The fact is, as is generally conceded, that the revisers of the New Testament, by the methods of revision pursued by them, brought the work of revision as a whole into disrepute. The Old Testament revisers were content to undertake little more than a fresh translation of the one extant Hebrew text. The New Testament revisers, along with a work of translation, undertook a revision of the Greek text itself, but that revision of the text was so adversely and so powerfully criticised by competent English scholars that the work of the revisers fell, as a whole, into discredit. Much has doubtless been said, and is even being said by textual critics, of what I may call the modern school, in attempted vindication of the text underlying the Revised English New Testament; but their arguments, which are so preponderatingly subjective, not so say esoteric, don’t seem to appeal to the common-sense of Britons.
In a letter which, through your favour, appeared in the Northern Chronicle in April, 1903, I pointed out that the arguments by which the English version had been condemned, condemned equally the Gaelic version, inasmuch as it was patent everywhere that, as a translation, it was based on the same unsatisfactory Greek-text. It was argued in that same letter that the changes made in regard to Rev. xv. 6, Luke xxiv. 42, Mark xvi. 9-20, Matt. vi. 13, in particular, were unwarranted, and therefore, in a case such as this, intolerable. I am not now, therefore, to enter on a discussion of the general question at issue as between the traditional and the revised text. I would merely, in effect, repeat that there are two facts of which the abettors of the revised text have never been able to render an adequate account. They cannot, from their premises, explain how the few old codices, to which they defer so much, had failed, save in the meagrest sense, to reproduce themselves in similar copies; nor how the traditional text, which its abettors maintain is the fundamental apostolic text, became, and has remained, by common consent, for the last 1500 years, the text in actual possession of the Church of God. In this connection, one circumstance in which the text of the New Testament differs materially from that, say, of the Greek and Roman Classics, should be noted. From the time in which the several books of the New Testament were written, there has not passed a day in which those books have not been read and meditated upon with the intensest interest of which the human mind is capable. The New Testament has been used and reproduced in copies out of all proportion to the most popular of the classics. Its substantial text can on this account be traced from the days of the Apostles to the present hour with as much certainty as can the Spey from its rise in Loch Spey to its falls in the Moray Firth. And it is no disparagement to the true text that its most ancient copies should, through constant use, have been almost all thumbed out of existence, and that as we get further down through the centuries the copies containing it should become more numerous. But what should be thought of an explorer who, while searching for the sources of a river, discovered, at a point not very far below the head-waters, a small stream issuing from the main stream, and ending quickly in a marsh or stagnant pool, if he should insist that, in order to our having the pure water of the fountain, we must draw from this pool? Yet at least in regard to some readings wherewith the revisers would displace the commonly received reading the analogy does them no injustice. I proceed to refer to an an instance in point. In 1 Tim. iii. 16, we have been used to read:—”Agus gun amharus is mor run diomhair na diadhachd: dh’ fhoillnicheadh Dia ‘san fheoil, dh’ fhireanaicheadh e ‘san Spiorad a. m. s. s.” For this the revised Gaelic substitutes:—”Agus gun amharus is mor diomhair-eachd na diadhaidheachd; Esan a dh’ fhoillsicheadh anns an fheoil, a dh’ fhireanaicheadh anns an Spiorad a. m. s. s.” The vital question, of course, here is as to whether “Dia,” according to the common text, or “Esan a,” according to the revised text, is the true reading. Now, I am not here to dwell on the grandeur nor the exceeding appropriateness in every way of the common reading, nor on the manner in which the revised reading detracts from all this. Suffice it to say that President Routh and Dr. Fred. Field, than whom it would not be easy to name finer samples of English scholarship, both counted that this, the argument from internal evidence, was decisive in favour of the common reading, and condemnatory of the reading which the revisers propose to substitute therefor. Neither am I to dwell on the anomaly of crediting the Apostle, as the revisers here do, with writing unparalleled Greek. “Esan a” is “He who,” and such a use of the Greek relative OS, in the nominative, is unknown. Dr. Hort, indeed, held that the whole verse under consideration was but a fragment of an early Christian hymn, and that the antecedent of OS would doubtless have been found in the preceding context. But these are two of the purest assumptions, and only reveal the straits to which the revisers are driven in order to their being able to give a rational account of the grammatical structure of the form of words adopted by them.
The First Epistle of Timothy was sent in the first instance to Ephesus, a leading town of Asia Minor. From the days of the Apostles to beyond the fourth century of our era there flourished a Christian Church throughout Asia Minor, characterised by the greatest intellectual and spiritual activity. In the latter half of the fourth century, Gregory of Nyssa, one of the most brilliant theologians of the period, and himself a native of the district in question, maintained that in his time there were more churches in Cappadocia than in any other part of the globe. Now, one would think that to Asia Minor in this instance one should look for, prima facie, the purest copies of the Epistle under consideration. Would not one naturally look to Scotland as supplying the most likely reliable MS. copies of Knox’s history? In this sense, there may even be some elements of truth in the epithet where-with Dr. Hort would disparage the traditional text, calling it Syrian. The Gospel itself is Syrian. Now, in connection with 1 Tim. iii. 16, which was first sent to a native of Asia Minor living in Asia Minor, Gregory of Nyssa quotes our verse 22 times, and always in accordance with the common reading. One quotation of his, in which he witnesses that the common reading of our text was, so far as he knew, the unquestioned reading in his time everywhere, is of peculiar value, and I here reproduce it. Writing against Eunomius (v. 3), he says:—”All who preach the word point out the wonderful character of the mystery in this respect—that ‘God was manifest in the flesh,’ that ‘the Word was made flesh,’ that ‘the Light shined in darkness,’ ‘the Life tasted death,’ and all such declarations which the heralds of the faith are wont to make, increase, etc.” This testimony of Gregory is, in the circumstances, of exceeding value, and the universal Asian reading to which it bears witness is not to be called in question because Codex Aleph, which itself, according to the latest expert judgment, is due to a recension of the Greek text which took place in Egypt in the third century, and whose worth in the estimation of the past, may be gauged from the fact that eleven different scribes tried their hand in mending it, has another reading. The attempt to follow up the common reading in probable allusions to it in the writers of the third, second, and even first century would occupy too much space. I know that the corrupt form OS, too, is of ancient date. But the explanation is easy. We suppose that the Apostle Paul wrote $\Theta\S$ [THS, God]. Some early copyist carelessly omitted the horizontal bar in O, and wrote OS (Who). God is the Author of Scripture, and has by His providence secured that of the New Testament, as of the Old Testament, not a jot or tittle shall pass till all be fulfilled. But He has not ordained a perpetual miracle whereby it should come to pass that whensoever a scribe might take it into his head to write a copy of the Scriptures he should be infallibly kept from committing a clerical error. And hence the easy paradox that as copies of the Scriptures multiplied the true text was more and more established, while the number of variations increased. In a short time, we may suppose, a MS. containing the corrupt reading OS fell into the hands of another copyist. He perceived that what seemed to be the antecedent of OS was a neuter noun (mysterion), and he, in turn, corrected the masculine relative into a neuter relative. This grammatically more tolerable corruption, with the neuter relative, found much more favour in the ancient Church than the corruption from which it started. The reading OS was thus abandoned on the right hand, and on the left, and has extremely meagre support from MS. or version or Father, and yet it is foisted upon us in the name of criticism as apostolic verity! Chrysostom was not in doubt as to what was the true reading here. “Paul, too,” writes he, “admiringly says—’And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness.’ In what sense great? ‘God was manifested in the flesh.'” Neither yet was Theodoret, a Syrian bishop of the early fifth century, and as wide-awake a man as any. In his dialogue between Orthodoxos and Eranistes, the following, to us interesting, passage occurs:—”Ortho.—’God,’ says the Apostle Paul, ‘was made manifest in the flesh.’ Eran.—I accept this as Scripture.” The reading OS ere long died out of use. The reading $\Theta\S$ [THS] has lived continuously to this day, and has, according to Burgon, the suffrage of 20 Greek Fathers, 3 versions, and 300 MSS. representing all parts of ancient Christendom. Surely Dr. Scrivener, who devoted a valuable life to studies of this kind, was understating when, at the conclusion of a discussion of the reading in question, he put it:—”I dare not pronounce $\Theta\S$ a corruption.”
I pass on to notice a not less serious change for the worse which the Gaelic revisers make in what is an Old Testament passage. Daniel ix. 25 we have been accustomed to read thus: “Aithnich uime sin agus tuig, o dhoh a mach na h-aithne gu Ierusalem aiseag agus a thogail suas, gu Messiah am Prionnsa, gu’m bi seachd seachduinean, agus tri fichead agus da sheachduin: togar an t-sraid a ris agus am balla, eadhon ann an aimsiribh caraideach.” The whole passage (from verse 24 to verse 27), treating as it does of those seventy weeks (or 490 years) which it was told Daniel were determined upon his people, to finish the transgression and to anoint the Most Holy, has—from Julius Africanus in the third century to Dr. C. H. H. Wright in the twentieth century—ever been regarded by Christian apologists as, in proof of the Messiahship of Jesus, of the utmost value. Even when there existed some dubiety as to the exact dates of the Persian empire, it was felt that the revelation given to Daniel—that in round numbers there should intervene but five centuries between his own time and that of Messiah—not only rendered the Jewish position of a Messiah yet to come untenable, but of itself put it beyond reasonable doubt that Jesus was that Messiah. The exactness with which we can speak of those dates now renders the passage a perfect demonstration. Seven weeks added to sixty-two weeks are sixty-nine weeks—i.e., sixty-nine weeks of years, or 483 years. If we reckon the date when the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem went forth as being the seventh year of Artaxerxes (or B.C. 457), when Ezra re-imposed the Levitical law in its entirety on Israel, then 483 years added thereto brings us to the year 26 A.D. That is the year in which the public ministry of John the Baptist began, and, according to Christ Himself (Luke xvi. 16), the Gospel, strictly taken, has its commencement from that date. There were just seven weeks and sixty-two weeks from the going forth of the commandment of Artaxerxes unto Messiah, the Prince. It was in the midst of the seventieth week that Messiah, being cut off, caused piacular sacrifices of every kind to cease. Now, it was as impossible for a finite intelligence to make that exact prediction as it would be impossible for finite power to create the world. The exact and marvellous correspondence of the fulfilment with the prediction is the proof that the Omniscient One spake in Daniel, and as the Omniscient One is the only Omnipotent One, the passage demonstrates not only the Messiahship of Jesus, but also that the God of the Scriptures is the living God, the true God, and the Creator of heaven and earth. Now, will it be believed that the revised rendering simply spikes this piece of the Christian armament? This is the form in which the revisers offer us verse 25: “Aithnich uime sin agus tuig, o dhol a mach an fhacail, gu Jerusalem aiseag agus a thogail, gu aon ungta, prionnsa, gu’m bi seachd seachduinean; agus tri fichead agus da sheachduin togar e a ris, le aite farsuinn agus le dig; eadhon ann an teanntachd amanna.” Not to refer to details, they have punctuated the passage so as to render it senseless. The English Revised Version, although it gives in its text the equivalent of the foregoing Gaelic, gives us at least good sense in the margin. The Gaelic revisers do not treat us to that much consideration. I know it will be said that the revisers have only followed the punctuation of the Hebrew MSS. But there is nothing in that. What would be thought of His Majesty’s printers if they punctuated the first verse of Genesis thus:—”In the beginning God created; the heavens and the earth?” And yet the same emphatic accentuation occurs in the Hebrew MSS. under the fourth word in Gen. i. 1, as occurs under the thirteenth word in Daniel ix. 25. The fact is that in their rendering of Daniel ix. 25, the revisers appear to have succumbed to the arguments of unbelief. On these, and on other similar accounts, if my words might reach the Directors of the National Bible Society of Scotland, I would plead with them to do none otherwise with the Gaelic Revised Version than they have done with the English Revised Version—leave it alone.
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