The New English Bible, officially published on 16th March, 1970, has been on sale for the past six weeks. Nine years ago almost to the day there appeared the New English Bible New Testament, which now, revised in no fewer than 250 places, is incorporated in the New English Bible, along with the new translation of the Old Testament and the uncanonical Apocrypha.
As an antidote to the publicity and high-pressure advertising which has accompanied this event, readers would do well to read carefully the articles which appeared in the April, June, August and September issues of the Free Presbyterian Magazine in 1961. One of these articles, entitled The New Translation of the New Testament a Peril to the Evangelical Cause, was written by the Rev. Terence H. Brown, Secretary of the Trinitarian Bible Society, soon after the publication of the 1961 New Testament. Mr Brown has now swiftly followed up the publication of the complete translation with an analytical assessment of the revised New Testament and the Old Testament; and it is the main purpose of this brief article to direct the attention of readers to Mr Brown’s assessment published in the English Churchman (20th March, 1970). Within the limited compass of this article it will be possible to quote only a few passages from Mr Brown’s evaluation.
One of the fundamental flaws in the translation of the Old Testament — conjectural emendation of the Hebrew text — Mr Brown explains as follows: “Professor Driver outlines the translators’ view of the state of the transmitted Hebrew text in the introduction, which makes it quite plain that they felt obliged to reconstruct the Hebrew to some extent before translating it. ‘It is certain that this text does not always represent what was originally written. The translators must often go behind the traditional text to discover the writer’s meaning’. (Introduction, p. xvi.) . . . . . . A careful examination of the N.E.B. Old Testament reveals more than eleven hundred of these conjectures, referred to in the notes as ‘probable readings’.”
Two outstanding defects arising out of conjectural shuffling of the text are the obscuring of Messianic prophecies and the undermining by implication of certain Biblical doctrines.
On the first defect Mr Brown has this to say: “In the rendering of Genesis iii, 15, it is now barely possible to see any Gospel promise. Following Moffat almost verbatim the N.E.B. reads, ‘I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your brood and hers. They shall strike at your head, and you shall strike at their heel’. The treatment of Genesis xlix, 10, eliminates every vestige of relevance to the Messiah — ‘The sceptre shall not pass from Judah, nor the staff from his descendants, so long as tribute is brought to him’. The word ‘Shiloh’ has caused difficulty to Biblical scholars for centuries. Some have adopted ‘until he (Judah) comes to Shiloh’, but ‘Shiloh’ must be the subject of the verb. Others have regarded ‘Shiloh’ as a proper name meaning ‘Peace-maker’ and have linked the text with the ‘Prince of Peace’ in Isaiah ix, 6. The N.E.B. has been influenced by the ancient versions which assume that the word has been incorrectly vowelled. Christian writers from the 2nd century, including Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Eusebius and Augustine, have regarded this verse as prophetic of the Messiah.”
In another passage Mr Brown deals with the translation of Isaiah 9 : 6 as follows: “The testimony of Isaiah to the Deity of the Messiah in ch. ix is practically eliminated, and this passage now reads, ‘in purpose wonderful, in battle God-like, Father for all time (note: or of a wide realm), Prince of peace’. There is a great difference between ‘The Mighty God’ and ‘God-like’, and between ‘for all time’ and ‘everlasting’.”
On the second defect (doctrinal implications) Mr Brown writes as follows: “In the beginning of creation, when God made heaven and earth’ in Genesis i, 1, is in harmony with an interpretation devised by Jewish scholars in the Middle Ages, but does not appear to be supported by the ancient versions. It implies the pre-existence of the matter out of which the heavens and the earth were created. ‘Once upon a time’ in Genesis xi, 1, adds a suggestion of folk-lore to the narrative of the confusion of tongues. ‘Noah had won the LORD’S favour’ (Genesis vi, 8) and ‘If I have deserved your favour’ (xviii, 3) introduce without any warrant a suggestion of human merit which the text does not imply . . . . . . . . . The footnote on Isaiah liv, 7, ‘On the impulse of a moment I forsook you’ implies a measure of capriciousness on the part of the Almighty.’
When one has read Mr Brown’s article and turns to Professor F. F. Bruce’s preview, The New English Bible, in Christianity Today (30th January, 1970) one cannot but be pained by the tendentiousness of its tenor, especially when the author is a professedly evangelical Biblical scholar. He does, however, deal with the matter of conjectural emendation, albeit his criticism is muted. Comments like “the emendation of the Hebrew by reference to the versions (Septuagint, Peshitta and Vulgate) varies so much from one editor to another that some means of severely reducing the element of personal preference would be welcome” and “in view of our imperfect knowledge, the wiser course at this stage would be to try to establish the text attested by our earliest surviving witnesses, and wait for further light on the earlier period” underline the perils attendant on conjectural emendation, however scholarly. He cannot refrain, however, from white-washing the New English Bible: “The New English Bible, however, does not run to excess in this matter, though it indulges in conjectural emendation much more than did the Revised Standard Version — which in this respect was remarkably conservative.”
In conclusions, it must be emphasised that responsible critics of this latest translation of the Bible do not regard a new translation as being in itself undesirable. After all, the Authorised Version was new in 1611. What is undesirable and deplorable is that translators, however eminent in Biblical and linguistic scholarship, should, with intellectual arrogance, irreverence and lack of spiritual sympathy with the “holy men of God” who “spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost” (2 Peter 1 : 21), subject the words of God to their personal judgment and conjecture. There is a patent inconsistency in the devotion of time and labour to the translating of the Bible on the part of modernist translators who have jettisoned some of the fundamental doctrines of the faith — Inspiration, for instance. It is an indisputable fact that a sinner who comes by divine teaching to believe the Bible which they have attempted to translate will embrace the very doctrines they reject. What then do the sponsors and translators hope to achieve by the new translation? Does the New English Bible in fact constitute part of the grand strategy of modernist theologians in their campaign to perpetrate the ultimate in absurdity — bringing the Bible into line with modern theological thought?
A.G.