Chapters of Bible Study Part 7

Cardinal Newman and Dr. Pusey were invited, but declined to attend.

Mr. Vance Smith, a Unitarian, a distinguished scholar, but certainly no Christian, received a place in the New Testament committee. These gentlemen set to work in earnest to revise the Word of G.o.d and settle the Bible of the future. They had to consider the advance made in textual criticism represented by Lachmann, Scholz, Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Drs. Westcott and Hort.

They labored ten years and a half, as Dr. Ellicott a.s.sures us, "with thoroughness, loyalty to the authorized versions, and due recognition of the best judgment of antiquity. One of their rules, expressly laid down for their common guidance, was to introduce as few alterations as possible into the text of the authorized version."

How many corrections, think you, were made in the New Testament alone?

About 20,000, of which fifty per cent. are textual, that is "9 to every five verses of the Gospels, and 15 to every five in the Epistles."

Besides these changes, which must be a shock to many an English Protestant who has accustomed himself by long reading of the Bible to believe in verbal inspiration, there are a number of omissions in the New Revised Text which in all amount to about 40 entire verses. It appears, then, that the King James Bible of some years ago has not been as most Protestants of necessity claimed for it--the pure, authentic, unadulterated Word of G.o.d. And if not, what guarantee have we that the promiscuous body of recent translators, however learned, withal not inspired, have given us that pure, authentic, unadulterated Word of G.o.d?

Let us glance over a few pages of the New Testament to see of what nature and of what importance, from a doctrinal point of view, are the changes made by the late revisers of the "Authorized (Protestant) Version."

In the first place, they have acknowledged the reading of I. Cor. xi.

27, regarding communion under one kind, by translating the Greek [Greek: gamma] by _or_, and not by _and_, an error which had been repeated in all the Protestant translations since 1525, and which gave rise to endless abuse of the Catholic practice of giving the Blessed Sacrament to the laity under only one species. "Whosoever shall eat the bread _or_ drink the cup" is the reading in the Greek as well as in the Latin Vulgate, and nothing but "theological fear or partiality," as Dean Stanley expressed it, could have warranted this mistranslation, which may be found in all the editions of 1520, 1538, 1562, 1508, 1577, 1579, 1611, etc.

But this is only one of many acts of justice which the learned revisers have done to Catholics by restoring the true reading; they have given us back the _altar_ which, together with the Holy Sacrifice and confession and celibacy, had become obnoxious to the "reformers." We now read, I. Cor. x. 18, that "those that eat the hosts" are in "communion with the _altar_," where formerly they were only "partakers of the temple."

Having restored the Catholic practice of Holy Communion under one kind, and likewise the altar, we are not surprised that the "overseers" of the King James version should have become _bishops_, as in Acts xx. 28, although a good many of the _overseers_ have been left in their places, possibly because the "elders" (Acts xv. 2; t.i.t. i. 5; I. Tim. v. 17 and 19, etc.) have not yet become _priests_, as they are in the Rhemish (Catholic) translation. However, the "elders" are likely to turn out priests at the next revision, because they are not only "ordained," but also "appointed," whereas in the old English revisions of 1562 and 1579 they were ordained elders "by election in every congregation," which is still done in Protestant churches where there are no bishops, and even in some which have "overseers" with the honorary t.i.tle of "bishop."

As to the celibacy question, the revisers have not thought fit to endorse it by translating [Greek: _adelphen gynaicha_] a "woman," a sister; but they adhere to the old "wife," as Beza, in his translation, makes the Apostles go about with their "wives" (Acts i. 14).

In the matter of "confession" we have got a degree nearer to the old Catholic version and practice likewise. The Protestant reformers had no "sins" to confess; they had only "faults." Hence they translate St.

James v. 16 by "confess your faults." But the revisers of 1881 found out that these "faults" were downright sins, and so they put it.

Accordingly we find that the Apostles have power literally "to forgive"

sins, whereas formerly, the sins being only faults, it was enough to have them "remitted," which means a sort of pa.s.sive yielding or condoning on the part of the overseers in favor of repentant sinners, but did not convey the idea of a sacramental power "binding and loosening" in heaven as on earth.

Our dear Blessed Lady also receives some justice at the hands of the new translators. She is not simply "highly favored" as in the times of King James and ever since, but now is "endued with grace," though only in a footnote.

"It was expected," says an anonymous writer in the above cited article of the _Dublin Review_,[4] "that the revisers, in deference to modern refinement, would get rid of 'h.e.l.l' and 'd.a.m.nation,' like the judge who was said to have dismissed h.e.l.l with costs. 'd.a.m.nation' and kindred words have gone.... A new word, 'Hades,' Pluto's Greek name, has been brought into our language to save the old word 'h.e.l.l' from overwork.

The Rich Man is no longer in 'h.e.l.l,' he is now '_in Hades;_' but he is still 'in torment.' So Hades must be Purgatory, and the revisers have thus moved Dives into Purgatory, and Purgatory into the Gospel. Dives will not object; but what will Protestants say?"

An important change has been introduced in their treatment of the Lord's Prayer. Protestants, for over three hundred years, have concluded that prayer with the words: "for Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever." These words were to be found in St.

Matt. vi. 13 according to the Protestant text. They were certainly wanting in St. Luke xi. 2, who also gives us the words of the "Our Father" with a very slight change of form. Catholics were reproached for not adding the 'doxology,' which proved to be a custom in the Greek Catholic Church, very much like our use of the "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son," etc., at the end of each psalm recited or sung at Vespers. Examination showed that the phrase "for Thine is the kingdom," etc., was to be found princ.i.p.ally in versions made by and for the Catholics of the Greek Church, and this explained how the same had crept into the copyists' Greek version. This fact is recognized at length in the late revision where the words are omitted from the text of St. Matthew, whilst a footnote states that "many authorities, some ancient, but with variations, add: 'for Thine is the kingdom and the glory forever.'"

The American revisers had made a number of very sensible suggestions, which would have brought the new Protestant version of the Bible still nearer to the old Catholic translation of Rheims and Douay; but their voice was not considered weighty enough, and Mr. Vance Smith openly blames the English committee on this score, saying that "they have not shown that judicial freedom from theological bias which was certainly expected from them." On the other hand, the American revisers showed their national spirit and liberality to a degree which must have horrified the orthodox members of the Anglican Community. The Americans "suggested the removal of all mention of the sin of heresy--heresies in their eyes being only 'factions.' They desired also that the Apostles and Evangelists should drop their t.i.tle of Saint, and be content to be called plain John, and Paul, and Thomas.

This resulted, no doubt, from their democratic taste for strict equality, and their hatred of t.i.tles even in the kingdom of heaven."[5]

After all this the principle of faith in the Bible alone became somewhat insecure, and we find the revisers making a silent concession on this point by allowing something to the Catholic principle of a living, perpetually transmitted _tradition_. St. Paul, who speaks of the _altar_ and of _bishops_, and who allows _Communion under one kind_, and who had no wife, and wanted none (I. Cor. vii.), praises the Corinthians, not simply for keeping his "ordinances," as in the time of King James, but for keeping the _traditions_ as he had delivered them to the Greek churches before he found opportunity to write to the Corinthians.

There is one other point of difference between the Catholic and Protestant Bibles to which it is instructive to call attention. It is in regard to the writing of proper names, especially in the Old Testament. Thus where we in the Catholic Bibles have _Nabuchodonosor_ for the king of Babylon, son of Nabopolla.s.sar, the Protestant version has _Nebuchadnezzar_; where we have _Elias_ and _Eliseus_, the Protestant version has _Elijah_ and _Elisha_, and so forth regarding many Hebrew names of persons and places. You will ask whence the difference, and which is right?

The difference arises from the fact that the Protestant Version follows the present Hebrew text of the Bible, whilst the Catholic Version follows the Greek. Which is the safer to follow on such points as the p.r.o.nunciation of proper names--the Hebrew or the Greek? You will say the Hebrew, but it is not so. The old Hebrew writing had, as I mentioned before, no vowels. Hence it could not be read by any one who had not heard it read in the schools of the rabbis. Some _six centuries after our Lord_, certain Jewish doctors who were called Masorets, anxious to preserve the traditional sounds of the Hebrew language, supplied vowels in the shape of points, which they placed under the square consonants, without disturbing the latter. Hence the present vowel system in Hebrew, or, in other words, the present p.r.o.nunciation of Hebrew according to the reading of the Bible, is the work of men who relied for the p.r.o.nunciation of words on a tradition which carried them back over many centuries, that is, from the time when Hebrew was a living language to about six hundred years after Christ. It is not difficult to imagine how in such a length of time the true p.r.o.nunciation may have been lost or certainly modified in some cases; for though the Hebrew words were there on the paper, written in consonants of the old form, the p.r.o.nunciation of the vowels must have been doubtful if resting on tradition alone, since the Hebrew had already ceased to be a living language for many centuries.

In the meantime, the true p.r.o.nunciation of the Hebrew proper names could have been preserved in some of the translations made long before the Masoretic doctors supplied their vowel points. One of these translations from the Hebrew is the Greek Septuagint. It was made, as we have seen, in the time of Ptolemy, _i.e._, some two and a half centuries before Christ. The learned Jews who made this translation knew perfectly well how the Hebrew of their day was p.r.o.nounced, and we cannot suppose that they would mutilate the proper names of their mother tongue in the translation into Greek which, possessing written vowels, obliged them to express the full p.r.o.nunciation of the persons and places which they transcribed.

Accordingly, we have two sources for our p.r.o.nunciation of Hebrew proper names: one which dates from about the sixth or seventh century of the present era, when the Hebrew had become a dead language; and another, made about _nine hundred years earlier_ by Jewish rabbis, who spoke the language perfectly well, and who could _express the p.r.o.nunciation of proper names_ accurately because they wrote in a language which had _written_ vowels, and with which they were as conversant as with their own, the Hebrew.

Furthermore, we have other versions, made long before the Masoretic Doctors invented their vowel-points in order to fix the Hebrew p.r.o.nunciation as they conceived it. Among these is the Latin Vulgate which, like the Greek of the Septuagint, should give us the correct p.r.o.nunciation--because it was made by St. Jerome, who had studied the Hebrew and Chaldee in Palestine under a Jewish rabbi. He knew, therefore, the p.r.o.nunciation of the Jews in his day (331-420), and there was no reason why he should not give it to us in his several different translations, whilst there might have been some cause why the Masoretic Jews who lived two or three centuries later should dislike to accept either the Greek or the Latin versions for an authority, because both versions were used and constantly cited by the Christians as proof that the Messiah had come.

Incidentally, the late archeological finds confirm this. Thus the name of Nabuchodonosor (IV. Kings xxiv. 1) (Protestant, Nebuchadnezzar), mentioned above as an example, reads in the cuneiform inscription of the a.s.syrian monument Nebukudursur, which is evidently the same form of vowel p.r.o.nunciation as that employed in the Catholic version.

In comparing the two versions thus far little has been said as to the peculiar character or merits of the English Catholic version commonly called the Vulgate English or Douay Bible. But the main purpose of the present chapter has been attained by the necessary inference which the reader must have drawn, namely, that the old Catholic version is the more faithful, and that, after all, the Bible is not a safe guide without a Church to guard its integrity and to interpret its meaning.

But let me say just a word about the Vulgate. The Catholic Vulgate is practically the work of St. Jerome, and our English Catholic edition is made as literally as may be from this Latin Vulgate, "diligently compared with the Hebrew, Greek, and other editions in divers languages." The copies, most in use now, were made from an edition published by the English College at Rheims in 1582, and at Douay in 1609, revised by Dr. Challoner.

The need of a new revision has been recognized, and an effort to supply the want was made by the late Archbishop Kenrick, whose translation was recommended by the Council of Baltimore in 1858, although it has not been generally adopted. However, the changes to be made in the translation of the Catholic Bible in English cannot be very numerous nor affecting doctrines defined by the Church; nor is any accidental change of words or expressions so vital a matter to the Catholic mind as it must be with those who have but the Bible as their one primary rule of faith. So far Protestant revisions have done Catholics a service in removing by successive corrections one error after another from the "reformed" Bible, thus demonstrating the correctness of the old Vulgate; but they have also led Protestants to reflect seriously, and to realize that the "Bible only" principle is proved to be false and dangerous. They must see that the Scripture is powerless without the Church as the witness to its inspiration, the safeguard of its integrity, and the exponent of its meaning.

[1] Cf. a paper on the subject of the New Revision in the _Dublin Review_, 1881, vol. VI., ser. iii.

[2] These books have been mostly retained in the Protestant Bible under the name of _Apocryphal_, _i.e._, not inspired. The Church accepts and defines their inspiration, and in this is supported by the strong testimony of apostolic tradition.

[3] "Pastoral Epistles," p. 13.

[4] Vol. VI., ser. iii.

[5] _Dublin Review_, _l.c._

XXI.

THE POSITION OF THE CHURCH IN THE PRESENT STATE OF THE SCIENTIFIC CONTROVERSY REGARDING THE BIBLE.

In one of the old churches of Wales you may see the Ten Commandments written upon the wall, and beneath them the following inscription, the meaning of which, it is said, had for a long time remained a mystery to the people:

P R S V R Y P R F C T M N, V R K P T H S P R C P T S T N.

Some one supplied the key to the interpretation by suggesting the letter E. Then everybody read the lines, and the old folks told their children, who inform the casual visitor that the strange letters plainly mean: _Persevere ye perfect men, ever keep these precepts ten_.

The inscription in the old Welsh church is a good ill.u.s.tration of the old text of the Bible, which had no vowels, no division of words and sentences. G.o.d gave the key to its meaning through an intelligent interpreter, and the men of learning supply the divisions--even in this sense that they sometimes dispute the place where to insert and where to omit the E.

The original obscurity has induced many to study the Bible, and the grand result of this study in our day has been to lead the great majority of scientific men, whether they are believers in the divine origin of the Book or not, to the conclusion that it is, to say the least, an historical monument of the highest antiquity, the contents of which have come down to us in that genuine and authentic form which is claimed for it; that is to say, that it has not been tampered with or falsified to such an extent as would render its statements materially other than they were from the beginning.

Tischendorf, one of the leading Biblical text critics in recent times, allows indeed some 30,000 variations for the New Testament alone in the different ma.n.u.scripts of which we possess any trace. Although these variations are on the whole very slight, so as not to affect the genuineness of the Scripture doc.u.ments, they establish the fact that we do not possess the text of the Bible in the _literal_ form in which the inspired writers originally wrote it down.

Whatever changes have crept into the text of the Bible, through inadvertence of copyists or defective translations into other languages, it is a settled fact among Catholic divines that they do not affect the moral and dogmatic teaching of the Catholic Church. They regard either purely historical incidents or scientific facts, neither of which are the object of the doctrinal definitions or moral teachings of the Church. They are the proper subject for the study of human reason and investigation. Hence philological science may very becomingly occupy itself with the verbal criticism of the language and thought of the Bible. But the Catholic Church, as a teacher of religious truth, has an interest in these studies of verbal criticism in so far only as they may become a help or a hindrance to her legitimate activity of preaching and preserving the truth of Christianity. As a rule, the Church antic.i.p.ates the dangerous issues arising from the misuse of such studies by deliberately defining not only the right use of the instruments employed for the purpose of criticism, but also what she herself deems the subject-matter lying outside of the domain of such criticism. Thus, in a negative way, she points out the field for the exercise of theories, or rather she defines the lines beyond which speculation may not safely go. The Church would have no end of tasks if she undertook to defend her position against the continuously proposed hypotheses by which any chance comer might venture to challenge her veracity or authority.

Most theories are ephemeral; two, succeeding each other, are often mutually destructive. Prof. H. L. Hastings in his "Higher Criticism"

tells us that since 1850 there have been published 747 theories, known to him, about the origin and authenticity of the Bible. Of these 747 theories he counts 608 as now defunct, and as the Professor wrote several years ago, we may a.s.sume that nearly all of the remaining 139 are dead by this time, although a few new ones have come in to take their place for a day.[1]

What, then, is the position of the Catholic Church, as limited by _positive definition_, with regard to the text of the Bible, by which she limits the aggressiveness of Biblical criticism?

The Catholic Church gives us a very ancient and well-attested text of the entire Bible in the Latin tongue, and in virtue of her commission to teach, which includes the right and duty to appoint the text-book for that teaching, she says: _The sacred Council of Trent, believing that it would be of great advantage to the Church of G.o.d to have it known which of the various Latin editions of the Bible is to be held authentic, hereby declares that the ancient edition commonly known as the Vulgate, which has been approved by the long-standing use of ages in the Church, is to be considered as the authentic Bible for official uses of teaching_ (Trent, vi. 12).

You notice that the Council of Trent does not say that the Vulgate corresponds exactly to the literal original text, nor that it is the best of all known translations. The Council states only, but states explicitly, that the Vulgate edition of the Bible is a reliable source of the written revelation in matters of faith and morals. And the reason which the Council alleges for this preference of the Vulgate over other editions is its constant use for centuries in the Church; in other words, that it represents the best tradition of the received text-form of the Sacred Scriptures. But the definition of the Council implies not only that the contents of the Vulgate in their entirety are reliable and authentic, but that each of its statements is authentic in its dogmatic contents, since the whole Vulgate, _i.e._, in all its parts, is said to const.i.tute a medium or instrument of official teaching in the Church. The declaration of the Council is regarding the _Latin_ Vulgate; hence all translations must conform to _its_ text, that is to say, the corrected text of 1592, called the Clementine recension.

It is noteworthy that, whilst the Church points out a text which is to be the official pattern in her liturgy and in the defence of Catholic teaching regarding faith and morals, she does not define anything regarding other texts or versions of the Bible. Neither the Hebrew nor the Greek texts are mentioned, although the Church gives to them, and the Coptic, Syrian, and Armenian versions, an implied approbation by tolerating their liturgical use in the Oriental churches.

What the Church has defined, therefore, regarding the Vulgate is this: It has declared its _dogmatic integrity_. This implies that the contents of the Vulgate give in their entirety and in their details a reliable version of the inspired text as an instrument of teaching Catholic truth and morals.