SUBSTANCE AND FORM.

There are probably devout persons not a few in whose minds the mere suggestion of a Revision of the Scriptures arouses a feeling of mingled pain and surprise. In that Bible which they received from their fathers in the trustful confidence of childhood, they have heard the voice of God speaking to their souls. Not from any testimony given to them by others, but from their own lengthened and varied experience of it, they know it to be the Father’s gift unto His children. It has quickened, guided, and strengthened them, as no human words had ever done, answering the deepest cravings of their nature, stimulating them to endeavours after a nobler life, and enkindling within them the confidence of a sure and blessed hope. That it is from heaven, and not from men, they know, not because of what has been told them, but from what they themselves have seen and learnt; and they need no further evidence of its inspiration than the fact that it has opened their eyes to a knowledge of themselves, and to a perception of the loveliness of Christ. That any should dare to meddle with a book so precious and so honoured, seems to them a sacrilegious act, and a Revision of the Holy Scriptures is to them a presumptuous attempt to improve upon the handiwork of God.In this feeling there is much with which every Christian man will warmly sympathize; but there is in it also something that calls for correction and instruction. There is need here, as elsewhere, of careful thought and self-discipline, lest, by confounding things that differ, we transfer our reverence for what is God-given and divine to what is only human, and therefore fallible. A little consideration will suffice to show that, in such a matter as this, it is peculiarly important to distinguish between substance and form, between what is essential and permanent and what is accidental and variable. By the substance of the Bible we mean the statements which, in various ways and diverse manners, it presents to our thoughts; the precepts and the promises, the histories and the prophecies, the doctrines and the prayers, the truths about God and about man, through which our minds are instructed, our consciences enlightened, and our hearts established by grace. By the form of the Bible, we mean the signs or sounds by which the various statements contained in the Bible are presented to us, and which are, as it were, the channel through which the truths it teaches are conveyed to our minds. It will be obvious upon the least consideration, that the kind and degree of reverence which it is right to entertain towards the form of Scripture, is very different from that which it behoves us to cherish for the substance of Scripture. Respecting the latter, it is fitting to watch with all jealousy that no man add unto it or take from it; it is precious for its own sake. Not so, however, with the former; its worth is not in itself, but only in that which it enshrines. The two sentences—

“This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,”

“Gwir yw’r gair ac yn haeddu pob derbyniad, ddyfod Crist Iesu i’r byd i gadw pechaduriaid,”

are very different in form, whether judged by the eye or the ear, and yet the truth conveyed by the former to an Englishman, or by the latter to a Welshman, is essentially the same. And although one who had learnt to prize that truth under either of the forms here given would naturally cherish also the very words by which it had been taught him, his reverence for the truth would impel him to adopt the other form in preference whenever that might be the better instrument for conveying it to another. Changes, therefore, in the form of Scripture may be lawful and right.

Moreover, as a matter of history, the form of Scripture has, from the very beginning, been passing through a continued succession of changes, and with this fact it is most important that the Bible student should familiarize himself. These changes may be arranged under two general classes.

One class of changes has arisen out of the perishable nature of the documents, of which the Bible at the first consisted.

It is scarcely needful to state that we do not now possess the original copies of any of the books of the Old or the New Testament. Even while these were still in existence it was necessary to transcribe them in order that many persons in many places might possess and read them. In the work of transcription, however careful the transcriber might have been, errors of various kinds necessarily arose; some from mistaking one letter for another; some from failure of memory, if the scribe were writing from dictation; and some from occasional oversight, if he were writing from a copy before him; some from momentary lapses of attention, when his hand wrote on without his guidance; and some from an attempt to correct a real or fancied error in the work of his predecessor. If any of my readers will make an experiment by copying a passage of some length from any printed book, and then hand over his manuscript to a friend with a request to copy it, and afterwards pass on the copy so made to a third, and so on in succession through a list of ten or a dozen persons, each copying the manuscript of the one before him in the list, he will, on comparing the last with the printed book, have a vivid and interesting illustration of the number and kind of variations that arise in the process of transcription. In the case, therefore, of even very early copies of any of the books of the Scriptures, some sort of revision would become necessary, and the deeper the reverence for the book, the more obligatory would the duty of making such a revision be felt to be, and the more earnestly and readily would it be undertaken. So long as the original copies were in existence and accessible this work of revision would be comparatively easy and simple. It would call only for the ability to make careful and patient comparison. But when the originals could no longer be appealed to, and when, moreover, successive transcription had gone on through many generations, the work would become much more complex and difficult, calling for much knowledge and much persevering research, for a mind skilled in the appreciation of evidence, and able to judge calmly between conflicting testimony. At the same time, the need for revision would to some extent be greater than before. I say to some extent, because the natural multiplication of errors arising from successive transcription through many centuries, has in the case of the Scriptures been very largely checked. The special reverence felt for this book beyond other books led to the exercise of special care in the preparation of Biblical manuscripts, and special precautions were taken to guard them as far as possible from any variation. Owing to these and other causes a larger measure of uniformity is found in the later than in the earlier manuscripts now extant.

A second class of changes in the form of the Scriptures has arisen from the natural growth and development of language.

The earliest Bible of which we have any historical knowledge was in the form of a roll, made probably of skins, containing the five books of Moses, and written in the Hebrew language. This was described as “the Book of the Law of the Lord given by Moses” (2 Chron. xxxiv. 14); more briefly as “the Book of the Law of Moses” (Joshua viii. 31; 2 Kings xiv. 6; Neh. viii. 1), or as “the Book of the Law of God” (Neh. viii. 8); and more briefly still as “the Book of the Law” (2 Kings xxii. 8), or as “the Book of Moses.” (Ezra vi. 18; Mark xii. 26.) Two other collections of sacred books were subsequently added, known respectively as the Prophets and the Holy Writings, the former comprising Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the twelve minor prophets; the latter comprising the Psalms, Proverbs, Job, the Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles. It is in this order, we may note in passing, that the books of the Old Testament are still arranged in our Hebrew Bibles.

Before the completion of the canon of the Old Testament the language of the Jews began to exhibit evidences of change, and through their intercourse with the various peoples of Mesopotamia (or Aram) the later books show a distinct tendency towards Aramaic forms and idioms. This tendency, already apparent at the time of the return from the Captivity, was accelerated by the political events which followed. During the hundred and eighty years and more which intervened between the Restoration of the Temple, B.C. 516, and the overthrow of Darius Codomannus, B.C. 331, JudÆa was a portion of that province of the Persian empire, in which the Aramaic was the prevalent dialect. The ancient Hebrew gradually ceased to be the language of the Jews in common life, and, before the time of our Lord, had been supplanted by the language of their Eastern neighbours.

With the decline of the Hebrew language there arose amongst the Jews the class of men known as Scribes, whose primary function was that of preparing copies of the Scriptures, and of guarding the sacred text from the intrusion of errors. Owing to their great zeal for the preservation of the letter of Scripture, and to their natural tendency to hold fast to the honour and influence which their special knowledge and skill gave to them, they did not, when Hebrew ceased to be intelligible to the common people, set themselves to the task of giving them the Bible in a form which they could understand; but, magnifying their office overmuch, assumed the position of authoritative teachers and expounders of the Law. Scholars might still study for themselves the ancient Bible, but for the people at large the form which the Scriptures now practically assumed was that of the spoken utterances of the Scribes.

How imperfect and unsatisfactory this must have been is obvious; and the more so as these teachers did not content themselves with simply rendering the ancient text into a familiar form, but intermingled with it a mass of human traditions that obscured and sometimes contradicted its meaning. It would have been a great gain for the people of JudÆa if their regard for the outward form of their Scriptures had been less extreme and more enlightened, and if competent men amongst them had ventured so to revise the ancient books that their fellow countrymen might read in their own tongue the wonderful works and words of God.

This wiser course was adopted in that larger JudÆa which lay outside of Palestine. The Jews scattered through Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, and other parts of the empire of Alexander and his successors, were less rigidly conservative than were the residents of JudÆa, and for their use a translation into Greek was made in the latter part of the third century before Christ. This is the version known as the Septuagint.[1] It is probable, both on general grounds and from internal evidence, that the Pentateuch was the portion first translated, and that subsequently, though after no very long interval of time, the other portions were translated also. It is quite certain that the whole was in circulation in the middle of the second century before Christ. Various tales respecting the origin of this translation got spread abroad.[2] These are largely due to the vivid imagination of their authors. They may, however, be taken as evidence of the high esteem in which this version was held; and we shall probably not err in concluding from them that Alexandria was the city in which it originated. During, then, the two centuries that preceded the Advent, the Bible, as used by the great majority of its readers in various parts of the world, had assumed an entirely different form from that in which it at first appeared. It was in Greek, and not in Hebrew, and it included several additional works; those, namely, which are now called collectively the Apocrypha. The use of this translation amongst the extra-Palestinian Jews contributed largely to the spread of Christianity; and to many amongst the earliest Christian churches, and for many generations, it was still the form under which they studied the books of the Old Testament.

At the time of our Lord and His Apostles, Greek was the language which most widely prevailed through the Roman Empire. It was the ordinary language of intercourse amongst all the peoples that had formerly been subjugated by Grecian arms, and was read and spoken by many in Rome itself. It was in this language, and not in the sacred language of the ancient Church, that the books of the New Testament were written; and the lesson was thereby emphatically taught us that the Bible was for man, and not man for the Bible; that the form was subordinate to the substance, and should be so modified, as occasions occur, that it may best minister to the spiritual wants of mankind.

As years passed on Christianity spread into the rural parts of the districts already occupied, where Greek was but little known, and into new regions beyond, where that language had never prevailed. This called for further changes in the form of Scripture, and in the second century of our era both the Old and New Testaments were translated for the use of the numerous Christians in Northern and Eastern Syria into that form of Aramaic which is known as Syriac. This language—the Syro-Aramaic—differs by dialectic peculiarities from the Palestinian Aramaic. In its earliest forms, however, we have probably the nearest representation we can now hope to obtain of the native language of the people amongst whom our Lord lived and laboured.

About the same time also the Scriptures began to be translated into Latin for the use of the Churches of North Africa, and there is good reason for believing that in the last quarter of the second century the entire Scriptures in Latin were largely circulated throughout that region. This was what is termed the Old Latin version. It was the Bible as possessed and used by Tertullian and Cyprian, and subsequently, in a revised form, by Augustine. In the Old Testament this version was made, not from Hebrew, but from the Greek of the Septuagint, and so was but the translation of a translation.

From Africa this Bible passed into Italy. Here a certain rudeness of style, arising from its provincial origin, awakened ere long a desire to secure a version that should be at once more accurate and more grateful to Italian ears. Various attempts at a revision of the Latin were consequently made. One of these, known as the Itala, or the Italic version, is highly commended by Augustine. In the year A.D. 383, Damasus, the then Bishop of Rome, troubled by the manifold variations that existed between different copies of the Latin Scriptures then in circulation, used his influence with one of the greatest scholars of the age, Eusebius Hieronymus, to undertake the laborious and responsible task of a thorough revision of the Latin text. Hieronymus, or, as he is commonly termed, Jerome, at once set himself to the task, and his revised New Testament appeared in A.D. 385. He also once and again revised the Old Latin version of the Book of Psalms, and subsequently the remaining books of the Old Testament, carefully comparing them with the Greek of the Septuagint, from which they had been derived. In A.D. 389, when in his sixtieth year, he entered upon the further task of a new translation of the books of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew, and completed it in the year A.D. 404. Out of the various labours of Jerome arose the Bible which is commonly known as the Vulgate. Jerome’s translation of the Old Testament from the Hebrew was not made at the instance of any ecclesiastical authority, and the old prejudice in favour of the Septuagint led many still to cling to the earlier version. Only very gradually did the new translation make its way; and not until the time of Gregory the Great, at the close of the sixth century, did it receive the explicit sanction of the head of the Roman Church.[3] In the case of the Psalter, the old translation was never superseded.

The Vulgate is thus a composite work. It contains (1) Jerome’s translation from the Hebrew of all the books of the Old Testament, except the Psalms; (2) Jerome’s revision of the Old Latin version of the Psalms, that version being, as stated above, made from the Septuagint; (3) the Old Latin version of the Apocrypha unrevised, save in the books of Judith and Tobit; (4) Jerome’s revised New Testament, which in the Gospels was very careful and complete, and might almost be termed a new translation, though he himself repudiated any such claim.

During many centuries the Vulgate was the only form in which the Bible was accessible to the people of Western Europe, and it was the Bible from which in turn the earliest Bibles of our own and other countries were immediately derived. It will thus be seen that the history of the Bible has from the beginning been a history of revision. Only so could they who loved the Bible fulfil the trust committed to them; only so could the Bible be a Bible for mankind.