The King James and subsequent versions
The King James (Authorized) Version
Because of changing conditions, another official revision of the Protestant Bible in English was needed. The reign of Queen Elizabeth had succeeded in imposing a high degree of uniformity upon the church. The failure of the Bishops’ Bible to supplant its Geneva rival made for a discordant note in the quest for unity.
A conference of churchmen in 1604 became noteworthy for its request that the English Bible be revised because existing translations “were corrupt and not answerable to the truth of the original.” King James I was quick to appreciate the broader value of the proposal and at once made the project his own.
By June 30, 1604, King James had approved a list of 54 revisers, although extant records show that 47 scholars actually participated. They were organized into six companies, two each working separately at Westminster, Oxford, and Cambridge on sections of the Bible assigned to them. It was finally published in 1611.
Not since the Septuagint had a translation of the Bible been undertaken under royal sponsorship as a cooperative venture on so grandiose a scale. An elaborate set of rules was contrived to curb individual proclivities and to ensure its scholarly and nonpartisan character. In contrast to earlier practice, the new version was to preserve vulgarly used forms of proper names in keeping with its aim to make the Scriptures popular and familiar.
The impact of Jewish sources upon the King James Version is one of its noteworthy features. The wealth of scholarly tools available to the translators made their final choice of rendering an exercise in originality and independent judgment. For this reason, the new version was more faithful to the original languages of the Bible and more scholarly than any of its predecessors. The impact of the Hebrew upon the revisers was so pronounced that they seem to have made a conscious effort to imitate its rhythm and style in the Old Testament. The English of the New Testament actually turned out to be superior to its Greek original.
Two editions were actually printed in 1611, later distinguished as the “He” and “She” Bibles because of the variant reading “he” and “she” in the final clause of chapter 3, verse 15 of Ruth: “and he went into the city.” Both printings contained errors. Some errors in subsequent editions have become famous: The so-called Wicked Bible (1631) derives from the omission of “not” in chapter 20 verse 14 of Exodus, “Thou shalt commit adultery,” for which the printers were fined £300; the “Vinegar Bible” (1717) stems from a misprinting of “vineyard” in the heading of Luke, chapter 20.
The English Revised Version
The remarkable and total victory of the King James Version could not entirely obscure those inherent weaknesses that were independent of its typographical errors. The manner of its execution had resulted in a certain unequalness and lack of consistency. The translators’ understanding of the Hebrew tense system was often limited so that their version contains inaccurate and infelicitous renderings. In particular, the Greek text of the New Testament, which they used as their base, was a poor one. The great early Greek codices were not then known or available, and Hellenistic papyri, which were to shed light on the common Greek dialect, had not yet been discovered.
A committee established by the Convocation of Canterbury in February 1870 reported favourably three months later on the idea of revising the King James Version: two companies were formed, one each for the Old and New Testaments. A novel development was the inclusion of scholars representative of the major Christian denominations, except the Roman Catholics (who declined the invitation to participate). Another innovation was the formation of parallel companies in the United States to whom the work of the English scholars was submitted and who, in turn, sent back their reactions. The instructions to the committees made clear that only a revision and not a new translation was contemplated.
The New Testament was published in England on May 17, 1881, and three days later in the United States, after 11 years of labour. Over 30,000 changes were made, of which more than 5,000 represent differences in the Greek text from that used as the basis of the King James Version. Most of the others were made in the interests of consistency or modernization.
The publication of the Old Testament in 1885 stirred far less excitement, partly because it was less well known than the New Testament and partly because fewer changes were involved. The poetical and prophetical books, especially Job, Ecclesiastes, and Isaiah, benefitted greatly.
The revision of the Apocrypha, not originally contemplated, came to be included only because of copyright arrangements made with the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge and was first published in 1895.
The American Standard Version
According to the original agreement, the preferred readings and renderings of the American revisers, which their British counterparts had declined to accept, were published in an appendix to the Revised Version. In 1900 the American edition of the New Testament, which incorporated the American scholars’ preferences into the body of the text, was produced. A year later the Old Testament was added, but not the Apocrypha. The alterations covered a large number of obsolete words and expressions and replaced Anglicisms by the diction then in vogue in the United States.
The Revised Standard Version
The American Standard Version had been an expression of sensitivity to the needs of the American public. At the same time, several individual and unofficial translations into modern speech made from 1885 on had gained popularity, their appeal reinforced by the discovery that the Greek of the New Testament used the common nonliterary variety of the language spoken throughout the Roman Empire when Christianity was in its formative stage. The notion that a nonliterary modern rendering of the New Testament best expressed the form and spirit of the original was hard to refute. This, plus a new maturity of classical, Hebraic, and theological scholarship in the United States, led to a desire to produce a native American version of the English Bible.
In 1928 the copyright of the American Standard Version was acquired by the International Council of Religious Education and thereby passed into the ownership of churches representing 40 major denominations in the United States and Canada. A two-year study by a special committee recommended a thorough revision, and in 1937 the council gave its authorization to the proposal. Not until 1946, however, did the revision of the New Testament appear in print, and another six years elapsed before the complete Revised Standard Version (RSV) was published, the work of 32 scholars, one of them Jewish, drawn from the faculties of 20 universities and theological seminaries. A decision to translate the Apocrypha was not made until 1952 and the revision appeared in 1957. Insofar as the RSV was the first to make use of the Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah, it was revolutionary.
The Revised Standard Version was essentially not a new translation into modern speech, but a revision. It did engage in a good deal of modernization, however. It dispensed with archaic pronouns, retaining “thou” only for the Deity. But its basic conservatism was displayed in the retention of forms or expressions in passages that have special devotional or literary associations even where this practice makes for inconsistency. The primary aim was to produce a version for use in private and public worship.
Jewish versions
Though Jews in English-speaking lands generally utilized the King James Version and the Revised Version, the English versions have presented great difficulties. They contain departures from the traditional Hebrew text; they sometimes embody Christological interpretations; the headings were often doctrinally objectionable and the renderings in the legal portions of the Pentateuch frequently diverged from traditional Jewish exegesis. In addition, where the meaning of the original was obscure, Jewish readers preferred to use the well-known medieval Jewish commentators. Finally, the order of the Jewish canon differs from Christian practice and the liturgical needs of Jews make a version that does not mark the scriptural readings for Sabbaths and festivals inconvenient.
Until 1917 all Jewish translations were the efforts of individuals. Planned in 1892, the project of the Jewish Publication Society of America was the first translation for which a group representing Jewish learning among English-speaking Jews assumed joint responsibility.
This version essentially retained the Elizabethan diction. It stuck unswervingly to the received Hebrew text that it interpreted in accordance with Jewish tradition and the best scholarship of the day. For over half a century it remained authoritative, even though it laid no claim to any official ecclesiastical sanction.
With an increasingly felt need for modernization, a committee of translators was established composed of three professional biblical and Semitic scholars and three rabbis. It began its work in 1955 and the Pentateuch was issued in 1962. The Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, and Jonah, all in a single volume for the convenience of synagogue use, followed in 1969; and Isaiah and Psalms appeared in 1973. A second committee had been set up in 1955 to work separately on the rest of the Hagiographa (Ketuvim).
The New English Bible
The idea of a completely new translation into British English was first broached in 1946. Under a joint committee, representative of the major Protestant churches of the British Isles, with Roman Catholics appointed as observers, the New Testament was published in 1961 and a second edition appeared in 1970. The Old Testament and Apocrypha were also published in 1970.
The New English Bible proved to be an instant commercial success, selling at a rate of 33,000 copies a week in 1970. The translation differed from the English mainstream Bible in that it was not a revision but a completely fresh version from the original tongues. It abandoned the tradition of “biblical English” and, except for the retention of “thou” and “thy” in addressing God, freed itself of all archaisms. It endeavoured to render the original into the idiom of contemporary English and to avoid ephemeral modernisms.
Catholic versions
With the exception of a version by Irish-American archbishop Francis Patrick Kenrick (1849–60), all translations up to the 20th century were merely versions of the Douai–Reims Bible. A celebrated translation was that of Ronald Knox (New Testament, 1945; Old Testament, 1949; complete edition with Old Testament revised, 1955).
The most significant development in modern Catholic translations was initiated by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine in 1936. A New Testament version of the Latin Clementine Vulgate (1941), intended as a revision, in effect was a new translation into clear and simple English. The Old Testament revision remained unfinished, the work having been interrupted by a decision inspired by the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1943 to encourage modern vernacular translations from the original languages instead of from the Latin Vulgate. Accordingly, both the Old and New Testaments were respectively retranslated into modern English from the Hebrew and Greek originals. The resultant Confraternity Version (1952–61) was later issued as the New American Bible (1970). Another modern version, more colloquial, is the Jerusalem Bible (1966), translated from the French Catholic Bible de Jérusalem (one-volume edition, 1961).