Abstract

The Proposed Revision of the English Bible

The surpassing general excellence of the standard English translation of the Bible is universally admitted. In accuracy of rendering, it acknowledges no inferiority to any other version of the Jewish and the Christian Scriptures in purity and beauty of style, it is the first of English classics and its diction and special grammatical structure are appropriate to the matter in a degree of which modern literature offers no other example. The revision of such a translation can have but two legitimate aims first, the correction of errors arising from the adoption of a corrupt original text by translators or from a mistaken interpretation of the text and secondly, the substitution of more appropriate words or forms of expression for terms and phrases which are now wholly obsolete and unintelligible to the ordinary reader or which, through changes in the language and in the tone of social culture, have become inapplicable or suggestive of low or revolting images or associations, offensive to the sound taste and the moral sense of the present age.