One of the most important events of the century to the English
speaking world is the Revision of the Bible. Its full effect is not
yet felt, as the book which was the product of the Revisers' labors is
but slowly winning its way into use in the Church and the home. Like
its predecessor, the Authorized Version now in general use, it has to
encounter the prejudice which comes from long familiarity with the
book in use and from the veneration for the phraseology in which the
precious truths, are expressed. Yet from the beginning of the century
the need of an improved translation was felt and several persons,
undertook to supply it, but with very objectionable results. The
principal bases of the need were serious. One was that many words and
phrases have in the nineteenth century a meaning entirely different
from the one they had in the early part of the seventeenth century
when the Authorized Version was issued. One case in point is Mark vi.
22, in which Salome asks that the head of John the Baptist be given
her "by and by in a charger." In 1611 the expression by and by meant
immediately or forthwith, and was a correct translation, while with us
it means a somewhat indefinite future and is therefore an incorrect
translation. With the noun, too, the meaning has changed. Our idea of
a charger is of a war-horse, not of a dish, which the original
conveys. A second reason for the revision was that there were in the
libraries in this century several manuscripts of the original, much
older than those to which the translators of the Authorized Version
had access when they undertook their work. A third reason was that a
notable advance had been made in scholarship in the interval, and
learned men were much better acquainted with the Hebrew and Greek
idiom than were any of the scholars of the King James period. For
these three, among other reasons, a revision was necessary, that the
unlearned reader might have, as nearly as was possible, the exact
equivalent in English of the words of the Bible writers. The project,
after being widely discussed for several years, finally took shape in
England in 1870, when the Convocation of Canterbury appointed two
committees to undertake the work. The ablest scholars in Hebrew and
Greek literature in the country were assigned to the committees, of
which one was engaged on the Old, and the other on the New Testament.
They were empowered to call to their aid similar committees in
America, who might work simultaneously with them. Stringent
instructions were given to them to avoid making changes where they
were not clearly needed for the accuracy of translation, and to
preserve the idiom of the Authorized Version. Only with these
safeguards and with not a little reluctance, the commission was
issued. One hundred and one scholars on both sides of the Atlantic
took part in the work. The committees commenced their labors early in
1871. On May 17, 1881, the Revised New Testament was issued, and on
May 21, 1885, the Revised Old Testament was in the hands of the
public. All that scholarship, strenuous labor and exhaustive research
could do to give a faithful translation had been done within the
somewhat narrow and conservative limits under which the revisers were
commissioned.