New Testament Scholarship in My Time

Abstract

In 1881, as a lad of fourteen, I reached New York from Trinidad. Among other interesting events of which I have a memory was the excitement due to the arrival from London, a few days before, of the first consignment of copies of the Revised New Testament. It was said to have made a sensation in New York comparable to that made by the issue of the book in London. In the history of the English Bible, its publication was indeed a significant milestone. It was at once attacked on the ground that it was far more than a revision of the Authorized Version, more even than a fresh translation; for it was based upon a new Greek text. It would impair in the minds of religious people—so it was said—the sacred words endeared by long use. Amid the controversy, however, there was this satisfaction, as I well remember hearing my father assure some friends, that no changes in the translation, which was the result of the labours during many years of the greatest British and American New Testament scholars, had vitally affected any doctrine. This very satisfaction was due to a method of scriptural interpretation which has since been utterly changed. Then, the Bible was treated by theologians as a treasury of doctrines. Each verse was held to be verbally inspired, and could be used, often under distortion of its true import, to prove some doctrine the assent to which was deemed vital for soundness in the faith. But after the Revised Version appeared, the previously wide-spread doctrine of plenary inspiration gradually dropped out of sight. If verbal accuracy was essential to guarantee the truth of doctrine, why had the Holy Spirit allowed corruptions in the texts? The revised book made its way very slowly, though surely; for sacred truth, invested with such noble expression as that of the Authorized Version, had through public reading and private meditation so appealed to the heart and mind that any change jarred the sensitively responsive spirit.