Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions

Part 1

Produced by Martin Ward

Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech Preface and Introductions

Third Edition 1913 Public Domain--Copy Freely

These files were produced by keying for use in the Online Bible. Proofreading was performed by Earl Melton. The printed edition used in creating this etext was the Kregal reprint of the Ernest Hampden-Cook (1912) Third Edition, of the edition first published in 1909 by J. Clarke, London. Kregal edition ISBN 0-8254-4025-4.

Due to the plans to add the Weymouth footnotes, the footnote markers have been left in the text and page break indicators. Other special markings are words surrounded with "*" to indicate emphasis, and phrases surrounded with "<>" to indicate bold OT quotes. See WEYMOUTH.INT in WNTINT.ZIP for the introduction to the text, and information on Weymouth's techniques.

The most current corrected files can be found on:

Bible Foundation BBS 602-789-7040 (14.4 kbs)

If any errors are found, please notify me at the above bbs, or at:

Mark Fuller 1129 E. Loyola Dr. Tempe, Az. 85282 (602) 829-8542

----------- Corrections to the printed page ---------------------

Introduction says personal pronouns referring to Jesus, when spoken by other than the author/narrator, are capitalized only when they recognize His deity. The following oversights in the third edition were corrected in subsequent editions. Therefore we feel justified in correcting them in this computer version.

Mt 22:16 Capitalized 'him'. Same person speaking as in v.15.

Mt 27:54 Capitalized 'he'.

Joh 21:20 Capitalized 'his'

Heb 12:6 Capitalized last 'HE' (referring to God).

==== changes made to printed page.

Lu 11:49 Added closing quote at end of verse as later editions do.

Lu 13:6 come > came (changed in later editions)

Ro 11:16 it > if (an obvious typesetting error corrected in later editions)

1Co 11:6 out > cut (an obvious typesetting error corrected in later editions)

Php 4:3 the Word 'book' in 'book of Life' was not capitalized in various printings of the third edition, but it was in later editions. So we have capitalized it here.

2Ti 1:9 deserts > desserts (misspelling perpetuated in later editions)

==== no change made:

Eph 6:17 did not capitalize 'word' as in Word of God.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The Translation of the New Testament here offered to English-speaking Christians is a bona fide translation made directly from the Greek, and is in no sense a revision. The plan adopted has been the following.

1. An earnest endeavour has been made (based upon more than sixty years' study of both the Greek and English languages, besides much further familiarity gained by continual teaching) to ascertain the exact meaning of every passage not only by the light that Classical Greek throws on the langruage used, but also by that which the Septuagint and the Hebrew Scriptures afford; aid being sought too from Versions and Commentators ancient and modern, and from the ample et cetera of apparatus grammaticus and theological and Classical reviews and magazines--or rather, by means of occasional excursions into this vast prairie.

2. The sense thus seeming to have been ascertained, the next step has been to consider how it could be most accurately and naturally exhibited in the English of the present day; in other words, how we can with some approach to probability suppose that the inspired writer himself would have expressed his thoughts, had he been writing in our age and country. /1

Part 2

3. Lastly it has been evidently desirable to compare the results thus attained with the renderings of other scholars, especially of course witll the Authorized and Revised Versions. But alas, the great majority of even "new translations," so called, are, in reality, only Tyndale's immortal work a little--often very litLle--modernized!

4. But in the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each of these patois having also its own special, though expressive, borderland which we name 'slang.' But all these salient angles (as a professor of fortification might say) of our language are forbidden ground to the reverent translator of Holy Scripture.

5. But again, a modern translation--does this imply that no words or phrases in any degree antiquated are to be admitted? Not so, for great numbers of such words and phrases are still in constant use. To be antiquated is not the same thing as to be obsolete or even obsolescent, and without at least a tinge of antiquity it is scarcely possible that there should be that dignity of style that befits the sacred themes with which the Evangelists and Apostles deal.

6. It is plain that this attempt to bring out the sense of the Sacred Writings naturally as well as accurately in present-day English does not permit, except to a limited extent, the method of literal rendering--the verbo verbum reddere at which Horace shrugs his shoulders. Dr. Welldon, recently Bishop of Calcutta, in the Preface (p. vii) to his masterly translation of the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle, writes, "I have deliberately rejected the principle of trying to translate the same Greek word by the same word in English, and where circumstances seemed to call for it I have sometimes used two English words to represent one word of the Greek;"--and he is perfectly right. With a slavish literality delicate shades of meaning cannot be reproduced, nor allowance be made for the influence of interwoven thought, or of the writer's ever shifting--not to say changing--point of view. An utterly ignorant or utterly lazy man, if possessed of a little ingenuity, can with the help of a dictionary and grammar give a word-for-word rendering, whether intelligible or not, and print 'Translation' on his title-page. On the other hand it is a melancholy spectacle to see men of high ability and undoubted scholarship toil and struggle at translation under a needless restriction to literality, as in intellectual handcuffs and fetters, when they might with advantage snap the bonds and fling them away, as Dr. Welldon has done: more melancholy still, if they are at the same time racking their brains to exhibit the result of their labours---a splendid but idle philological tour de force --in what was English nearly 300 years before.

7. Obviously any literal translation cannot but carry idioms of the earlier language into the later, where they will very probably not be understood; /2 and more serious still is the evil when, as in the Jewish Greek of the N T, the earlier language of the two is itself composite and abounds in forms of speech that belong to one earlier still. For the N.T. Greek, even in the writings of Luke, contains a large number of Hebrew idioms; and a literal rendering into English cannot but partially veil, and in some degree distort, the true sense, even if it does not totally obscure it (and that too where perfect clearness should be attained, if possible), by this admixture of Hebrew as well as Greek forms of expression.

8. It follows that the reader who is bent upon getting a literal rendering, such as he can commonly find in the R.V. or (often a better one) in Darby's New Testament, should always be on his guard against its strong tendency to mislead.

9. One point however can hardly be too emphatically stated. It is not the present Translator's ambition to supplant the Versions already in general use, to which their intrinsic merit or long familiarity or both have caused all Christian minds so lovingly to cling. His desire has rather been to furnish a succinct and compressed running commentary (not doctrinal) to be used sidc by side with its elder compeers. And yet there has been something of a remoter hope. It can scarcely be doubted that some day the attempt will be renewed to produce a satisfactory English Bible--one in some respects perhaps (but assuredly with great and important deviations) on the lines of the Revision of 1881, or even altogether to supersede both the A.V. and the R.V.; and it may be that the Translation here offered will contribute some materials that may be built into that far grander edifice.

10. THE GREEK TEXT here followed is that given in the Translator's Resultant Greek Testament.

11. Of the VARIOUS READINGS only those are here given which seem the most important, and which affect the rendering into English. They are in the footnotes, with V.L. (varia lectio) prefixed. As to the chief modern critical editions full details will be found in the Resultant Greek Testament, while for the original authorities--MSS., Versions, Patristic quotations--the reader must of necessity consult the great works of Lachmann, Tregelles, Tischendorf, and others, or the numerous monographs on separate Books. /3 In the margin of the R.V. a distinction is made between readings supported by "a few ancient authorities," "some ancient authorities," "many ancient authorities," and so on. Such valuation is not attempted in this work.

Continue reading Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions free in the Wunder reader →