Why should anyone make a new English translation of the Old Testament? With the Authorized Version of King James and the British and American revisions, to say nothing of unofficial renderings, have we not enough? This question may quite fairly be asked. The only possible basis for a satisfactory answer must be either in a better knowledge of Hebrew than was possible at the time when the earlier translations were made, or in a fuller appreciation of fundamental textual problems, or in a clearer recognition of poetic structures, or in such a change in our own language as would render the language of the older translations more or less unintelligible to the average man of our day. As a matter of fact, our answer is to be found in all of these areas.

The most urgent demand for a new translation comes from the field of Hebrew scholarship. The control of the Hebrew vocabulary and syntax available to the scholar of today is vastly greater than that at the command of the translators of the Authorized Version or of its revisers. This is due partly to the greater degree of scientific methodology now practiced in the study of language in general and of Hebrew in particular, and partly to the contributions made to our knowledge of Hebrew by the decipherment of the hieroglyphic and cuneiform writings. The first requirement of a translation is that it should reproduce as fully and accurately as possible the meaning of the original documents. To this end the translators should know the language of the original as well as it can be known.

Modern studies of textual problems reinforce the need for a new rendering. These have brought out more and more clearly the uncertain state of the Hebrew text and have perfected the technique of critical method. The science of textual criticism has made great progress in recent years, and no translation of the Old Testament can afford to ignore its results. Our guiding principle has been that the official Massoretic text must be adhered to as long as it made satisfactory sense. We have not tried to create a new text; but rather to translate the received text wherever translation was possible. Where departure from this text was imperative we have sought a substitute for it along generally approved lines, depending primarily upon the collateral versions, having recourse to scientific conjecture only when the versions failed to afford adequate

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help. The reader who wishes to check the translation from the point of view of its loyalty to the original will find the passages in which textual change has been made listed in the Appendix. If the number of such passages seems to him unduly large, he should hear in mind certain facts. The oldest known Hebrew manuscript of the Old Testament dates from the ninth century A.D. This means that at least eighteen centuries elapsed between the earliest Hebrew written documents and our oldest manuscript; and that between the latest Hebrew document now found in the Old Testament and our oldest manuscript there was a lapse of approximately eleven centuries. Moreover, the original Hebrew text included only the consonants. The vowels were not added until about the seventh century A.D. Naturally many more errors are found in the vocalic part of the text than in the much older consonantal element. In the list of changes to be found in the Appendix it may be noted that in a large measure the vowels only have been touched. A vowel change naturally involves a very much slighter correction than is involved in a change of consonants. Anyone who has had experience in handling ancient manuscripts will be surprised, not that there are so many corrupt passages, but rather that under the circumstances there are so few. We trust that our attitude in this fundamentally important matter will commend itself to careful and cautious scholars.

The last half-century has developed a great interest in the stylistic qualities of Hebrew poetry. Much of the text that had long passed for prose is now recognized as really poetic in both form and spirit. This adds to the necessity for a new translation. Poetry should not be printed as prose. The present translation brings into clear light many of the hidden beauties of Hebrew poetry. The text is printed in poetic lines as clearly indicated by the parallelism of the structure. In cases where the elegiac measure is employed in Hebrew, the text indicates it by a deep indentation of the second or short line. Where the content and the form both point to the presence of strophes the text has been printed in stanzas. Where such structure is not clearly shown the poetic lines are left to follow one another without a break.

The English of King James's day is not wholly natural or clear to the average man at the present time. In common everyday speech "thou," "thee" and "thy" are no longer used; they have been retained here when they occur in language addressed to God, since they convey a more reverent feeling than the blunt "you." The endings "est" for the second person and "eth" for the third person singular of verbs are now archaic.

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The same holds true of "ye" for "you," "waxen" for "waxed" and "lade" for "load." The use of "vinegar" in the sense of a wine or liquor for drinking has long since ceased to be recognized. "To ear" in the sense of "to plow" or "to till" is obsolete; so are "marish" for "marsh," "scrabble" for "scratch," "in the audience of" for "in the hearing of," "all to" for "altogether," and many others like them. Time has wrought changes in the usage of words. The translators of the King James Version were casting no aspersion upon the character of womankind in general when they said, "Who can find a virtuous woman?" The word "virtuous" for them had its old force brought over from the Latin virtus. But today, when applied to woman, the word will almost inevitably be taken in a more specialized sense, and so be misunderstood. The same charge lies against "virtuously." The word "prevent" once meant "to anticipate," but is now used in the sense of "to hinder"; consequently its old usage in passages like Psalms 119:147 f. puzzles modern readers. Facts like these make the reading of the Bible a scholarly rather than a religious exercise, and clearly point toward the need of a new translation.

The translator to do his best work must be in sympathy with his subject matter and be able to put himself into mental and spiritual contact with its authors. From this side of his work the demand made upon him is a very heavy one. On the other hand, a translation should read well. It should be in a vocabulary and style appropriate to the thought which it is designed to express. If the original be dignified, impressive, and eloquent, those qualities must not be lacking in the translation; if it be trivial, commonplace, and prosaic, the translation must take on the same character. The content of the Old Testament is, with little exception, upon a high literary plane. The language of the translation, therefore, cannot be allowed to fall to the level of the street. In this translation the foregoing principles have been kept constantly in mind. It tries to be American in the sense that the writings of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Wilson are American. This does not imply any limitation of our mother-tongue, but if anything an enrichment of it. Least of all does it mean that the translation is for Americans only; it aims at being easily understood wherever English is spoken. In general we have been loyal to the Hebrew in its use of symbolic and figurative language; occasionally where such figures would not be clear to the reader, we have translated the figure into more familiar terms.

One detail of the translation which requires explanation is the treatment of the divine name. As nearly as we can now tell, the Hebrews

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called their Deity by the name Yahweh, and in a shorter form, Yah, used in relatively few cases. In course of time they came to regard this name as too sacred for utterance. They therefore substituted for it the Hebrew word for "Lord." When vowels were added to the text, the consonants of "Yahweh" were given the vowels of "Lord." Somewhere in the fourteenth century A.D. Christian scholars, not understanding this usage, took the vowels and consonants exactly as they were written and produced the artificial name "Jehovah" which has persisted ever since. In this translation we have followed the orthodox Jewish tradition and substituted "the Lord" for the name "Yahweh" and the phrase "the Lord God" for the phrase "the Lord Yahweh." In all cases where "Lord" or "God" represents an original "Yahweh" small capitals are employed. Anyone, therefore, who desires to retain the flavor of the original text has but to read "Yahweh" wherever he sees LORD or GOD.

The translators and the University Press have sought to give this work the appearance of a modern book. This purpose has determined the make-up of the page and has led to the addition of headings for paragraphs, and to the insertion of some half-titles. It has also kept the verse numbers out of the text and relegated them to the margin, so that the reading of the text may not be interrupted.

The work of translation has been shared by four men: Professor Alex. R. Gordon, of the United Theological College and McGill University, Montreal; Professor Theophile J. Meek, of the University of Toronto; Professor Leroy Waterman, of the University of Michigan; and the Editor. Each of them carries the primary responsibility for his own work. The Editor has left his fellow-workers free to express themselves as they would, and has aimed at uniformity only in the most essential matters. If it be felt that each translator has his own style, this should not be regarded as a defect, for each document in the Old Testament has a style of its own, and the extent to which such stylistic characteristics are ignored by translators is a measure of their failure. Each book ought to speak its own message in its own way, even in a translation.

The Editor wishes to express his appreciation of the self-sacrificing labor of his fellow-translators, of their conscientious devotion to the work and of their prompt responsiveness to his few suggestions. Only by such faithful and hearty co-operation could our common task have attained any measure of success.

We are well aware that in undertaking the task of presenting the Old Testament to the modern world in its own speech we have undertaken the impossible. No translation can preserve intact the full content and

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the symmetrical beauty of the original; in the transition from the old language to the new, much must be lost by the way. We can but hope that we have not fallen too far short of the summit of perfection; and that our work may at least serve as a stepping-stone toward those greater translations which time will surely bring.

THE EDITOR

UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO March 8, 1927

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