Line Upon Line | Part 3
Our Vernacular Bible, Its Words, and Its Translators
מ MEM
97 O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day.
98 Thou through thy commandments hast made me wiser than mine enemies: for they are ever with me.
99 I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation.
100 I understand more than the ancients, because I keep thy precepts.
101 I have refrained my feet from every evil way, that I might keep thy word.
102 I have not departed from thy judgments: for thou hast taught me.
103 How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
104 Through thy precepts I get understanding: therefore I hate every false way.נ NUN
105 Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.
The present third part of this series is intended to serve, not as any sort of appeal to the thoughts of respectable men, (for it is right and holy “not to think of men above that which is written,”)1 but rather, as a word of encouragement by means of a select few testimonies of what, quite possibly, might be counted among the most wonderful truths of our faith ever uttered. And that truth is this:—
Scripture is its own interpreter.
Yet, perhaps even more special than this is the truth of that promise proceeding direct from the lips of our Saviour, saying—“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth.”2 To which we say one to another, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way, and while he opened to us the scriptures?”3 For it is written, “[T]he anointing which ye have received of him abideth in you, and ye need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing teacheth you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it hath taught you, ye shall abide in him.”4
So now, beloved brethren, let our meditation be upon these short few testimonies, as we turn back the pages of Protestant history to see what the translators of our vernacular Bible have to say concerning its words.
According to the Translators
William Tyndale
William Tyndale’s (1494–1536) unfeigned love for his fellow man was most ardently expressed in his translation of the holy scriptures into the English tongue. His valiant efforts to place the Bible in the hands of the common people, so that they might hear and read the words of God in their own language, effectively secured his fate as a martyr for the light of JEHOVAH’s word.
Tyndale’s respective contribution to the King James Bible amounts to an astounding eighty percent of the text,5 the New Testament itself comprising upwards of eighty-three percent of his translation. In his Preface to the Five Books of Moses, Tyndale writes:
Which thing only moved me to translate the new Testament. Because I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to establish the lay-people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother-tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text: for else, whatsoever truth is taught them, these enemies of all truth quench it again, partly with the smoke of their bottomless pit, whereof thou readest in Apocalypse, chap. ix.6 (that is, with apparent reasons of sophistry, and traditions of their own making, founded without ground of scripture,) and partly in juggling with the text, expounding it in such a sense as is impossible to gather of the text, if thou see the process, order, and meaning thereof.
—William Tyndale, “Preface to the Five Books of Moses” (The Works of William Tyndale, Volume One. Banner of Truth, 2010)
The process and order (i.e. the phrase & structure) of the text determines not only the sense (i.e. the meaning) of it as a whole, but the sense of the individual words (with each one’s relation to the other) comprising that whole. In weighing every word and comparing every phrase, the true meaning may be gained (albeit, only by God’s grace). In this statement (and many others), it is seen that Tyndale was fully persuaded that the holy scriptures belonged unto the simple.7
Tyndale’s sharp reproof of them, in his day, that held the truth in unrighteousness echo the word of JEHOVAH by the prophet Ezekiel unto the shepherds of Israel:—
18 Seemeth it a small thing unto you to have eaten up the good pasture, but ye must tread down with your feet the residue of your pastures? and to have drunk of the deep waters, but ye must foul the residue with your feet?
19 And as for my flock, they eat that which ye have trodden with your feet; and they drink that which ye have fouled with your feet.
Ezekiel 34:18-19
In like manner did the prophet Malachi also sharply reprove the priests of Israel, saying, “For the priest’s lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth: for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts. But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law”.8 And once more, in reproving the hypocritical scribes and Pharisees, Christ declared unto them before his disciples and all the people, “Woe unto you, lawyers! for ye have taken away the key of knowledge: ye entered not in yourselves, and them that were entering in ye hindered.”9
But as Jesus revealed to His disciples a better way in Himself, it was not merely Tyndale’s work to reprove the priests and learned doctors of his day, but to point the people to the pure and unadulterated words of Jesus. And this was his hope: that the common people would be established in the word of God, if only “they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text” with a vernacular Bible laid open before them.
Richard Bancroft
Richard Bancroft (1544–1610) was the Archbishop of Canterbury (1604–1610), as well as “translation overseer” and “chief director” of the production and printing of the Authorized Version,—as commissioned by James I in the year 1604. The king set his seal of approval on the Rules to be Observed which were instituted by Bancroft. The sixth of those principles reads as follows:
VI. No marginal notes at all to be affixed, but only for the explanation of the Hebrew or Greek words, which cannot without some circumlocution so briefly and fitly be expressed in the text.
—Richard Bancroft, “The Rules to be Observed in the Translation of the Bible”
In his sixth rule of translation noted above, the word circumlocution is employed in the sense of a nearby synonym, that two or more words or phrases might express a single sense or idea. Webster defines circumlocution as “a circuit or compass of words; a periphrase; the use of a number of words to express an idea…”10 Periphrastic construction, often a facet of the literary feature of parallelism, is employed throughout scripture for emphasis, clarity, nuance, richness, and even memorability. In such a case in which a synonym within the text is unavailable, such could be supplied in the margin.
By the approval of Bancroft’s fifteen rules of translation, James I authorized his translators to append synonymous renderings in the marginal notes when the explanation (i.e. the sense, meaning, and definition) of a word or phrase was not so clearly expressed within the text. For in Bancroft’s statement, it’s most clearly inferred that the meaning of the words in the original languages are expressed in the text itself. Thus, it is evidenced by his approval of Bancroft’s principles, and thereby his sixth rule, that the King of England himself acknowledged holy scripture as its own expositor,—setting forth in itself the meaning of its own words and phrases through a diversity of like senses.
Myles Smith
Myles Smith (1554–1624) of Brasenose College, Oxford, later Bishop of Gloucester (1614–1624), was positioned in the work of translating what would become the King James Bible. As a member of the First Oxford Company, Smith was involved in the translation of the prophets Isaiah through Malachi. Alongside Thomas Bilson (1547–1616), Bishop of Winchester (1597–1616) moved from Worcester,11—the pair formed the “Committee of Two,” which performed the final review of the translation before its subsequent publication in 1611. As one invested in the work from beginning to end (1604–1611), there was perhaps none other more qualified than Smith to pen The Translators to the Reader (which, today is typically excluded by KJB publishers). All this to say, the following statement from Smith’s Preface to the Authorized Version is a significant one:
Another thing we think good to admonish thee of, gentle Reader, that we have not tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done, because they observe, that some learned men somewhere have been as exact as they could that way. Truly, that we might not vary from the sense of that which we had translated before, if the word signified the same thing in both places, (for there be some words that be not of the same sense every where) we were especially careful, and made a conscience, according to our duty.
—Myles Smith, “The Translators to the Reader”, Authorized Version, 1611
Should any be desirous of a more explicit statement than that which has here been given to us in the Translators’ Preface of our Authorized Bible, I am afraid that no other statement could be furnished that would satisfy him. For if “there be some words that be not of the same sense everywhere,” then it is most abundantly clear that it is the context in which any given word is located that rules the selfsame word’s meaning.
Instead of maintaining a “uniformity of phrasing” or an “identity of words,” the translators have employed a diversity of phrasings with words of diverse significations in order that holy scripture would, in the highest degree the English language permits, express and expound itself more freely. Wherefore, every word within its context is fixed with special import—each imbuing its neighbour with itself in a coalescence of express senses. For where a word is recontextualized, there it might also be redefined. Thus, let the whole inform the meaning of each word as we permit every word to rightly communicate the whole.
An Honest-Hearted Farmer
William Miller
William Miller (1792–1849), though not a translator as those aforementioned, was the man chosen by God to lead out the proclamation of the Advent message to the world. After only a few short years following his conversion at the age of thirty-four, Miller came to the following conclusion:—
VI. Scripture must be its own expositor, since it is a rule of itself. If I depend on a teacher to expound it to me, and he should guess at its meaning, or desire to have it so on account of his sectarian creed, or to be thought wise, then his guessing, desire, creed, or wisdom is my rule, not the Bible.
—William Miller, Miller’s Rules of Bible Interpretation
If scripture is truly its own expositor (i.e. interpreter), then scripture must be able to expound the meaning of its own words,—and quite able it is, indeed! If we depend wholly upon the Bible to define the meaning of its terms as expressed in the text, then we will only be conformed to the truth. But if we depend upon a teacher other than Christ12 to expound the meaning of the words, and such men have not wholly depended upon the Bible to expound the meaning of its words (in their right context), but instead have guessed at their meaning according to their own preferred learning, then such men’s guesswork becomes our learning.
For we are exhorted to “Study to shew [ourselves] approved unto God, [as] [workmen] that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”13 The first part of rightly dividing the word of truth is to receive the scriptures as the word of God, and to separate the word of God from the word of man. For as Paul wrote in his First Epistle to the Thessalonians, “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.”14
Wherefore, because we believe and know the scriptures are the word of God, we then have confidence that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works.15 Thus all scripture was given by inspiration of God in order that His people might be thoroughly furnished (margin, perfected) by it. And because scripture is given to thoroughly furnish us, it is all we need. But even this must be qualified, which leads us to Miller’s final, and most imperative rule of all Bible interpretation:
XIV. The most important rule of all is, that you must have faith. It must be a faith that requires a sacrifice, and, if tried, would give up the dearest object on earth, the world and all its desires, character, living, occupation, friends, home, comforts and worldly honors. If any of these should hinder our believing any part of God’s word, it would show our faith to be vain. Nor can we ever believe so long as one of these motives lies lurking in our hearts. We must believe that God will never forfeit His word. And we can have confidence that He that takes notice of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our head, will guard the translation of His own word, and throw a barrier around it, and prevent those who sincerely trust in God, and put implicit confidence in His word, from erring far from the truth, though they may not understand Hebrew or Greek.
—William Miller, Miller’s Rules of Bible Interpretation
Verily is faith most important of all, and that faith begins in JEHOVAH’s word.
As it is written, “Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”16 In this most joyful promise shall our faith rest.
God bless,
Brandon
Scripture Index, Citations, and Notes
Nielson, J., & Skousen, R. (1998). How Much of the King James Bible is William Tyndale’s? An Estimation Based on Sampling. Reformation, 3(1), 49–74.
Revelation, chapter 19
Webster, N. (1828). American Dictionary of the English Language, Circumlocution.
Thomas Bilson, Bishop of the Church of England, was “translated” from his episcopal see of Worcester (1596–1597) to the see of Winchester in the year of 1597.