Avenues of Approach to the English Bible

AVENUES OF APPROACH TO THE ENGLISH BIBLE Sir RoBERT FALCONER TWO years ago in England there was a commemoration of the burning at the stake in October, 1536, of William Tyndale, the greatest of all translators of the Bible into English; in June of this year, 1938, there was recalled, with authentic appraisement of its significance, the injunction of Henry VIII four hundred years ago to the clergy:. That ye shall provyde ... one boke of the whole Bible of the largest volume, in Englyshe, and the same sett up in summe convenyent place within the said churche that ye have cure of, whereas your parishners may most commodiouslye resort to the same and rede yt. • . . I tern ..• shall expresslye provoke, stere, and exhorte every parsone to rede the same, as that whyche ys the verye lively Warde of God that every Christen man ys oownde to embrace, beleve and folowe, yf he lake to be saved; admonishinge them neverthelesse to avoid all contention, altercation therin, and to use an honest sobrietye in the inquisition of the true sense of the same, and referre th' explication of obscure places to men of higher jugement in Scripture. 1 The translations of the Bible in present use by the Englishspeaking peoples are the outcome of a process extending over centuries. It goes back as far as the Venerable Bede and King Alfred; John Wycliffe in the fourteenth century first turned the whole Bible from the Vulgate into English, and he left for Tyndale and his successors his bold example, though perhaps little direct legacy oflanguage. The English translations were made to be read and understood by the common people, and the Authorized Version of 1611 became so nationally important that it stands on its own merits with the value to them of an original. It has moulded the English language, determined the moral and social attitudes of average persons, and is even yet an authoritative Word to the majority. This translation of the Bible is quite different from those of the Greek and Latin classics. These classics appeal to the few: to scholars, men of letters, and -others whose taste has been cultivated in the university. By this select company recourse is had to translations, and as a rule the most recent, either as an aid to their understanding of the original, or with the curiosity of experts. None are content with trans56 APPROACH TO THE ENGLISH BIBLE 57 lations; it is the style of the originals, the faultless word, the metre and cadence of poetry, no less than the substance, indeed the blending of both, which have given them their immortality. Scholars, however, will not cease to translate. Homer still tempts them to venture both in metre and in prose. In 1879 a new experiment, and a most successful one, was made by Butcher and Lang when they did the Odyssey into Biblical English, being " as nearly analogous to the Greek Epic as anyth·ing our tongue has to offer." But the author of the most recent translation, still in prose, reverts to plain language to reproduce the liveliness and beauty of Homer as a plain story. If the movement of the Greek hexameter defies English metre, much more does the incomparable lyrical poetry baffle even the most skilful. Professor Gilbert Murray goes to the root of the matter: "The sense of difficulty, and indeed of awe, with which a scholar approaches the task of translating the Agamemnon depends directly on its greatness as poetry." He does no~ attempt to abide by the metres of the choral lyrics but creates verse of his own to convey, as far as may be, equivalence of meaning, as m the lovely lines, 737-45: And how shall I call the thing that came At the first hour to Ilion city~ Call it a dream of peace untold, A secret joy in a mist of gold, A woman's eye that was soft, like Bame, A flower which ate a man's heart with pity. Those who are bold enough to essay this supremely difficult task of what Mr J. W. Mackail calls "transvaluation," follow one or other of two methods: either a Hellenization of the...