The New Testament in English by Ronald A. Knox (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The New Testament in English. By RoNALD A. KNox. New York: Sheed and Ward, 1944. Pp. 573. $3.00. Translation? Paraphrase? Commentary? The triple question is bound to rise when one reads Msgr. Knox's "New Testament in English." In the preface he hints at a departure from " ordinary methods " and indeed the result is far from ordinary. It is no pleasant thing to strike consciously a dissonant note in the hr··. mony of praise that 'has gone up about this book. It deserves a great many of the nice things that have been written about it. However, the publishers, in their house organ, give us to understand that " critics may differ as to whether this latest translation is very good or merely good, or perhaps not so good," and a number of reviews so far seen also draw a line between the "critic" and the "layman": the latter obviously being expected to approve; the former, to disapprove. The "critics" ought to be the most competent judges in this matter, and if they are so confidently expected to disapprove, it would seem that there must be somewhere " the little rift within the lute." And there is! Good Latin and Greek scholarship is essential to a good translation of the Vulgate, but there are other ingredients that enter into a good translation ~ There must be, and it seems to me that it is the most important of all, a high degree of accuracy, by which I mean fidelity to the originaL A translation ought to reproduce as closely as is possible within the limits of the newer language, the thought and expression of the original. Words in any language represent mental concepts, and the concepts caused by the language of the version ought to be the same as those caused by the language of the original. Where that is not true, we have no translation but a paraphrase or a commentary. And a translation ought not to so interpolate and substitute that a merely possible interpretation is woven into the text as the actual text itself. The proposal of a particular sense in a disputed passage ought to be left to the commentaries and not interpolated into the text. It is fidelity to the original that, in the last analysis, distinguishes a translation from a paraphrase or a commentary. It is its fidelity to its original that we have praised so long in the Douai-Rheims Bible, maintaining that that fidelity more than compensated for the supposedly superior English style of the King James Version. The same defense cannot be made of this new version. One finds in this work an extraordinary number of minor interpolations; modifying words and phrases that have no justification in the original text. 285 fl86 REVIEWS Repeatedly such temporal particles as soon, afterwarcJ,s, still, already, when, and the like, are inserted to give the text involved a precise modality that is lacking in the original. John I, 1 reads: "At the beginning of time"; Romans Vlli, 38: "The height above us, and the depth beneath us"; Acts I, 8: "Enough for you"; Romans V, 6: "Were that hope vain"; I Cor. XIII, 4: "Charity is never perverse or proud." In Romans V, 8, the simple affirmation "Oommendat autem charitatem suam Deus pro nobis," becomes" As if God means to prove how well he loves us." Serious enough for one who is interested in the true sense of Sacred Scripture is, for example, the interpolation of the phrase of time in John I, 1 and I, 3. " Which command is more lightly given " (Matt. IX, 5) is but one of several possible interpretations of " quid est facilius dicere." As with the in principia of St. John, I think it the most probable interpretation, but I know that it is not certainly the correct interpretation and that it is certainly not an exact translation of either Vulgate or Greek. As has been said, the ·proposal of possible interpretations ought to be left to a commentary. There are a great many passages that must be called mis-translations. By what transmutation of language can the " mollibus vestitum " of Matt. XI, 8 become "clad in silk?" Or...