New Book on the Revised Version by Cadwallader

Alan Cadwallader has been working on a major book on the Revised Version for years now. I first became aware of his work when I visited Westcott House a few years ago and found that he had preceded me and had very helpfully produced a catalogue of the materials there. Since then, I have been waiting for the fruit to appear. Now it has.

Although I have not seen the final book in hand, I was able to use some of the chapters in pre-pub form thanks to Alan’s generosity. If the rest of the book is like what I saw, then you can expect it to be finely researched, insightful, and full of spicy details. I learned a good deal from what I read. For a taste of the earlier fruit of his research, see the article I mention here.

The price is uncomfortable, but I hope to get a copy somehow at some point. If you’re interested in Bible translation, the history of New Testament scholarship, or Victorian church politics, you’ll want to take a look.

The full details are The Politics of the Revised Version: A Tale of Two New Testament Revision Companies, The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (T&T Clark, 2018).

The Timing of Burgon’s Last Twelve Verses

Some time ago, I posted Hort’s review of Dean Burgon’s defense of Mark 16.9-20. Along with that, and more interesting than the review, was a letter that Hort sent to Westcott about his review and the importance of its timing. Hort tells Westcott that he hopes the review is out before the committee for the RV meets to discuss this passage. And so it was. The review was published just before that meeting.

What I had not realized then was that Hort, in timing his response, was following in Burgon’s footsteps. Burgon’s own book was timed to precede—and so influence—the committee’s discussion of this passage.

Here is what A. H. Cadwallader says in his article “The Politics of Translation of The Revised Version: Evidence from the Newly Discovered Notebooks of Brooke Foss Westcott,” JTS 58, no. 2 (2007): 415–39. After discussing how careful the committee was to remain tight-lipped about their internal deliberations and disagreements, Cadwallader says (pp. 424-25),

The newspapers were officially provided only with details of the days of meeting, the members present, and the passages examined. This provided at least one antagonist, Dean Burgon, with the opportunity to time a publication on the integrity of the last twelve verses to Mark’s Gospel (the ‘Longer Ending’) before the Company dealt with the passage. Westcott’s close companion on such textual issues, Fenton J. A. Hort, saw the political danger immediately, and bemoaned to Westcott the rapid refutation that was needed if the Company was not to swing behind the moderately conservative Frederick Scrivener. As it was, the implication from the minutes is that the discussions on this passage were lengthy if not heated. Of all the 412 days of meeting, this seven-hour meeting yielded the least number of verses processed.

Having seen the minutes from these meetings, I can say that they are pretty boring. The first few entries detail who voted for what change but after that they quickly become a mere record of who was present and what changes were voted for. But Cadwallader’s observation is probably right to see the less-than-usual progress as a sign of serious debate. At least we know the decision was not made hastily.

Perhaps I should also note that Cadwallader has been at work on a history of the RV and I hear that he is making good progress. It should be a fine study when it comes out.

Interesting Material from the Archives at Westcott House

Westcott House in the summer

This morning I spent some time going through a cabinet of material from B. F. Westcott kept at Westcott House in Cambridge (see here for details). Westcott founded the school in 1881 as Cambridge Clergy Training School and it took its current name only after his death.

The archives has a number of interesting things belonging to Westcott. There are about ten books that either he owned or that he gave to others. These include Hort’s copy of Tischendorf’s Greek Old Testament, H. B. Swete’s copy of Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, and a copy of the Revised Version (NT) that Hort gave to Westcott.

The manuscript of Westcott’s
book on the history of the canon.

Speaking of Hort, there is this nice note to Westcott when the latter left Cambridge to become the Bishop of Durham: “… It does not often happen that two friends work together almost literally day by day for forty years; and now, in one sense, our end comes, and some words of farewell which are indeed God speed may well be spoken, & yet it is not the words themselves so much as the blessing of the presence.”

The archives also contain a number of Westcott’s original manuscripts from his published books including his History of the English Bible, History of the Canon of the New Testament, and his commentary on John.

But the most interesting item in the collection, as far as I’m concerned, is Westcott’s own copy of Eberhard Nestle’s first edition of the Novum Testamentum Graece (1898). This, of course, is the precursor to the Nestle-Aland edition we are all familiar with today. Westcott and Hort’s edition was one of the three that Nestle originally used to determine his own text. What makes the copy at Westcott House special is that it is the copy Nestle himself sent to Westcott as a thank you. Inside the front cover there is a short letter from Nestle.

Ulm, Germany
end of March
1898

Dear Sir

It is my pleasant duty, after I have finished the edition of the Greek Testament, which I have undertaken for the Bible Society of Wurttemberg, to renew to you the expression of our sincerest thanks, for the permission so graciously granted to us, to make use for it of the Greek Testament revised by yourself and Professor Hort. As you will see from the copy, which will be forwarded to you by same post, your text is the one constituent factor of the new edition, and I testify once more with the greatest pleasure, I never handled a book made up with so much care and thoughtfulness in the smallest details as your edition. The forthcoming number of the Expository Times (and that of May) will bring the small list of Errata or Inconsistencies, which I have detected, while I was collating your edition with Weymouth and Tischendorf. I shall recommend it to your kind attention and remain in lasting thankfulness.

yours
most faithfully
Eb. Nestle

Here’s a photo. (Sorry about the quality.)

Now, I can’t talk about Westcott House without mentioning my favorite feature: their tortoise named Hort. He literally gets put in a fridge for the winter to hibernate so I didn’t see him today. But during the warmer months, he can be seen trawling the courtyard for food. I’m told he used to have a friend named Lightfoot, but he lived up to his name and ran off!

“Hort” at Westcott House

The Greek Text of the English Bible between 1611 and 1881

Two of the most significant English translations as far as the text of the New Testament is concerned are the Authorized or King James Version of 1611 and its revision, the Revised Version, published in 1881 (NT; OT in 1885).

The KJV is obviously significant given its widespread adoption and use. Even today, it usually ranks as the second or third bestselling English translation. The RV marks another watershed in that it is the only officially sanctioned revision of the KJV. As far as textual criticism is concerned, it is even more important because it marks the first major English Bible to move away from the Textus Receptus and its lineage. After that, almost all English translations follow suit, right down to the present.

Because of their historical significance, it is worth asking how different the Greek text is behind these two translations. For the RV, we are lucky to have the Greek text used by the revisers and published by F. H. A. Scrivener, himself a member of the New Testament committee for the RV. For the KJV, it’s a bit trickier because the translators did not say exactly what Greek text they followed. By most accounts, however, they generally followed Beza’s fifth edition (1598) with occasional preference for Stephanus or even the Vulgate (for details, see here and here).

For his part, John W. Burgon said that the RV diverged from the traditional Greek text “nearly 6000 times.” Since this is Burgon we’re talking about, he naturally adds that these were “almost invariably for the worse.” But Burgon himself did not have access to the Greek text of the revisers as far as I know. Presumably he must have used Westcott and Hort for his estimate, assuming that it was close enough. If so, he was right to do so as his estimate is not far from the truth.

But for a better comparison, we can turn to Scrivener’s Parallel New Testament: Greek and English (Cambridge, 1882) which lays out the Greek behind the KJV and the Greek text adopted by the RV committee. Helpfully, Scrivener marks any place where he thinks the KJV translators diverged from Beza and any place where the RV’s Greek text differs from the KJV’s. In this way, his book gives a nice view of how the text used for the English Bible changed between 1611 and 1881.

In all Scrivener tells us there are 190 places where the Greek text behind the KJV diverges from Beza. More relevant, I counted a total of 5,614 differences between the KJV and RV Greek texts.* That makes for a rate of about 0.7 differences per verse or one every 1.5 verses. The lowest rate is 0.4 in Matthew and Galatians. The highest is in Revelation with 1.6 differences per verse. That’s quite a lot more than I expected, to be honest. For some reason I assumed there were only a few thousand at most.

Of course, bare numbers only tell you so much. Many of these differences are untranslated and untranslatable. But many others do affect the translation and that is one reason why the RV was criticized. Had the changes been fewer, it might not have raised the ire of critics like Burgon the way it did. It would be useful to have more precise numbers on how many changes did not actually affect the translation, but that would take a good deal more work.

*Update (3/24/18): For what it’s worth, F. C. Cook says that Scrivener’s notes record 6,788 differences. I haven’t bothered to recount and see who’s right.

Principles for Revising the KJV

I spent the morning today looking through some of the minutes and papers from the revisers of the English Bible (i.e., the Revised Version). Unfortunately, I didn’t get to the minutes on the New Testament. But I did come across some interesting collateral material. For example, the funding put up by the University of Oxford and Cambridge was £20,000 and they retained the profits from printing. Also, the NT committee, at least from what I saw, took detailed notes for each verse whereas the OT minutes were essentially a record of attendance and a note on the point in the text reached in each meeting. All the meetings opened with prayer. I also didn’t realize that Charles Hodge was on the committee for the American edition.

Here are the general principles for the revision for both the Old and New Testament committees:

From MS Add. 6924