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By Root 1090 0

of unnecessary departure from the familiar phraseology, undue literalism, elaborate overcorrection, destruction of beauty and rhythm, impoverishment of the English language and the like flew thick and fast.” All but the second of these charges can be sustained against R.S.V., even though it has not gone so far as such other modern versions as those of Moffatt, Rieu, and Smith-Goodspeed. Whether it will be any more successful in replacing K.J.V. than the 1885 version was remains to be seen. If it is, what is now simply a blunder—a clerical error, so to speak—will become a catastrophe. Bland, flavorless mediocrity will have replaced the pungency of genius. And if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? That is to say (R.S.V.): if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored?

Appendix:

THE CAMFORD BIBLE

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Since the King James Version is both poetic and religious, the Zeitgeist is not easy with it. “The Bible comes from a pre-scientific age,” an English bishop sadly observed recently. The latest in the long series of attempts since 1870 to replace K.J.V. with something more in harmony with the spirit of the times—that is something prosaic, nonreligious, and rational—was the publication in 1961 of the New Testament section of The New English Bible. This was published jointly by the university presses of Oxford and Cambridge—and so is sometimes called the Camford, or the Oxbridge, Bible—and was the first fruits of the labors of a scholarly committee headed by the Rev. Dr. C.H. Dodd and appointed by a joint conference of all the non-Catholic churches of the British Isles. The London Observer asked me to have a look at the Camford Bible, which had sold a million copies in advance. The following review is the result.

The miracle of the King James Version is that its range extends from the ornate to the simple, from the most grandiose Latinism to the most direct Anglo-Saxon. The miracle in reverse that the Rev. Dr. C.H. Dodd, the foreman on the demolition job, and his wrecking crew have performed is to extirpate, with unerring taste, both elevation and vigor. On the one hand, “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” is banalized into “Each day has trouble enough of its own.” On the other, “the brightness of His Glory” is Wardourized into “the effulgence of God’s splendor.”

“Ideally, we aim at a ‘timely’ English version,” Professor Dodd has stated, “avoiding equally both archaicisms and transient modernisms.” They have avoided neither. Their “tax-gatherer” is less archaic than “publican” but “tax-collector” is modern usage; the K.J.V. “Woe unto you” is antiquated but so is their “Alas for you”; “anoint,” “attire,” “burnished,” and “perdition” are not current locutions; and it is a regression to replace “thief” by “bandit.” As for “transient modernisms,” one hardly knows where to begin—“came down on the rioters on the double,” “out of my depth in such discussions,” “prominent citizens,” “merchant princes,” “my good man.”

I expected that the Jacobean grand style would be taken down more than a few pegs—that “hearken to my words” would become “give me a hearing”; that Jesus would say to the woman taken in adultery not “Go and sin no more” but “You may go; do not sin again” (even more “timely” would have been, “Don’t let it happen again”); that the subtle rhythm of “I cannot dig; to beg I am ashamed” would be hamstrung into: “I am not strong enough to dig, and too proud to beg.”[1] I knew all the great passages would be bulldozed flat, but still it was a shock to go from: “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass darkly....” to: “When I was a child, my speech, my outlook, and my thoughts were all childish. When I grew up, I had finished with childish things. Now we see only puzzling reflections in a mirror.” Like finding a parking lot where a great church once stood.

But what I was not prepared for was the opposite—the inflation of simple Anglo-Saxon