Revised Version
From Textus Receptus
The Revised Version (or English Revised Version) of the Bible is a late 19th-century British revision of the King James Version of 1611. The New Testament was published in 1881, the Old Testament in 1885, and the Apocrypha in 1894. The best known of the translation committee members were Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort; their fiercest critic of that period was John William Burgon.
The stated aim of the RV's translators was "to adapt King James' version to the present state of the English language without changing the idiom and vocabulary," and "to adapt it to the present standard of Biblical scholarship." Further, it was to be "the best version possible in the nineteenth century, as King James' version was the best which could be made in the seventeenth century." To those ends, the Greek text used to translate the New Testament was believed by some to be of higher reliability than the Textus Receptus used for the KJV. The readings used were compiled from a different text of the Greek Testament by Edwin Palmer.
Most modern version supporters claim that no doctrines are affected by the changes of modern versions, George Vance Smith was a Unitarian scholar who worked on the RV translation committee and wrote a book explaining that the new RV readings favor Unitarian doctrines. He called it: Texts and margins of the revised New Testament: affecting theological doctrine briefly reviewed.
While the text of the translation itself is widely regarded as excessively literal and flat, the Revised Version is significant in the history of English Bible translation for many reasons. At the time of the RV's publication, the nearly 300-year old King James Version was still the only viable English Bible in Victorian England. The RV, therefore, is regarded as the forerunner of the entire corrupt modern translation tradition. Other important enhancements introduced in the RV include arrangement of the text into paragraphs, printing Old Testament poetry in indented poetic lines (rather than as prose), and the inclusion of marginal notes to alert the reader to variations in wording in ancient manuscripts.
In the United States, the RV was adapted as the Revised Version, Standard American Edition (better known as the American Standard Version) in 1901. It is largely identical to it, the most readily noticeable difference being the use of the word Jehovah rather than the traditional "the LORD" to represent the Divine Name, the Tetragrammaton.
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See Also
- Revised Version
- Brooke Foss Westcott
- Fenton John Anthony Hort.
- George Vance Smith
Sources
- Marlowe, Michael D. "English Revised Version (1881-1895)". Retrieved March 22, 2004.
- Hall, Isaac H. (ed.) "History of the English Revised Version (1881)". Retrieved March 22, 2004.
- Palmer, Edwin Palmer, ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ. The Greek Testament with the Readings Adopted by the Revisers of the Authorised Version. London: Simon Wallenberg Press, 2007. ISBN 1843560232
- Ryken, Leland (2002). The Word of God in English. Wheaton, IL: Crossway. ISBN 1-58134-464-3
- Burgon, John William (1883). The Revision Revised. Google Books: Revision Revised
Notes
- Palmer, Edwin Palmer, ΚΑΙΝΗ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗ. The Greek Testament with the Readings Adopted by the Revisers of the Authorised Version. London: Simon Wallenberg Press, 2007. ISBN 1843560232
