Of making many translations there is no end. People get bewildered and say, “It is all Greek to me; I prefer my King James Version.” True, its worth and beauty cannot be measured, yet the desire to have “as nearly as possible the exact words which God caused to be written” is perfectly upright. If one knows not Hebrew and Greek, others must translate God’s Word for him into his language. “The faithful rendering of the original text outweighs every other consideration” (J.N.D.). And with this noble object before them some have toiled painstakingly for long years. Should we then be indifferent and ignore their labors? In the course of time words become obsolete, such as: amerce, besom, bruit, champaign, clout, fray, neesing, tabering, bestead, assuage, betimes, choler, discomfit, froward, wist, trove, let, holpen, bowels, kidneys, etc.
Beyond conception are the complicated and intricate factors involved in weighing carefully the mass of materials in order to arrive at the true text and then to translate it correctly. It requires not only scholarship but more especially spirituality, coupled with self-sacrifice and enduring patience. It has been well said that “A spiritual man is less liable to err than a great scholar.”
It will be our first endeavor to touch but briefly upon some of the principle sources from which the translations and their basic texts have been drawn.