In The Revision Revised (1883, here I excerpt
from page 398-400), John William Burgon analyzes the contents of C. J. Ellicott’s pamphlet about the “Proposed Revision of the Scriptures.” He also shows that the revisers exceeded the
instructions of the Convocation of Canterbury, even using Ellicott’s own words against him. Ellicott attempted to deflect this objection in his Addresses on the Revised Version of Holy Scripture.
…
all this, my lord Bishop, I frankly avow, to me, looks very much indeed like what, in the language of lawyers, is called “Conspiracy.” It appears then that instead of presiding over the deliberations of the Revisionists as an impartial arbiter, you have been throughout, heart and soul, an eager partizan. You have learned to employ freely Drs. Westcott and Hort’s peculiar terminology. You adopt their scarcely-intelligible phrases: their wild hypotheses: their arbitrary notions about ‘Intrinsic’ and ‘Transcriptional Probability:’ their baseless theory of ‘Conflation:’ their shallow ‘Method of Genealogy.’ You have, in short, evidently swallowed their novel invention whole. I can no longer wonder at the result arrived at by the body of Revisionists.
...
The ‘fundamental Resolutions adopted by the Convocation of Canterbury’ (3rd and 5th May, 1870), five in number, contain no authorization whatever for making changes in the Greek Text. They have reference only to the work of revising ‘the Authorized Version:’ an undertaking which the first Resolution declares to be ‘desirable.’ In order to ascertain what were the Revisers’ ‘Instructions with regard to the Greek Text,’ we must refer to the original Resolution of Feb. 10th, 1870: in which the removal of ‘plain and clear errors, whether in the Greek Text originally adopted by the Translators, or in the Translation made from the same,’—is for the first and last time mentioned. That you yourself accepted this as the limit of your authority, is proved by your Speech in Convocation. “We may be satisfied” (you said) “with the attempt to correct plain and clear errors: but there, it is our duty to stop.”[i]
Now I venture to assert that not one in a
hundred of the alterations you have actually made, ‘whether in the Greek Text
originally adopted by the Translators, or in the Translation made from the same,’
are corrections of ‘plain and clear
errors.’ Rather,—(to adopt the words of the learned Bishop of Lincoln,)—“I
fear we must say in candour that in the Revised Version we meet in every page
with changes which seem almost to be made
for the sake of change.” May I trouble you to refer back to p. 112 of the
present volume for a few words more on this subject from the pen of the same
judicious Prelate?
From page 112:
“To pass from the one to the other, is, as it were, to alight from a well-built and well-hung carriage which glides easily over a macadamized road,—and to get into one which has bad springs or none at all, and in which you are jolted in ruts with aching bones over the stones of a newly-mended and rarely traversed road, like some of the roads in our North Lincolnshire villages.”—Bishop Wordsworth.[ii]
…
all this, my lord Bishop, I frankly avow, to me, looks very much indeed like what, in the language of lawyers, is called “Conspiracy.” It appears then that instead of presiding over the deliberations of the Revisionists as an impartial arbiter, you have been throughout, heart and soul, an eager partizan. You have learned to employ freely Drs. Westcott and Hort’s peculiar terminology. You adopt their scarcely-intelligible phrases: their wild hypotheses: their arbitrary notions about ‘Intrinsic’ and ‘Transcriptional Probability:’ their baseless theory of ‘Conflation:’ their shallow ‘Method of Genealogy.’ You have, in short, evidently swallowed their novel invention whole. I can no longer wonder at the result arrived at by the body of Revisionists.
...
The ‘fundamental Resolutions adopted by the Convocation of Canterbury’ (3rd and 5th May, 1870), five in number, contain no authorization whatever for making changes in the Greek Text. They have reference only to the work of revising ‘the Authorized Version:’ an undertaking which the first Resolution declares to be ‘desirable.’ In order to ascertain what were the Revisers’ ‘Instructions with regard to the Greek Text,’ we must refer to the original Resolution of Feb. 10th, 1870: in which the removal of ‘plain and clear errors, whether in the Greek Text originally adopted by the Translators, or in the Translation made from the same,’—is for the first and last time mentioned. That you yourself accepted this as the limit of your authority, is proved by your Speech in Convocation. “We may be satisfied” (you said) “with the attempt to correct plain and clear errors: but there, it is our duty to stop.”[i]
“To pass from the one to the other, is, as it were, to alight from a well-built and well-hung carriage which glides easily over a macadamized road,—and to get into one which has bad springs or none at all, and in which you are jolted in ruts with aching bones over the stones of a newly-mended and rarely traversed road, like some of the roads in our North Lincolnshire villages.”—Bishop Wordsworth.[ii]
[i] Chronicle of Convocation, Feb. 1870, p.
83.
[ii] Address at Lincoln Diocesan Conference,—p. 16. Christopher Wordsworth (1807–1885), Bishop of Lincoln, was a nephew of the poet William Wordsworth. According to Isaac H. Hall in The Revised New Testament and History of Revision, pp. 83-84, Wordsworth served on and then resigned from the Old Testament company.
[ii] Address at Lincoln Diocesan Conference,—p. 16. Christopher Wordsworth (1807–1885), Bishop of Lincoln, was a nephew of the poet William Wordsworth. According to Isaac H. Hall in The Revised New Testament and History of Revision, pp. 83-84, Wordsworth served on and then resigned from the Old Testament company.
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