Vocabulary and cadence

I was recently reading a Theology Today article written by Burton H. Throckmorton, Jr. in 1990 regarding the *new* NRSV and REB translations (both had been released in 1989); I thought that the opening paragraphs were worth quoting:

For over forty years, the Revised Standard Version has been widely thought of as the best English version one could read. In spite of an occasional oddity in translation, and the somewhat lusterless idiom that overlays it, the RSV has remained the most reliable and “safest” English translation of the Bible on the market. It has proved to be both an advantage and a disadvantage that the truly remarkable collection of scholars who produced the original RSV were under the mandate to “revise” the King James or Authorized Version of 1611, not to produce an altogether new translation. And now a different RSV Bible committee has provided the church with what will become the RSV’s successor-the New Revised Standard Version, to be known as the NRSV. This just published work is, except on one major point, a remarkable achievement. The committee and its tireless chair, Bruce M. Metzger, are to be congratulated and thanked.

The NRSV has left behind the King James cadences (largely maintained in the RSV, but no longer representing current idiom), while still remaining essentially a revision of what has been called the “noblest monument of English prose.” The Authorized Version was the Bible of the English-speaking church for over three hundred years, and, in a sense, through the NRSV, it still is-not in details of translation, and not in its rhythms, but in its basic vocabulary. Illustration: The Authorized Version of John 13:31 reads: “Now is the Son of man glorified.” The RSV repeats that verbatim, though that is not the way we would say it. The NRSV, however, puts it in our idiom: “Now the Son of Man has been glorified.” The vocabulary is still King James; the cadence is ours.

The idiom of the NRSV is consistently our own, rather than something inherited, vaguely or verbatim, from the KJV. For example, in the RSV of John 11:8 we read: “The Jews were but now seeking to stone you”-hardly contemporary English; but the NRSV reads: “The Jews were just now trying to stone you.” With this kind of change, carried out consistently throughout the entire Bible, the NRSV presents us with a major shift into contemporary English. At the same time, it also preserves what has remained through the centuries the characteristic English translation of the Bible, by maintaining, wherever possible, the basic vocabulary of the KJV. That is no small achievement. (p.281)

In contrast, the author goes on to note that the REB’s predecessor, the NEB, “broke entirely from the KJV, using few of its distinctive words, expressions, or rhythms. It remains the base of the REB, but the latter makes substantial changes throughout” and “is fresh, vibrant, and imaginative, giving us a new way of seeing, unfettered by the literary garb in which the biblical text is customarily clothed. It offers English-speaking readers an alternative to the NRSV, a different, reliable way of hearing the text that will further illuminate the mysteries of the Word of God.” (p.287, 289)

It is the different mixes of vocabulary, cadence and tradition in translation that have spurred my interest in the English Bible over the past year and they remain at the heart of what I hope to write about.

Finally, Throckmorton’s concluding thought:

Translation is truly an impossible art. It must be done, but there is no final way of doing it. And, so, it must be redone, again and again. To mix two quotations: God has more truth and light yet to break forth out of God’s holy Word than this world dreams of. God be praised for all those who, through their devotion to the study of holy Scripture, make it ever more clearly a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.