We might proceed with numerous illustrations' exhibiting the weakness of
Mr. Sawyer's claim of an improved and strictly literal rendering, but
these are enough. Before he claims much on the score of scholarly
accuracy or critical rendering, he must explain these inconsistencies
and remove these blemishes. But if such faults are patent in the
simplest narrative passages, what confidence can we place in Mr. Sawyer
as a translator of difficult, abstruse, doctrinal, and disputed texts?
In every instance in which we have tested his translation of the
original, the changes which he has made from the common version not
only, in our judgment, are no improvements, but positively render the
expression less clear, less forcible, and less precise; of course, as
the language is made worse, the thought is, in the same proportion,
obscured.
Another peculiarity of Mr. Sawyer's translation, which we suppose he
claims as an improvement, does not meet our approval. In all cases where
there is no word in our language which expresses the signification
of the Greek, as in the names of weights and measures, Mr.
Pages:
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412