Principal George Adam Smith, in his address at the Aberdeen meeting celebrating the tercentenary of the Authorized Version, and the jubilee of the National Bible Society of Scotland said that — “He did not know of any two languages which presented more points of resemblance to each other than the Hebrew of the Old Testament writers, and the English of our translators. To translate Hebrew into Greek or even into Latin, was to run its thought and music into moulds far less adapted for them, than the moulds into which they ran when they translated the Hebrew into English. With our English Bible we really enjoyed more of the poetry, the music, the fragrance, of the Hebrew Scriptures, than did the Hellenistic Jews of Alexandria or the early mediaeval Latins.” |
