Taking the Heart out of the Bible - Glenn Conjurske

Taking the Heart out of the Bible

by Glenn Conjurske

For somewhere in the neighborhood of a quarter of a century I have been accused of “subjectivism” in my criticism of the “New” Bibles, and my defense of the old. To that charge I plead guilty. Not that I am purely subjective—-not that there is no solid objective foundation beneath my position—-but subjective I surely am, and subjective I intend to remain. When the heart is involved in a matter, we must be subjective, and I make no apology for the fact that I love the old Bible. But love can be objective also. “Love is blind,” but “God is love,” and God is not blind. A man may be very keenly conscious of the faults of his children, and yet love them all the same. For my part, I believe I can see the faults of the old Bible as well as any of its modern detractors do, and yet I love it still. ‘Tis true that “love covers a multitude of sins,” but it is equally true that “faults are thick where love is thin,” and when I see modern pedants and petty grammarians turning almost everything in the old Bible into a fault, I can only conclude that their love for the old Book must be very thin. And if their love for the old Book is very thin, this tells me something about the nature of their Christianity. I was once there too. I spurned and despised the old Book also—-when I was heady, highminded, enamored with modern scholarship, ignorant of the issues, and destitute of wisdom. My Christianity was more head than heart, but when I began to learn a little of the religion of the heart, I became painfully aware of how little there was even of head in my former state. And as I entered more deeply into the solid substance of the religion of the heart, that heady intellectualism, with which I had been so enamored before, lost its charms—-became, indeed, positively distasteful. But the old Bible regained its charms, for the old English Bible is the book above all books for the heart. The “New” versions are the product of a heady and unspiritual intellectualism, and certainly not of old-fashioned heart-religion. As a consequence, they speak to the head, where the old version speaks to the heart.

But some will claim that the “New” versions speak to the heart also.

I will not deny it, while I yet contend that they do not speak to the heart in the same degree or manner as the old one. The modern Bibles are the product of modern Christianity—-the product therefore of an unspiritual intellectualism—-and whatever is missing in modern Christianity is missing in the modern Bibles also. Now one of the greatest deficiencies of modern Christianity lies in the realm of the heart. The things of the heart have given way before those of the head. Emotion is feared and shunned. Men would not weep if they could—-nor could if they would. A cold correctness has replaced that gushing warmth of heart which belongs by nature to real Christianity. The modern revisers of the Bible of course would not purposely eject the matters of the heart from the book, but they knew not how to help it. They had too little feel for the matter. They could not tell what to prune for the head’s sake, and what to spare for the heart’s sake, —-seem, indeed, to have been largely unaware that it mattered to spare anything for the heart’s sake—-and they pruned all alike. The NKJV is less guilty of this than the others, but none of them are innocent.

But I must proceed to something specific and objective. There are two manners in which the heart has been taken out of the modern Bibles. The first is by removing many of the old heart associations of the saints of God, and the second by abandoning the strong and vigorous language of the old version, which naturally appeals to the heart.

Now as to the first, we must affirm that words are not purely indifferent. They are not purely neutral, and they do not stand entirely alone. Words have associations—-mental, moral, personal, nostalgic, spiritual, sacred. And will we nill we, the words of the old Bible have associations. They have heart associations. They are associated with all that is most precious to the saints of God, and to cast away those heart associations, because, perforce, we have found a word which we fancy to be more accurate, entails more loss than gain, and displays besides a lamentable insensitivity to the matters of the heart, which is one of the most patent characteristics of modern intellectualism, and of the modern Bibles. If John Jones has always tenderly addressed his lover as “Foo-foo,” she will likely feel the loss when he drops it for “darling,” though he might contend that “darling” is more refined, more accurate, and more of who knows what. But this modern intellectualism can think of nothing but accuracy, and it seems never to have imagined that there might be any heart associations in the old Bible—-or that men have any hearts at all.

I grew up near the top of a large hill known as “the hogsback.” Our lot was just below the summit. The top of the hill was unoccupied, and covered with woods. I used to wander there and pick trilliums or mayflowers, or stand on the edge of the hill above the road and look out over the countryside. Just on the summit there stood a large hemlock, and anyone driving up the road, ascending the hill, could always see the top third or quarter of that old hemlock, towering above the rest of the trees.

But I grew up and left my boyhood home. I went to Bible school in Michigan, then to preach in Colorado. I lived in various places, and for years did not see my boyhood home. At length, however, I returned there for a visit. As I drove through town and across the bridge, and began to approach the hogsback, one thought was uppermost in my mind—-to see again the old hemlock. But as I began to drive up the hill, I began to feel confused—-disappointed—-robbed. The old hemlock was—-—-—-—-GONE!! The top of the hogsback was levelled. A building was there.

Now I can guess that none of my readers have felt, in the reading of these paragraphs, what I have felt in the writing of them. They shed none of the tears in the reading of these things, which I shed in the writing of them. None of the sobs which convulsed my frame convulsed theirs. The hogsback was nothing to them. The old hemlock was nothing to them.

Yet it is with just these emotions that a spiritual saint must read the “New” Bible versions. He finds many of the old heart associations gone, hewed down without a pang of regret, to make way for progress. Well, my readers must pardon me, but I can only suppose concerning the translators of these “New” versions, that the old landmarks of English Christianity were nothing to them. The warm heart associations of the old saints of

God were nothing to them. They had a cold, intellectual thing called (or miscalled) “scholarship,” and hearts were of no account where heads knew something—-or thought they did. Young intellectuals may read these “New” versions, and be delighted with the progress. Old saints read them, and can only feel grieved and violated.

Now in all of this it is the unspirituality of the “New” translators which comes out. They know some things, we may grant, but they are lamentably destitute of spiritual sense and spiritual feeling. They march through the old Bible like an army in combat boots, with no sense—-judging solely from their performances—-that they are treading on holy ground, but on they go, like heartless soldiers, hacking and hewing and treading down old widows’ flower gardens, with no sense that they are violating anything sacred. They must have a Bible for the unspiritual, for the intellectual, for the lazy, for the lukewarm, for the ungodly, and it nothing concerns them to spare that which is dear to the spiritual. In all of this we see the unspirituality of modern Evangelicalism.

Do they have no sense that the hearts of the saints of God are intimately bound up with every turn of expression in the old Bible? Do they not know that their continual discarding of its innocent little quaintnesses—-do they not perceive that their continual upsetting of its familiar cadences—-can they not guess that their constant replacing of one word with another (when the two words mean precisely the same thing), are just so many depredations upon the hearts of the saints of God? “Linked with all our holiest, happiest memories, and bound up with all our purest aspirations: part and parcel of whatever there is of good about us: fraught with men’s hopes of a blessed Eternity and many a bright vision of the never-ending Life;—-the Authorized Version, wherever it was possible, should have been jealously retained.” So wrote J. W. Burgon, when observing the insensitivity of the old revisers, who, like the “New” ones, subjected every matter of the heart to a frigid—-and often imagined—-accuracy.

But I must pause to give an example, lest my readers suppose all of this to be empty assertion. When the “New” Bibles came on the scene, they came, we would like to hope, to a people familiar with the word of God. All such people know very well the meaning of the word “closet”—-a word which is full of fragrance to spiritual souls. It is full of heart associations, which are spiritual—-holy—-sacred. But “thy closet” is no more the place of prayer in the “New” versions, for that priceless “accuracy” which produced them must thrust its cold and careless hand into every warm association of the heart, and undo it. Not that the modern brand of accuracy can tell us what “thy closet” ought to be—-only it is sure it should not be “thy closet” (for that is the rendering of the old version). According to the NIV and the NKJV, it is now “your room,” which to every ordinary person will mean “your bedroom.” According to the Berkeley Version and the NASV it is now “your inner room,” which may mean most anything, and to many will likely mean but little, as they are not conscious that they have any “inner room.” According to the Christian Bible it is now “your storeroom,” which means the same thing as is ordinarily understood by “your closet,” but which has none of its sacred associations. For in spite of the “New” versions, all of the holy associations of the heart remain with the terminology of the old one. The saints of God—-who know the word of God—-whose element is fellowship with the people of God—-who love the precious heritage left to us by men of God—-these all know very well what “thy closet” is. These all know what it means to “go from the closet to the pulpit”—-while they know also that the “closet” may be the woods or the riverbank. But all of these sacred associations of the heart are thrown to the winds by the “New” versions, for the sake of an accuracy which is usually no more accurate than that of the old one. This demonstrates plainly enough how little those sacred associations meant to the producers of the “New” versions. It was not spirituality which wrought after this fashion, and the result produced has failed conspicuously to find acceptance with spirituality or with wisdom. The young people, the Campus Crusaders, the Neo-Evangelicals, the intellectuals, these have taken up the “New” versions before the ink was dry, while the old saints have, generally, stood aloof.

But this is no concern to the makers of the “New” versions, for the fact is, the solid, old-fashioned, spiritual saints of God were not the “target readers” of the “New” versions. They were not translated for the old saints who loved the old book. That were entirely a work of supererogation—-indeed, an inexcusable impertinence. The old saints did not want a “New” Bible. These “New” Bibles were neither produced by nor for such saints of God. They were produced for the shallow and unspiritual generation which makes up modern Evangelicalism. They were produced for the modern preachers who know more of the batting averages of the major league ball players than they do of the cadences of the old Bible. They were produced for the modern generation of Christians, who are more familiar with the personalities of Hollywood than they are with Job or Jeremiah. They were produced for the young people who are too lazy to use a dictionary. Such Christians, of course, may take these “New” Bibles in hand, and feel no disappointment at all—-no loss at all—-no wrenching of the feelings of their hearts at all. They had no such feelings to wrench. They likely little knew the old book, and at any rate they little loved it.

Ah! but the “New” versions are more accurate—-if we may believe their defenders. I would not pretend to deny it, at least in some few particulars, but then I am so far out of step with the times as to prefer the warm heart associations of the old version, to the cold accuracy of the “New” ones. Worse yet, I am so unscholarly as to doubt that the “New” translators are competent to show us what accuracy is. If it was accuracy which dictated that the NASV should alter “the invisible things of him” to “His invisible attributes” in Romans 1:20, then I am very ignorant, and unable to perceive the value of accuracy. If it was accuracy which compelled the NKJV to thrust out “When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own” from John 8:44, and replace it with “When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources”—-then “accuracy” is a commodity which we may well live without. Of such accuracy both sense and feeling compel me to say, as

F. H. A. Scrivener said of Hort’s textual theory, “that the system which entails such consequences is hopelessly self-condemned.” Translators who are capable of such a stroke as “his own resources” do but demonstrate how absolutely unqualified they are for their task. They amputate the patient’s nose to cure his cold—-and we are not so sure he had any cold to cure. Did they draw “resources” out of a hat, or mix up their manuscript with their order to Focus on the Family? If they were determined to add something, why did they not say “manuscript,” or “kitchen”? Yet there was no occasion to add anything. We suppose it was wisdom in the old version which let “his own” stand alone in the English, as it does in the Greek. But if they felt compelled to fill out the elipsis, “resources” was as inapt and unfitting a word as they could well have found.

But why do I devote so much attention to these Bible versions? Why do I spend so much emotion on the subject? I wish all of my readers to understand that the things of which I have written in this article are no peripheral issues, but belong to the very heart of the testimony which God has committed to me. This paper is not entitled Olde Paths and Ancient Landmarks for nothing. We are here precisely to call men back to the old paths, “where is the good way.” We know right well what sort of task this is. We know right well how certain our endeavors are to be misunderstood. We know right well what an all-but-impossible task it is to penetrate the smug certainty of the modern generation that the modern departures from the old ways consist of progress. But progress it is not. It is no progress to replace the heart with the head. It is no progress to replace vigorous literary English with the weak and tasteless stuff of the conversational sort, under the plea of intelligibility. It is no progress to take the heart out of the Bible, under the plea of accuracy. It is not that we could never endure any revision of the old version, but we cannot bear the sort of revisions which we have seen. If the old version needs revision, surely the Evangelicals of the present generation are not the ones to revise it. We have seen enough to know what they can do. For my part, I can never call a truce with that modern intellectual sophistication which takes the heart out of Christianity, or out of any part of it, upon any plea whatsoever, but shall stand against it while life shall last. If I do this in too vigorous a manner, it is hard to help it. My heart is involved.

But let one thing be well understood. I am well aware that there are many true-hearted saints of God who use the “New” Bible versions. I do not write to reproach them, but to teach them better, and most surely to make them feel the things which I say. I write to enlighten them as to the true issues involved in the question. The people of God have been plied with many plausible arguments to move them from the old version to the “New” ones, and some of those arguments have moved some good people. The disadvantages of using archaic language has probably moved more than any other argument. The supposed inaccuracy of the old version has moved many, who lack the learning or the means to judge the question. I know good people who have left the old version for a “New” one, but I believe they have been misled. I believe that in making the switch they have lost a good deal more than they have gained. I do not write to reproach or reprove them for their choice, but to make them feel their loss.

Glenn Conjurske