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Charles Thomson and the First American New Testament
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 July 2011
Extract
Charles Thomson (1729–1824) is best known as the first translator of the Septuagint, or Greek Old Testament, into English—or for that matter into any modern language. He is less well known as the first American translator of the New Testament, for his four volumes included the New Testament as well as the Old.1 His achievements are remarkable, for he was no professional scholar but a layman—early American patriot, Secretary to the Continental Congress, and friend of Thomas Jefferson—who taught himself Greek in order to carry out the task. Born in Ireland in 1729, he arrived in America as an orphan at the age of ten, learned Latin, went into business, and became an activist in resisting the repressive measures of the British government, particularly the Stamp Act.
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References
1 The Holy Bible containing the Old and New Covenant, commonly called the Old and New Testament: Translated from the Greek (Philadelphia: Jane Aitken, 1808). The work appeared in four volumes—three Old Testament volumes and a New Testament.
2 See Daniell, David, The Bible in English (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003) 644Google Scholar.
3 It did, however, include Psalm 151, which is not in the Hebrew canon, and Thomson followed suit, without numbering it, and with the following note: “N.B. There is in the Septuagint another Psalm, with this title:—This Psalm on David was written by himself in prose, when he fought in single combat with Goliath” (throughout this paper all quoted material maintains original italics).
4 As John Reumann points out, “the Greek Old Testament was not an unknown book in America in Thomson's day” The Romance of Bible Scripts and Scholars Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1965) 126. Moreover, as one who knew Latin he would have found Greek far more accessible than Hebrew.
5 See Daniell, The Bible in English, 645.
6 The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament according to the Vatican Text (London: Samuel Bagster, 1844). Brenton wrote of Thomson (rather backhandedly) in his preface: “In the notes also, though very rarely, there appears the name of Thomson, the American translator. The writer has himself never seen that work, but some alterations and improvements were made from it by a friend (Mr. Charles Pridham) who had the opportunity of comparing the two, and to whom he is otherwise indebted for the correction of many errors. While thus acknowledging our obligations to Thomson, we are of course not likely to speak slightingly of the work. If there are faults, they are probably those of a vigorous and independent mind, better fitted to engage in original attempts than to submit to the drudgery of translation” (xi).
7 A New English Translation of the Septuagint and the Other Greek Translations Traditionally Included under that Title (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
8 The Septuagint Bible: The Oldest Text of the Old Testament in the Translation of Charles Thomson … as edited, revised and enlarged by C. A. Muses (2d ed.; Indian Hills, Colo.: Falcon's Wing Press, 1960). Muses was quite candid about the extent of his revisions. For example: “We have confined ourselves to changing Thomson's work only where the facts of the text required it, or where another translation was called for preferentially by the oldest manuscript tradition” (xii); “Since Thomson omitted additional material in the Book of Esther found in the Septuagint Bible, we have restored it to his proper place in the text” (xiii); “It was necessary to repunctuate and paragraph practically the entire Old Testament, as well as to remove inconsistent spelling, all in all amounting to thousands of improvements” (xiv). Admittedly, he also incorporated a number of changes that Thomson himself had made by hand after the publication of his translation in 1808 (xv).
9 This work is entitled on the spine Thomson's Septuagint (see above, n. 2), but on the title page The Old Covenant commonly called the Old Testament translated from the Septuagint by Charles Thomson, in two volumes (London: Skeffington & Son, 1904; repr., Hove, U.K.: S. F. Pells, 1907).
10 Pells, , Hades (London: Skeffington & Son, 1904Google Scholar).
11 Avoiding all mention of hell, Thomson uses “Hades” in Matt 16:18 and in Luke 10:15, but “the mansion of the dead” consistently throughout the rest of the New Testament; see Luke 16:23; Acts 2:27, 31; Rev 1:18, 6:8, 20:13-14). A note at Matt 16:18 explains: “Hades, the place, mansion or habitation of departed spirits.” Thomson frequently renders “Hades” as “mansion of the dead” in his Septuagint as well.
12 The full title on the title page was The New Covenant commonly called the New Testament translated from John Field's Cambridge Edition, 1665, A Greek Text, first published at Amstelodami, 1639, of Codex Vaticanus, by Charles Thomson (Hove, U.K.: S.F. Pells, 1929). Muses seems to have taken this claim at face value (The Septuagint Bible, xxiii).
13 Oddly enough, there is clear evidence that Pells himself knew better. In his book The Church's Ancient Bible (Hove, U.K.: S. F. Pells, n.d.), published after his edition of Thomson's Septuagint but well before that of the New Testament, he wrote, “Charles Thomson also translated the New Testament, but not from Codex Vaticanus, but from the text known as the Textus Receptus” (78 n. 1). The mistake must therefore be attributed either to carelessness or to irresponsible marketing.
14 Inside, Pells printed a facsimile of Thomson's original title page, presenting itself more modestly as The New Covenant commonly called the New Testament translated from the Greek (Philadelphia: Jane Aitken, 1808). That Thomson's version was not based on Codex Vaticanus is evident at once from its retention of such passages as John 7:53–8:11 and Mark 16:9–20 without so much as a footnote.
15 See Isaac H. Hall, “List of Printed Editions of the Greek New Testament,” in Schaff, Philip, A Companion to the Greek New Testament and the English Version (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1883) 504Google Scholar (#195).
16 According to Daniell, “His New Testament basis was a version of the Textus Receptus as printed by Field, who was reprinting Thomas Buck's edition of 1632, which reproduced the first Elzevir edition from Leiden in 1624, which itself reprinted Beza's of 1565” The Bible in English, 645.
17 Grobel, “Charles Thomson, First American N.T. Translator—An Appraisal,” JBR 11 (1943) 145–51. Grobel adds that “He consulted Karl Gottfried Woide's edition of Codex Alexandrinus (London, 1786) or quoted it at second hand” (147).
18 See Reumann, 122–44, and Metzger, Bruce M., The Bible in Translation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001) 83–90Google Scholar.
19 According to Margaret T. Hills, “Thomson's OT was printed in London in 2 vols by S. F. Pells. It was followed by the NT in 1929.” The English Bible in America (New York: American Bible Society, 1962) 27. A. S. Herbert lists the 1904 Septuagint and notes that it was republished in 1907 but makes no mention at all of the 1929 New Testament Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible 1525–1961 (London: British and Foreign Bible Society, 1968) 452. David Daniell, drawing his information from those two sources, says only that Thomson's “New Testament was apparently reprinted in London in 1929” (it was actually reprinted in Hove, U.K.) The Bible in English, 646. The Harvard library online catalogue lists the 1904 Septuagint but not the 1929 New Testament; COPAC online lists one copy of the latter at Oxford.
20 With the help of a friend I was able to obtain a copy from a British bookseller who advertised simply Thomson's Septuagint by Pells in three volumes. Only by inquiry did I ascertain that in fact it included the New Testament.
21 While Thomson's rendering of Acts 9:20 (“Jesus” instead of “Christ”) agrees with the better manuscripts, the choice of “Greeks” over “Hellenists” in Acts 11:20 remains an open question even today, and Thomson's preference for “all” rather than “some” in 1 Cor 9:22 (on the basis of “the Syriac and Vulgate translations”) is almost certainly wrong. By far his longest note, running to almost a full page, is on 1 John 5:6–8, where he acknowledges the precedent of Luther, Zwingli, Erasmus, and Bullinger in omitting the famous Comma Johanneum.
22 In Matt 6:13, later editors followed Thomson's precedent or else omitted the doxology altogether. He prefers “fruit of this light” over “fruit of the Spirit” in Eph 5:9, not only on the basis of ancient witnesses but “because by continuing the use of the same metaphor it seems most agreeable to the context.” In 1 Pet 4:3 he omits “us,” noting that “some copies have us and some you, and some neither.” In Rev 18:17, instead of “And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships”(KJV), his translation is “And everyone sailing to the place, both mariners and traffickers by sea,” with an accompanying note that “I here follow the Alexandrian and other ancient manusripts.” In Jude 4 he follows the textus receptus but acknowledges an Alexandrian variant in a footnote.
23 While this reading anticipated later Greek texts (including the Nestle text from 1927 to 1993) and later English versions (from the English Revised Version of 1881 through the RSV, NEB, and NIV), it is almost certainly incorrect. See Epp, Eldon J., Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005Google Scholar). Epp finds no English versions prior to Rodolphus Dickinson (1833) that read the masculine (66), but he has overlooked at least two in addition to Thomson's: John Wesley's (London: William Bowyer, 1755), and Thomas Belsham's so-called “Improved Version” (Boston: Thomas B. Wait, 1809).
24 Daniell, pointing to Tyndale, “for the daye present hath ever ynough of his awne trouble,” and wondering “Did he in some way have access to a Tyndale New Testament? Or was it a case of great minds thinking alike, when they were translating the Greek text and not copying the Latin?” (The Bible in English, 645).
25 Grobel, “Charles Thomson,” 148. For this distinction, Thomson had ample precedent in John Wesley's Explanatory Notes on the New Testament (London: William Bowyer, 1755). “Woe,” in Thomson, becomes “Alas” (see, e.g., the Lukan “woes” in 6:24–26, Jesus' denunciations of the Pharisees in Luke 11 and Matt 23, and Rev 8:13).
26 Grobel, “Charles Thomson,” 147–48.
27 See the New Shorter Oxford Dictionary (ed. Lesley Brown; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993).
28 This can plausibly be attributed to a desire to do justice to two different Greek words for a basket or hamper. When both occur Thomson alternates between “pannier” and “basket” (e.g., Mark 8:10–21).
29 That is, according to Brown, New Shorter Oxford, with “ostentatious display.”
30 According to Brown, New Shorter Oxford, “An official distributor of alms on behalf of an individual, as a monarch, or an insitution, as a religious house.” Thomson renders the same Greek word as “deacons” in Phil 1:2 and as “minister” or “attendant” elsewhere.
31 According to Brown, New Shorter Oxford English, “A person who … admonishes someone or gives advice or a warning as to conduct.”
32 Grobel, “Charles Thomson,” 150.
33 He defends his translation in a note: “This alludes to the custom then in use among both Jews and Gentiles, of ratifying treaties, leagues or covenants, by killing a victim.” For a more sophisticated argument offering a different rationale for the same kind of translation, see Hahn, Scott, “A Broken Covenant and the Curse of Death: A Study of Hebrews 9:15–22,” CBQ 66 (2004) 416–36Google Scholar.
34 Here Grobel comments, “perhaps only by good luck—or did he know that adultery in Israel was legally the infringement of another man's property rights, and that therefore a husband's lechery with an unmarried woman was not adultery?” (“Charles Thomson,” 148).
35 See also Matt 11:21, 12:41; Luke 10:13, 11:32, 17:3–4, and Acts 8:22, where “repent” is similarly retained. Μετάνοια is rendered as “repentance” in Acts 5:31, 11:18 and as “the turning of the mind” in Acts 20:21. In Heb 12:17, the KJV's “no place of repentance” becomes “no way to change his father's mind.” Everywhere else, Thomson translates the noun as “reformation.”
36 Quite possibly it can be explained by Mark's rather atypical use of the preposition ἐν instead of εἰϛ after the verb ordinarily translated as “believe” (πιστεύω).
37 In John 14:1, however, he has “Trust in God: trust also in me.”
38 See Grobel, “Charles Thomson,” 147.
39 This is closer to Thomson's own rendering of Hab 2:4, “But the just shall live by faith in me.”
40 See Jefferson's Extracts from the Gospels (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).
41 Holifield, E. B., Theology in America: Christian Thought from the Age of the Puritans to the Civil War (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003) 159Google Scholar. Mark Noll defines it as “The belief that the empirical, inductive procedures promoted by Francis Bacon (1561–1626) for use in physical sciences provided also the best methods for organizing ethics, epistemology, theology, and study of the Scriptures.” America's God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002) 563–64.
42 See Holifield, Theology in America, 174–80.
43 Holifield, Theology in America, 195. “Before the mid-1830s,” he adds, “the evidential arguments and the confidence in natural theology commanded almost universal assent among theologians in America.”
44 Letter to the Reverend Samuel Miller, 6 January 1801, as quoted in Reumann, Romance of Bible Scripts, 130
45 Compare Reumann: “That Thomson regarded himself as a seeker after truth, emancipated from denominationalism, is quite in harmony with the rationalistic spirit of the times.” Romance of Bible Scripts, 130.
46 Strictures on Sandemanianism in Twelve Letters to a Freind [sic] (New York: Richard Scott, 1812), 18. Fuller goes on to add, “When Mr. Pike became his disciple, and wished to think that by a ‘bare belief' he meant a hearty persuasion, and not a mere notional belief, Mr. S. rejected his construction, and insisted that the latter was his true meaning” (1819). At least one American translator of the nineteenth century, Julia E. Smith, the only woman to translate the whole Bible into English, was a Sandemanian, but the theology of that movement seems to have had no particular influence on her extremely literal translation.
47 According to Holifield (Theology in America, 299), “The restorationists incorporated this evidential tradition into their understanding of faith. Smith taught that to believe was merely to ‘give credit to the report of another.' Both Stone and Campbell taught that faith was assent to testimony that was confirmed by evidence. ‘Faith,' Campbell said, ‘is neither more nor less than belief of some testimony.' For him, as for John Locke, faith meant assent to the testimony of the apostles that Jesus was the Messiah who rose from the dead.” Not surprisingly, Alexander Campbell, whose translation of the New Testament is said to have been influenced by Thomson, was accused by some of being a Sandemanian, a charge he rejected.
48 Thomson is on somewhat firmer ground, however, in attributing the notion that Jesus was “distracted” rather to an indefinite “some,” bracketed along with the charge made by the scribes from Jerusalem that he was “possessed by Beelzebub” (Mark 3:22).
49 In Mark 9:29 he comments in a note, “I have added the words [of power] for the sake of perspicuity.” But “power” has not been mentioned and moreover, “this kind” (touto to genos) is neuter, referring back to “it” in the preceding verse and to the neuter “dumb spirit” in the preceding narrative (Mark 9:17, 25).
50 In a note Thomson defines the one coming as “a phrase used to denote the Messiah.”
51 He explains in a note that “Something seems to be wanting. From what follows, it appears that the words ‘but not directly to Nazareth,' have been omitted in transcribing; I have, therefore, inserted them in brackets.” Here he is in remarkable agreement with John Wesley, who in his Explanatory Notes on the New Testament (1755) left the text pretty much intact but added in a note, “He went into Galilee—that is, into the Country of Galilee; but not to Nazareth. It was at that town only that he had no Honour. Therefore he went to other towns” (234).
52 An ingenious, if not altogether convincing, solution to the difficulty that the Sabbath is said to be “dawning” (epephōsken) just as it gets later (and darker) on Friday evening. Where most translations take “dawning” metaphorically, Thomson takes it literally, in relation to the preceding “darkness over the whole land” (Luke 23:44).
53 The note is worth quoting in full: “Zacharias IX.I, A Burden.] This, and the five following chapters, though added to what Zacharias wrote, appear evidently, from the style and subjects, to be the work of another. The Evangelist Matthew, in his quotation, (Chap. II. [sic]) ascribes them to Jeremias. And it must be allowed that the contents of these chapters agree well with the time of Jeremias, but by no means with that of Zacharias. And the same may be said with respect to the style, which corresponds with that of Jeremias, but not in the least with that of Zacharias. From the words of the Evangelist it would appear, that in his time, they were considered as being written by Jeremias:—and it is to be observed that in some ancient manuscripts, there is a large vacant space between the end of Chap. VIII. and IX. to distinguish what precedes, from that which follows.”
54 Thomson cited Leviticus 27:28 LXX, which reads in his translation, “But with respect to every Anathema which a man may devote to the Lord from all that he hath, whether from [apo] man or beast, or from [apo] field of his possession, it shall not be sold or redeemed.” He reads the “from” (apo) in Romans 9:3 the same way, as a partitive construction referring to some “from” among those who are Christ's as the ones accursed or “devoted to destruction.”
55 Grobel, “Charles Thomson,” 148, referring Bultmann, to, Der Stil der paulinischen Predigt und die kynisch-stoische Diatribe (Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments. Der ganzen Reihe 13; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1910Google Scholar).
56 See, e.g., Fitzmyer, Joseph, Romans (AB 33; New York: Doubleday, 1993Google Scholar), 595–96, who acknowledges 10:14–21 as a diatribe but divides it quite differently from Thomson.
57 Interestingly, he makes no such move in connection with 1 Cor 14:34–35, where Helen Barrett Montgomery in 1924 famously translated, “In your congregation [you write,] as in all the churches of saints, let the women keep silence,” adding in a note that “Paul is probably quoting a sentence from the Judaizers.” The New Testament in Modern English (Philadelphia: Judson, 1954) 465.
58 In Thomson's translation, “yet to us there is but one God, the father of all, of whom are all things and we for him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things and we by him.”
59 See the discussion in Fee, Gordon D., Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 2007) 89–94Google Scholar.
60 I can only quote from the note, without pretending to understand it: “that it is not the language of the apostle appears evident—1. From the form of common swearing therein contained, which the apostle explains in a parenthesis; 2. From the severe reprehension in his answer, charging it with profaneness; and, 3. From his quoting another objection of, (I apprehend), the same scoffer.” Evidently the second point is referring to v. 33, “Be not led astray; ‘good morals are debauched by talk profane,’” and the third to v. 35, “But a certain person will say …” What is unclear is his first objection, which apparently refers to his v. 30: “I swear by that boasting of yours (meaning that which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord).” Earlier in the note Thomson says that he regards “all but the parenthesis” as the words of Paul's opponents. He seems to read “I swear by that boasting of yours” as their words to Paul, to which he interjects in parenthesis: “(meaning that which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord).” On such a reading the “I” who “dies daily” and who “fought with beasts at Ephesus” appears to be an unidentified opponent of Paul, and the “boasting of yours” (humeteran, plural!) is assumed to be the boasting of Paul! It is impossible to make sense of the text on such a reading.
61 See Gutjahr, Paul C., An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States 1777–1880 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999) 94Google Scholar, citing Harley, Lewis R., The Life of Charles Thomson: Secretary of the Continental Congress and Translator of the Bible from the Greek (Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs, 1900) 163Google Scholar.