t is
wholly forced and unnatural; and upon comparing Mr. Sawyer's translation
with the original, we find that he has paraphrased the passage with a
vengeance, altogether omitting to translate the clause [Greek: _eis
thaen koilian ... eiselthein kai gennaethaenai_], and interpolating an
expression, instead, which is neither in the original text nor in the
thought. Probably Mr. Sawyer's motive for taking this extraordinary
liberty was a false delicacy, amounting to prudery; but it ill assorts
with his assertion, that his work is not a paraphrase, nor one of
compromises, or of conjectural interpretations.

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. Sawyer
substitutes for the language of the common version the foreign word of
the original,--sometimes merely giving the orthography of the Greek in
English letters, sometimes affixing a termination,--and frequently he
adds, in brackets, an explanation of his rendering. As examples of this,
we quote the following:--

"Neither do men light a candle, and put it under a _modius_ [1.916
gallon measure]."

"I tell you that you shall not go out thence till you have paid even the
last _lepton_ [2 mills]."

"It is like leaven which a woman took and hid in three _sata_ [33
quarts] of flour."

"And there were six stone water-jars there, placed for the purification
of the Jews, containing two or three _metretes_ [16.75 or 25.125
gallons]