e instance of
this, in passing, we will notice in this place--it will be
familiar to everyone as the passage quoted at the opening
of the English burial service, and adduced as one of
the doctrinal proofs of the resurrection of the body: "I
know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand
at the latter day upon the earth; and though, after my
skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see
God." So this passage stands in the ordinary version.
But the words in italics have nothing answering to
them in the original--they were all added by the
translators to fill out their interpretation; and for in
my flesh, they tell us themselves in the margin that we
may read (and, in fact, we ought to read, and must read)
"out of," or "without" my flesh. It is but to write
out the verses omitting the conjectural additions, and
making that one small, but vital correction, to see how
frail a support is there for so large a conclusion; "I
know that my Redeemer liveth, and shall stand at the
latter... upon the earth; and after my skin...
destroy this...; yet without my flesh I shall see
God." If there is any doctrine of a resurrection here,
it is a resurrection precisely not of the body, but of the
spirit. And now let us only add that the word translated
Redeemer is the technical expression for the
"avenger of blood"; and that the second paragraph
ought to be rendered--"and one to come after me (my
next of kin, to whom the avenging my injuries belongs)
shall stand upon my dust," and we shall see how much
was to be done towards the mere exegesis of the text.
This is an extreme instance, and no one will question
the general beauty and majesty of our translation; but
there are many mythical and physical allusions scattered
over the poem, which, in the sixteenth century, there
were positively no means of understanding; and perhaps,
too, there were mental tendencies in the translators
themselves which prevented them from adequately
apprehending even the drift and spirit of it. The form
of the story was too stringent to allow such tendencies
any latitude; but they appear, from time to time,
sufficiently to produce serious confusion. With these
recent assistances, therefore, we propose to say something
of the nature of this extraordinary book--a
book of which it is to say little to call it unequalled
of its kind, and which will, one day, perhaps, when it
is allowed to stand on its own merits, be seen towering
up alone, fa