We consider first, the alteration in the Lord’s prayer in the Revised Version of the Bible. The petition there stands: “Deliver us from the Evil One”. Is this translation justifiable? In plain cases it is unquestionable that the Reviser’s acquaintance with the usages and idioms of the Greek tongue qualified them to render reliably into English the ideas expressed in the Greek: but suppose a case that is not plain, and on which their doctrinal predilections would incline the scale, it is evident their reliability in that case would be a little in question. This is just such a case. It is a case surrounded with uncertainty. They have shown this by the way they have presented the alteration. They have not given us the phrase “The Evil One” in plain unchallengeable Roman letters. “The Evil” comes out boldly enough, in Roman type, but then there is a falter, and the word “one”, which is the pith of the alteration, emerges modestly and uncertainly in italics.
The meaning of italic letters in such a connection, must, of course, be known to everyone: it is an intimation to the English reader what the word so printed is not in the original. If such English reader is tempted to ask, “Why introduce such words at all if they are not in the original?” The answer is that they are often needed to complete the expression of the sense of the original. The structure of the Greek and Hebrew languages is so different from English as to make a word-for-word translation impossible; and it often happens that additional words are needed in English to complete the expression of an idea which in the original is only hinted at. In the majority of cases the necessity for the additional words is so self-evident that the added words legitimately form part of the translation and need not be italicized: in some cases, however, there is room for doubt, and therefore the safe rule is adopted of italicizing in all cases where the words used in the translation have no corresponding terms in the original. By this means, the English reader is, to some extent, placed on a level with those who can read the text in the original.
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Author: Robert Roberts
Keywords: Deliver us from evil, The evil one, Lords prayer, Evil inclination, Yetzer hara, Yetser hara, Yetzer ha ra, Yetser ha ra, evil
Bible reference(s): Matthew 6:13, Luk 11:4, Eph 6:16, 2Th 3:3, 1Jo 2:13-14, 1Jo 3:12, 1Jo 5:18-19
Source: Robert Roberts
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