RSV Apocrypha Preface

In response to the request of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church, October, 1952, the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. organized a committee of scholars to undertake revision of the English translation of the Apocrypha; and its publication was authorized by the General Board, NCCCUSA, December 12, 1952. The scholars accepting this assignment were Millar Burrows, Winkley Professor of Biblical Theology, Yale University; Henry J. Cadbury, Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard University; Clarence T. Craig, Dean and Professor of New Testament, Drew Theological Seminary; Floyd V. Filson, Dean and Professor of New Testament Literature and History, McCormick Theological Seminary; Frederick C. Grant, Professor of Biblical Theology, Union Theological Seminary; Bruce M. Metzger, Professor of New Testament, Princeton Theological Seminary; Robert H. Pfeiffer, Hancock Professor of Hebrew and other Oriental Languages, Harvard University; Allen P. Wikgren, Professor of New Testament, University of Chicago; and Luther A. Weigle, Sterling Professor of Religious Education and Dean of the Divinity School, Emeritus, Yale University, who was appointed chairman of the Committee. A great loss was sustained in the death, August 20, 1953, of Dean Craig. In 1954, J. Carter Swaim, Professor of New Testament at Western Theological Seminary, Pittsburgh, became Executive Director, Department of the English Bible, in the Division of Christian Education, NCCCUSA, and was added to the membership of the Committee. Roy G. Ross, General Secretary of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and Paul C. Payne, Chairman, and Gerald E. Knoff, Executive Secretary, of its Division of Christian Education, have been members of the Committee ex officio.

The work has involved the preparation and circulation of mimeographed drafts of translation, the discussion and resolution of all disputed points in face-to-face conference, the circulation of new drafts embodying the decisions reached in conference, and a final review of each book in the light of written agenda proposed by the members of the Committee and of the Advisory Board made up of representatives appointed by denominations which accepted the invitation to review the drafts. This procedure is similar to that followed by the Committee which prepared the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments; and, in general, similar principles of translation have been, followed.

Meetings of the Committee were held at the Yale University Divinity School, January 30-31, June 22 to July 3, and December 18–23, in 1953; and December 7–9, 1956. Most of the conferences, however, were held at the Hotel Northfield, East Northfield, Massachusetts, where the Committee was in session over the following periods: August 17-29, 1953; June 14-26 and August 16-28, 1954; June 13–25 and August 15–27, 1955; and June 11–23, 1956.

The Apocrypha here translated are those books and portions of books which appear in the Latin Vulgate, either as part of the Old Testament or as an appendix, but are not in the Hebrew Bible. With the exception of 2 Esdras these books appear in the Greek version of the Old Testament which is known as the Septuagint, but they are not included in the Hebrew Canon of Holy Scripture.

Because of their inclusion in the Latin Vulgate, the Church throughout the medieval period looked upon these books as belonging to the Scriptures, though not unaware of their lack of canonical status among the Jews. In 1546, the Council of Trent decreed that the Canon of the Old Testament includes them (except the Prayer of Manasseh and 1 and 2 Esdras), and condemned any one who “does not accept these entire books, with all their parts, as they have customarily been read in the Catholic Church and are found in the ancient editions of the Latin Vulgate, as sacred and canonical.”

In Luther’s German translation of the Bible (1534) the Apocrypha stand between the Old Testament and the New Testament, with the title: “Apocrypha, that is, books which are not held equal to the sacred Scriptures, and nevertheless are useful and good to read.” Coverdale’s English translation of the Bible (1535) gave them the same position, with the title: “Apocrypha. The books and treatises which among the fathers of old are not reckoned to be of like authority with the other books of the Bible, neither are they found in the Canon of the Hebrew.”

The Apocrypha had a place in all the sixteenth century English translations of the Bible, and in the King James Version (1611). The Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England say concerning the Apocrypha: “And the other books (as Jerome saith) the Church doth read for example of life, and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” The Puritans opposed every use of them that would suggest that they possessed any authority; and the Westminster Confession (1648) declares: “The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God,’ nor to be otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.”

The basic Greek text of the books of the Apocrypha from which the present translation was made is the edition of the Septuagint prepared by Alfred Rah1fs, published by the Württemberg Bible Society, Stuttgart, 1935. This text is based mainly upon the Codex Vaticanus (4th century A.D.), the Codex Sinaiticus (4th century), and the Codex Alexandrinus (5th century). For the book of Tobit the Greek text found in the codices Vaticanus and Alexandrinus was followed; and for the Additions to Daniel (namely, Susanna, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men, and Bel and the Dragon) the translators used the Greek version of Theodotion. In both these cases the Committee’s procedure was in accord with general usage.

The basic text followed in the case of 2 Esdras is the Old Latin version edited by Robert L. Bensly. This was supplemented by consulting the Latin text edited by Bruno Violet, as well as the several Oriental versions of 2 Esdras, namely, the Syriac, Ethiopic, Arabic ( two forms, referred to as Arabic I and Arabic 2), Armenian, and Georgian versions. In addition, account was taken of a few verses of the fifteenth chapter of 2 Esdras which have been preserved in Greek (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus number 1010).

In the translation of Sirach, constant reference was made to the medieval Hebrew fragments of a large part of this book, which were discovered at the end of the nineteenth century. Throughout the work of translating the books of the Apocrypha consideration was given to variant readings, including those in the apparatus criticus of Rahlfs as well as those in other editions of the Septuagint or of single books of the Apocrypha. Likewise, a search was made for all portions of the Apocrypha preserved in the Greek papyri from Egypt, and the text of these fragments was collated with that of Rahlfs.

No attempt has been made to provide introductions to the various books of the Apocrypha, as here translated. The scholar will not need them, and for the general reader there are admirable recent books on the Apocrypha by Charles C. Torrey, Edgar J. Goodspeed, Robert H. Pfeiffer, and Bruce M. Metzger.

We gladly acknowledge our debt, not only to the scholars who throughout the centuries have made competent studies of these books, but also to the former English translations, especially the King James Version of 1611, the English Revised Version of 1894, and Goodspeed’s translation of 1938. The quarrels over the authority of the Apocrypha are now largely matters of the past. A generation that has witnessed the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls will probably agree with the statement by Professor Frank C. Porter, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible (1901), that “modern historical interest, on the other hand, is putting the Apocrypha in their true place as significant documents of a most important era in religious history.”