New Testament Improved

One of the two most popular modern English versions of the New Testament was issued 20 years ago by Professor Edgar Johnson Goodspeed of the University of Chicago.* Although some 500,000 copies have been sold, this is a drop-in-the-bucket figure compared to the sales of the 300-year-old King James version.

To catch some of these readers, Goodspeed last week issued The Goodspeed Parallel New Testament (University of Chicago Press; $2), in which his version and the King James are printed in parallel columns.

Says Goodspeed: "What the modern reader most wants of the New Testament is to know what it means." The British Bible, he says, was written "for the plow-boys of England."-He thinks that modern readers want to know that "about the sixth hour" means "about noon," that "wine mingled with myrrh" means "drugged wine," that "fifty thousand pieces of silver" means "$10,000."

Some Goodspeed parallels:

>King James: "And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. ... Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men."

>Goodspeed: "The angel said to them', 'Do not be frightened, for I bring you good news of a great joy that is to be felt by all the people. . . . You will find a baby wrapped up and lying in a manger.' Suddenly there appeared with the angel a throng of the heavenly army, praising God, saying, 'Glory to God in heaven and on earth! Peace to the men he favors!' "

>King James: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal."

>Goodspeed: "If I can speak the languages of men and even of angels, but have no love, I am only a noisy gong... ."

Now 71, white-haired, tight-lipped Baptist Goodspeed retired from the University of Chicago faculty in 1936. When he entered the graduate school the late President Harper reportedly advised him: "Now Edgar, don't rush through!" He took the advice literally, spent 38 years of teaching there. Students liked his mixture of ham acting, old-fashioned oratory, prejudices. But many faculty members found him a bit too conscious of his family's long association with the university. His father was secretary of the trustees, did yeoman work in coaxing $600,000 out of the late John D. Rockefeller to start the university in 1891. They also wearied of his continual feuding with Professor Albert Ten Eyck Olmstead, who held that the Gospels were written in an Aramaic dialect of Jesus' time, and were later translated into Greek. Goodspeed maintains they were originally written in Greek. One of Goodspeed's greatest thrills came in 1927 when he found a rare 13th-century New Testament manuscript in a Parisian antique shop. He got the late rich Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick to buy it for him ($25,000), then he edited the three volumes, called it the Rockefeller McCormick New Testament.

Goodspeed now lives in Bel-Air, near the University of California, where he has been lecturing on his pet subject. He still clings to his habit of reading detective stories. He once wrote a readable one: Curse in the Colophon.

*The other: by Professor James Moffatt of Manhattan's Union Theological Seminary.

*No Latinists, England's plowboys spoke an English which was chiefly made up of forceful Saxon words, a fact which may well explain the failure of more modern translations to approach the strength and eloquence of the King James version. Scholars estimate that the King James version is more than 90% Saxon.

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