Image: From facsimile of KJV (1611)
The issue:
Last Sunday morning I preached on Hebrews 10:11-25 at
CRBC. A point of text/translation arose
with v. 23.
The question: Should
Hebrews 10:23 read “profession of our
faith” or “profession of our hope”?
In this case, there is a difference even within editions of
the King James Version tradition, with some reading “faith” and others “hope.”
The Greek text:
In this case there is little controversy with the Greek text.
Both the TR and the modern critical text read: katechomen
ten homologion tes elpidos akline [let us hold fast the confession of (our)
faith without wavering].
The key point is that both include the noun elpis [hope] rather than pistis [faith]. The apparatus to the modern critical text
does not show any textual variation at this point.
The Greek mss. read elpis. One variation of
note, however, is the fact that the pronoun “our” [hemon] is included in the original hand of Sinaiticus, the Old
Latin, and Syriac Peshitta.
Survey of various
translations:
Luther’s 1522 NT reads hope (hoffnung) rather than
faith: Lasst uns festhalten an dem
Bekinntnis der Hoffnung
Tyndale’s NT reads hope (from the modern-spelling edition of
the 1534 translation): and let us keep
the profession of our hope
Karolyi ‘s 1590 Hungarian translation reads hope (reménység): tartsuk
meg a reménységnek vallását
The Geneva Bible (from 1599
edition) reads hope: let us keep the
profession of our hope
The original edition of the King
James Version, however, reads faith: Let
us hold fast the profession of our faith
Modern translations, including
the NKJV, uniformly read hope rather than faith (cf. RSV, NASB, NIV, NKJV, NRSV,
ESV, etc.).
Variations in later editions
of the King James Version:
As noted, though the 1611 edition of the KJV reads faith
rather than hope, some later editions of the KJV read hope.
The Cambridge Paragraph
Bible of 1873 (Hendricksen, 2009) edited by F. H. A. Scrivener, reads “hope”
rather than “faith.” My guess is that
the editor sought to conform this edition to what he perceived was a more
literal approximation of the Greek original (elpis).
Analysis:
Why does the KJV read “faith”? There are, I believe, two possibilities for
the KJV rendering. One is that the KJV translators had access to an early mss. which
read “faith” [pistis] rather than “hope”
[elpis], which they privileged. More likely, this is probably an example of
the KJV translators’ commitment to variation in English renderings of the
underlying original language words. As
the translators tell the reader in the preface:
“we have not tied ourselves to an uniformity of phrasing, or to an
identity of words, as some peradventure would wish that we had done” (see “The
Translators to the Reader”). In this
case, the translators rendered elpis
as “faith” rather than its more typical translation as “hope.” As with the KJV’s rendering of Paul’s stock
phrase me genoito as “God forbid” the
KJV translators here make a rare preference for a more dynamic than formal rendering. Perhaps this was to give emphasis to the noun
homologia, confession or profession, with
the translators conveying that the essential meaning of a “profession of hope”
would be a “profession of faith.” We must
also keep in mind that the great “faith” chapter (Hebrews 11) follows this passage.
Is this rendering legitimate?
In his commentary on the verse, John Owen observes: “Wherefore holding fast our hope, includes in
it the holding fast of our faith, as the cause is in the effect, and the building
in the foundation” (Hebrews, Vol. 6,
p. 515). Owen proceeds to make clear his
preference for the translation “profession of faith” noting it “is more suited to
unto the design of the apostle, and his following discourse” (Ibid). When I preached on Sunday, I felt comfortable
using the KJV rendering without making reference to variations in translation.
JTR
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