August 17. 1833
“The Lord” in the English Version of the Psalms, etc — — Scotch Kirk and Irving
It is very extraordinary that, in our translation of the Psalms, which professes to be from the Hebrew, the name Jehovah—[Hebrew: —] ‘O — The Being, or God—should be omitted, and, instead of it, the [Hebrew: —] Ktlpio?, or Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian Jews had a superstitious dread of writing the name of God, and put [Greek: Kurhios] not as a translation, but as a mere mark or sign—every one readily understanding for what it really stood. We, who have no such superstition, ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and thereby bring out in the true force the overwhelming testimony of the Psalms to the divinity of Christ, the Jehovah or manifested God.1
I cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch Kirk with regard to poor Irving. They might with ample reason have visited him for the monstrous indecencies of those exhibitions of the spirit;—perhaps the Kirk would not have been justified in overlooking such disgraceful breaches of decorum; but to excommunicate him on account of his language about Christ’s body was very foolish. Irving’s expressions upon this subject are ill judged, inconvenient, in had taste, and in terms false: nevertheless his apparent meaning, such as it is, is orthodox. Christ’s body—as mere body, or rather carcass (for body is an associated word), was no more capable of sin or righteousness than mine or yours;—that his humanity had a capacity of sin, follows from its own essence. He was of like passions as we, and was tempted. How could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of being seduced?
It is Irving’s error to use declamation, high and passionate rhetoric, not introduced and pioneered by calm and clear logic, which is—to borrow a simile, though with a change in the application, from the witty-wise, but not always wisely-witty, Fuller—like knocking a nail into a board, without wimbling a hole for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns crooked, or splits the wood it pierces.
Notes
1 I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford’s diary, under date 17th December, 1827:—“[Greek: CHairhete en t_o Kurhi_o Kurhios] idem significat quod [Hebrew: —] apud Hebraeos. Hebraei enim nomine [Hebrew: —] sanctissimo nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in colloquio utebantur, sed vice ejus [Hebrew: —] pronuntiabant, quod LXX per [Greek: Kurhios] exprimebant.”—Remains of Bishop Sandford, vol. i. p. 207.
Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making the observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. He was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that the mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been his own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the Diary with great care:—“I have received,” said he, “much spiritual comfort and strength from the latter. O! were my faith and devotion, like my sufferings, equal to that good man’s! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is prayer in faith.”
In connection with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorized version of the expression, [Greek: pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os] in the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 15.: [Greek: hos estin eik_on tou THeou tou aoratou, pr_ototokos pas_es ktise_os.] He rendered the verse in these words:—“Who is the manifestation of God the invisible, the begotten antecedently to all creation;” observing, that in [Greek: pr_ototokos] there was a double superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of “first-born of every creature,”—the language of our version,—afforded no premiss for the causal [Greek: hoti] in the next verse. The same criticism may be found in the Stateman’s Manual, p. 56. n.; and see Bishop Sandford’s judgment to the same effect, vol. i. p. 165.—ED.