Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origins and Development of the Bible, The

The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origins and Development of the Bible. By Paul D. Wegner. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999 (corrected printing, 2000), 462 pp., $29.99. Paul Wegner has produced a very useful, wonderfully designed textbook in five

parts, on the canon, text, and translation (primarily English) of the Bible.

Part 1 ("Preliminary Matters regarding the Bible") constitutes about 10% of the book and serves as a general introduction to the names and order of books in both the OT and NT, along with comments on the relationship between the two testaments. This section includes an appendix on the "Synoptic Problem," which favors the priority of Mark and very gently seems to support the existence of Q.

Part 2 ("Canonization of the Bible"), about 20% of the book, first presents a good overview of writing and the production of texts in the biblical worlds, and then discusses the canon history of both the OT and NT. It also includes brief accounts of the OT apocryphal and pseudepigraphical writings and the NT apocryphal texts.

Part 3 ("Transmission of the Bible"), also about 20% of the book, ably discusses textual criticism of both the OT and NT. It is a clear and comprehensive guide for students.

Parts 4 ("Early Translations of the Bible") and 5 ("English Translations of the Bible"), the largest section of the book (about 40%), briefly cover the ancient versions of the Bible and the first printed Greek New Testaments, and then give a fairly extensive history of English translations of the Bible from Wycliffe to the New Living Translation (1996). The remaining portion of the book constitutes the notes and indexes.

One of the stunning and excellent features of the book are its 231 (!) illustrations, including pictures of objects and persons, maps, and various charts and tables. These visual aids alone make the book both attractive to the reader and pedagogically helpful to the teacher. Many of the pictures are of manuscripts and of pages from famous Bibles. Many are of prominent scholars such as, for example, B. F. Westcott, F. J. A. Hort, James Moffatt, E. J. Goodspeed, and C. H. Dodd. Many of the charts and tables show comparisons among and between various translations. All of this data is helpful and well presented. Every chapter of the book concludes with a good bibliography for further study, and the index is comprehensive.

In many ways Wegner's book is a current version of the work of Ira Maurice Price, The Ancestry of Our English Bible: An Account of Manuscripts, Texts, and Versions of the Bible, which featured as well more than 60 illustrations and diagrams (interestingly, Wegner mentions Price only once, in a footnote on p. 428). Price's work first appeared in 1906 and was revised in 1934, 1949 and 1956; the last revision was done by William A. Irwin and Allen P. Wikgren. Of course, much new material is available since the last edition of Price in 1956. Price's work, for example, had only a brief appendix on the Dead Sea Scrolls and concluded its English translation survey with the 1952 Revised Standard Version.

The major sections of the book discuss the history of translations of the Bible, especially that of English translations of the Bible. Due to the plethora of the latter, and especially the NT, it would not be possible to survey them all in such a book. What Wegner covers is a good and balanced selection, providing pertinent data on the history of the translations included, and his comments evaluating various translations are fair and always attempt to emphasize what is positive about various translations. One could wish that Wegner had discussed William Barclays translation of the NT; it deserves to be compared to that of J. B. Phillips, and it is in the train of private translations by major NT scholars (e.g. Moffatt, Goodspeed). It is too bad, too, that Wegner does not give at least some attention to the translations of Julia E. Smith (the whole Bible in 1876) or of Helen Barrett Montgomery (the NT in 1924), since they are the only two women on their own to have produced English translations based on the Greek text. Although Wegner does well in describing the range of translations from literal to dynamic equivalence, it is perhaps confusing that he makes as sharp a cleavage as he does between "translation" and "paraphrase"; this seems misleading in light of his otherwise nuanced approach to translation theory.

Perhaps the most serious academic question that might be raised relates to Wegner's discussion and use of the Muratorian Canon in his discussion of the history of the NT canon (pp. 142, 147-48). Wegner accepts the traditional date of about AD 190 for the Muratorian Canon. Although this view is defensible, it ought to be made explicitly clear that there is serious question about this. At least as early as 1973 Albert C. Sundberg, Jr., argued that the Muratorian Canon dates from the fourth century. This was argued in depth by Geoffrey M. Hahneman in 1992 (The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon [Oxford: Clarendon]). If the fourth-century date is correct, then it would have a significant impact on the way the history of the NT canon is presented. Wegner at least owes his readers the knowledge of the problem and the consequent interpretive options.

The short chapter on "New Testament Extracanonical Literature" (pp. 153-62), although commendable in intent, is almost too brief to be very useful. The focus in this chapter is, actually, primarily on the agrapha (sayings of Jesus not recorded in the canonical Gospels) and the issues of whether any of them might be authentic words of Jesus. This is a fascinating issue, but the focus and function of the data here is not sufficiently clear in terms of the structure of the chapter or the larger purposes) of the book.

In spite of criticisms that might be offered, Wegner's book remains a wonderful achievement. It is a delightful, genuinely helpful, and fascinating book, which deserves wide use.

David M. Scholer

Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA

Copyright Evangelical Theological Society Jun 2002
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved