little--often very litLle--modernized!

4. But in the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century
English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or
sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a
Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of
Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each
of these _patois_ having also its own special, though expressive,
borderland which we name 'slang.' But all these salient angles
(as a professor of fortification might say) of our language are
forbidden ground to the reverent translator of Holy Scripture.

5. But again, a _modern_ translation--does this imply
that no words or phrases in any degree antiquated are to be
admitted? Not so, for great numbers of such words and phrases are
still in constant use. To be antiquated is not the same thing as
to be obsolete or even obsolescent, and without at least a tinge
of antiquity it is scarcely possible that there should be that
dignity of style that befits the sacred themes with which the
Evangelists and Apostles deal.

6. It is plain that this attempt to bring out the sense
of the Sacred Writings naturally as well as accurately in
present-day English does not permit, except to a limited extent,
the method of literal rendering--the _verbo verbum reddere_ at
which Horace shrugs his shoulders. Dr. Welldon, recently Bishop
of Calcutta, in the Preface (p. vii) to his masterly translation
of the _Nicomachean Ethics_ of Aristotle, writes, "I have
deliberately rejected the principle of trying to translate the
same Greek word by the same word in English, and where