This marks the end of the literary evolution of the Bible.  Everything that has since been done has only been in the direction of retrogression, of injury to the text.  We have now a great many later versions, much more scholarly, so far as correct scholarship is concerned, than the King James version, but none having any claim to literary importance.  Unfortunately, exact scholars are very seldom men of literary ability; the two faculties are rarely united.  The Bible of 1870, known as the Oxford Bible, and now used in the Anglican state-church, evoked a great protest from the true men of letters, the poets and critics who had found their inspirations in the useful study of the old version.  The new version was the work of fourteen years; it was made by the united labour of the greatest scholars in the English-speaking world; and it is far the most exact translation that we have.  Nevertheless the literary quality has been injured to such an extent that no one will ever turn to the new revision for poetical study.  Even among the churches there was a decided condemnation of this scholarly treatment of the old text; and many of the churches refused to use the book.  In this case, conservatism is doing the literary world a service, keeping the old King James version in circulation, and insisting especially upon its use in Sunday schools.

We may now take a few examples of the differences between the revised version and the Bible of King James.  Professor Saintsbury, in an essay upon English prose, published some years ago, said that the most perfect piece of English prose in the language was that comprised in the sixth and seventh verses of the eighth chapter of the Song of Songs: 

Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm:  for love is strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave; the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame.

    Many waters can not quench love, neither can the floods drown it: 
    if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it
    would utterly be condemned.

I should not like to say that the Professor is certainly right in calling this the finest prose in the English language; but he is a very great critic, whose opinion must be respected and considered, and the passage is certainly very fine.  But in the revised version, how tame the same text has become in the hands of the scholarly translators!

    The flashes thereof are flashes of fire, a very flame of the Lord.

Now as a description of jealousy, not to speak of the literary execution at all, which is the best?  What, we may ask, has been gained by calling jealousy “a flame of the Lord” or by substituting the word “flashes” for “coals of fire”?  All through the new version are things of this kind.  For example, in the same Song of Songs there is a beautiful description of eyes, like “doves by the rivers of waters, washed with milk, and fitly set.”  By substituting “rivers” only for “rivers of waters” the text may have gained in exactness, but it has lost immeasurably, both in poetry and in sound.  Far more poetical is the verse as given in the Douai version:  “His eyes are as doves upon brooks of waters, which are washed with milk, and sit beside the beautiful streams.”