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Concordant Literal Bible, article in the Dearborn Independent 1921
Original Title: New Bible Revision by Los Angeles Printer
Californian's Years of Study Bring Revelations of Discrepancies
RESEARCH into the sources of the Bible have shown that many things which that Book is said to teach it does not teach at all. It has been proved that many “difficulties” in the Bible are not in the Book itself but in hearsay testimony concerning it. This is being made clear by the work of translators who are scientifically interested in finding the bottom fact of Biblical statement.
Bible translations of earlier years have suffered from two forms of bias: the first copying houses were under the control of those whose thought leaned toward the Judaistic idea, coloring many statements with that hue. In later times the copying houses were under the control of ecclesiastics who made their translations to suit an established doctrine, giving the scriptures a theological bias. It is a remarkable fact that in spite of these hindrances to an exact translation, the Bible has come down to us clear in its main streams, but cloudy in others.
More recent translations or revisions have had a purpose to make the Bible modern and “easy reading.” The literary method has contributed substantially nothing of value.
To render a complete and perfect translation it is necessary for the scholar to divorce himself from doctrinal and ecclesiastical bias, and remain undividedly loyal to the text as far as it can be ascertained.
In Los Angeles this form of work is well under way in a modest brown bungalow, much in need of repainting, the home of Adolph Ernest Knoch. It is a humble home, surrounded by other humble homes of workingmen, and tells only too plainly that the dweller therein is engaged in making something besides money. Knoch was not always poor. Earlier in life he made money enough to buy leisure in which to do the work he felt called to do. An unfortunate investment swept his modest fortune away. Today he is employed in a downtown printing establishment—he is an expert printer—and gives the early hours of morning and the late hours of night to his life work, the retranslation of the Bible from the earliest obtainable manuscripts. A scholar in Hebrew and Greek, he has managed to enlist expert assistance all around the country. A country minister in Michigan (in a country parish because of his health) checks over the Greek verbs. Scholars elsewhere render other editorial assistance. A farmer contributes $100 a year to the expenses of printing, a physician gives $50 a month. So the work goes on, its center the home of this journeyman printer in Los Angeles.
The work was hindered during the war. Knoch is a German name, and a man with a German name at a printing case was—who knows what? He needed a few pounds of Greek type, which was “foreign” and queer looking, so the type foundry refused. Knoch made the type himself. It was a tedious process. Each letter was cut, filed or punched at the end of a piece of soft steel. This was hardened by heating and tempering. These steel dies were then sunk in copper plates which were used as matrices in casting the type. It was then found that this face was too heavy for the superlinear so another font was made, much lighter and smaller.
Knoch was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and is in his forties. He went to Los Angeles 25 years ago. Becoming interested in the Bible he noticed the discrepancies between the Greek and the English. He resolved to make an accurate translation, or to put the Bible in such form that the intelligent reader could judge as between translations. He had no theories to confirm, except that the original could be intelligibly reproduced. Knoch obtained a mastery of Greek and Hebrew. He card-indexed every word in the Greek, tracing it to its source and recording all the variations of its use. For 20 years he thus equipped himself to weigh the words and syllables of earliest extant sources.
These sources are the Codex Vaticanus, which is in the Vatican Library at Rome; the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered in a convent on Mt. Sinai and is now in Petrograd—if the Bolsheviks have not destroyed it; and the Codex Alexandrinus, which is in the British Museum at London. Knoch works from photographic copies of all three. These originals were written in capital letters with no spaces between the words. Discrepancies between the three can be attributed to carelessness of the copyists. Mr. Knoch proceeds upon the theory that the copyists were more likely to omit passages than they were to add them, and has accordingly used all the passages found in the original text of any of the three. But to avoid the charge of bias or concealment he is printing the full Greek text with supralinear notations of all the discrepancies. The reader is thus enabled to judge for himself of the correctness of the English translation which is appended.
Knoch and his assistants work without remuneration. All the help he receives is voluntary. His helpers are everywhere, one of them in Scotland. Some, who are not Greek scholars of distinction, help him by counting the words and letters, that no word or phrase may be omitted.
The translator is a modest man who goes about his business quietly. Already he has become the calm and unmoved center of several theological storms. He is undisturbed because he conceives that the agitation must eventually spend itself not on the personality of the translator but upon the accuracy of the text.
“I am publishing the entire evidence so that it will not be necessary to take my word for anything,” says Mr. Knoch.
The name given to the work is “The Concordant Version,” and the style of the page is shown herewith. A few of its contributions to the understanding of the Bible are here given:
“There has been a struggle for many years to correct the time periods of Scripture,” said Mr. Knoch. “Every Bible student knows that the expression 'the end of the world' should be the end of the Age or Eon. “World’ means age. It always has this significance and is so rendered in The Concordant Version. This opens up the grand system of time periods or eons. The Bible does not treat of eternity past or future, but of a great Time Cycle called the AGE, Times or Eonian Times. These had a beginning and will have an end. Two have been past and two are still future. The phrase “forever and ever' is self-destructive, apart from the Greek. If there can be an 'ever' added to ‘forever,' then 'forever' is not endless. It means 'for the Age', or the ages.
“The passage Hebrew 11:1 is a test for any translation. In the authorized version it reads, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The revised version has it: ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. The Concordant method gives us this: “Now faith is an assumption of what we are expecting, a conviction concerning matters which we are not observing. Faith is neither substance nor evidence, it assumes the truth of which it is convinced.”
The familiar counsel, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat nor what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on,” is made to read, “Do not be worrying about your soul.” The word “soul” stands for life sensation hence it is translated as eating and drinking merely.
The Concordant Version is distinctly not an attempt to reproduce the Bible in modern English or to turn out an “easy reading” volume. Its aim is to tackle big Biblical problems. Take, for example, the much disputed matter of Hell. On this subject Mr. Knoch said:
“The revisers, knowing that the English word 'hell’ no longer represented the true thought of the original, compromised by using the Greek word itself and rendering it “hades. The Bible says that after His death Christ went into Hell. This cannot mean the conventional place of torment we associate with that word.
"The Concordant Version deals with the matter thus: "Hades' in Greek is made up of two elements: A means UN (the 'h' is not a letter in Greek); the remainder of the word comes from the element ID which means perceive, and is so used hundreds of times. Thus Hades is the IMPERCEPTIBLE or UNSEEN.
"Take also the doctrine of the Beginning of things. In the revised version two distinct words are given the same translation as foundation. One word is 'themelios' [QEMELIOS] which literally means to place with care and when used of the foundation of a city or a prison undoubtedly. means ‘foundation. The other word ‘katabolee' is literally 'down-casting'; it is the very opposite of, foundation, it means disruption. The passage: "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, really means, the Lamb slain from the disruption of the world. Take also the passage: For then must He, often have suffered since the foundation of the world'—it means, since the disruption of the world.”
This doctrine of “Beginnings in disruption” has many angles which cannot be treated in an article like this. It throws a new light on the Biblical account of creation and the supposed conflict between Geology and Genesis. Creation is contained in the first verse of Genesis; that first verse is indeed the whole first chapter and the whole book of Creation. Then at verse 2 begins the description of restoration after an undescribed world cataclysm which left the earth and the near-by planets in an altered state. The disruption of the earth, indicated here and there throughout Scripture, is a point whose lack has put needless burdens on faith and loyalty to the Bible.
The example of the double use of the word “Foundation" by the authorized translators illustrates a rule which Mr. Knoch finds absolutely binding upon him, namely, that no English wore should stand for two distinct Greek words. “Disruption” and “careful-placing" in Greek cannot both be “foundation” in English.
Another rule is that there should be no smoothing away of meanings for the sake of obtaining easy reading, that is, no word or part of a word should be omitted in translation if it can possibly be turned into English.
The principle that each Greek word shall be represented by only one English word has a bearing on the doctrine of the second coming cf Christ which is now attracting much attention. The special terms used with reference to this subject are carefully distinguished in The Concordant Version. There are three terms in the Greek, and they are not uniformly translated into their three equivalents in the English. The first term is “epiphany” (epiphaneia) which is Advent. The second term is “unveiling” (apokalupsis, whence the term Apocalypse) and means simply unveiling, in the sense of revealing or disclosing. Then there is the term "parousia" which means "presence," and not the "act of coming." Of Paul it was said "his bodily presence was weak"; it is the same word which in I Cor. 15:23 is translated "they that are Christ's at His coming." If parousia is presence in one place, it cannot be coming in another. That is the principle upon which The Concordant Version proceeds.
Mr. Knoch gives all the texts because he believes that, like all other ancient treasures, the Scriptures lose rather than gain by age. He is restoring to the text the original touch, piling the words sometimes three high. as the accompanying illustration shows, that the reader may do his own work of consideration.
The Concordant Version is published in parts, one edition with the editor's doctrinal notes and the other free from notes. The edition without the notes is preferable for those who wish to study the text without any reference whatever to another's interpretation of it. Friends of the Bible are not always quite sure of the propriety of even the best men putting their interpretations on the same page, or within the same covers, with the sacred text. It is from this admixture of the two that confusion has come throughout the centuries.
Original Title: New Bible Revision by Los Angeles Printer
Californian's Years of Study Bring Revelations of Discrepancies
RESEARCH into the sources of the Bible have shown that many things which that Book is said to teach it does not teach at all. It has been proved that many “difficulties” in the Bible are not in the Book itself but in hearsay testimony concerning it. This is being made clear by the work of translators who are scientifically interested in finding the bottom fact of Biblical statement.
Bible translations of earlier years have suffered from two forms of bias: the first copying houses were under the control of those whose thought leaned toward the Judaistic idea, coloring many statements with that hue. In later times the copying houses were under the control of ecclesiastics who made their translations to suit an established doctrine, giving the scriptures a theological bias. It is a remarkable fact that in spite of these hindrances to an exact translation, the Bible has come down to us clear in its main streams, but cloudy in others.
More recent translations or revisions have had a purpose to make the Bible modern and “easy reading.” The literary method has contributed substantially nothing of value.
To render a complete and perfect translation it is necessary for the scholar to divorce himself from doctrinal and ecclesiastical bias, and remain undividedly loyal to the text as far as it can be ascertained.
In Los Angeles this form of work is well under way in a modest brown bungalow, much in need of repainting, the home of Adolph Ernest Knoch. It is a humble home, surrounded by other humble homes of workingmen, and tells only too plainly that the dweller therein is engaged in making something besides money. Knoch was not always poor. Earlier in life he made money enough to buy leisure in which to do the work he felt called to do. An unfortunate investment swept his modest fortune away. Today he is employed in a downtown printing establishment—he is an expert printer—and gives the early hours of morning and the late hours of night to his life work, the retranslation of the Bible from the earliest obtainable manuscripts. A scholar in Hebrew and Greek, he has managed to enlist expert assistance all around the country. A country minister in Michigan (in a country parish because of his health) checks over the Greek verbs. Scholars elsewhere render other editorial assistance. A farmer contributes $100 a year to the expenses of printing, a physician gives $50 a month. So the work goes on, its center the home of this journeyman printer in Los Angeles.
The work was hindered during the war. Knoch is a German name, and a man with a German name at a printing case was—who knows what? He needed a few pounds of Greek type, which was “foreign” and queer looking, so the type foundry refused. Knoch made the type himself. It was a tedious process. Each letter was cut, filed or punched at the end of a piece of soft steel. This was hardened by heating and tempering. These steel dies were then sunk in copper plates which were used as matrices in casting the type. It was then found that this face was too heavy for the superlinear so another font was made, much lighter and smaller.
Knoch was born in St. Louis, Missouri, and is in his forties. He went to Los Angeles 25 years ago. Becoming interested in the Bible he noticed the discrepancies between the Greek and the English. He resolved to make an accurate translation, or to put the Bible in such form that the intelligent reader could judge as between translations. He had no theories to confirm, except that the original could be intelligibly reproduced. Knoch obtained a mastery of Greek and Hebrew. He card-indexed every word in the Greek, tracing it to its source and recording all the variations of its use. For 20 years he thus equipped himself to weigh the words and syllables of earliest extant sources.
These sources are the Codex Vaticanus, which is in the Vatican Library at Rome; the Codex Sinaiticus, which was discovered in a convent on Mt. Sinai and is now in Petrograd—if the Bolsheviks have not destroyed it; and the Codex Alexandrinus, which is in the British Museum at London. Knoch works from photographic copies of all three. These originals were written in capital letters with no spaces between the words. Discrepancies between the three can be attributed to carelessness of the copyists. Mr. Knoch proceeds upon the theory that the copyists were more likely to omit passages than they were to add them, and has accordingly used all the passages found in the original text of any of the three. But to avoid the charge of bias or concealment he is printing the full Greek text with supralinear notations of all the discrepancies. The reader is thus enabled to judge for himself of the correctness of the English translation which is appended.
Knoch and his assistants work without remuneration. All the help he receives is voluntary. His helpers are everywhere, one of them in Scotland. Some, who are not Greek scholars of distinction, help him by counting the words and letters, that no word or phrase may be omitted.
The translator is a modest man who goes about his business quietly. Already he has become the calm and unmoved center of several theological storms. He is undisturbed because he conceives that the agitation must eventually spend itself not on the personality of the translator but upon the accuracy of the text.
“I am publishing the entire evidence so that it will not be necessary to take my word for anything,” says Mr. Knoch.
The name given to the work is “The Concordant Version,” and the style of the page is shown herewith. A few of its contributions to the understanding of the Bible are here given:
“There has been a struggle for many years to correct the time periods of Scripture,” said Mr. Knoch. “Every Bible student knows that the expression 'the end of the world' should be the end of the Age or Eon. “World’ means age. It always has this significance and is so rendered in The Concordant Version. This opens up the grand system of time periods or eons. The Bible does not treat of eternity past or future, but of a great Time Cycle called the AGE, Times or Eonian Times. These had a beginning and will have an end. Two have been past and two are still future. The phrase “forever and ever' is self-destructive, apart from the Greek. If there can be an 'ever' added to ‘forever,' then 'forever' is not endless. It means 'for the Age', or the ages.
“The passage Hebrew 11:1 is a test for any translation. In the authorized version it reads, “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. The revised version has it: ‘Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, a conviction of things not seen. The Concordant method gives us this: “Now faith is an assumption of what we are expecting, a conviction concerning matters which we are not observing. Faith is neither substance nor evidence, it assumes the truth of which it is convinced.”
The familiar counsel, “Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat nor what ye shall drink, nor yet for your body what ye shall put on,” is made to read, “Do not be worrying about your soul.” The word “soul” stands for life sensation hence it is translated as eating and drinking merely.
The Concordant Version is distinctly not an attempt to reproduce the Bible in modern English or to turn out an “easy reading” volume. Its aim is to tackle big Biblical problems. Take, for example, the much disputed matter of Hell. On this subject Mr. Knoch said:
“The revisers, knowing that the English word 'hell’ no longer represented the true thought of the original, compromised by using the Greek word itself and rendering it “hades. The Bible says that after His death Christ went into Hell. This cannot mean the conventional place of torment we associate with that word.
"The Concordant Version deals with the matter thus: "Hades' in Greek is made up of two elements: A means UN (the 'h' is not a letter in Greek); the remainder of the word comes from the element ID which means perceive, and is so used hundreds of times. Thus Hades is the IMPERCEPTIBLE or UNSEEN.
"Take also the doctrine of the Beginning of things. In the revised version two distinct words are given the same translation as foundation. One word is 'themelios' [QEMELIOS] which literally means to place with care and when used of the foundation of a city or a prison undoubtedly. means ‘foundation. The other word ‘katabolee' is literally 'down-casting'; it is the very opposite of, foundation, it means disruption. The passage: "The Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, really means, the Lamb slain from the disruption of the world. Take also the passage: For then must He, often have suffered since the foundation of the world'—it means, since the disruption of the world.”
This doctrine of “Beginnings in disruption” has many angles which cannot be treated in an article like this. It throws a new light on the Biblical account of creation and the supposed conflict between Geology and Genesis. Creation is contained in the first verse of Genesis; that first verse is indeed the whole first chapter and the whole book of Creation. Then at verse 2 begins the description of restoration after an undescribed world cataclysm which left the earth and the near-by planets in an altered state. The disruption of the earth, indicated here and there throughout Scripture, is a point whose lack has put needless burdens on faith and loyalty to the Bible.
The example of the double use of the word “Foundation" by the authorized translators illustrates a rule which Mr. Knoch finds absolutely binding upon him, namely, that no English wore should stand for two distinct Greek words. “Disruption” and “careful-placing" in Greek cannot both be “foundation” in English.
Another rule is that there should be no smoothing away of meanings for the sake of obtaining easy reading, that is, no word or part of a word should be omitted in translation if it can possibly be turned into English.
The principle that each Greek word shall be represented by only one English word has a bearing on the doctrine of the second coming cf Christ which is now attracting much attention. The special terms used with reference to this subject are carefully distinguished in The Concordant Version. There are three terms in the Greek, and they are not uniformly translated into their three equivalents in the English. The first term is “epiphany” (epiphaneia) which is Advent. The second term is “unveiling” (apokalupsis, whence the term Apocalypse) and means simply unveiling, in the sense of revealing or disclosing. Then there is the term "parousia" which means "presence," and not the "act of coming." Of Paul it was said "his bodily presence was weak"; it is the same word which in I Cor. 15:23 is translated "they that are Christ's at His coming." If parousia is presence in one place, it cannot be coming in another. That is the principle upon which The Concordant Version proceeds.
Mr. Knoch gives all the texts because he believes that, like all other ancient treasures, the Scriptures lose rather than gain by age. He is restoring to the text the original touch, piling the words sometimes three high. as the accompanying illustration shows, that the reader may do his own work of consideration.
The Concordant Version is published in parts, one edition with the editor's doctrinal notes and the other free from notes. The edition without the notes is preferable for those who wish to study the text without any reference whatever to another's interpretation of it. Friends of the Bible are not always quite sure of the propriety of even the best men putting their interpretations on the same page, or within the same covers, with the sacred text. It is from this admixture of the two that confusion has come throughout the centuries.
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