II Kings - Ferrar Fenton Bible Translation page 415

INTRODUCTORY NOTE my discovery of the methods of the poetical Prophets in constructing their lyrics. As I noted previously, I often fancied I heard the tone of the Persi- Arabic lyrists in portions of the Psalms and elsewhere, but failed to establish any laws of rhythm in the Hebrew so long as I read that language by aid of I therefore abandoned them, and practised reading by the use of the fully—written vowels and by forming them into diphthongs when two or three of them were written together, and carefully listening to detect the step of any Arabian metre in the Hebrew text. I was soon rewarded by here and there finding a consonance in portions of Isaiah, but my first full success was reached in the Book of job, where l caught the regular metre in which the Persian poet Hafiz delighted, consisting of a line of seven syllables, followed by another of eight—or the same in reverse order, but at times running into an eight and nine, or occasionally falling to a six and seven, the accents resting on the fourth and eighth syllables for the first line, and upon the fourth and sixth and seventh, to make the close, in the second line. Another metre is a line of six syllables, a third one oi twelve, and others are formed on the movement which in Greek produced the hexameter, for the Greeks got their alphabet and doubtless their versitication from the Hebrews, and another of a regular line of nine syllables, the accent resting on each third in succession and without a definite close, so that the line can run on to twelve or fifteen syllables if the sense der ids it. Delighted with it, I wrote to a Continental friend., He replied, thinking

I must be mistaken ; so to prove my discovery a fact, I made a rough translation of the whole Book of job in its poetical parts into the same metre, but in English~——and asked him to test it. He did so, was converted to my views, and coming to England for the purpose, assisted me with his rich and accomplished intellect and scholarship to amend and polish the work. I need not go into detail as to how I arrived at the varied measures of the Psalms and the Prophets, and the division of each Ode in them to its proper beginning, end, and stanzas. For ten years I laboured at it upon the same lines, and after repeated versions, all direct from the Hebrew text, I arrived at the present form and results, which I now present to the kindly consideration of the Anglo-British Race in Europe, America, Australia, Africa, India, and wherever its members exist amongst other Peoples. At the urgent request of many friends to my object in making the Word of

God again intelligible to our Race, Ihave given this Preface a somewhat Auto- to let as one of my best friends he added. So I consented. I n this translation my sole object has been to ascertain by my own study

and the aid of the best critics, printed formerly, or who are now living in the body, the exact meaning of the text, and to transfer that meaning to the English language in equivalent words and in the sense we now use them, untrammelled by either tradition or authorities, and without any bias from preconceived theories, or the mystifications of Modern Sceptical Critics of Schools, or the Fads and Myths, or the fashionable of our day, or of any Theological Systems whatever. To make the Bible, and the Bible alone, intelligible has been my single endeavour, without fear or favour to any Systemizers. Three very competent scholars have given me loyal assistance to this end in different parts of the work, one being a clergyman of clear, bold, and original intellect