n of usages which we now know belong to later developments.
These later developments, all of which are, to some extent, to be
recognized in the Greek Testament, such as the disappearance of the
optative, the use of [Greek text] with the subjunctive in the place of
the infinitive, the displacement of [Greek text], the interchange of
[Greek text] and [Greek text], of [Greek text] and [Greek text], the use
of compound forms without any corresponding increase of meaning, the
extended usage of the aorist, the wider sphere of the accusative, and
many similar indications of later Greek--all these were so far known to
us as to exercise a cautionary influence on our revision, and to prevent
us overpressing the meaning of words and forms that had lost their
original definiteness.

My second reason for the answer I have given to the question is based on
the accumulating experience we were acquiring in our ten years of labour,
and our instinctive avoidance of renderings which in appearance might be
precise, but did in reality exaggerate the plain meaning intended by the
Greek that we were rendering. Sometimes, but only rarely, we fell into
this excusable form of over-rendering. Perhaps the concluding words of
Mark xiv. 65 will supply an example. At any rate, the view taken by
Blass {114} would seem to suggest a less literal form of translation.

When I leave the limited form of answer, and face the broad and general
question of the extent to which our recently-acquired knowledge affects
the correctness and fidelity of the revision, I can only give an answer
founded on an examination of numerous passages in which I have compared
the comments of Dr. Blass in his Grammar, and of Dr. Deissmann in his
"Bible Studies with the renderings of the Revisers." And the answer is
this, that the number of cases in which any change could reasonably be
required has been so small, so very small, that the charge of any real
ignorance, on the part of the Revisers, of the Greek on which they were
engaged, must be dismissed as utterly and entirely exaggerated. We have
now acquired an increased knowledge of the character of the Greek of the
New Testament, and of the place it holds in the historical transition of
the language from the earlier post-classical to the later developments of
the language, but this knowledge, interesting and instructive as it may
be, leaves the principles of correctly translating it practically intact.
In this latter proces