On the spikenard of the ancients / By Charles Hatchett.

  • Charles Hatchett
Date:
[1836]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On the spikenard of the ancients / By Charles Hatchett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    17/36 page 7
    and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair, and the house was filled with the odour thereof.”—The following passage also enables us to ascertain, what at that time was the value of the Ointment. “ Then saith one of his disciples Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, who should betray him, why was not this Ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor.” St John. chap. 12 verse 3, 4, 5. Hence we learn that at the time in question, a pound of this precious Ointment was valued at three hundred pence according to the translation in the English New Testament, for I must here observe that whenever the coin called Denarius happens to occur, as in St. John above mentioned, in Matthew, chap. 20 and 22, and in Luke, chap. 10, the English translators have invariably employed the term penny, having evidently in these, as well as in some other instances, been induced to do so by following that which is called Luther’s Bible.* * The first English Bible allowed by Royal Authority, and in fact the first translation of the whole Bible printed in our language, is that which Miles Coverdale (afterwards Bishop of Exeter in the reign of Edward Vlth) translated, printed, and dedicated to Henry VHIth in the year 1535, being the year after the King’s Supremacy had been settled by Parliament. In setting forth this, which he calls a special translation, Coverdale says, that he humbly and faithfully followed his interpreters, of which he states that he had recourse to five who had translated the Scriptures not only into Latin but into Dutch, by which no doubt he means German. It is quite evident that he principally looked to this, and that his translation was made almost word for word with that which bears the name of Luther, who then was living in the height of his celebrity, and was no longer regarded as a Heresiarch by that capricious tyrant Henry VIIIth, for had it been otherwise, the head of Coverdale would have been in no small danger. Whenever the coin Denarius occurs in the New Testament, it is invariably by Luther translated Groschen, and Coverdale following him, first sets the example to the subse- quent English translators by translating Groschen, into Peny according to his Ortho- graphy. Matthew. Chap. 20. “ And whan he had agreed with his labourers for a peny a daye.”— Matthew. Chap. 22. “ Shewe me ~ tribute money, and they toke hi a peny?'
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