Talk:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)

Scripture text

I just proofread a page of Genesis 4 and noted that, whereas in the source images there is a distinction in typeface between the blocks of Scripture text and the commentary, this feature has not been carried over into the Wikisource version. Any suggestions?--PeterR2 (talk) 12:51, 10 January 2017 (UTC)

I just now noticed this message. I'm not sure what to do exactly because there is only a small difference in font size between the normal text and the quoted text. It's hard to see what is what. Maybe we could do the same thing but make the difference a little bit more noticeable. Heyzeuss (talk) 17:10, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

I think this was fixed ages ago. PeterR2 (talk) 19:19, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Volume 5 and 6

Volume 5 is not the whole New Testament as currently shown, but only Matthew to John. Vol 6 is Acts to Revelation. --PeterR2 (talk) 09:45, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Welsh

Wow. An edition translated into Welsh? At Googlebooks. Shenme (talk) 00:30, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

And Portuguese, at Googlebooks. And Indonesian! Shenme (talk) 00:51, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Double-wow - when the printer went bankrupt, the translator Rev Evan Griffiths of Swansea (Abertawe in modern Welsh) bought the printing business in order to ensure his translation of Matthew Henry would continue to be printed. See The Life and Times of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles: A Forgotten Scholar and Griffiths, Evan (DNB00). --PeterR2 (talk) 08:33, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

I Googled "Qui non auget scientiam, amittit de ea" hoping to find the source, and instead found translations of Matthew Henry into various languages. --PeterR2 (talk) 20:19, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Incidentally, I found a previous source of the above quotation of the Rabbi (Hillel) in Latin. It seems likely that Matthew Henry lifted this directly from Matthew Poole's Latin Synopsis - see Poole: Synopsis Criticorum on Proverbs 1. It's not in Poole's 3-volume English-language commentary. According to the reference in Poole's margin, he seems to have got it from Louis de Dieu. His list of abbreviations of authors' names doesn't give titles. --PeterR2 (talk) 20:51, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Looking to the future - layout of sections in main space

I'm thinking about how the main space for the work should be allocated. The existing scheme as seen for KJV will not serve because the commentary, having added commentary and therefore being so greatly enlarged, is too voluminous for single mainspace page per Bible book.

Ballpark figuring, I see Genesis has 50 chapters, in the KJV work encompassing about 185 'screens' (an inexact if countable measure) altogether in one page. The same Genesis here has as yet only 30 chapters but occupies about 600 'screens'. So somewhere around 5 to 6-fold expansion in text from KJV to here.

I've been working on Psalms in Volume 3, and have finished Psalm 119, 176 verses, being pages 551 through 581 - about 30 pages. In KJV the entirety of Psalms is about 200 screens. Here for just psalm 119 it's about 30 * 8 screens, or 225 to 240 screens for this one psalm. That's longer than Genesis in KJV!

If I look at Psalm 1, which has 6 verses, I see about 2.5 pages here, which is about 20 screens of text. A short psalm is one-tenth the length of the entire KJV Genesis?!

It really looks like we will need to impose an additional level of subdivision, to create display pages of manageable sizes.

Not just An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Genesis, but rather An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Genesis/Chapter 1, /Genesis/Chapter 2/ and so on.

And not just An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Psalms, but e.g. An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828)/Psalms/Psalm 119.

Can you see any other solution than creating the additional level of subdivision? Shenme (talk) 05:36, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

I'm not very knowledgeable on the technical aspects of Wikisource. I came to it because I was reading Matthew Henry on an app and found obvious typos. I traced this back to CCEL's edition. However CCEL got theirs from elsewhere and do not know from what source it was transcribed, therefore corrections cannot easily be made. So when I found this edition which Heyzeuss had been working on, I figured that whilst it wasn't the British quarto edition of 1811 - "the "best edition" according to Matthew Henry's biographer Memoirs of the life, character, and writings of the Rev. Matthew Henry, page 239 - it was available as a scan and was based on the 1811 edition. I suspect it's not actually an 1828 PRINTING, but the actual commentary is printed from the same type - see scans of 1828/9 volumes printed by Towar and Hogan - at HathiTrust website

With regard to your question about divisions, in Genesis, on which I have been working, the chapters are marked up with "section begin" "section end" and "span id" tags, which enable direct access to the individual chapters from An_Exposition_of_the_Old_and_New_Testament_(1828). --PeterR2 (talk) 21:49, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

We haven't gotten around to subdivision yet. Each book should at least be broken down by chapter. I'm surprised my browser can handle it the way it is! Bookmarking is also near impossible. Thank you for your work, ShenMe. 🙂 Heyzeuss (talk) 13:04, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

If you want to have a go at it, check out the transclusion example at Bible_(King_James_Version,_1611)/Obadiah. Heyzeuss (talk) 13:25, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Older form of KJV than is now in use

I noticed that in Joshua 4:6 the words familiar in later editions of the KJV as "What mean ye by these stones?" are printed as "What mean you by these stones?". I discovered that this was how it was in a 1611 edition. "You" is also present in the first and last phrases of verse where more recent printings have "ye". The 18th century minor textual revisions must have standardised the use of "ye" as subject and "you" as object. The other instances of "you" in "take you" (both in 1611 and later) suggest a reflexive verb form - i.e. not "ye take", but "take yourselves" - as we might say today "get yourselves a stone each". PeterR2 (talk) 09:52, 31 July 2021 (UTC)

I've been meaning to learn Early Modern English grammar, just because I think it would help me with my reading comprehension. Heyzeuss (talk) 09:09, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Interesting topic. Distinctions between singular and plural in pronouns were already going out of use in 1611, but the translators kept them because they better matched Greek and Hebrew pronouns. Thou/thee/thy is singular and ye/you/your is plural.

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 1 Corinthians 6:19

The idea of our bodies as Temples of the Holy Spirit is often extended to the promotion of personal health and fitness, which is not correct. "Your body" refers to a single body that belongs to a plural "you", as in the body of believers. We often read things like this incorrectly through a modern individualist lens, whereas in ancient times, people would have understood this through a collective filter. Western cultures also have a tendency to be more individualistic. This passage is an example of misinterpretation that arises from historical changes in the English language.

Heyzeuss (talk) 13:45, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

But compare "your bodies" in verse 15. There are, it seems, at least four places where the specific combination that you mentioned occurs, namely Matthew 6:25, Romans 6:12, 1 Corinthians 6:19,20, 1 Thessalonians 5:23. I think it must mean the body of each of you, but also perhaps reminding them that they are not mere individuals but one church. Also there is "your spirit" in several places from Malachi onwards. PeterR2 (talk) 15:30, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

The 1611 KJV Bible should have a completed transclusion. See Index:BibleKJV1611-001.pdf. This edition of the Bible is the most significant milestone in the development of modern English. Geddes MacGregor called it "the most influential version of the most influential book in the world, in what is now its most influential language." Another reason to finish this edition on Wikisource, and a reason that initially got me into editing here, is that you can link to specific Bible passages from Wikipedia without the annoying external link icon. Oh, the things that motivate usǃ 😄 Unfortunately, Wikipedia templates for linking to KJV passages link to the 1769 standard Oxford text, which is not the first edition of the KJV, and the Wikisource book is not published using our process of transclusion and matching with the pages of a physical volume. Heyzeuss (talk) 13:56, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Validation

I was thinking that, as Genesis is complete (since 2020!) it might be nice to get it validated - I will tag those who have been most involved - @Heyzeuss @Shenme @Beeswaxcandle PeterR2 (talk) 00:13, 8 March 2023 (UTC)

Also tagging @Kathleen.wright5 @David Haslam PeterR2 (talk) 10:41, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

I'll have a look. Heyzeuss (talk) 12:33, 11 March 2023 (UTC)

Quotation marks

The following is a copy of what I wrote on the Talk page at Page talk:An Exposition of the Old and New Testament (1828) vol 3.djvu/82. It has some relevance to the whole of an edition of Matthew Henry like this one, as it notes a discrepancy between editions produced in his lifetime and later ones.

Reprints of Matthew Henry's exposition after his death (but probably only from around 1800) include quotation marks around reported speech. These are not specifically quotations from anywhere, but an expression of what Matthew Henry suggested Bible people were expressing. A number of editions have an unclosed quote here:

"Thou wilt have a desire to the work of thy hands; thou hast mercy in store for me, not only as made by thy providence, but new-made by thy grace; otherwise he that made them will not save them.

I found a more modern edition that closes the quote after "grace".

I have left it open and not inserted a SIC as there is no certain alternative.

PS There is another mystery here! A number of writers of the Puritan period quote Isaiah 27:11 as saying "he that made them will not save them". However, despite trawling through the various translations at textusreceptusbibles.com I have been unable to locate the source for this rendering.

PeterR2 (talk) 10:20, 31 July 2023 (UTC)