Devotion

RV gives ' devotion ' for AV 'prayer' in .lob 15 (nij-i;). In AV the word is found only Ac 17" ' as I passed by, and beheld your devotions,' Or. ri acjidaiuxTix v/iuir, KV ' the objects of your worship.' Tliat RV gives the meaning of the Greek there la no doubt Ttie same Or. won! occurs Wis 142" (Vulg. deue, AV ' a (tod,' KV ' object of devotion '), IS" (Vulg.

quof colil, A V ' the things which ho worshippeth,' RV 'object of his worship'); Bel" (EV 'the gods ye worship'); and '2 Th '2^ (I'V 'that il worahippccl/ KVm "an object of worship'). Did the AV trans- lators understand 'devotions' in the sense of ' objects of wor- ship,' then? Aldis Wright (.Bible WordJiook,* p. 198 t.), after • 604 DEW DIAL full ducuBslon, concludes that they did not. He qnotes, how- ever, from Sidney, Arcadia (ed. 1698, p. 282 [ed. 1622, p.

277J), AS /oUow : Dametos began to speaice his lowd voyce, to looke big, to march up and downe, and in his march to lift his leggea higher than he waa wont, swearing by no meane devotions, that the walls should not keepe the coward from him.' The Ox/. £tuj. Diet, gives an object of religious worship' as one of tlie meanings of ' devotion,' quoting the above from Sidney, Ac IT^, and a passage from Fletcher (1625), Double Marriage, it. iv.

: * Churches and altars, priests and all devotions, Tumbled to- gether into one rude chaos'; but saya, 'this sense is not very certain, the meaning of the quotations being in every case doubtful.' As Wright points out, AV took the word from Oen. Bible of 1660 ; Wyclif (1380) having ' mawmetis ' ; Tind. ' the maner how ye worship your goddes,' so Cran., Gen. of 1657 (WTiitting- ham). Bishops' ; Gov. ' youre gods seruyce ' (from Zurich Bible, euwre Gotttidienit) ; Rhem. 'your Idols.'

But it has not been observed that Tomson's NT of 1576, wliich from 1587 onwards supplanted the NT of 1560 in most copies of the Gen. Bible, has the marg. note : * \Vhatsoever men worship for religion's sake, that we oill devotion.' That note, which removes all doubt of this meaning from the word, was before the translators of AV, and they would have no hesitation in using an abstract word in this concrete sense : cf. Ac lO^ Gr. ri fjui.ra.toL, AV ' vanities,' RV 'vain things.'

OoverdAle has 'devotion ' in Ja 1™ for AV »nd BV ' religion.' J. HASTINGS.