THE TWENTIETH CENTURY NEW TESTAMENT: A Translation into MODERN ENGLISH Made From the Original Greek (Westcott & Hort's Text (3 VOLUME SET): Part One: Five Historical Books - Gospels and Acts; Part Two: Paul's Letters to the Churches; Part Three: The Pastoral, Personal, and General Letters, and The Revelation

Kingsland Higgs, Mary; Ernest de Merindol Malan

Published by Fleming H. Revell, 1900

About this Item

First American Printing of the first complete edition in three volumes. 16mo, navy cloth over cards, red-orange stamped spine lettering and title to front cover with floral emblazoned Jerusalem cross all within double ruled border. Tips a bit rubbed, vol. 2 FFEP and few following leaves dampstained, otherwise all volumes are clean, sound, and unmarked. Vol. 2 has a complete jacket, edgeworn and chipped 1' at fore head corner; Vol. 1 has a severed front and front flap. A pioneer translation of the countless subsequent 'modern speech' translations, The Twentieth Century New Testament was an un-comissioned grass roots project organized and executed by lay people. In 1891, W. T. Stead received independent letters from Mary Kingsland Higgs and Ernest de Merindol Malan, both lamenting inability of the youth in their charge to understand either the antiquated 1611 AV or even the 1881 RV with its wooden renderings. Stead connected these two and issued a call for likeminded translators in three issues of his 'Review of Reviews' monthly. The resulting committee was a heterogenous array of non-professional people, reform-minded, liberal and heterodox but ernest and often pious, careful and independent thinkers from age 19 to 63. Over the next 14 years, they challenged the ecclessiastized renderings that had lost their meaning and power and offered a plain rendering worthy of the 'Common' KOINE Greek in which the NT was first composed. Their long undertaking remains unique in the history of translation and many of their uncredentialed renderings would find adoption in the 20th century scholarly consensus. 'Somewhere along the line, some transforming miracle seems to have occurred. We are forced to conclude that the devotion to their task has made of them better scholars than they were at first' (Kenneth W. Clark, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, Sep. 1955. See also Bruce, History of the Bible in English 3rd Ed.) Darlow & Moule 2084, 2099, 2113. Seller Inventory # 500048

Bibliographic Details

Title: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY NEW TESTAMENT: A ...

Publisher: Fleming H. Revell

Publication Date: 1900

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: VERY GOOD

Dust Jacket Condition: Good

Edition: First American Edition.