First English Bibles in Modern Speech

Bruce Metzger, The Bible in Translation: Ancient and English Versions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 95, asserts that it was the “publication of the Revised Version (1881–85) and the American Standard Version (1901) . . . [which] stimulated the production of modern-speech versions.” Metzger’s two reasons were: (1) both the RV and ASV had “offered a strictly formal rendering of the original texts,” yet (2) through the discovery of many Greek papyri it “became clear that the New Testament documents were written in a plain, simple style to meet the needs of ordinary men and women.” Consequently “Should [the NT documents] not then be translated into the same kind of English? This was the argument of translators of modern-speech versions.”

Metzger thus implied that the first “modern language” Bibles date back to the early 20th century. Indeed he discusses the history of The Twentieth Century New Testament: A Translation into Modern English Made from the Original Greek (Westcott and Hort’s Text) published in 1901 and 1904, whereby the committee that produced this NT (formed in 1891 in Manchester and Hull and working at first only by mail correspondence), produced a version that “In more than one passage, the translators clarified the meaning so admirably that later revisers [i.e. NRSV and "all the important translations"] adopted their rendering.”

Metzger also discusses the influence of Weymouth’s New Testament in Modern Speech (1903), Moffatt’s Translation of the whole Bible (1913; 1924–25), and Smith and Goodspeed’s American Translation (NT: 1923; OT: 1927; Apocrypha: 1938).

However, in Harry M. Orlinsky and Robert G. Bratcher, A History of Bible Tramnslation and the North American Contribution (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991) one catches glimpses of earlier “modern speech” translations of the Bible (and Bible portions). There is of course much agreement with Metzger in that they follow Cheek’s suggestion that Frank Ballentine’s [incomplete] NT, in 1901, begins a new period (of modern speech Bibles). And similarly, the majority of the “modern language” Bibles (including “simplified” versions and “paraphrases”) are to be found in their so-called “Fourth Great Age” (1960s–).

The background here is that Orlinsky and Bratcher chose to present their history as “Four Great Ages of Bible Translation” by viewing the four ages as the product of “the changing milieus brought on by social forces.” In other words, they have not simply provided a history of translation categorised merely by time but by impetus and origin (i.e. “the vernaculars that were involved [and] the role played by organized religion”). Basically (mainly from the “Introduction”, pages xi-xii):

• 1st Great Age: Jewish in origin – about 200 BCE–400 CE – Greek (Septuagint) and Aramaic (Targums);
• 2nd Great Age: Catholic in origin – primarily Greek and Latin – about 400 CE–1500 (Middle Ages);
• 3rd Great Age: Protestant in origin – about 1500–1960 – in the emerging vernaculars of German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Scandinavian, and overwhelmingly English;
• (Transitional Period—represent by the Revised Standard Version—toward the “fourth great age” of Interdenominational and Interconfessional translation) and ushering with it several “New” [non-“revised”] Bible Translations;
• 4th Great Age: Jewish-Catholic-Protestant in scope represented by the JPS’s New Jewish Version of the Torah (1962), the Catholic New American Bible (1970), and the British Protestant New English Bible (1970) all characterised by a more scholarly approach to exegesis with attempts to move away from sectarian eisegesis as well as mechanical “word for word” approaches.

Back to the question about the first modern speech versions in English. Orlinsky and Bratcher discuss several 19th century versions (within their 3rd “Great Age”). One of these versions is more interesting than their discussion fully admits. They mention the 1828 and 1832 editions of a NT produced by Irish-born Alexander Campbell (based on an earlier NT published in London in 1818) and they seem to accept the comment by Cecil Thomas that his “third edition "seems to be more exactly what one would call a ‘modern-language’ translation."” 

This comment seems somewhat out of place in their historical scheme and they do not explain how this might fit. Interestingly, Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: A History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777–1880 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999) asserts that “Campbell’s version was arguably the best-selling bible translation by an individual prior to the Revised Version.” Orlinsky and Bratcher do at least speak about Campbell’s approach as though being quite modern, that is, they mention Campbell’s reasons for his NT as: “First, living language is always changing, requiring new and better translations. Second, he did not believe that the KJV was always a faithful translation” as we are now in a much better position to translate the NT “[i]n light of the better understanding of the Greek language, and with the discovery and publication of better manuscripts of the Greek New Testament.”

Not only does this sound very much like what Metzger has as the "modern" impetus in his account of the early 20th century of “modern speech” versions, but here’s the twist: Campbell was only lightly revising a version that was actually composed in the 1700s. His so-called 1818 base was merely a compilation of three earlier published portions of the NT by George Campbell (Gospels, 1789), Philip Doddridge (1756, 1765?), and James McKnight (Epistles, 1784–1795) published together in 1818 in London as The Sacred Writing of the Apostles and Evangelists of Jesus Christ, Commonly Styled The New Testament. Translated from the Original Greek, by George Campbell, James MacKnight, and Philip Doddridge, Doctors of the Church of Scotland. With Prefaces to the Historical and Epistolary Books; and an Appendix, Containing Critical Notes and Various Translations of Difficult Passages.

Suddenly we have jumped from early 20th century back to the mid-to-late 18th century in the search for the first “modern speech” Bibles in English.

At first, this was surprising to me, until reading Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible: Translation, Scholarship, Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). Sheehan’s book should be compulsory reading for anyone interested in the history of modern Bible translation. Almost everything we might suppose as "modern" (in Bible translation theory and practice) is found already in 18th century Germany, and mid-nineteenth century in England. So it was, for example, between 1700–1800s that various “paraphrases” of biblical books were published in various attempts to go toward making the first Bibles in modern English.

Sheehan’s thesis basically exposes the inadequacy of seeing the Enlightenment Bible as a process of secularization. Rather, he says, “I have tried to show its [religion’s] malleability in the face of new challenges. To speak with Robert Alter, the invention of the Enlightenment and culture Bibles was "an attempt to recover the religious truth of the Bible through means of investigation compatible with secular categories."”


Probably what I found most fascinating in Sheenan was the deliberate scholarly avoidance of Bible translation in the century prior to the “Enlightenment Bible.” More on that another time . . . 

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Postscript: The question of the first Bible translations in modern speech will of course depend on one's definition of "modern" and "modern language." Suffice to say here (other posts will pick it up) the King James Version (1611) simply consolidated (revised) the earlier 16th century Bibles and avoided modern speech in preference for archaic speech--it was not (contrary to misconceptions) either a completely "new" translation, nor was it a "modern language" version.