ANDOVER-HARVARD 1934- Copyright 1900-1901-1902-1903-1904 BY FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY All rights reserved 2395 .TS 1904 PREFACE. A Translation into Modern English. ENGLISH-SPEAKING people of to-day have not, until quite recently, had the opportunity of reading the Bible in the English of their own time. Though in the course of the last hundred years the Bible has been translated into the vernacular of most countries, the language of our Bible remains the English of three hundred years ago. This translation of the New Testament is an endeavour to do for the English nation what has been done already for the people of almost all other countries to enable Englishmen to read the most important part of their Bible in that form of their own language which they themselves use. It had its origin in the recognition of the fact that the English of the Authorized Version (closely followed in that of the Revised Version), though widely valued for its antique charm, is in many passages difficult, or even quite unintelligible to the modern reader. The retention, too, of a form of English no longer in common use is liable to give the impression that the contents of the Bible have little to do with the life of to-day. The Greek used by the New Testament writers was not the Classical Greek of some centuries earlier, but the form of the language spoken in their own day. Moreover the writers represent those whose utterances they record as using the words and phrases of every-day life. We believe that the New Testament will be better understood by modern readers if presented in a modern form; and that a translation of it, which presents the original in an exalted literary and antiquated dress, cannot, despite its "aroma " and the tender memories that have gathered around it, really make the New Testament for the reader of to-day the living reality that it was to its first readers. In this respect the present translation differs altogether in its aim from that of the Revised Version of 1881. No attempt is made in that Version to translate the original into the language of our own time. Its authors state in their preface: "We have faithfully adhered to the rule that the alterations to be introduced should be expressed, as far as possible, in the language of the Authorized Version, or of the Versions that preceded it.' Our constant effort, on the contrary, has been to exclude all words and |