One-man translations
Eight Bibles made from the original languages by a single translator working alone. Almost no circulation between them, and they turn up in reference work out of all proportion to their size.
Every one of these was made from the original languages by a single translator, and most of them restore the divine name — which is why a group this small matters so much for tracing it.
They cluster in the nineteenth century for a reason: printing was cheap, critical Greek texts had just become available, and no committee had to be satisfied.
| Bible | Year | The spirit of the change |
|---|---|---|
| Young’s Literal Translation | 1862 · rev. 1898 | Hebrew and Greek tense and word order rendered as mechanically as English permits. |
| The Emphatic Diaglott | 1864 | Griesbach’s Greek with a word-for-word English rendering beneath it. |
| Darby | NT 1867 · complete 1890 | For careful study rather than public reading — closely literal, heavily footnoted. |
| Rotherham’s Emphasised Bible | NT 1872 · complete 1902 | Show the emphasis the Hebrew and Greek carry and English cannot. |
| Moffatt | NT 1913 · Bible 1926 | Free, vigorous, frankly opinionated English. |
| Smith–Goodspeed | NT 1923 · Bible 1931 | An American Translation — the American answer to Moffatt. |
| The Bible in Living English | published 1972 | Ordinary living English, by one man over about forty years. |
| J. B. Phillips | NT 1958 · rev. 1972 | Begun in an air-raid shelter, for a youth group who could not follow the King James. |
Young’s Literal Translation
Robert Young — of the concordance — rendering Hebrew and Greek tense and word order as mechanically as English permits, so the reader can see the grammar through the translation. Uses “Jehovah.”
It is not a Bible to read continuously, and was never meant to be. It is a Bible to check something in.
The Emphatic Diaglott
Benjamin Wilson set the Griesbach Greek text with a word-for-word English rendering beneath it and his own translation in the margin — the exact format the Kingdom Interlinear would use a century later.
Uses “Jehovah” in the New Testament, where no Greek manuscript has it. The Watch Tower Society took it over and reprinted it, and still cites it as source J21.
Darby
J. N. Darby, for careful study rather than public reading — closely literal, heavily footnoted, “Jehovah” in the Old Testament.
Rotherham’s Emphasised Bible
Show the emphasis the Hebrew and Greek carry and English cannot. Accents and vertical lines mark emphatic words and clauses.
Ginsburg’s Masoretico-critical Hebrew for the Old Testament, Westcott and Hort for the New — his 1872 New Testament had used Tregelles, and he moved to Westcott and Hort for the 1897 edition — and “Yahweh” throughout.
Moffatt
James Moffatt in free, vigorous, frankly opinionated English — he reordered passages he judged displaced, which no committee would have permitted.
Renders the divine name “the Eternal,” which almost nobody else does, and which is a genuinely third answer to a question usually treated as having two.
Smith–Goodspeed
An American Translation — Edgar Goodspeed’s New Testament in the plain American English of its day, with J. M. Powis Smith’s Old Testament. The American answer to Moffatt.
Its handling of the divine name is not stated here. It is left off the ✦ table rather than guessed at.
The Bible in Living English
Ordinary living English, by one man over about forty years.
Steven T. Byington set himself the task before he was thirteen and died in 1957 without seeing it printed; the Watch Tower Society bought the rights and published it in 1972. Uses “Jehovah.”
That it was made from the original languages is certain; which printed Greek text he worked from is not recorded here, because the sources used do not state it.
J. B. Phillips
Began in a London air-raid shelter, paraphrasing Paul’s letters for a youth group who could not follow the King James. New Testament only, and still the most quoted of these.