Weymouth New Testament in Modern Speech, Preface and Introductions — A Reader’s Guide

Proofreading was performed by Earl Melton. The printed edition used in creating this etext was the Kregal reprint of the Ernest Hampden-Cook (1912) Third Edition, of the edition first published in 1909 by J. Clarke, London. Kregal edition ISBN 0-8254-4025-4.

Due to the plans to add the Weymouth footnotes, the footnote markers have been left in the text and page break indicators. Other special markings are words surrounded with "*" to indicate emphasis, and phrases surrounded with "<>" to indicate bold OT quotes. See WEYMOUTH.INT in WNTINT.ZIP for the introduction to the text, and information on Weymouth's techniques.

The most current corrected files can be found on:

Bible Foundation BBS 602-789-7040 (14.4 kbs)

If any errors are found, please notify me at the above bbs, or at:

Mark Fuller 1129 E. Loyola Dr. Tempe, Az. 85282 (602) 829-8542

----------- Corrections to the printed page ---------------------

Introduction says personal pronouns referring to Jesus, when spoken by other than the author/narrator, are capitalized only when they recognize His deity. The following oversights in the third edition were corrected in subsequent editions. Therefore we feel justified in correcting them in this computer version.

Mt 22:16 Capitalized 'him'. Same person speaking as in v.15.

Mt 27:54 Capitalized 'he'.

Joh 21:20 Capitalized 'his'

Heb 12:6 Capitalized last 'HE' (referring to God).

==== changes made to printed page.

Lu 11:49 Added closing quote at end of verse as later editions do.

Lu 13:6 come > came (changed in later editions)

Ro 11:16 it > if (an obvious typesetting error corrected in later editions)

1Co 11:6 out > cut (an obvious typesetting error corrected in later editions)

Php 4:3 the Word 'book' in 'book of Life' was not capitalized in various printings of the third edition, but it was in later editions. So we have capitalized it here.

2Ti 1:9 deserts > desserts (misspelling perpetuated in later editions)

Eph 6:17 did not capitalize 'word' as in Word of God.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The Translation of the New Testament here offered to English-speaking Christians is a bona fide translation made directly from the Greek, and is in no sense a revision. The plan adopted has been the following.

1. An earnest endeavour has been made (based upon more than sixty years' study of both the Greek and English languages, besides much further familiarity gained by continual teaching) to ascertain the exact meaning of every passage not only by the light that Classical Greek throws on the langruage used, but also by that which the Septuagint and the Hebrew Scriptures afford; aid being sought too from Versions and Commentators ancient and modern, and from the ample _et cetera_ of _apparatus grammaticus_ and theological and Classical reviews and magazines--or rather, by means of occasional excursions into this vast prairie.

2. The sense thus seeming to have been ascertained, the next step has been to consider how it could be most accurately and naturally exhibited in the English of the present day; in other words, how we can with some approach to probability suppose that the inspired writer himself would have expressed his thoughts, had he been writing in our age and country. /1

3. Lastly it has been evidently desirable to compare the results thus attained with the renderings of other scholars, especially of course witll the Authorized and Revised Versions. But alas, the great majority of even "new translations," so called, are, in reality, only Tyndale's immortal work a little--often very litLle--modernized!

4. But in the endeavour to find in Twentieth Century English a precise equivalent for a Greek word, phrase, or sentence there are two dangers to be guarded against. There are a Scylla and a Charybdis. On the one hand there is the English of Society, on the other hand that of the utterly uneducated, each of these _patois_ having also its own special, though expressive, borderland which we name 'slang.' But all these salient angles (as a professor of fortification might say) of our language are forbidden ground to the reverent translator of Holy Scripture.

5. But again, a _modern_ translation--does this imply that no words or phrases in any degree antiquated are to be admitted? Not so, for great numbers of such words and phrases are still in constant use. To be antiquated is not the same thing as to be obsolete or even obsolescent, and without at least a tinge of antiquity it is scarcely possible that there should be that dignity of style that befits the sacred themes with which the Evangelists and Apostles deal.