American Translation






	The earliest modern-speech translation made for the United States was produced by Edgar J. Goodspeed, a New Testament professor at the University of Chicago. Goodspeed had criticized the translations of Weymouth and Moffatt, saying that he could make a better translation than any of them. Challenged to do so, he went to work, publishing The New Testament: An American Translation in 1923. A working principle in his translation was to give his "version something of the force and freshness that reside in the original Greek." He said, "I wanted my translation to make on the reader something of the impression the New Testament must have made on its earliest readers, and to invite the continuous reading of the whole book at a time." His translation was a success. An Old Testament translation followed, produced by J.M. Smith and three other scholars.

The Bible: An American Translation + The Old Testament Translated By A Group of Scholars Under the Editorship of J. M. Powis Smith, The New Testament Translated By Edgar J. Goodspeed
Published in 1931. Hardcover.

The Apocrypha An American Translation, by Edgar J. Goodspeed
This translation of the "Lost Books of the Bible" was done by Edgar J. Goodspeed. He used the Greek texts. The contents of this are: The First Book of Esdras The Second Book of Esdras The Book of Tobit The Book of Judith The Additions to the Book of Esther The Wisdom of Solomon Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Sirach The Book of Baruch The Story of Susanna The Song of the Three Children The Story of Bel and the Dragon The Prayer of Manasseh The First Book of Maccabees The Second Book of Maccabees. Hardcover.

Apocrypha, by Edgar J. Goodspeed
The Apocrypha consists of the books that are found in the Greek version of the Jewish Bible--the Septuagint, the earliest complete version of the Bible we possess--but that were not included in the final, canonical version of the Hebrew Bible. For this reason, they were called “Apocrypha,” the hidden or secret books, and while they formed part of the original King James version of 1611, they are no longer included in modern Bibles. Yet they include such important works as The First Book of Maccabees, the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus, and the stories of Susanna, Tobit, and Judith, and other works of great importance for the history of the Jews in the period between the rebuilding of the Temple and the time of Jesus, and thus for the background of the New Testament. These works have also had a remarkable impact on writers and artists. Beyond this, they are often as powerful as anything in the canonical Bible. The translation into contemporary English is by Edgar J. Goodspeed. Paperback.