The Timeless King James Update (TKJU) New Testament is an English-dialect update to the King James Authorized Version; intended as a complementary reading, studying, & teaching aid to those reluctant to acclimate to Elizabethan/Early Modern English.
English Bibles
From the Webmaster
10/28/2024 If you come across a post that doesn't have a download link, please post a note to me in the comments of that post (no download), and I will try to get the file uploaded and linked to that post. We have had glitches in the past, and some posts lost their downloads. Basically, I am taking down all posts (650 posts on the site), and checking each one to see if they have their download, and if not adding it. Most do not. Once I take it down, it will repost (1 per day) until I am caught up and can work on new posts. Note that MySword reads theWord modules and esword modules now, so use them if you have them. Check these sites twmodules.com and eswordlibrary.com
If you can use these mysword modules in your Christian life and ministry, I need a big favor from you. I need you to pray for me. I sustain this website alone, out of my own living expense money. The Google Adsense ads have been adding to my income at the rate of 5 US cents per day for Google Adsense Ads on 32 of my sites, all of them combined earn me a nickel per day except on bad days when it is less. I have been hacked continually, and these sites breakdown or are hacked, so I need your prayers. Please pray that God would protect this labor of love
-- David Cox, Webmaster
Darby translation 1890 [Darby]
Darby translation 1890 [Darby]
Summary
The Darby Bible (DBY, formal title The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby) refers to the Bible as translated from Hebrew and Greek by John Nelson Darby. Darby published a translation of the New Testament in 1867, with revised editions in 1872 and 1884. After his death, some of his students produced an Old Testament translation based on Darby’s French and German translations (see below). The complete Darby Bible, including Darby’s 3rd edition New Testament and his students’ Old Testament, was first published in 1890.
J. N. Darby’s purpose was, as he states in the preface to his English NT, to make a modern translation for the unlearned who have neither access to manuscript texts nor training and knowledge of ancient languages of the Scriptures. He was the principal scholar for a number of translations – and not the sole translator of any one of the various translations that bear his name. He worked with various brethren who had academic and spiritual qualifications. He also acknowledges dependence on the critical work of Samuel Prideaux Tregelles and various other scholars. Darby’s translation work was not intended to be read aloud. His work was for study and private use. In his own oral ministry he generally used the English KJV.
When Mr. Darby first issued his New Translation into English he wrote in the preface to the Revelation ‘if the reader find my translation exceedingly similar to Mr. William Kelly’s, I can only rejoice in it, as mine was made a year or two before his came out, and he has never seen mine up to the time of my writing this . . .’ (Darby went on to write that his New Testament translation had been lying by him for some years then). In his introduction to the 1890, German version, he wrote, “In the issue of this translation, the purpose is not to offer to the man of letters a learned work, but rather to provide the simple and unlearned reader with as exact a translation as possible.”
In the Old Testament Darby translates the covenant name of God as “Jehovah” instead of rendering it “LORD” or “GOD” (in all capital letters) as most English translations do. Among other widely-used translations only Robert Young’s Literal Translation, theAmerican Standard Version (1901), and the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation (1950) have followed this practice (the latter introducing the Name in their New Testament over 200 times, though not occurring in the extant koine Greek text). However, even the footnotes of many editions (such as the 1961 Modified Notes Edition) of Darby Bible’s New Testament indicate where “Lord” (“Kurios” in Greek) in the scripture text probably refers to Jehovah. The 1961 Modified Notes Edition of the Darby Bible includes the 1871 New Testament Preface, which says in part “All the instances in which the article is wanting before Kurios are not marked by brackets; but I give here all the passages in which Kurios, which the LXX employ for Jehovah, thence transferred to the New Testament, is used as a proper name; that is, has the sense of ‘Jehovah.'” It then gives a listing of those places. from wikipedia.org
Download
Download: Darby translation 1890 [Darby]
Geneva Bible (1560) [Geneva]
Geneva Bible (1560) [Geneva]
Summary
The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into the English language, preceding the King James translation by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of 16th century Protestantism and was the Bible used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, John Knox, John Donne, and John Bunyan, author of Pilgrim’s Progress. It was one of the Bibles taken to America on the Mayflower, it was used by many English Dissenters, and it was still respected by Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers at the time of the English Civil War.
This version of the Holy Bible is significant because, for the very first time, a mechanically printed, mass-produced Bible was made available directly to the general public which came with a variety of scriptural study guides and aids (collectively called an apparatus), which included verse citations which allow the reader to cross-reference one verse with numerous relevant verses in the rest of the Bible, introductions to each book of the Bible which acted to summarize all of the material that each book would cover, maps, tables, woodcut illustrations, indexes, as well as other included features — all of which would eventually lead to the reputation of the Geneva Bible as history’s very first study Bible.
Because the language of the Geneva Bible was more forceful and vigorous, most readers preferred this version strongly over the Great Bible. In the words of Cleland Boyd McAfee, “it drove the Great Bible off the field by sheer power of excellence”. (from wikipedia.org) Continue reading
Great Bible (1539) [Great]
Great Bible (1539) [Great]
Summary
The Great Bible was the first authorized edition of the Bible in English, authorized by King Henry VIII of England to be read aloud in the church services of the Church of England. The Great Bible was prepared by Myles Coverdale, working under commission of Thomas, Lord Cromwell, Secretary to Henry VIII and Vicar General. In 1538, Cromwell directed the clergy to provide “one book of the bible of the largest volume in English, and the same set up in some convenient place within the said church that ye have care of, whereas your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it.”
The Great Bible includes much from the Tyndale Bible, with the objectionable features revised. As the Tyndale Bible was incomplete, Coverdale translated the remaining books of the Old Testament and Apocrypha from the Latin Vulgate and German translations, rather than working from the original Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic texts. Although called the Great Bible because of its large size, it is known by several other names as well: the Cromwell Bible, since Thomas Cromwell directed its publication; Whitchurch’s Bible after its first English printer; the Chained Bible, since it was chained to prevent removal from the church. It has also been termed less accurately Cranmer’s Bible, since Thomas Cranmer was not responsible for the translation, and his preface first appeared in the second edition.
Download
Download: Great Bible (1539) [Great]
Wilbur Pickering’s New Testament WPNT
Wilbur Pickering’s New Testamentr [WPNT]