Object Record
Metadata
Accession number |
P28 |
Title |
THE HOLY BIBLE: CONTINING THE OLD AND NEW TEST AMENT; TRANSLATED LITERALLY FROM THE ORIGINAL TONGUES |
Date |
1876 |
Notes |
The first woman to translate alone the entire Bible was Julia Evelina Smith (1793-1886). She was a member of a colorful family. Her parents belonged to the Sandemanian sect that had been founded in Scotland around 1730 with the anticipation of the restoration of the apostolic church. She was an exponent of women's suffrage, refusing to pay taxes, in particular those levied on her herd of Jersey cattle. The translation is a curious one. Her scheme was to replace Hebrew, Greek, or Latin words with their English equivalents, which resulted in strange syntax and distortions of meaning. In her preface she wrote: "Over twenty years ago, when I had four sister, a friend met with us weekly to study the Scriptures, we were desirous to learn the exact meaning of every Greek and Hebrew word, from this King James's forty-seven translators had taken their version of the Bible. We saw by the margin that the text had not been given literally, and it was the literal meaning were seeking. . . . I continued my labors and wrote out the bible five times, twice from the Greek, twice from the Hebrew, and once from the Latin. . . . It may be thought by the public in general that I have great confidence in myself, in not conferring with the learned in so great a work; but. . . as I have defined it word for word, I do not see how anybody can know more about it than I do." The edition was published at the expense of Miss Smith and was apparently no reprinted. It appeared in 1876, the year of the United States Centennial, purposely to remind the world that women were not yet beneficiaries of freedoms accorded men. |
Collection |
Framed Bible Leaves |
Subjects |
Bible Leaves Bible History |