Letchworth New Testament

The Letchworth New Testament is a distinct, independent English rendering of the New Testament produced in the postwar period. Its scope is limited to the New Testament alone, translated from Greek and based on the Greek New Testament text, and it is classed as a fresh translation rather than a revision of an existing version — that is, it does not stand in the line of successive corrections to earlier English Bibles, but restates the text anew. Its guiding philosophy is modernizing, in keeping with the broader twentieth-century movement toward renderings in contemporary English idiom, which followed a long period in which older versions dominated public and private reading. Like many such independent efforts of its era, it circulated narrowly and is relatively obscure today, remembered chiefly in catalogues and bibliographies of English versions of the Bible rather than in general church or scholarly use.