Twentieth Century New Testament

Produced at the turn of the twentieth century, the Twentieth Century New Testament was one of the first committee translations deliberately rendered in contemporary rather than traditional biblical English. Its scope is limited to the New Testament, translated from the Greek on the basis of a Westcott-Hort-era critical text, and it belongs to the category of fresh translation rather than revision of an earlier English version. Its philosophy is idiomatic and contemporary, seeking to present the writings in the ordinary language of its readers rather than in the inherited idiom of the King James tradition. Among its distinctive features, it reorders some material and makes use of modern literary forms, such as headings and paragraphing familiar from other books of the day. It is generally regarded as an early landmark in the modern-speech tradition of English Bible translation, anticipating the many idiomatic versions that followed in the twentieth century.