Holy Bible in Modern English

The Ferrar Fenton Bible is a major one-man translation project that deliberately departs from the style inherited by earlier English Bibles. Covering the complete Bible, it works directly from Hebrew and Greek, taking the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament as its base texts, and so belongs to the category of fresh translation rather than revision of an existing English version. Its translation philosophy is literary and idiosyncratic, reflecting the ambitions of a single translator working outside the committee model that produced most authorized English Bibles. Among its distinctive features are unusual formatting and chronology — including departures from the conventional arrangement and dating of the biblical books — as well as some highly individual readings. It stands within the broader tradition of independent modern-speech translations that appeared as English readers sought alternatives to the language of the King James Version, and it has retained a small but persistent readership.