New Testament
The Greaves New Testament is an independent nineteenth-century English rendering of the New Testament, one of the many efforts that made up the expanding movement of translation work following the King James Version. Its scope is limited to the New Testament, translated from Greek and based on the Greek New Testament, and it is classed as a fresh translation rather than a revision, following a literal and scholarly philosophy. Such privately undertaken versions were characteristic of the period, when advances in the study of Greek manuscripts and a growing readership for vernacular scripture encouraged individual scholars and clergymen to attempt their own renderings alongside the established ecclesiastical text. Many appeared in small editions and were intended chiefly for close study rather than public reading. Among the distinguishing characteristics of the Greaves New Testament is that it saw only limited circulation in later years.