Improved Version of the New Testament

The Improved Version of the New Testament is an important early nineteenth-century doctrinal and text-critical revision of an English New Testament, limited in scope to the New Testament alone. Working from both Greek and English source material, it took as its base text the Newcome New Testament, combining it with textual decisions characteristic of the Griesbach era, when the critical study of Greek manuscripts was reshaping assumptions about the received text. In philosophy it is a critical and theological revision, and it is classified as a substantial revision of its predecessor and base translation, the Newcome New Testament. It is known particularly for its controversial Christological and textual choices, which drew attention to the ways in which doctrinal commitments and text-critical judgement could bear upon one another in translation. It belongs to the broader tradition of English revision that grew up alongside and in reaction to the Authorized Version.