New and Literal Translation of All the Books of the Old and New Testament

Often referred to simply as the Quaker Bible, the Purver Bible was the first complete English Bible translated by a member of the Society of Friends, and it stands among the notable independent full Bibles produced in the period after the King James Version, when individual scholars increasingly ventured translations outside official or ecclesiastical sponsorship. Its scope is the complete Bible, rendered from the original-language texts in Hebrew and Greek rather than from earlier English or Latin versions, and it is accordingly classed as a fresh translation rather than a revision of existing work. Its translation philosophy was literal and independent, reflecting the translator's determination to follow his own judgment of the sense of the text. The most distinctive feature of the result was a highly individual diction, which limited its wider adoption; it remained a curiosity of English biblical scholarship rather than a version in common use.