Williams New Testament

The Williams New Testament is a popular scholarly rendering of the New Testament, noted for bringing verbal force explicitly into English. Its scope is limited to the New Testament, translated from Greek on the basis of a critical Greek New Testament text rather than from the later printed editions that underlay earlier English versions. Produced as a fresh translation rather than a revision of an existing English text, it follows an idiomatic philosophy, seeking natural English expression in place of close formal correspondence. Its distinguishing feature is its special attention to Greek verb forms: where a single English tense might otherwise suffice, the translation often expands tense and aspect nuances for the sake of clarity, making explicit distinctions that the Greek conveys through morphology. It belongs to the sequence of independent twentieth-century translations that sought to render the New Testament in contemporary idiom for ordinary readers alongside the established revision traditions.