The aim of the translator, James Moffatt, a doctor ofdivinity, was to present the Old and New Testaments in effective, intelligibleEnglish. No translation of an ancient classic can be quite intelligibleunless the reader is sufficiently acquainted with its environment to understandsome of its flying allusions and characteristic metaphors. The translatorfelt that ought to be done at the present day to offer the unlearned atranscript of the Biblical literature as it lies in the light thrown uponit by modern research. A real translation is in the main an interpretation.To the best of his ability he has tried to be exact and idiomatic.

The initial difficulties in making a new version are startedby the text used. The traditional or "massoretic" text of theOld Testament, though of primary value, is often desparately corrupt. Atpoints where the text was in such disrepair that no conjecture could healit, he inserted three dots. A longer line of dots in the poetical booksindicated the original text was missing or it was in too much disrepair.

Some Hebrew terms have no English equivalent which correspondsto the original meaning. Something is dropped if they pass from Hebrewto English. The Tetragrammaton is rendered "the Eternal," exceptin an enigmatic title like "the Lord of Hosts," although thetranslator would have preferred to use "Yahweh."

The text used for the New Testament was that of H. vonSoden, whose critical edition of the Greek New Testament based upon unprecedentedresearches, appeared during the first decade of the twentieth century.Quotations or direct reminiscences of the Old Testament are printed initalics.

George H. Doran Company (1922)

[Tyndale House, Cambridge, UnitedKingdom]

Comparisons which include this version:

Additions and Omissions in the Synoptic Gospels
The Burden and the Yoke to Be Removed
Commandments or Clean Robes?
Entering His Rest
The Falsifying Scribes
From Eternity or From Ancient Times?
The Fringe on the Borders of a Garment
Horses from Egypt and Kue
The Lord Is My Shepherd: An Anthology
The Name of Our Heavenly Father
Offering Sacrifices to the He-Goat
Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread
Sabbaths and Sundown
Scripture Inspired by God
The Seventy Weeks of Daniel 9
The Sides of the Court of the Tabernacle
The Speech Problem of Moses
That Which Will Happen Before the End
Those Who Work Iniquity
The Time of Peleg
The Tragedy at Beth-Shemesh
Words with Heathen Origins in the Scriptures