Henry Alford published the third edition of his four-volume New Testament For English Readers in 1872. The subtitle of the work explains that it contains "the Authorized Version, with marginal corrections of readings and renderings, marginal references and a critical and explanatory commentary."

It is Alford's verse-by-verse commentary and lengthy book introductions that give this work its lasting appeal. The KJV text and margin notes will not be reproduced in the Logos edition, but the commentary and introductions will be included in their entirety.

In his commentary, Alford brought within reach of English readers many findings of the German text critics, and introduced a wider audience to this new exegetical approach. His approach was marked by a shift from primarily theological, homiletic concerns to those of philology, historical studies, and text criticism.

This set is available used in hardcover from between $60 and $150.

Additional Details

• Title: The New Testament for English Readers: The Authorized Version, with marginal corrections of readings and renderings, marginal references and a critical and explanatory commentary
• Author: Henry Alford, D.D.
• Publisher: Rivingtons
• Date: Third Edition, 1872
• Volumes: Two volumes, each with two "parts"
• Pages: 1,941
• Electronic edition will be available on CD-ROM only!

From the Introduction to the Print Edition

"1. This Edition of the New Testament is undertaken with a view to put the English reader, whose knowledge is confined to our own language, in possession of some of the principal results of the labours of critics and scholars on the sacred text.

"2. There are of course very many cases where this cannot be done. The English reader must be content to remain in ignorance of all those minute niceties of meaning and connexion, which depend on the import of the constructions and the particles in a language far surpassing our own in its power of expressing the varying shades and slightest turns of thought.

"3. But it is believed that there are far more cases, where there is no reason why these results should not be imparted to him. And the more we value the inspired word of God, the more anxious ought we to be, that all should possess every help to ensure the purity of its text, and to clear up its true meaning.

"4. In the present state of the English reader’s knowledge of his Bible, there are two great obstacles to the attainment of these ends. The one consists in his ignorance of the variations of reading in the ancient authorities from which the sacred text is derived; the other in his ignorance of the existence of other and often indisputably better renderings of the sacred text than that which the version before him gives. Our Authorized Version is, as a translation, of high excellence, and is never to be thought of by Englishmen without reverence, and gratitude to Almighty God. But it is derived very often from readings of the Greek which are not based on the authority of our best ancient witnesses; and it frequently gives an inadequate rendering of the text which it professes to translate.

...

"7. The notes are mainly an adaptation and abridgment of those in my Edition of the Greek Testament. Additions are sometimes made to those notes, where further explanations, of a nature suitable to the English reader, seemed to be required.

...

"21. It has been my endeavour, in the notes, to give as much information as I could respecting the general currents of opinion and interpretation, without burdening the reader with long catalogues of names. The introduction of some names has been unavoidable. The German Commentaries of Olshausen and Meyer, for instance, are so valuable, and so rich in original material, that I have often cited them. The latter of these writers, though unhappily not to be trusted where there is any room for the introduction of rationalistic opinions, is, in accurate interpretation of the words and constructions of the sacred text, by far the best of all commentators. Another work has been found very valuable: the Reden Jesu (Discourses of Jesus) of the late venerable Rudolf Stier. Stier was a Christian scholar of the orthodox Evangelical party,—of a simple and fervid spirit,—apt sometimes to find fanciful allusions and connexions, but full of the power of spiritual discernment: and his great work above mentioned has certainly been among the most valuable of modern contributions to the understanding of our Lord’s words."

About the Author

Excerpted from the 1911 Encyclopedia

ALFORD, HENRY (1810-1871), English divine and scholar, was born in London on the 7th of October 1810. He came of a Somersetshire family, which had given five consecutive generations of clergymen to the Anglican church. Alford's early years were passed with his widowed father, who was curate of Steeple Ashton in Wiltshire. He was an extremely precocious lad, and before he was ten had written several Latin odes, a history of the Jews and a series of homiletic outlines. After a peripatetic school course he went up to Cambridge in 1827 as a scholar of Trinity. In 1832 he was 34th wrangler and 8th classic, and in 1834 was made fellow of Trinity. He had already taken orders, and in 1835 began his eighteen years' tenure of the vicarage of Wymeswold in Leicestershire, from which seclusion the twice-repeated offer of a colonial bishopric failed to draw him. He was Hulsean lecturer at Cambridge in 1841-1842, and steadily built up a reputation as scholar and preacher, which would have been enhanced but for his discursive ramblings in the fields of minor poetry and magazine editing. In September 1853 Alford removed to Quebec Chapel, London, where he had a large and cultured congregation. In March 1857 Viscount Palmerston advanced him to the deanery of Canterbury, where, till his death on the 12th of January 1871, he lived the same strenuous and diversified life that had always characterized him. The inscription on his tomb, chosen by himself, is "Diversorium Viatoris Hierosolymam Proficiscentis."

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Sample Pages from the Print Edition