Overview
The Emphasized Bible, by Joseph Bryant Rotherham, is a unique translation which helps English-only Bible readers to understand the linguistic and literary nuances of the Greek and Hebrew texts. This translation aims for a literal rendering of the original languages, and adds markings to the English text to indicate emphases, parallel structures, and the other linguistic features. It also includes accent marks, brackets, indentations, and other markings within the text itself, to help communicate the features in Greek and Hebrew which are lost in translation.
Indentations in The Emphasized Bible mark:
- The transition from narrative to speech
- The existence of speech within speech
- Parallelism within the text—one of the first translations to do this; now widely employed in biblical scholarship to display parallel relationships
- Results of logical analysis
- Divine proclamations
Emphasis markings indicate:
- Unusual or emphatic word order
- Inversion in both English and original language word order—in other words, the unusual features in the translation also present in the original languages
- Idiomatic features
- Levels of emphasis: accents for single-word emphasis, vertical lines for emphatic phrases, clauses, and multiple words
- Italics indicate New Testament use of the Old Testament
- Repeated refrains
The New Testament text—entitled The New Testament Critically Emphasised—first appeared in 1872, after Rotherham devoted nearly a decade to translation work. During the subsequent years after the initial publication, Rotherham kept abreast of the advances in biblical scholarship, and began translating the Old Testament. The combined edition first appeared in 1902 as The Emphasized Bible—the same edition which underlies the Logos edition, along with numerous reprintings throughout the twentieth century, most recently by Kregel in 1994. This edition uses the Ginsburg edition of the Masoretic text for the Old Testament, and Westcott and Hort’s Greek text for the New Testament.
Key Features
- Emphasis markings and indentation reveal the literary and linguistic features of the original languages
- Allows English-only readers of the Bible to view and understand additional elements from the original languages
- Includes a lengthy introduction on translating emphasis in the biblical texts
Praise for the Print Edition
The Emphasized Bible is one of the most innovative and thoroughly researched translations ever done by a single individual. Its presentation of emphases and grammatical features of the original language still reward careful study. And, because its language is less than a century old and because its textual base and footnotes are quite modern, it can be used as a companion text to any contemporary translation.
—John R. Kohlenberger, III
Product Details
- Title: The Emphasized Bible: A Translation Designed to Set Forth the Exact Meaning, the Proper Terminology, and the Graphic Style of the Sacred Original (EBR)
- Author: Joseph Bryant Rotherham
- Publisher: H. R. Allenson
- Date: 1902
- Pages: 1,192
About Joseph Bryant Rotherham
Joseph Bryant Rotherham was a well-known pastor, Bible scholar, translator, and editor. He was born in 1828 in Norfolk in the U.K. He became a Methodist preacher and served until 1854, when he became a pastor in the Church of Christ. In the 1860s, Rotherham began his translation of the Bible—a project to which he would devote nearly four decades of his life to completing. In addition to The Emphasized Bible, which appeared in 1902, Rotherham wrote other books and articles, and edited works of theology and biblical studies for James Sangster and Co. for more than thirty years. He was deeply influenced by Alexander Campbell, G. Campbell Morgan, and Charles Spurgeon. Rotherham died in 1910.
