Joseph Bryant Rotherham's Emphasized Bible (abbreviated EBR to avoid confusion with the REB) is a translation of the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

which uses various methods, such as "emphatic idiom" and special diacritical marks, to bring out nuances of the underlying Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic texts. Rotherham was a Bible scholar and minister of the

Churches of Christ The Churches of Christ, also commonly known as the Church of Christ, is a loose association of autonomous Christian congregations located around the world. Typically, their distinguishing beliefs are that of the necessity of baptism for salvation ...

, who described his goal as "placing the reader of the present time in as good a position as that occupied by the reader of the first century for understanding the Apostolic Writings". The ''New Testament Critically Emphasised'' was first published in 1872. However, great changes occurred in

textual criticism Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts (mss) or of printed books. Such texts may rang ...

during the second half of the 19th century, culminating in Brooke Foss Westcott's and Fenton John Anthony Hort's Greek text of the New Testament. This led Rotherham to revise his New Testament twice, in 1878 and 1897, to stay abreast of scholarly developments. The entire Bible with the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

appeared in 1902. Rotherham based his Old Testament translation on Dr. C.D. Ginsburg's comprehensive ''Masoretico-critical edition of the Hebrew Bible'', which anticipated readings now widely accepted. Rotherham's translation has stayed in print over the years because of the wealth of information it presents. John R Kohlenberger III says in his preface to the 1994 printing, "''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 languages still reward careful study."

References

*Rotherham, Joseph Bryant. ''Rotherham's Emphasized Bible'' (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 1994). *Rotherham, Joseph George
Reminiscences extending over a period of more than seventy years
(London: H. R. Allenson, Ltd., 1922).

External links

The Emphasized Bible searchable textThe Emphasized Bible 1902 edition
GoogleBooks copy.
The Emphasized Bible Online (at jw.org)
{{English Bible translation navbox Bible translations into English Churches of Christ 1902 non-fiction books 1902 in Christianity