Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
7:1 | And the king will go in and Haman to drink with Esther the queen. |
7:2 | And the king will say to Esther also in the second day at the drinking of wine, What thy asking, queen Esther? and it shall be given to thee: and what thy seeking? even to the half of the kingdom and it shall be done. |
7:3 | And Esther the queen will answer and say, If I found grace in thine eyes, O king, and if good to the king, my soul shall be given to me in my asking, and my people in my seeking |
7:4 | For we were sold, I and my people, to cut off, to kill and to destroy. And if for servants and for maids we were sold, I was silent, but the enemy made not even for the loss of the king. |
7:5 | And the king Ahasuerus will say, and he will say to Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, whom his heart filled him to do thus? |
7:6 | And Esther will say, The man, the adversary and enemy, this evil Haman., And Haman was terrified from before the king and the queen. |
7:7 | And the king rose up in his wrath from the drinking of wine, to the garden of the palace: and Haman stood up to seek out for his soul from Esther the queen; for he saw that evil was completed for him from the king. |
7:8 | And the king turned back from the garden of the palace to the house of the drinking of wine; and Haman fell upon the bed which Esther was upon And the king will say, Also is he to force the queen with me in the house? The word went forth from the king's mouth, and they covered Haman's face. |
7:9 | And Harbonah, one of the eunuchs, will say before the king, Also behold the tree which Haman made for Mordecai who spake good for the king, standing in Haman's house, high fifty cubits: And the king will say, Ye shall hang him upon it |
7:10 | And they will hang Haman upon the tree that he preps for Mordecai. And the wrath of the king subsided. |
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
The Julia Evelina Smith Parker Translation is considered the first complete translation of the Bible into English by a woman. The Bible was titled The Holy Bible: Containing the Old and New Testaments; Translated Literally from the Original Tongues, and was published in 1876.
Julia Smith, of Glastonbury, Connecticut had a working knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Her father had been a Congregationalist minister before he became a lawyer. Having read the Bible in its original languages, she set about creating her own translation, which she completed in 1855, after a number of drafts. The work is a strictly literal rendering, always translating a Greek or Hebrew word with the same word wherever possible. Smith accomplished this work on her own in the span of eight years (1847 to 1855). She had sought out no help in the venture, even writing, "I do not see that anybody can know more about it than I do." Smith's insistence on complete literalness, plus an effort to translate each original word with the same English word, combined with an odd notion of Hebrew tenses (often translating the Hebrew imperfect tense with the English future) results in a translation that is mechanical and often nonsensical. However, such a translation if overly literal might be valuable to consult in checking the meaning of some individual verse. One notable feature of this translation was the prominent use of the Divine Name, Jehovah, throughout the Old Testament of this Bible version.
In 1876, at 84 years of age some 21 years after completing her work, she finally sought publication. The publication costs ($4,000) were personally funded by Julia and her sister Abby Smith. The 1,000 copies printed were offered for $2.50 each, but her household auction in 1884 sold about 50 remaining copies.
The translation fell into obscurity as it was for the most part too literal and lacked any flow. For example, Jer. 22:23 was given as follows: "Thou dwelling in Lebanon, building as nest in the cedars, how being compassionated in pangs coming to thee the pain as in her bringing forth." However, the translation was the only Contemporary English translation out of the original languages available to English readers until the publication of The British Revised Version in 1881-1894.(The New testament was published in 1881, the Old in 1884, and the Apocrypha in 1894.) This makes it an invaluable Bible for its period.