Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 1:1 | The word of Jehovah which was to Hosea son of Beeri, in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jeroboam, son of Joash, king of Israel. |
| 1:2 | The beginning of the word of Jehovah by Hosea. And Jehovah will say to Hosea, Go, take to thee a wife of fornication and children of fornication; for the land committing fornication, will commit fornication from after Jehovah. |
| 1:3 | And he will go and take Gomer, daughter of Diblaim; and she will conceive and bring forth to him a son. |
| 1:4 | And Jehovah will say to him, Call his name Jezreel; for yet a little and I reviewed the bloods of Jezreel upon the house of Jehu, and I caused the kingdom of the house of Israel to cease. |
| 1:5 | And it was in that day and I broke the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel. |
| 1:6 | And she will yet conceive and bring forth a daughter. And he will say to him, Call her name, Not being compassionated: for I will no more add to compassionate the house of Israel; for taking away, I will take them away. |
| 1:7 | And I will compassionate the house of Judah, and I saved them by Jehovah their God, and I will not save them by bow and by sword, and by battle, by horses and by horsemen. |
| 1:8 | And she will wean the Not being compassionated, and she will conceive and bring forth a son. |
| 1:9 | And he will say; Call his name, Not my people: for ye are not my people, and I will not be to you. |
| 1:10 | And the number of the sons of Israel was as the sand of the sea which shall not be measured and shall not be numbered: and it was in the place which it shall be said to them, Ye are not my people, and it shall be said to them, Ye the sons of the living God. |
| 1:11 | And the sons of Judah and the sons of Israel were gathered together, and they appointed to them one head, and they came up out of the land: for great the day of Jezreel. |
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.