Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 1:1 | The word of Jehovah which was to Joel son of Pethuel. |
| 1:2 | Hear this, ye old men, and give ear, all ye inhabitants of the earth. Was this in your days, and if in the days of your fathers? |
| 1:3 | Concerning it recount to your sons, and your sons to their sons, and their sons to another generation. |
| 1:4 | The residue of the creeping locust the common locust ate; and the residue of the common locust the feeder ate; and the residue of the feeder the devourer ate. |
| 1:5 | Awake, ye intoxicated, and weep; and wail, all ye drinking wine, on account of the new wine, for it was cut off from your mouth. |
| 1:6 | For a nation came up upon my land, strong, and no number; his teeth the teeth of a lion, and a biter's teeth of the lioness to him. |
| 1:7 | He set my vine for destruction, and my fig tree for breaking: he stripped off its covering and cast away; and its shoots were whitened. |
| 1:8 | Wail as the virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. |
| 1:9 | The gift was cut off and the libation from the house of Jehovah; mourn, ye priests serving Jehovah. |
| 1:10 | The field was laid waste, the land mourned; for the grain was laid waste, the new wine was dried up, the new oil languished. |
| 1:11 | The husbandmen were ashamed; wail, ye vine-dressers, for the wheat and for the barley, for the harvest of the field perished. |
| 1:12 | The vine was dried up, and the fig tree languished; the pomegranate, also the palm tree and the apple tree; all the trees of the field were dried up, for joy was dried up from the sons of man. |
| 1:13 | Be ye girded and lament, ye priests: wail, ye, serving the altar: come in, pass the night in sackcloth, ye serving God: for the gift and the libation were withheld from the house of your God. |
| 1:14 | Consecrate a fast., call an assembly, gather together the old men, all the inhabitants of the land to the house of Jehovah your God, and cry to Jehovah. |
| 1:15 | Alas! for the day: for the day of Jehovah is near, and as destruction from the Almighty shall it come. |
| 1:16 | Was not the food cut off before our eyes, from the house of our God, joy and gladness? |
| 1:17 | The kernels died beneath the clods, the treasures were laid waste, the garners were pulled down, for the grain was dried up. |
| 1:18 | How the beasts groaned! the herds of oxen wept, for no pasture to them; also the flocks of sheep were laid waste. |
| 1:19 | To thee, O Jehovah, will I call: for a fire consumed the habitations of the desert, and the flame burned all the trees of the field. |
| 1:20 | Also the beasts of the field will look up to thee: for the channels of waters were dried up, and the fire devoured the habitations of the desert. |
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.