Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 3:1 | And the word of Jehovah will be to Jonah the second time, saying, |
| 3:2 | Arise, go to Nineveh the great city, and call to it the calling which I speak to thee. |
| 3:3 | And Jonah will rise and go to Nineveh according to the word of Jehovah. And Nineveh was a great city to God, the going of three days. |
| 3:4 | And Jonah will begin to go in to the city the going of one day, and he will call, and say, Yet forty days and Nineveh being overthrown. |
| 3:5 | And the men of Nineveh will believe in God, and they will call a fast, and put on sackcloth, from great and even to small. |
| 3:6 | And the word will reach to the king of Nineveh, and he will rise from his throne, and he will take away his wide cloak from off him, and he will cover with sackcloth, and he will sit upon ashes. |
| 3:7 | And he will cry out and say in Nineveh from the edict of the king and of his great ones, saying, The man and beast, the herd and flock shall not taste of anything; they shall not feed and they shall not drink water. |
| 3:8 | And man and beast shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry with strength to Jehovah: and they shall turn back each from his evil way, and the violence which is in their hands. |
| 3:9 | Who shall know God will turn back and lament, and turning back from the burning of his anger and we shall not perish? |
| 3:10 | And God will see their works that they turned back from their evil way, and God will lament for the evil which he spake to do to them: and he did it not |
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.