Textus Receptus Bibles
Julia E. Smith Translation 1876
| 12:1 | And a man of Ephraim will cry out and will pass over north, and they will say to Jephthah, Why didst thou pass over to war against the sons of Ammon and didst not call to us to go with thee? we will burn thy house upon thee with fire. |
| 12:2 | And Jephthah will say to them, I was a man of strife, I and my people and the sons of Ammon greatly; and I shall cry out to you, and ye saved me not from their hands. |
| 12:3 | And I shall see that thou savest not, and I shall put my soul in my hand, and I shall pass over to the sons of Ammon, and Jehovah will give them into my hand: and wherefore came ye up to me this day to war against me? |
| 12:4 | And Jephthah will gather together all the men of Gilead, and he will war with Ephraim: and the men of Gilead will strike Ephraim because they said, The escaped of Ephraim, ye of Gilead, in the midst of Ephraim and in the midst of Manasseh. |
| 12:5 | And Gilead will take the passages of Jordan before Ephraim: and it was that the escaped of Ephraim will say, I will pass over; and the men of Gilead will say to him, Thou an Ephrathite? and he will say, No. |
| 12:6 | And they will say to him, Say now Shibboleth: and he will say, Sibboleth and he will not form to speak thus. And they will seize him and they will slaughter him at the passages of Jordan. And there will fall in that time of Ephraim forty and two thousand. |
| 12:7 | And Jephthah will judge Israel six years: and Jephthah the Gileadite will die, and will be buried in the city of Gilead. |
| 12:8 | And after him Ibzan of the House of Bread, will judge Israel. |
| 12:9 | And there will be to him thirty sons and thirty daughters he sent without, and thirty daughters he brought in to his sons from without: and he will judge Israel seven years. |
| 12:10 | And Ibzan will die, and will be buried in the House of Bread. |
| 12:11 | And after him Elon the Zebulonite, will judge Israel; and he will judge Israel ten years. |
| 12:12 | And Elon the Zebulonite will die and will be buried in Elon in the land of Zebulon. |
| 12:13 | And after him Abdon, son of Hillel the Pirathonite, will judge Israel. |
| 12:14 | And there will be to him forty sons and thirty sons' sons riding upon seventy young asses: and he will judge Israel eight years. |
| 12:15 | And Abdon the son of Hillel the Pirathonite, will die, and will be buried in Pirathon in the land of Ephraim, in the mount of the Amalekite. |
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.