The Only Authorized Revision of the King James New Testament
In 1881, the most accomplished biblical scholars of Britain and America completed the first and only formal revision of the King James New Testament ever authorized by the Church of England. Their work was received with unprecedented public demand—millions of copies sold within days, and entire newspapers printing the text by telegraph.
Then the text largely disappeared from commercial print.
For more than a century, readers have been left with either the unrevised King James tradition or later private translations. The authorized revision itself became nearly impossible to obtain in a clean, modern edition.
This volume restores it.
Inside this Historic Edition you'll find:
- The complete 1881 Anglo-American Revised Version New Testament — the only revision of the King James New Testament produced under formal ecclesiastical authorization by a large international body of scholars.
- The original Revisers’ Prefaces of 1881 and 1885, explaining the rules, methods, and purpose of the work.
- Matthew Brown Riddle’s firsthand account — one of the American revisers explains how the Greek text was actually decided, correcting the persistent myth that the revision simply followed Westcott and Hort.
- The Great Bible Rush of 1881 — the dramatic public reception, including the longest telegraph transmission in history that printed the entire New Testament in the Chicago newspapers.
- The American Revision Committee’s full list of preferred readings, modernized for clarity while preserving the original content.
- False Friends’ Trap — The Reader’s Decoder Key — a practical guide to thirty-nine archaic terms that no longer mean what modern readers assume.
Commercial publishers preferred editions they could control exclusively. Outside Britain the 1881 text was freely reprintable, offering them no proprietary advantage. At the same time, a false claim took root that the revision was merely an English version of the private Westcott-Hort Greek text. Both factors helped push the authorized revision out of ordinary commercial print.
This edition returns the text to readers, together with the principal historical documents that explain how it was made.
Set in highly readable type and framed with the original sources, the volume allows you to examine the only authorized update to the King James New Testament on its own terms.
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