A New Translation of the Bible — Moffatt Bible
James Moffatt's A New Translation of the Bible (1935) was one of the earliest and most influential modern dynamic-equivalence translations, pioneering the movement toward natural contemporary English in Bible translation. Moffatt prioritized making Scripture read as living literature, not antique text, and his bold, idiomatic rendering opened the way for all subsequent modern-language Bibles.
History & Background
Scottish theologian James Moffatt (1870–1944) published the NT in 1913 and the OT in 1924, with a revised complete Bible in 1935. It proved enormously popular, running through many printings. The Moffatt Bible is notable for rearranging passages based on historical-critical judgments (e.g., placing John 14 after chapters 15–16) and for openly reflecting the documentary hypothesis in the OT. It started the modern trend toward paraphrase-style vernacular Bibles.
Canon Proximity Rating
Standard 66-book Protestant canon. Historically essential — the first major modern dynamic-equivalence English Bible and ancestor of all subsequent vernacular translations.