An American Translation
| An American Translation | |
|---|---|
| Full name | The Bible, An American Translation |
| Abbreviation | AAT |
| Language | English |
| Complete Bible published | 1939 |
| Authorship | J.M. Powis Smith (OT) and Edgar J. Goodspeed (deuterocanonical books and NT) |
| Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
|
When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was a desolate waste, with darkness covering the abyss and a tempestuous wind raging over the surface of the waters. Then God said, "Let there be light!" For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that no one who believes in him should be lost, but that they should all have eternal life. | |
The Bible, An American Translation (AAT) (not to be confused with Beck's American Translation done later) consists of The Old Testament translated by a group of scholars under the editorship of John Merlin Powis Smith, the Apocrypha translated by Edgar J. Goodspeed, and The New Testament translated by Edgar J. Goodspeed.
In a foreword to the 1949 edition, Goodspeed wrote, "The rapid advance of learning in recent years in the fields of history, archaeology, and language has thrown new light upon every part of the Bible. At the same time our changing English speech has carried us farther and farther from the sixteenth-century diction in which all our standard versions of it are clothed. Yet the great messages of the Old and New Testaments were never more necessary than in our present confused and hurried life. We have, therefore, sought to produce a new translation of them, based upon the assured results of modern study, and put in the familiar language of today."
