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This is Birmingham,
once the home of renowned scientist
and minister Joseph Priestley.
In 1789, Priestley joined forces
with a group of talented individuals
to start work on
a new translation of the Bible into English.
For the past 200 years,
this project was assumed to have failed
and all work considered lost.
How was this translation different?
And why was it never published?
We spoke to several scholars
to uncover the story of Priestley
and his translation project.
He’s best known today for his work in science
—in electricity and gases—
particularly in uncovering
the properties of oxygen.
Well, Joseph Priestley
was an extraordinary man.
He’s now these days remembered
really as a scientist, but that’s not
as he would have wanted to be remembered.
He would have wanted to be remembered
as a minister of religion
—as a theologian—
and that was his great passion.
He is somebody who could pick up languages,
who had a prodigious memory,
an enormous capacity for hard work.
He learned Hebrew early on,
probably around the age of 15,
and then went on to learn,
as well, Greek and Latin.
He also learned the major Semitic languages
that were available in those days.
That was an enormous help
when it came to his reinvestigation
of Biblical texts
because he could compare
the King James Version of the Bible
with original texts in original languages.
There were multiple manuscripts
of both the Hebrew texts
and of the Greek texts,
which were now available
and showed that sometimes the text
that the Authorized Version was based on
was not the only reading available.
I think it’s fairly clear
that although the language
of the King James is wonderful,
it does have mistranslations;
it does have interpolations;
it does have errors of translation in it.
Priestley was an independent thinker
searching for truth.
There was one truth
he considered most important
—that the Scriptures describe Almighty God
as being distinct from Jesus.
In 1783, he published this pamphlet,
which reads:
“The Scriptures teach us
that there is but one God,
“who is himself the maker
and the governor of all things;
“that this one God
is the sole object of worship,
“and that he sent Jesus Christ
to instruct mankind,
“empowered him to work miracles,
raised him from the dead,
“and gave him all the power that he ever was,
or is now possessed of.”
Priestley felt that the Authorized Version
blurred this distinction
between God and Christ.
So in 1787, he reached out
to his closest friend,
a minister named Theophilus Lindsey.
Lindsey began as an Anglican clergyman,
but he gradually began to question notions
such as the Trinity.
He was coming to
an understanding of theology
in the same direction that Priestley was.
Priestley wrote to Lindsey:
“I am glad that you seem pleased
“with the idea
of a new translation of the Bible.
“It does not appear to me
to be a very formidable undertaking;
“and if you will do the New Testament,
I will engage for the Old.
In three years it may be done very well.”
To finish the project in three years
was an ambitious target.
The King James Version
had taken 47 scholars
seven years to complete.
So Priestley and Lindsey
joined with two fellow scholars
to start planning the project.
Their plan was to improve
the King James Version
by changing only those passages
that required a more accurate rendering.
The group agreed to a set of rules
to guide the translation work.
One of those rules
would make this translation
different from any other Bible
that had ever been published in English
or possibly in any language up to that time.
The rule was simple
—to let God’s name as it appears in Hebrew
be rendered as “Jehovah”
rather than the word “LORD”
in the Old Testament
and to use the name Jehovah
in the New Testament
where it may be proper
to distinguish God from Christ.
This was not a new idea.
Here we have a book by Hopton Haynes.
Some 40 years prior
to Priestley’s translation project,
he proposed the very same approach.
Haynes believed
that in the King James Version,
the original word “Jehovah”
should have remained untranslated
and that if the word “Jehovah”
had been used in the New Testament
where the word “Lord” is often used,
this might have secured a proper distinction
between the Lord our God
and our Lord or Master, Christ.
Priestley’s team agreed with that idea.
Recognizing
that they were in need of more assistance,
they began reaching out
to other scholars for help.
Not many accepted.
They had reason to be cautious.
Preparing a new Bible translation
in 18th-century England
was more than ambitious;
it was potentially dangerous.
Producing any translation at this time
was a very sensitive issue.
A number of people had begun translations
but often never finished them.
The Church of England
was built upon the King James Version.
This was the version the church authorized;
this was the version
on which the church theology derived.
So it was a theological opposition
if you were going to say
the translation was not sufficient.
And if you brought in a new translation,
you were saying that we have a new theology,
which is contrary to the Church of England.
Within three months
of the initial planning meeting,
other like-minded scholars offered to help,
including a man whose talents
would prove invaluable
—Robert Edward Garnham.
We are now in Cambridge,
where we asked Dr. Nicolas Bell
and Dr. Chris Reid
to tell us more about Garnham and his work.
Robert Garnham came to Trinity as a student
at the age of 16, in 1769.
He was then admitted as a scholar
a year later
and in due course himself
became a fellow of the college.
A lot of his work could have happened
here in the Wren Library in Trinity College.
The library by Garnham’s time
was probably still not completely full
but more than half would have been
editions of the Bible
and Biblical commentaries
—other theological texts.
So to have all the tools you need
for very deep theological work
readily at hand in one building
would have been a significant advantage.
Priestley and Lindsey
valued his contributions to that
extremely highly
because he was such an acute intellect.
But combined with that,
he was an incredibly hard worker.
I think just to see
that this particular preacher
had studied the Bible, the text of the Bible,
in quite such depth
is really quite an important revelation.
Garnham worked quietly,
but he also worked quickly.
He finished his original assignment,
translating the letters of the New Testament,
and then took on even more.
In a letter to Lindsey,
dated November 25, 1789,
Priestley observed:
“Mr Garnham
is a valuable [member] of our corps.”
Lindsey later acknowledged
to another member of the team
that “no one’s labours
are beyond those of Mr Garnham.”
The improved Bible
that Priestley and his team
had been hoping for
was finally inching toward completion,
and then
the Birmingham riots of 1791
were among the most violent to erupt
in 18th-century Britain.
In addition to
their controversial political views,
Priestley and other nonconformists
had openly challenged the beliefs
of the church.
To Anglican clergymen,
that made them a threat and a target.
Four days of violence
left several rioters dead
and destroyed many buildings,
including Priestley’s home.
His house at Fairhill
was completely burned down.
He was very lucky to escape.
And his papers
were thrown literally out of the window.
All his manuscripts, his books
—and it does seem
as if his translation did not survive.
Priestley left England in 1794
for the United States.
He was isolated geographically
and isolated socially and culturally.
He was in a really difficult position.
Having lost his library
and without a team to support him,
Priestley was unable to continue
with his translation project.
He never took it up again.
But what about Garnham
and his translation work?
The answer to that question lies in London.
Garnham had cautiously only ever published
his many writings anonymously.
So after rioters destroyed Priestley’s home
and the project was abandoned,
Garnham left his work unpublished.
In the years that followed,
Garnham’s attitude toward the Bible changed
and his faith diminished dramatically.
He died in 1802 at the age of 49.
But what about his translation work?
Did any of the manuscripts survive?
For more than 200 years,
the answer seemed to be no.
But early in 2017,
researchers made
an unexpected discovery
at the Dr. Williams’s Library
in Central London.
What exactly did they find?
Two sets of well-preserved manuscripts,
which together comprised
almost the entire New Testament.
One was a rough draft
and the other a more polished version.
And one of them
was clearly signed
with the initials R.E.G.,
Robert Edward Garnham.
As researchers examined
these newly discovered manuscripts,
they realized
they had found something extraordinary
—the only surviving manuscript
from Priestley’s project
ever to have been found.
I think it’s very unusual
to find a manuscript of this nature
because not many of them survive anyway.
And therefore,
I think that’s why it’s remarkable.
Garnham’s translation
was unique in a number of ways,
with fresh, modern renderings
of many familiar verses.
Where the King James Version states
that “the whole world lieth in wickedness,”
Garnham’s version says
that “the whole world
is in the power of the Adversary.”
Rather than use the word “hell,”
Garnham translated
the Greek word “Hades” as “the Grave.”
But perhaps most noteworthy
is Garnham’s use of the name Jehovah.
Where the King James Version says:
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God
with all thy heart,”
Garnham wrote:
“Thou shalt love
Jehovah thy God with all thy heart.”
Whereas other translations
use God’s name only a handful of times,
Garnham followed the team’s translation rules
and used the name Jehovah
some 200 times
throughout the New Testament.
We had always assumed
this translation had been lost at that point,
so the finding
of Garnham’s New Testament translation
among his papers, among our collection,
was a revelation—a great surprise!
The manuscripts
in the Dr. Williams’s Library
are terribly exciting.
This was a translation undertaken
by real scholars
who knew their Hebrew and Greek.
It’s absolutely fascinating,
and it needs bringing to a wider audience.
The work that Garnham left behind
brings to light a thrilling chapter
in the history of the Bible:
An 18th-century English translation
of the New Testament
that had it been published
would have been truly groundbreaking.

A Lost Bible Translation Rediscovered