bat-internet-preface

25 January 2023 - 29 October 2023 bat-home-page

I am currently working at producing an electronic edition of The Bible: An American Translation, which originally appeared in print under the auspices of the University of Chicago in 1927. As of 1 January 2023, all materials produced in 1927 are in the public domain under US copyright law.

The work consists essentially of re-formatting, proofreading, and otherwise cleaning up material originally found on archive.org, to whom I am grateful.

My primary source of wording has been the facsimile at https://archive.org/details/oldtestamentanam028071mbp/page/n6/mode/1up. For proofreading purposes, I've (2023-11-28) begun making use of a higher-quality scan at https://archive.org/details/oldtestamentamer0000unse/page/86/mode/2up.

However, that source is missing pages 85 and 86, which make up Genesis 48:9-49:11. The missing verses have been supplied from a facsimile of a 1931 printing, https://archive.org/details/bibleamericantra0000unse_i4g9/page/n107/mode/1up.

Principles of style:

  • This is a project to produce a Markdown-based edition of the American Translation. This will dictate a number of formatting considerations.

    • Markdown formatting is relatively simple, so special features such as centering of text or right-justification are generally ignored, while section headings are changed into a format more like that of regular Markdown than the printed book. Likewise, material that is in a tabular form may be reorganized into a format more at home in Markdown.
    • Section headings are generally retained, though in a more Markdown-friendly format; while page headers are generally removed.
    • Page breaks are preserved in the front material and Preface and Appendix, on the theory that perhaps some reader might want to be able to cite material from this edition by page number. However, page breaks are removed in the Table of Contents and scripture portions proper, where such citation by page number seems less likely to be necessary, and page breaks would mostly serve just to interrupt the flow of reading. A reader who needs page numbers for whatever reason is welcome to check archive.org for the original facsimile.
    • With flexible line lengths, it becomes impossible -- without major modifications to the Markdown formatting -- to display versification in the way that the print edition does. As a result, verse numbers are moved into the Scripture text, with the ASV's verse divisions used as a guide. Although the ASV is used to help locate verse divisions, the words of the translation are never rearranged to match the ASV's order -- see Exodus 22:1-4 for an example of how this edition copes with the rearrangement of verses.
      • At Exodus 39:30, the American Translation mistakenly marks the verse as verse 39; the mistake has been preserved in this electronic edition, though with the notation [sic].
      • At Leviticus 14:31, a judgment call is made -- the Masoretic Text repeats "such as he can afford" twice, once at the end of v. 30 and once at the beginning of 31, while the repetition is eliminated in the American Translation, so that it's single use of the phrase might arguably fall on either side of the verse division.
    • We maintain the paragraph divisions found in the print edition; however, instead of paragraphs being illustrated by a small indent, they are now divided by double-spacing. In poetic sections, poetry will be kept in the form that it has in AT: on separated lines, with a capital letter at the beginning of each line.
    • As line lengths will now be flexible, rather than fixed as in print, all hyphens which serve only to split a word across two lines are removed. Occasionally one must make a judgment call, as in Genesis 35:18, 38:16, 47:1, etc.
    • Instances of small caps are rendered as full-size caps. Thus, for example, this Markdown edition reads "LORD", all in one size, where the print edition distinguishes between a larger L and smaller ORD. Where the term LORD is followed by an apostrophe and a letter S, I render that final letter as lower-case: LORD's.
      • Note that in Leviticus 17:1, the American Translation apparently by mistake, renders the tetragrammaton as "Lord", without any caps. This online edition reproduces the form found in the printed edition, but with the addition of [sic].

  • Because the goal of this edition is simply to make the American Translation available online, and not to improve it, its mistakes will generally be left as is, though often with the addition of a [sic] in order to make clear that the mistake originates in the printed edition rather than being an artifact of the move to an electronic edition. So, for example, in Exodus 39:30, the AT's mis-marking of the verse as "39" is retained, with [sic], in the electronic text. In the same way, where in Leviticus 17:1 the AT appears to mistakenly read "Lord" instead of "LORD", the same strategy is used. In the textual notes, the note for Job 30:12b is out of place, and is found among the notes for chapter 27 rather than where it ought to be.

    • There is, however, one sort of "mistake" which we will not reproduce in the electronic edition. In the facsimile that I am using, there are often places where black ink should be, where that ink is missing. It is unclear to me whether this is an a problem with the adhesion of the ink to the paper itself, or whether it is an artifact of the scanning process. In any case, consider the following example: Pasted image 20231015152912.png In the image above, from the Appendix "Textual Notes" on the book of Judges, the reader can see that there is usually a colon between chapter and verse numbers, but that this colon has disappeared in the line that begins with "23 7c". The same thing occurs in the final line where we read "Judg. 2 9". In both cases, the electronic edition simply supplies the colon. Where there is a clear irregularity and it is plausible that this irregularity is the result of missing black ink, I will simply correct it without noting every place this occurs, unless it is in some way noteworthy.

    • In the textual notes to 2 Samuel 8:8, I have supplied closing quotation marks after the word "Tabah", which I think no one will object to.

Random notes

  • It is not strictly true to say that this version uses contemporary pronouns. When the Deity is addressed, it reverts to "thee", "thou", etc. However, unlike the KJV, it tends to use "thy" before a vowel, rather than "thine".
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