Darby's Translation 1890 (DARBY)

John Nelson Darby

John Nelson Darby, sometimes known as JND, was born in London in 1800. He graduated in 1818 from Trinity College, Dublin, with Honours and the University Medal in Classics. In 1825 he was ordained as a deacon of the Anglican Church of Ireland, and in 1826 became a priest. However later he became a leader of the Plymouth Brethren movement. In the 1830s and 1840s he worked in Christian ministry and pastoral care in England, Ireland, France, Germany and Switzerland and elsewhere. He was a linguist, learned in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, French and German. He died in Bournemouth in 1882.

Darby New Testament 1871

Darby translated the New Testament into English from Greek, published in 1867 as “The Holy Scriptures: A New Translation from the Original Languages by J. N. Darby” and revised in 1871. His translation included footnotes on variant texts. After Darby died in 1882 the final edition was published in 1884. With the help of brethren, Darby also translated the Bible into French and German.

Darby Bible 1890

After Darby's death some of his students created the English Old Testament based on Darby's French (Pau) and German (Elberfelder) translations from the Masoretic Hebrew text.

The complete Darby Bible in English was first published in 1890. The Darby Bible is a fairly literal, word-for-word translation, which adheres closely to the Hebrew and Greek in tense and structure. In the Old Testament Jehovah is used to translate the Hebrew YHWH, and Elohim is translated as God, Eloah is translated +God, and El is translated as ·God.

Digital Edition

The text, including many critical text notes, was digitised for the British and Foreign Bible Society (BFBS) in 2012, who maintain the text.  It was last updated in 2020.