Belsham's Unitarian New Testament (1808)

[Thomas Belsham et al.,] The New Testament, An improved version upon the basis of Archbishop Newcome's new translation with a corrected text and notes critical and explanatory. London: Richard Taylor & Co., 1808. An American edition was distributed by William Wells of Boston in 1809. This Unitarian revision of Newcome's version (1796) provoked much indignation when it appeared. For a full discussion see P. Marion Simms' The Bible in America, pages 255-258.

The following paragraph is from Earl Morse Wilbur, A History of Unitarianism in Transylvania, England, and America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952, pp. 338, 339.

"[Thomas] Belsham was busily occupied in his own field in London. As minister at Essex Street he was looked to as practically the leader and mouthpiece of the Unitarians. Thus in his sermons he not only powerfully maintained the Unitarian cause, and expounded its doctrines, but also discussed in the light of liberal principles certain questions of national policy, or measures debated in Parliament ... But his predominant interest at this period was in the preparation of a new version of the New Testament, based upon a Greek text embodying the results of recent criticism. A project for a work of this sort had been proposed by [Joseph] Priestley in 1789, and was well advanced toward completion, when an important part of the manuscript was destroyed in the Birmingham Riots in 1791. Later in the same year, when the Unitarian Book Society was formed, the translation of the New Testament was made one of its main objects. After some five years' delay it was decided not to make an independent version, but to adopt the excellent one of Archbishop William Newcome, Primate of Ireland, as a basis, chiefly because it followed Griesbach's text, and to accompany it with an introduction and notes. The plan was taken up with ardor, and the work was published in 1808, in three sizes, and later in several editions; and it was at once reprinted in America (Boston, 1909), where Unitarianism was already incubating. It included a valuable introduction on the progress and principles of textual criticism, anticipating many judgments later adopted in the Revised Version of 1881; but drew the fire of the orthodox by omitting as late interpolations several passages traditionally cited as pillars of trinitarian doctrine. Belsham had taken the leading part in the editing of the work, and he regarded it with great satisfaction. It was widely circulated in Unitarian quarters; but in spite of its presenting a much more correct text, many strictures upon it were passed even by Unitarians, while to the orthodox its notes gave much offence, and by them it was generally scorned as a sectarian work, 'The Unitarian New Testament,' though it was never officially adopted even by the Unitarians."