The Two Phillips Versions – 1958 and 1972
J.B.Phillips started his translation work in 1941, during WWII. His first book was a translation of the epistles (the New Testament letters) and was released as Letters to Young Churches in 1952. The Young Church in Action, his translation of Acts, was released in 1955, followed by Revelation in 1957 and The Gospels in Modern English in 1958. At that point the entire New Testament was released as a combined volume called The New Testament in Modern English, also in 1958. The acronym for this, NTIME, never really caught on and this volume has become known unofficially as the Phillips Version or the Phillips New Testament.
This New Testament has been released in multiple editions of paperback and hardback, in lots of different colours and sizes. I probably have 25 different examples of these in my bookcase.
Many people do not realize that there are actually two versions of his New Testament translation. When new editions came out, very minor corrections or changes were made to some of the language as errors were noticed. In 1972, 14 years after the original release of the NTIME, and some 31 years after his first attempt at translation, J.B. felt there was a need to completely revise his translation. A lot of it is the same, but thousands of small changes were made. In typical simplicity and clarity, he explains why he decided to do this;
I would like to make it clear to my readers that this new edition is in fact a new translation from the latest and best Greek text published by the United Bible Societies in 1966 and recognised by scholars of all denominations as the best source available. Naturally some considerable parts of the former translation reappear, but that is only because after considerable thought I did not think I could improve upon their wording. However, the reader may rest assured that every single Greek word was read and considered. This rather exacting task took me more than two years.
I fear that a little personal history must be part of the explanation of why I have now been able to start completely afresh. I began the work of translation as long ago as 1941, and the work was undertaken primarily for the benefit of my Youth Club, and members of my congregation, in a much-bombed parish in S.E. London. I had almost no tools to work with apart from my own Greek Testament and no friends who could help me in this particular field. I felt then that since much of the New Testament was written to Christians in danger, it should be particularly appropriate for us who, for many months, lived in a different, but no less real, danger. I began with the Epistles since most of my Christian members had at least a nodding acquaintance with the Gospels, but regarded the Epistles as obscure and difficult and therefore largely unread. In those days of danger and emergency I was not over-concerned with minute accuracy, I wanted above all to convey the vitality and radiant faith as well as the courage of the early Church. The attempt succeeded and, as I have mentioned in the Translator's Preface to earlier editions, the strong encouragement of C. S. Lewis led me to continue the task. The war was over and I had been moved to a large and scattered country parish in Surrey before the translation of the Epistles was completed. I revised the typescript as well as I could with many other demands on my hands, and after many rejections succeeded in finding a publisher in the late Mr. Geoffrey Bles. The work, under the title Letters to Young Churches, appeared in 1947 Within five years and not without trepidation I had completed The Gospels in Modern English, and this was similarly well received: I then began the Acts, which I renamed The Young Church in Action. But before I could complete this I realised that the work of translation plus the many duties of a large parish were proving too formidable a task for me. I therefore purchased a small house in a quiet part of Dorset where I could continue my translation and other writing, and attend properly to the huge volume of correspondence that was beginning to arrive from all over the English-speaking world. Thus it happened that The Young Church in Action and The Book of Revelation were both published after I had left parish work.
In 1958 the books were collected together in one volume and published under the title of The New Testament in Modern English. During the years from 1947 to 1958 I had been able to make some minor alterations and to correct some errors, many of which were pointed out to me by kind friends. The edition of my complete translation issued in 1960 incorporated a large number of small but significant emendations.
Now, more than ten years later, I offer this translation as a wholly new book. Having by this time done much collateral reading and learned more of the usages of the N.T. Greek, I felt that now, faced with a completely clean sheet, as it were, I could do a better job. Quite apart from my own feelings there were good reasons for tackling this rather daunting task. The most important by far was the fact, which perhaps I had been slow to grasp, that "Phillips" was being used as an authoritative version by Bible Study Groups in various parts of the world. I still feel that the most important "object of the exercise" is communication. I see it as my job as one who knows Greek pretty well and ordinary English very well to convey the living quality of the N.T. documents. I want above all to create in my readers the same emotions as the original writings evoked nearly 2,000 years ago. This passion of mine for communication, for I can hardly call it less, has led me sometimes into paraphrase and sometimes to interpolate clarifying remarks which are certainly not in the Greek. But being now regarded as "an authority", I felt I must curb my youthful enthusiasms and keep as close as I possibly could to the Greek text. Thus most of my conversationally-worded additions in the Letters of Paul had to go. Carried away sometimes by the intensity of his argument or by his passion for the welfare of his new converts I found I had inserted things like, "as I am sure you realise'' or "you must know by now" and many extra words which do not occur in the Greek text at all. I must say that it was not without some pangs of regret that I deleted nearly all of them!
There was a further reason for making the translation not merely readable but as accurate as I could make it. It has been proposed that a Commentary on the Phillips translation should be undertaken. I felt it essential that the scholars who would contribute to such work should have before them the best translation of which I am capable. I certainly did not want them to waste time in pointing out errors which I had in fact by now corrected! The last, but not least important, reason for making a fresh translation was to check the English itself. It must be current and easily understood, and I must confess that I thought that the twenty-five years since the publication of Letters to Young Churches might have seriously "dated" the English I used then. With the help of my wife, several friends, including some critical young people, we scrutinised the English very carefully. Rather to my surprise only a few alterations were necessary, and this showed me that the ordinary English which we use in communication changes far more slowly than I had imagined. I knew, however, that slang and colloquialisms change rapidly, but since I had used few of these there was not much to alter. A couple of examples may illustrate my meaning. The "little tin gods" of 1 Peter 5.3 (an expression no longer current) have become "dictators". The colloquial use of the word " plutocrats" of James 5.1 has been changed to "men of affluence".
There are three fascinating things that strike me about this explanation:
1. His slowness in accepting the authority of his version.
J.B. was a humble man, and although he tasted the fruits of success and received many accolades and so must have known something of his influence, he was slow to see his version as an authority. This may be because his original intention was not to produce a new authoritative version for close study, to be dissected in scholarly fashion, but to produce a readable version that would portray what the original writers intended, and to encourage personal reading of the scriptures. He talks about this in the introduction to his earlier translations and encouraged, once engaged with scripture, the use of commentaries or other versions for closer study.
2. His avoidance of paraphrase unless necessary.
Sometimes the Phillips version is called a paraphrase, which is not accurate. He explains his translation philosophy in some depth in his introduction, which is fascinating reading. There are many, including in my own tradition, who rightly express zeal for the correct handling of the Word of God. Personally I share this passion for communicating the Word of God, as did J.B.P, which is why he wrote his translations and why I am undertaking this project. Sometimes however, this noble passion leads to a condemnation of any translation that is not a direct translation, of the exact words, into English. One point J.B. makes is that some phrases mean nothing if translated literally. It is sometimes impossible to convey the original meaning of the words with a direct translation – there has to be a skillful compromise. This is done poorly when an interpretation of one’s personal slant is included, but is done well if appropriate words are used skillfully to build a ‘bridge’ from the ancient Greek to modern English. For example, Matt 27.44, describing the words directed at Jesus by the criminals on the cross, reads literally “cast the same in his teeth”, which has no meaning for us today. His translation, faithful to the meaning of the text but using different words, is “hurled the same abuse at him”.
However, he does explain how in his earlier translation he would occasionally feel compelled to use paraphrase in order to convey the original meaning. The new version attempts to avoid some of these where not necessary.
3. The slowness of the change in English language.
The Phillips version is described as ‘timeless’ on the sleeves of some new publications of the work. I am not sure Phillips would have liked that description – a large part of the reason for his own translation work was to make the New Testament available in modern English from a version that was then 350 years old! But it is interesting to note that, because his own version does not use many colloquialisms, much of it did not need altering over the 30 plus years since his first versions. This explains why, to me and many others, it still reads as the most clear and engaging translation in the English language, now some 80 years later.
So which version should I use?
I have not read both versions side by side all the way through to be able to give detail on the minute differences but it is clear that while J.B.P saw the 1972 version as a “wholly new book”, probably because of the two years and thousands of changes he had made, it is in large sections unchanged from the 1958 edition.
Because his earlier version was made for readability, that is a good version for anyone wanting to enjoy reading large sections at a time, for example if someone wanted to read the whole of Mark, or the letter to the Philippians. The later edition is probably better for contemplation on particular passages. I personally read the later version because of its greater fidelity to the Greek.