CNT - 1989
Cassirer New Testament
New Covenant
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It was translated by Heinz W. Cassirer, a Jewish philosopher who had not read any part of the Bible before he was forty-nine years old. The experience of discovering these texts was so great that he spent the next twenty-one years studying them. This translation is the result of the need for personal clarity and the meaning of the New Testament texts.

He started work on the letters of Paul in 1957. Not until 1972 did he feel prepared to translate the New Testament in its entirety. He aimed for clarity that would be sensitive to every inflection of the original Greek. His style is probing rather than a watering down. Although he did not want his work to be a paraphrase, he did draw out a meaning with greater spiritual accuracy, if warranted.

The Gospel of John -- in particular chapters 7 and 8 -- was a stumbling-block for a long time. The decision to translate the New Testament came only when he was satisfied that the passages that had long fueled anti-Semitic reactions had been disastrously distorted and misinterpreted over the centuries and were not in themselves anti-Semitic. He later advocated its essentially Jewish character.

Old Testament quotations are in bolder typeface. References are at the bottom of pages. Many of these were found in the Greek New Testament texts and Old Testament texts that he used.

He did not care to have his translation published in his lifetime. His widow provided much assistance to the work before and after his death.

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (1989)

[Tyndale House, Cambridge, United Kingdom]

John 1: 1 - 3

It was the Word that was at the very beginning; and the Word was by the side of God, and the Word was the very same as God. It was he who at the beginning was by the side of God. All things came into being through him, and there was nothing that came into being apart from him.

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