2. The following abbreviations are used for archive holdings: BL = British Library; CRO = Cheshire Record Office; CUL = Cambridge University Library; DDC = Durham Dean & Chapter Library; ACER = Auckland Castle Episcopal Records (Durham University Library, Palace Green); LPL = Lambeth Palace Library; MA = Methodist Archives (John Rylands Library); TCC = Trinity College Cambridge; WFA = Westcott Family Archives; WHA = Westcott House Archives; ABS = American Bible Society.Google Scholar

3. This number includes those who died or resigned in the course of the 15-year project.Google Scholar

4. The moves for revision had begun at an official level in the Church of England, in February of that year: Ellicott, C.J., ‘Preface’ to The New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (Oxford: The University Press, 1881), p. ix.Google Scholar

5. The New York Times headlined the news ‘Scriptural Revision’ (13 June 1870) and reiterated the terms of the report that Convocation had adopted. Numerous denominational papers across the United States did the same, just as they had noted the first intimations of the project, several months earlier. It should be recognized that America was not alone in the excitement of anticipation of the coming revision. The newspaper of the remote country town of Mt Gambier in southern Australia carried the news as well: Border Watch, 18 June 1870.Google Scholar

6. National Baptist, 23 June 1870, quoting the English Nonconformist newspaper.Google Scholar

7. Crowther, M.A., ‘Church Problems and Church Parties’, in G. Parsons (ed.), Religion in Victorian England. IV. Interpretations (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1988), p. 12.Google Scholar

8. The Chicago Advance, 18 August 1870.Google Scholar

9. Lord Shaftesbury led the charge on this front: Finlayson, G.B.A.M., The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, 1801–1885 (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004 [1981]), p. 517.Google Scholar

10. See Frost, S.B., ‘The English Bible’, in H.N. Bream, R.D. Heim and C.A. Moore (eds.), A Light unto my Path: Old Testament Studies in Honor of Jacob M. Myers (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1974), pp. 208–209.Google Scholar

11. It was already well known that, even though dubbed ‘the Authorized Version’, there was no Act of Parliament so securing it. By contrast, with an embargo placed upon export to America of copies of the King James Version during and after the War of Independence, the fledgling Congress of the United States had declared the ‘use of the Bible is so universal and its importance so great’ that a means of breaking the sanction was to be sought. Robert Aitken ultimately secured the formal rights (in 1782) to print the King James Bible in the United States, which unleashed a plethora of American printings. This would become critical at the business end of the new Revised Version when the delicacies of publication rights were again debated.Google Scholar

12. South Australian Register, 30 January 1869; South Australian Advertiser, 1 February 1869.Google Scholar

13. It should be noted here that the public discourse of ‘English-speaking people’ as a means of securing ties within and beyond the British Empire, predates William Gladstone's politicized use and is an important additional component to the influential note by Herrick, Francis, ‘Gladstone and the Concept of the ‘English-Speaking Peoples’, JBS 12 (1972), pp. 150–156.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14. Alford, H., The New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, after the Authorised Version, Newly compared with the original Greek and revised (London: Strahan & Co, 1869). The work completed a venture in which he had been involved: The Gospel According to St John, after the Authorized Version, Newly Compared with the Original Greek and Revised by Five Clergymen (London: John W. Parker, 3rd edn, 1863).Google Scholar

15. Alford, New Testament, p. vi. Alford was to live long enough to see the establishment of the two Revised Version companies formed by the RV Committee set up by Convocation, and to serve briefly on the New Testament Company. He died in January 1871.Google Scholar

16. Schaff, P., ‘Prefatory Note’ to Members of the American Revision Committee, Anglo-American Bible Revision: Its Necessity and Purpose (Philadelphia: American Sunday-School Union, 2nd edn, 1879), p. ii. The phrase was quickly standardized as the American mode of referring to the venture: see Austin Allibone (Editor of Books for the American Sunday School Union), ‘Origins of this Volume’ in the same collection of essays (p. iv).Google Scholar

17. Schaff, P., Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version (London: Macmillan, 1883), pp. 478, 404.Google Scholar

18. Schaff, Companion, p. 406.Google Scholar

19. Lee, A., ‘Revision of the Scriptures’, in Anglo-American Bible Revision, p. 180.Google Scholar

20. Hall, I., The Revised New Testament and History of Revision (Philadelphia: Hubbard Bros, 1881), p. 81.Google Scholar

21. See Penzel, K.‘Philip Schaff: A Centennial Appraisal’, Church History 59 (1990), pp. 207–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22. Schaff, Companion, p. 482. The rhetoric was used in an attempt to gain both English recognition of American scholarship in the undertaking and support for the product once published.Google Scholar

23. Carey, H.M., God's Empire: Religion and Colonialism in the British world c 1801–1908 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

24. Reports covering arrival and departure and almost every step in between filled American newspapers. The newspapers also made constant reference to Stanley's work with the American Committee on the Revision: see, for three examples among many, The Tribune, 28 September 1878; The Observer, 3 October 1878; The Evangelical, 3 October 1878. For a partial insight into Stanley's view of the tour, see Prothero, R.E., Life and Letters of Dean Stanley (London: Nelson, 1909), pp. 525–546.Google Scholar

25. Schaff made more than half a dozen visits to England during the period of the revision project. See Pranger, G., Philip Schaff (1819–1893): Portrait of an Immigrant Theologian (New York: Peter Lang, 1997), p. 189.Google Scholar

26. National Baptist, 23 June 1870.Google Scholar

27. The Philadelphian Evening Telegraph, 30 June 1870, incorporating an editorial from the London Standard. The three or four in mind were not named and it is not quite clear whether the focus is the Episcopal Church or the sweep of Protestant churches.Google Scholar

28. The Guardian, 27 March 1872, a letter from ‘A Clergyman of the American Episcopal Church’.Google Scholar

29. CUL Ms Add 9739, Robert Scott papers Folder 3. ‘Resolution of the American Committee’.Google Scholar

30. Considerable tensions developed over the Union's claim for compensation for the Alabama's damage to the northern side. The matter was ultimately resolved by arbitration but it generated considerable public antagonism on both sides of the Atlantic. See Hall, M.Goldstein, E., ‘Writers, the Clergy, and the “Diplomatisation of Culture”: Sub-Structures of Anglo-American Diplomacy, 1820–1914’. in J. Fisher and A. Best (eds.), On the Fringes of Diplomacy: Influences on British Foreign Policy 1800–1945 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011), p. 128.Google Scholar

31. Gentzler, E., Translation and Identity in the Americas (London/New York: Routledge, 2008), pp. 31, 134.Google Scholar

32. Ellicott, ‘Preface’, p. xi.Google Scholar

33. Norton, D., A History of the Bible as Literature: From Antiquity to 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), ch. 6.Google Scholar

34. Norton, A History of the Bible, p. 218.Google Scholar

35. Hall and Goldstein, ‘Diplomatisation of Culture’, pp. 127–54.Google Scholar

36. See Carey, God's Empire, pp. 6–14 and generally.Google Scholar

37. So Kaye, B., An Introduction to World Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 46–49.Google Scholar

38. The Guardian, 27 March 1872. The description is included in quotation marks in a letter from an Episcopalian clergyman criticizing a previous letter from a supporter of Dean Burgon's opposition to the revision. This suggests that there was a battle waging within the Episcopal Church over the revision, just as there was in England.Google Scholar

39. Ward, K., A History of Global Anglicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 55. Again however, the Revised Version is not factored into the overview.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40. The only study of the political dimensions of the Revised Version concentrates on its significance within the American context and does not examine the complex dimensions of the interactions between the English and American committees. See Thuesen, P.J., In Discordance with the Scriptures: American Protestant Battles over Translating the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), ch. 2.Google Scholar

41. Schaff wrote to other members of the American Bible Revision Committee (ABRC) in 1883 promoting the publication of the Documentary History which he had compiled. He received varying responses. The Revd Dr Conant agreed that ‘Nothing else will show the true position taken by the American Committee, and their just grounds for that position’, Conant to Schaff, 22 October 1883; Professor Dwight however urged reticence: Dwight to Schaff, 17 August 1883 (ABS ABRC Correspondence Foreign and Domestic, 1883) and he became involved in the final editing. Six months later it was still being debated ‘whether or not and when the Documentary History is to be published’ – roneoed Agenda sent out by Schaff and George Day (a member of the Old Testament Company), 14 April 1884 (ABS ABRC Correspondence, Correspondence Foreign and Domestic, 1884). It was finally printed (rather than published) a year later.Google Scholar

42. Schaff, Companion, p. 398 and see infra.Google Scholar

43. Resolution 5 of the Joint Committee Report, 24 March, 1870, submitted 3 May of the same year.Google Scholar

44. He hoped to include a Roman Catholic representative as well, namely John Henry Newman, but Newman declined. See my ‘Star-Cross'd lovers: John Henry Newman and the Revision of the Bible’ AEJT forthcoming.Google Scholar

45. See my ‘The Politics of Translation of the Revised Version: Evidence from the Newly Discovered Notebooks of Brooke Foss Westcott’, JTS 58 (2007), pp. 415–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46. See my ‘‘His Love Has Been our Banner on our Road’: Identity Politics and the Revised Version’, forthcoming in S. Elliot and R. Boer (eds.), Ideology, Culture and Translation (Semeia monograph; Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2012).Google Scholar

47. House of Commons debate, 14 June 1870, Hansard, vol. 202, p. 100. Matthew Arnold had already dismissed Buxton (the Liberal member for Wisley) as having ‘a turn for swimming with the stream’, by which, presumably, he meant, a penchant for pursuing the latest radical cause: Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism (London: Smith, Elder and Co, 1869), p. xviii.Google Scholar

48. Hansard, vol. 202, pp. 112–17.Google Scholar

49. Gladstone's personal copy (held at the William Gladstone Library in Hawarden) of Edmund Beckett's pamphlet ‘Should the Revised New Testament Be Authorized?’ has a pronounced, capitalized ‘No!’ penciled onto the front page. This tallies with other notices of his ‘hectoring’ opposition to the revision, as one of the revisers, Charles Vaughan noted: C.J. Vaughan to Alex Macmillan (the publisher) in BL Add Ms 55113, f. 78.Google Scholar

50. Diary entry, 14 June 1870 (H.C.G. Matthew, The Gladstone Diaries Vol. VII [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990]).Google Scholar

51. Quinault, R., ‘Gladstone and Parliamentary Reform’, in D. Bebbington and R. Swift (eds.), Gladstone Centenary Essays (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000), p. 83.Google Scholar

52. This was the way Buxton understood it in his parliamentary speech when he advocated tapping into the learning of Jewish scholars on finer points of Hebrew: Hansard, vol. 202, p. 101.Google Scholar

53. This executed a theological commitment as much as a political strategy; see Schwarz, H., Theology in a Global Context: The Last Two Hundred Years (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 61–62.Google Scholar

54. Stanley to Schaff, 30 May 1871 (Documentary History of the American Committee on Revision [New York, 1885], p. 45).Google Scholar

55. Schaff to Dr Joseph Angus, 18 August 1870 (Documentary History, p. 31).Google Scholar

56. Stanley to Schaff, 30 May 1871 (Documentary History, p. 46).Google Scholar

57. Humphry, W.G., A Word on the Revised Version of the New Testament (London: Christian Knowledge Society, 1881), p. 34.Google Scholar

58. Stanley had feared that the conference was going to be directed towards reinforcing reactions against Bishop Colenso of Natal, thus inciting what he called ‘party differences’; it was a fear that was realized: Prothero, Stanley, pp. 376–78.Google Scholar

59. Hopkins to Stanley, 9 November 1867 (Prothero, Stanley, pp. 379, 381).Google Scholar

60. Stanley to Schaff, 13 January 1871. This, however, was the formal contact; Stanley had already encouraged the Baptist member of the English New Testament Company of revisers, Dr Joseph Angus, to utilize his many American contacts to the advantage of the work of Revision six months earlier. Angus was then to be in the United States for a meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, with which Schaff was associated.Google Scholar

61. Letters Westcott to Lightfoot, 28 November 1867, 7 May, 1869 (DDC Letters and Papers of Joseph Barber Lightfoot). See, on Westcott and Lightfoot's involvement in the Dictionary, Westcott, A., Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott (London: Macmillan, 1903), Vol. 1, pp. 319–320.Google Scholar

62. Letter Westcott to Lightfoot, 15 May 1869 (DDC).Google Scholar

63. Pragmatics also played a part – Angus was a frequent visitor to the United States for gatherings of the Evangelical Alliance.Google Scholar

64. Angus to Schaff, 14 December 1871 noted the delay caused (ABS Foreign Correspondence 1870–1881, Letter 6).Google Scholar

65. The letter is dated 7 August 1871, reprinted as Appendix XIV in Journal of the General Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1871), pp. 615–16 (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter 148a).Google Scholar

66. Edward White Benson, long-time friend of Westcott and Lightfoot, recorded in his diary (8 June 1882) about Wilberforce's ‘desire to have everything his own way’ (TCM Ms 147, Cornwall Record Office, The Benson Diaries). The assessment was not unique: see Bishop Ellicott to Lightfoot, 21 February, 1871 (DCC). Wilberforce had been working behind the scenes to engineer a narrower membership of the Companies, as well as a curtailment of the brief for revision. See Wilberforce, R.G., Life of the Right Reverend Samuel Wilberforce (London: John Murray, 1882), III, pp. 346–350). He early removed himself from chairing the New Testament Company, citing episcopal pressures. His death in 1873 precluded further concerns at his actions.Google Scholar

67. The Guardian, 23 November 1870, p. 1367.Google Scholar

68. The Guardian, 5 October 1870, p. 1179.Google Scholar

69. From Journal and Proceedings of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1872), p. 353.Google Scholar

70. These protests had a vociferous champion in John Burgon, Dean of Chichester Cathedral; see Goulburn, E.M., John William Burgon, Late Dean of Chichester: A Biography (2 vols; London: John Murray, 1892), II, p. 45. He was also soliciting Gladstone to the cause: Gladstone Diary entry, 24 April 1871 (Matthew, Gladstone Diaries Vol. VII).Google Scholar

71. The Second Congress of the Protestant Episcopal Church (1872), p. 198. Catholics had been carefully excluded from the beginning of the American venture by an accent on the use of the Authorized Version: Qualification 3 formulated by the Committee on New Members and adopted by the American Bible Revision Committee on 30 November 1872 (ABRC Minute Book, ABS Archives Box RG#86 0-3-6). Stanley had tried to persuade Schaff otherwise: Stanley to Schaff, 30 May 1871 (Documentary History, p. 46).Google Scholar

72. Ellicott to Schaff, 22 April 1872 (Documentary History, p. 59).Google Scholar

73. Abbot to Schaff, 14 March 1872 (ABS ABRC Correspondence – Philip Schaff Domestic 1871–81, Folder A); Abbot to Joseph Barber Lightfoot, 5 January 1872 (DDC Lightfoot Papers).Google Scholar

74. ABRC Minute Book, 4 October 1872 (ABS Committee and Sub-committee Records 1870–1887).Google Scholar

75. Schaff to Ellicott, 12 October 1872 (Documentary History, p. 72).Google Scholar

76. Documentary History, p. 70.Google Scholar

77. Stanley to Schaff, 8 April 1871 (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter No. 112).Google Scholar

78. Ellicott to Schaff, 23 October 1871, conveying a resolution of the New Testament Company (ABS Foreign Correspondence Letter No. 42).Google Scholar

79. Stanley to Schaff, 13 January 1871 (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter No. 111).Google Scholar

80. See my ‘Who Can Tamper with the Text? The Battles for Authority to Revise the KJV’, forthcoming.Google Scholar

81. Grant, F.C., Translating the Bible (Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson, 1961), p. 91. Schaff estimated the value of the University Presses’ support in American money as $100,000: Schaff, Companion, p. 402.Google Scholar

82. Letter of John Troutbeck, secretary to the New Testament Company, to Schaff, 14 June 1876 (ABS Committee and Sub-Committee Records 1870–1887).Google Scholar

83. ‘University Press, Correspondence relating to the Revised Version’, CUL Pr.B.4 ff. 1-18. This was in spite of an earlier resolution of the Companies themselves that they not alienate the copyright: ‘Minutes and Related Papers of the Company for Revision of the Authorised Version of the New Testament’, 13 July 1870, CUL Ms Add 6935, f. 10.Google Scholar

84. Hall and Goldstein, ‘Diplomatisation of Culture’, p. 131.Google Scholar

85. ABRC Minute Book, 7 December 1871 (my emphasis).Google Scholar

86. Documentary History, pp. 32–33, 54–55.Google Scholar

87. ABRC Minute Book, 29 May 1873.Google Scholar

88. ABRC Minute Book, 31 May 1873.Google Scholar

89. The phrase comes from a later letter of Schaff to Dr James Cartmell, President of the Syndics of the Cambridge Press and clearly shows his frustration: Schaff to Cartmell, 5 May 1876 (ABS RG#86 0-3-6 Reports, Papers, Correspondence, Letter books).Google Scholar

90. A summary of his addresses to the two Companies was printed for private circulation: Robert Scott papers, CUL Ms. Add. 9739, folder 3. It is also found in the Documentary History, pp. 89–93.Google Scholar

91. Andrew Taylor was the financial secretary for the American Bible Revision Committee whose sole role was to garner contributions for the work (ABS Taylor Schaff Correspondence).Google Scholar

92. Both Companies agreed to a substantial modification of an earlier agreement, by looking to the appointment of certain members of each Company to serve on its parallel. The New Testament Company added a number of conditions, the most decisive being ‘the express consent of the two University Presses’ (Documentary History, p. 94).Google Scholar

93. Hort to Schaff, 14 July 1875 (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter No. 73). This was not the first time that a member of the Cambridge triumvirate had advised Schaff on the best approach to matters, mindful as they were of English sensitivities: Lightfoot to Schaff, 15 July 1872 (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter No. 78).Google Scholar

94. The ‘List of Contributors to the Fund for defraying the Expenses of the ABRC, October 1872 to Mar 1 1881’ is found in the ABS ‘ABRC Eng & Amer Comms and Directors of University Presses: Private and Confidential Documents 1873–1885’.Google Scholar

95. There were many more suggestions for changes made by the Americans: List of Changes made in the Text of the Greek Testament by the Company of Revisers of the AV in CUL Ms Add 9739, Scott papers, folder 6.Google Scholar

96. This seems to have been recognized in some quarters in England. A resolution of the Assembly of the Congregational Union of England and Wales, carried on 4 October 1881 offered ‘hearty thanks to the scholars of England and America’ (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter No. 39, and attachment).Google Scholar

97. This was precisely the point made by J.W. Henley, the member for Oxfordshire, in the House of Commons debate in June 1870: Hansard, Vol. 202, p. 118.Google Scholar

98. Angus to Schaff, 8 February 1875 (ABS Foreign Correspondence, Letter No. 13). A similar acknowledgement from members of the American Companies was made at the conclusion of the privately distributed Historical Account of the Work of the American Committee of Revision (New York: Scribner, 1885), p. 56.Google Scholar

99. Schaff to Ellicott, 7 May 1872 (ABS Papers and Correspondence, Letterbook, p. 56).Google Scholar

100. See for example, Schaff to Ellicott, 24 November 1874.Google Scholar

101. See for last minute concerns that mistakes be corrected, Abbot to Schaff, 6 February 1876 (ABS Schaff Domestic Correspondence, 1871–1881, folder A).Google Scholar

102. Packard to Schaff, 8 July 1874 (ABS ABRC Correspondence – Philip Schaff Domestic Correspondence, 1871–1881, folder N-O-P).Google Scholar

103. Strictly, work on the Apocrypha remained to be done but again the simmering conflict interfered with a cooperative venture. The revision of the Apocrypha (which was included in the first edition of the Authorized Version), was broached in November 1877, with the initial intent that, for the sake of ‘uniformity of character … the whole body of the Revisers’ was to be involved ‘as far as practicable’ (CUL Ms Add 9739, Scott papers, folder 3). In the end, this was not adopted as a resolution (20 February 1878), and despite American enquiries, ‘no cooperation is contemplated’ (Troutbeck to Schaff, 20 August 1881; ABS Papers and Correspondence).Google Scholar

104. Schaff to Ellicott, 8 July 1881 (ABS Papers and Correspondence). The heading to the Appendix as sent by the American Committee read: ‘The American NT revision Co having in many cases yielded their preference for certain readings and renderings, present the following instances in which they differ from the Eng Co as in their view of sufficient importance to be appended to the Revision, in accordance with an understanding between the Companies.’Google Scholar

105. ABS Papers and Correspondence, Letterbook, p. 587.Google Scholar

106. Pranger, Philip Schaff, p. 66.Google Scholar

107. Schaff died in 1893.Google Scholar

108. Abbot to Schaff, 10 June 1881 (ABS Domestic Correspondence folder A). Abbot had maintained a friendship with Lightfoot from the beginning of the English revision: see Abbot to Lightfoot, 4 May 1870 (DDC Lightfoot Papers).Google Scholar