Edgar J. Goodspeed

Edgar Johnson Goodspeed (1871, Quincy, Illinois – 1962), the American scholar of Greek and the New Testament, was a liberal theologian who graduated from Denison University (where he also received a doctorate in Divinity, 1928) and the University of Chicago (Ph.D. 1898), where he taught for many years, and whose collection of New Testament manuscripts he enriched by his searches. The University's collection is now named in his honor.

He is widely remembered for his translations of the Bible: "The New Testament: an American Translation" (1923), and (with J. M. Powis-Smith) "The Bible, An American Translation" (1935), the "Goodspeed Bible".

Edgar J. Goodspeed died in 1962 and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Aside from his scholarly work, he wrote many non-dogmatic introductions to biblical literature for the lay reader:
*"The Story of the Bible" and
* "The Story of the Apocrypha,"
*"How to Read the Bible" 1946
*"The Twelve, The Story of Christ's Apostles"
* "Strange New Gospels," 1931
* "How Came the Bible?", Abingdon–Cokesbury Press, c1940.
* "A History of Early Christian Literature," University of Chicago Press, 1942
* "Problems of New Testament Translation," 1945.
* "The Life of Jesus for Young People"
* "Modern Apocrypha," The Beacon Press, 1956

External links

* [http://www.ccel.org/bible/kjv/preface/thesis.htm Goodspeed, "The translators to the Reader"] : Goodspeed's thesis on the Preface to the King James Version, 1611
* [http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/spcl/goodspeed.html goodspeed and the goodspeed collection of mss at Chicago]
* [http://www.thedcl.org/store/ant-preface.html Preface to the American Translation] at The DCL.
* [http://www.thedcl.org/christia/author-g.html Works by Goodspeed] at The DCL.