Wisdom From The Past
Two leading Bible translators, whose translations are still available today, strongly held to the Anglo-Israel or Two House doctrine.
Ferrar Fenton and Benjamin Wilson
Fenton Bible Translation and Emphatic Diaglott
Ferrar Fenton (1832-1920) was a child prodigy who read the Bible in the original Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic from the age of seven, and spent a half-century producing his translation, “The Holy Bible In Modern English,” first published complete in 1903. Wikipedia says of him, “Fenton had acquired a great learning and understanding of ancient Sanskrit, Greek, Hebrew and Latin through being a distinguished member of the Royal Asiatic Society, [whose members on the RAS website are said to be “highly accomplished and notable scholars”-ed.] As a tradesman he also had access to numerous ancient Septuagint and Masoretic manuscripts to aid in his translation, and he also used [Protestant Reformation scholar] Brian Walton’s Polygot Bible (1657) for minimal referencing.”
This Bible has remained in print ever since, and copies can be purchased through Bible Blessings Christian Resources in the “Specialty Bibles” section. Much more information about this Bible and its author are found at this link.
Benjamin Wilson (1817-1900) produced “The Emphatic Diaglott” between 1856-1864, which has also remained available to this day. It was one of the first American interlinear Bible translations. Wilson was editor of the “Gospel Banner Magazine” and co-founder of “The Church of the Abrahamic Faith.”
The following information about
these men, published in 1893, is quite interesting, and serves as a good background to a basic theological
understanding of these men. The article below begins with an assessment of the Ferrar Fenton Bible:
Professor Blackie of Edinburgh, to whom the first edition of the
work was dedicated, writes of it, “There can nothing but good arise from a
person of independent thinking making a new translation of the Epistles of
Paul, as novelties of phrase, largely, even though not conveying any absolutely
new idea, shake people out of an unthinking posture and stimulate inquiry.”A
correspondent in England, who wrote to author Charles A.L. Totten, shared several letters received by her from Mr. Ferrar Fenton himself, and from which we may be
pardoned for making the following quotations:
“Poor man as I now am, if you had sent me a fifty pound note it would not have given me more delight than the book (Professor Totten’s Study No. One) you have sent. I am a believer in the Identity. As a fact, 35 years ago, when I was a devotee of the so-called ‘Higher Criticism,’ and an infidel, not only in Christianity, but in or with regard to all Religions, or Religion whatsoever, I became convinced of the Hebrew origin of the British people as a mere question of scientific Philological Ethnology. I was then an ardent Classical and Oriental Student, read with delight in Oriental literature and the Science of Languages, and was struck with the fact that Kymraeg, Khumry tongue, vulgarly called Welsh) and Arabic, and Hebrew, were allied; and following up the research, as a matter of scientific investigation, and by the regular methods of science, I satisfied myself that we were of the race of Shem, and that Max Muller, Von Meyer, and the Germans were wrong in asserting we were Aryans.
“I accordingly wrote some short essays on the matter which attracted the notice of the late Sir Thomas Phillips, the chief trustee of the British Museum, and the greatest English scholar of our century. He and Karl Von Baer, the learned German professor, declared I had discovered a new field in Philology, and Sir T. Phillips offered me the position of his secretary, to aid him in editing Archaeological and Oriental works.
“After many years I accidentally was asked by an illiterate lady ‘if the English were descendants from the Jews?’ She had read yesterday in a magazine that they were! ‘No,’ I replied, ‘they are not descended from the Jews, but they are the sons or descendants of Abraham. They are the posterity of the Ten Tribes who fled before the Assyrian Invaders according to Isaiah, to Tarshish (Spain) and the Isles of the Sea, or Isles of the West!’ At that time I had become a Christian, and took up the study again and became convinced of its vital bearing on our existence and history as a Race.
“Since then I have written considerably on the matter, illustrating it in the popular style
but on purely scientific grounds, and methods. My articles in Britain’s
Inheritance’ raised attention from all parts of the world where
Englishmen are, and brought correspondence to its editor, my late dear friend,
Thomas Almond. What we Identists need to do is to win
the literary and learned world, and I applied to them as a scholar to scholars.
The two evidences of Language and Archaeology supply us with matchless weapons
of war, and our enemies are the enemies of the Israel of God!” [End of Quote by
Ferrar Fenton]
Another Bible Translator:
Now the very opposite of these free translations is the “Emphatic Diaglott,”or literal Greek Translation of the New Testament so often quoted and held to as authority by most all American Adventists. Our friends will therefore share our own surprise and pleasure in reading the following extracts from letters lately received from its author, Benjamin Wilson, of Sacramento, California, who wrote as follows: “Perhaps it may interest you to know the work you refer to and advertise, called ‘The Emphatic Diaglott,’ is my work, and completed and published by me in 1865; …I am now 77 years old.I am deeply interested in your work, and believe in our Israelitish origin! I am an Englishman, came to the States 50 years ago. I had the privilege of reading John Wilson’s book about 1849. I was not ready at that time to endorse the doctrine, though my brother Joseph, who brought the book (Wilson’s) with him, when he followed me to Illinois, fully believed and advocated the theory. I have interested others by lending your (Totten’s) books, and one gentleman says he will give you material help so soon as he possibly can to assist you to publish this news to the world.”
When our Advent brethren resist the truth of the Identity we ask our friends to read this extract to them, conjuring them to examine the matter personally and on its own merits as did Benjamin Wilson. Surely “the disciple is not above his master, but every one that is perfect shall be as his master!” -[Reprinted from “The Heart Of History” by Professor Charles Adiel Lewis Totten, published in 1893, pp. 293-297]