This is a private translation of The Bible
by Reverend Herman A. Hartmann.
The late Reverend Herman Hartmann began his work as a pastor in 1946, and was devoted to gaining the best understanding possible of the Word of God. After his retirement, we were lucky to have him as a member of the North Church congregation for many years.
He was not only a devoted bible scholar, but also an antiquities expert. Reverend Hartmann made it his personal quest to find the oldest sources he could for scriptural passages and to translate them himself into “his own English” from the original languages. His journey to find ancient texts took him to a monastery at the top of mount Sinai, and to some of the oldest collections at libraries and academic sites around the world.
He shared his translations with friends, and led bible studies for North Church, working from his own translations. In the later years of his retirement, he focused on translating more and more of the scriptures, and finally finished the Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha. Just before Herman passed in 2017, we were able to recover all his old translations from various old word processor formats, and convert them to PDF files with his insightful footnotes intact. He gave us permission to share them on our congregation’s website.
The Bible by Rev. Herman Hartmann is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.northchurchucc.org/the-bible/.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.northchurchucc.org/the-bible/.
A Word from the Translator
This translation began as the result of the purchase of a book from The Half-Priced Book Store. I found a new copy of Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament by F. Wilber Gingrich, for a ridiculously low price and purchased it. My mother always said, ‘Don’t buy anything unless you will use it.’ I felt I should follow her instruction.
I decided to translate The Good News According to Mark and give it to my family and dear friends as a Christmas gift. That would be ‘using the book.’ But, I was intrigued with translation and continued.
When I had finished the New Testament I thought, ‘What next?’ and decided I would try my hand at translating the Psalms. Then I translated the Minor Prophets, and kept on until I finished my translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.
On my 92nd birthday close friends met for a birthday party and one asked, since I was near the end of the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, “What will you do next?” A dear friend sitting next to me responded: “I suppose he will translate the Apocrypha.” The night before, just prior to my going to sleep I decided: “Deo volente – I will try to translate the Apocrypha.”
On the day of my 70th year since graduation from Theological Seminary, I completed the translation, at age of 93.
It is my hope and prayer that whoever might read any of this translation will receive, as I did, a new and deeper understanding of the work and will of the Almighty God and the greatness and importance of the role of Christ in our lives.
Herman A. Hartmann