Webster Bible

The Webster Bible is an early modernization of the complete Bible in King James English, prepared by Noah Webster, America's leading lexicographer and the compiler of its first major dictionary. Covering the whole Bible, it works from English while consulting the Hebrew and Greek, and takes the King James Version as its base text; it is accordingly classified as a revision of the KJV rather than a fresh translation. Webster's guiding philosophy was conservative modernization: obsolete words and some expressions were replaced, while the structure and familiar cadence of the King James Version were preserved. Published in 1833, it stands as one of the earliest American attempts to adapt the Authorized Version to contemporary usage, anticipating the more systematic revisions of the English Bible undertaken later in the nineteenth century.