The Emphatic Diaglott is a diaglot, or two-language polyglot translation, of the New Testament by Benjamin Wilson, first published in 1864. It is an interlinear translation with the original Greek text and a word-for-word English translation in the left column, and a full English translation in the right column. It is based on the interlinear translation, the renderings of eminent critics, and various readings of the Codex Vaticanus. It includes illustrative and explanatory footnotes, references, and an alphabetical appendix. The Greek text is that of Johann Jakob Griesbach. The English text uses "Jehovah" for the divine name a number of times where the New Testament writers used "translit=kýrios" when quoting Hebrew scriptures. For example, at Luke 20:42-43 it reads: "For David himself says in the book of Psalms, Jehovah said to my Lord, sit thou at my Right hand, 'till I put thine enemies underneath thy feet", where Jesus quoted Psalm 110:1. The text of the original edition's title page is as follows:
Publishing history
A nephew of Benjamin Wilson wrote this account of the production of The Diaglott: Although Wilson prepared the plates himself, the first edition was published in 1865 by Orson Squire Fowler of Fowler and Wells Ltd. of New York. Fowler and Wells were phrenologists who published a periodical to which Walt Whitman contributed, and also published his Leaves of Grass. After Wilson's death in 1900, the plates and copyright were inherited by his heirs. Charles Taze Russell, then president of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, approached Wilson's family via a third party and obtained the copyright, and at some later point, the plates. The Society published the Diaglott in 1902, and later had the type reset for publication on its own presses in 1927, with an additional printing in 1942. In 1952 the copyright to the Diaglott expired and it came into the public domain. The Watch Tower Society sold the Diaglott inexpensively, making it non-viable for others to print until the depletion of that inventory. Others such as Wilson's home church, Church of the Blessed Hope, had considered reprinting their own edition; in 2003 the Miami church of the group, with support from Christadelphians in the United Kingdom and the United States published their own edition, with a new preface. The public domain status of The Emphatic Diaglott has made it a popular online translation.
