The New Testament. Translated From Griesbach's Text. By Samuel Sharpe. The Third Edition. Owen, Robert Dale (His Copy) - Bible; English.

From the library of Robert Dale Owen, a religious sceptic and spiritualist, with his signature dated 1859 on the title page. Owen's time as a diplomat in Naples between 1847 and 1858 saw increased public interest in his religious views, with rumours abounding in the American press that he was a Catholic convert. In 1860, Owen (1801-1877) responded to the speculation with Footfalls on the Boundary of Another World, a book detailing his forays not into Catholicism but into spiritualism. Whilst not as entrenched in the spiritualist movement as his father, the social reformer Robert Owen (1771-1858), Robert Dale found that the claims of spiritualism answered questions that traditional religion could not. He recounted how a mystical experience at the Russian ambassador's house had encouraged him to research its historical basis: "I became convinced that what by many have been regarded as new and unexampled phenomena are but modern phases of what has ever existed" (p. xiv). Questioning Christianity was a common theme across Owen's life. In 1833, Owen and Origen Bacheler published their Discussion on the Existence of God and the Authenticity of the Bible, within which they questioned the authenticity of the New Testament: "For a century and a half after Jesus' death, we have no means whatever of substantiating even the existence of the Gospels, as now bound up in the New Testament. There is a perfect blank of 140 years; and a most serious one it is" (p. 247). This religious scepticism went hand in hand with Congressional campaigns and exerted a notable influence on contemporary American thought: "Nearly all political observers in the 1840s agreed that Congressman Owen held provocative religious opinions. Whigs and Democrats in the 1840s responded to Owen's tenure in Washington by developing ideas of religious liberty suitable to their powerful constituencies. Although Owen eventually served only two terms in Congress, his relatively brief career raised questions about religion's place in American political life that remain unresolved in the twenty-first century" (Schlereth). Sharpe (1799-1881) was a Unitarian who became a dissenter after extensive study of Griesbach's New Testament in Greek, leading him to produce the present translation. "In eight editions of his New Testament, and four of his old, he devoted great care to the improvement of his work. As a translator he was unoriginal but showed sound judgement; he was successful beyond others of his time in the difficult experiment of removing the archaisms without destroying the stylistic beauty of the English Bible" (ODNB). Sharpe was selected as one of four Unitarians to collaborate with the production of the 1870 Revised Version of the King James Version. Eric R. Schlereth, "Mr. Owen Goes to Washington", Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life, accessible online. Octavo. Original brown cloth, spine lettered in gilt and with decorative roll at ends in blind, covers framed in blind, edges red, dark brown coated endpapers. Wear to spine ends and corners, slight cockling to rear cover, damp stain to rear endpapers, occasional light foxing to contents else clean: a very good copy.