This article will provide a brief outline of the history behind the English translation of the scriptures that we have today. Included in the second half is a review of the major and minor editions of the authorized version.

For our purposes in this article we can begin our history at the time of the apostles, and I have divided the remaining “time of the end”¹ into three time periods. Our first part concerns the early A.D. period, the second part covers the early English translations, and the third part covers the Bible under modern English or “proper” English, which will be defined below. Part four also contains some added research material mainly to supplement the third.

Page Index

Part 1: Timeline of the Bible before modern English

As the book of Acts records in the New Testament, the word of God began taking root in many languages on the day of Pentecost.² It is further related that the word of God “grew, and multiplied” during this time.³ However, it must be that only a small portion of all that was spoken was written down into physical copies. Nevertheless, the watchful eye of God ensured that nothing of his inspiration was lost,⁴ so that the New Testament of today contains every prophecy, by its incorruptible nature.⁵ The original word has been transmitted and written down, copied numerous times, and translated accurately into other languages, with the Holy Spirit teaching the truth of those things unto his believers in every time.⁶

The fact that the New Testament is in Koine Greek first, appears to help for two reasons. The first reason is because it was the trade language in the eastern Mediterranean region. This causes the gospel to be given in a well-known and well-defined language with many copyists in place to transmit it. Secondly, the grammatical structure of this language also allowed the precise word tenses to be encoded into the text of the Scripture.

For many ancient Europeans, the language most closely corresponding to Koine Greek at the time would be Classical Latin. Over time this became the scholarly language of the continent. It would remain in use by scholarship for more than a millenium after its fall into disuse as a spoken language.

F.H.A. Scrivener in his book Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament⁷ draws specific attention to the use of Latin translations in northern Italy. He cites the Prolegomena of John Mill,⁸ where Mill has dated the original Latin translations of the ancient churches as no later than the year A.D. 157. Scrivener also mentions the fact that Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430) singled out this translation, which “deserved praise for its clearness and fidelity.” This body of translations is referred to as Vetus Latina, or sometimes the Old Italic translation. It now represents a textual family in Latin which predates the translation of Jerome⁹ by hundreds of years.

It is further told to us in the work of Beza¹⁰ that a community who lived near this region, known to the French as Vaudois, must deserve credit for France today having the Bible in her own language.¹¹ These are people that lived in mountainous valleys in the region known as Savoy (in the part of it that is now in northern Italy), which is a certain distance to the south of Switzerland.

There are a few interesting points of comparison we can make before moving past the Latin formats. By the time of Jerome, a great number of Vetus Latina copies had already been circulating in the Latin world, many having been faithfully translated from their Greek counterpart. Meanwhile, there is a great amount of variance in the precursors to what we know as the Vulgate, which are only partially taken from the work of Jerome. His decision¹² to use the Hebrew for his Old Testament and not an intermediate Greek version, did not prevent his other separate translation of the Hexaplar Septuagint version of the Psalms from entering into the Vulgate. Because of this, the Vulgate also includes the removal of the prophecy of the Son in Psalm 2:12 (see article) where it writes “Apprehendite disciplinam” or “Embrace discipline”, instead of “Kiss the Son” as the verse is given in the original language.¹³ Until the counter-reformation, there were many copies circulating of both Vetus Latina, and of the prototypical versions of Latin which finally became the Sixtine Vulgate in 1590. Thus 1590 is the earliest possible date for the “standard version” of the Vulgate, despite it often being suggested that the text body is much older. Widely known changes in this version are the addition of the word “again” in John 3:5,¹⁴ (manifested as “renatus” instead of “natus”), and the alteration of Matthew 6:11¹⁵ against the Greek text, where “daily bread” was replaced by “supersubstantial bread.” In A.D. 1592, the Sixtine Vulgate was superceded by the Clementine Vulgate which contained various changes, but did nothing to correct the above. A small number of the textual variations in the Alexandrian texts¹⁶ which were discovered much later can also be observed in this version.

Following up after the Latin is the Anglo-Saxon part of our history. Our closest source for British history following the collapse of the Roman empire there is the ancient source Gildas. His work De Excidio Britanniae remarks on the causes for which Germanic Angles and Saxons came to Britain. Regarding events of approximately the year A.D. 411, he wrote:¹⁷

“The Romans, therefore, left the country, giving notice that they could no longer be harassed by such laborious expeditions, nor suffer the Roman standards, with so large and brave an army, to be worn out by sea and land by fighting against these unwarlike, plundering vagabonds; but that the islanders, inuring themselves to warlike weapons, and bravely fighting, should valiantly protect their country, their property, wives and children, and, what is dearer than these, their liberty and lives; that they should not suffer their hands to be tied behind their backs by a nation which, unless they were enervated by idleness and sloth, was not more powerful than themselves, but that they should arm those hands with buckler, sword, and spear, ready for the field of battle;”

Seeming to corroborate this, a Greek Byzantine chronicler Zosimus also mentioned it in his Historia Nova:¹⁸

“When Valens, the master of the horse, was killed after falling under suspicion of treason, Alaric attacked all the cities of Aemilia that had refused to accept promptly Attalus’ rule. He brought over with no trouble at all every one of them except Bononia [Bologna], which he besieged for several days but could not capture as it held firm. He then proceeded to the Ligurians and compelled them to recognise Attalus as Emperor. Honorius, however, wrote letters to the cities in Britain urging them to be on their guard, and he distributed rewards to the soldiers from moneys supplied him by Heraclianus.”

From this situation, Gildas attributes the decision by the king of the Britons to enlist mercenaries from Saxony to defend against the northerners, which are now known as the Picts and Gaels. This would have occurred in the early 5th century, some years after the withdrawal of the legions. Yet before this series of events, there is cause to believe that centers of Christian learning had already flourished on the island.

According to the entry for “Landwit-Major” in A Topographical Dictionary of Wales¹⁹ it is recorded that a college was founded: Cor Tewdws,²⁰ dating to the reign of Emperor Theodosius (A.D. 392-395). The false teacher Pelagius is traditionally said to have received education here. The original college was ransacked by an unknown war party around the middle of the 5th century, and according to some, is also where Patrick himself had been abducted into Ireland from.²¹ It is held also to have been re-established on the same spot by Illtud²² around the year A.D. 508, and from then on became the center of learning for Britons (who later came to be called the Welsh) and where the aforementioned Gildas may have learned from. According to the Dictionary, the place was originally known as Caer Wrgorn but afterward the town-site was called Lanilltydvawr. In modern times its name is Llantwit Major. The college is gone, but many churches in Wales remain. There was also another famous center of ancient learning at Bangor in the northern region of Wales. More than a dozen regional centers of learning existed in that nation’s history afterward.²³

There was an attempt, spearheaded by Augustine of Canterbury,²⁴ to convene together the leaders of all churches found in Wales with the recently created Anglo-Saxon ecclesiastical order, in the early 7th century, around the year 603. The effort was never realized as the Welsh (known as Britons or Cymry) chose not to cooperate with him. So the country of Wales was left to its own devices during an entire period of history, until the reign of William I, who established three lieutenants in the area as Earls. These English lords began to bring Wales under control of the crown. The English king Edward I finally completed this conquest in the year A.D. 1283.

Yet, it was earlier than this year that several known Old English translations of the Bible were produced. Reputedly lost translations date from the first milennium, and well-known commentaries on the Bible, which are not direct translations, date to the Genesis A paraphrase, and also to some ‘glosses,’ written between lines of Latin text, which are found in the Vespasian Psalter and the Lindisfarne Gospels. King Alfred the Great²⁵ is said to have commissioned translations of several independent passages from the Ten Commandments and from Psalms.²⁶ More directly, it is known that around the year A.D. 990, the turn of the milennium, one translation was commissioned of the four Gospels into Old English.

This translation, Wessex Gospels, on inspection adheres to the received text more than the Vulgate does, as we find later documented by the scholarship behind the Textus Receptus. There is no removal of the last twelve verses of Mark, nor of Luke 17:36, nor of John 7:53-8:11, and Greek forms of Matthew 6:11 and John 3:5 appear intact in the manuscripts of this translation as well.

However despite these developments, study of the classical languages as a discipline undoubtedly suffered during these times. Since literacy remained limited to the upper echelons of educated society, and the written word remained for the most part unmoved from classical languages, it was only accessible to those with education to read, or upon recital. There were many more copies being written than the elements of time could destroy— yet with this, some amounts of transfusion between existing variants, as greater copies were being produced from disparate smaller fragments, and minor typographical errors propagated, so that hybrids were sometimes formed between Vetus Latina and proto-Vulgate texts, or between the original Hebrew and Syriac Old Testament and the Greek Hexaplar Septuagint variants. This was especially true between many minor variants on the Psalms, one of the most popular books of the Bible. Certain variants of Greek manuscripts that omitted sections such as Acts 8:37²⁷ also spread to some extent.

So it is that despite advancements which demonstrate the potential for medieval scholarship to produce translations in Britain, we find by considering that which we have, that work once started in the field of written English translation was left incomplete. This is at least partially attributable to the disposition of those times, but also to the lack of a mechanical copying mechanism, as all manuscripts required a dedicated pen hand to produce. The work of sufficiently copying what already was would have demanded a great amount of labor. But the relative amount of literature that does survive dealing with this subject powerfully demonstrates a continuation of the awareness of the contents of Scripture, rather than a forgetting of Scripture.

The Norman conquest in 1066 brought changes to the ancient English language as ‘Norman French’ was carried across the channel and coexisted as the prestige language in England for centuries. Gradually, from this Middle English emerged.

It is noteworthy to mention that, during the “High” Middle Ages in western Europe (c. 1000-1315), there were also written many independent ‘translation-adaptations’ which attempted to paraphrase the Latin-form scripture, such as the “Anglo-Norman Bible,” a Norman-French paraphrase based on the Latin. It was probably made in the early 13th century and is known by its two surviving copies, one of which contains extensive marginal notes in Middle English to help with the interpretation. This work is known to have originally included all the Scriptural and western Apocryphal books in the traditional order up through Hebrews chapter thirteen.

A more successful translation project resulted in John Wycliffe’s translations, of which about 30 presumed originals still exist (c. 1381-1384), and more than 100 of the later edition (c. 1384-1390²⁸). However, these English translation projects evidently relied heavily on the proto-Vulgate as it existed at the time. So did the earliest mechanically printed Bible, the Gutenberg Bible. This became another iteration of the more regularized Latin Vulgate, as it later influenced the aforementioned Clementine Vulgate (the counter-reformation version of 1592). Gutenberg’s iteration, in turn, was based mostly on the “Paris Bible” (Bible du XIIIe siècle), but with various changes or “emendations” of its own.

However, as we have already seen, the existence of the Wessex Gospels, written about A.D. 990, in Old English, demonstrates a continued presence of the received, classical language form. It clearly says “daily” in Matthew 6:11 and “born” (not “born again”) at John 3:5.

Within about 50 years of Gutenberg’s movable type, the organization of new projects, with the intent to publish standard editions of the Bible for mass production, began in 1502 at the Universitas Complutensis.²⁹ By 1505 the scholar Desiderius Erasmus had also started to work independently on a similar project, turning down multiple offers to work on the Complutensian project. Both of these projects had the intended aim of placing the best representation of the Latin text in parallel columns with the original language sources. Regardless of the motivations, the end result was that these became the first of many mass-produced, textual-critical editions of the Bible in its original languages, which combined all of the available source manuscripts and high scholarship. The fact that multiple projects were completed independently of each other, and that we can make a comparison of their editions, reveals the level of commonality achieved during the ensuing period.

As we will see, these projects took on increasing levels of sophistication.

By 1514, the Universitas Complutensis had completed and printed its polyglot of the New Testament. However, it would delay the publication of this until the entire project, New Testament and Old, was complete. Three years later, their Old Testament parallel³⁰ was cleared for release. This interlinear of the whole Bible also included the Hexaplar Septuagint in addition to the Latin and the original-language columns.

However, in the meantime, Erasmus had already published his first edition of the combined New Testament in 1516, called Novum Instrumentum omne. This is now known as “Textus Receptus” via the words taken from one of the last major editions, written over a century later: the Elzevir 2nd edition T.R., which in its preface stated, “the text which you hold, is now received by all: in which [is] nothing corrupt.”³¹

Erasmus would continue his project, releasing five major editions. The third of these, Novum Testamentum omne (1522) became an important source for the English translation project of William Tyndale which began in 1524. The fourth edition of Erasmus was released mainly due to his comparisons with the Complutensian over the book of Revelation, and his inclusion of an additional column showing his own Latin version aside the Vulgate. The Greek column of his fifth edition had as few as four differences from its predecessor, while also dropping the Vulgate column.

It is remarkable that, among the differences between Textus Receptus editions, as well as between the manuscripts themselves, the most frequent are differences of a nature which bear no effect on the translation. This includes variations in spelling of words with more than one spelling,³² or variants resulting in equivalent sentences, due to the nature of Koine Greek. We will see later that this minor orthographic variation also specially applies to the so-called nomina sacra found in some manuscripts. The great majority of all textual differences, strictly speaking, fall into this category. Whichever variant or spelling you might take, the translation would be unchanged, because these variations are just a different spelling of the same word, or similar such minor differences that mean exactly the same thing in Koine Greek. There are a few of these that do affect meaning, however, which we will very briefly mention later.

Beginning in 1546, an official royal printer in Paris named Robert Estienne, or Robert Stephens (Latin: Stephanus) began to publish works of the same ambition. He sought to represent the original Greek language New Testament using movable type. Boasting a long career as a lexicographer who had already published the landmark Latin lexicon “Thesaurus linguae latinae,” he went on to produce four editions of the Textus Receptus. In contrast to common assumptions, Stephanus did not attribute any of Erasmus’ editions as a source for his work, instead building his own four editions from an increasing library of Greek manuscripts available to him, the first three increasing in sophistication, and culminating in his 3rd edition ‘T.R.’ of 1550, which afterward became used as a primary source for many scholars in both translation and textual critical studies. His final edition came the next year, with the addition of verse divisions which have become standard in all New Testaments, including the New Testament of the Geneva Bible completed in 1557.

The prominent Biblical scholar Theodore Beza, who in 1558 became resident at Geneva, had at that point already begun his work in the field, having released his own first edition of the T.R. in 1556. At Geneva, Beza would go on to fill the position of primary lector at the academy there, succeeding John Calvin in 1564. He is traditionally ascribed five editions of his own, though with the inclusion of every release he is known to have made, his total work comprises ten editions, of which his most sophisticated and oft cited is his fifth major edition, and ninth overall, published in 1598.

Contrary to public imaginings, these were not all carbon copies of Erasmus’ hastily assembled version of the Greek New Testament, which was more of an aside to his Latin presentation according to his own words. Yet despite this, Erasmus did arrive very closely to the received text purely by nature of the task which he had assigned himself. But through the work of multiple projects by other scholars, of increasing sophistication, time and expense of resources, the limited number of problems with Erasmus’ T.R. editions were thoroughly scrutinized and ironed out of the independent ‘T.R.’ editions of Stephanus, Beza, and later works, all of which conform incredibly closely to one exact version of the scripture. A close examination of Mill’s apparatus, which he collated near the end of his life in 1707, shows the incredible level of uniformity between the editions of later scholars who contributed to the Textus Receptus problem set by collating the differences between authors, of which the vast majority are of no effect on any resultant translation. This demonstrates that the task of textual criticism had been accomplished. The foundation for any future work, it has been shown, had been faithfully laid down, at the appointed time.

Before we move on from the T.R., a comprehensive look at the substantive differences elicited by Mill, and of later collators such as F.H.A. Scrivener, reveals the perceptions of that time as wholly focused on variant Greek readings in a highly limited number of locations that today stand, with perhaps one exception, as well supported by the state of the manuscript evidence today, even if one entirely discounts the evidence of the textus receptus scholars themselves. Variations stand in the following locations:

Luke 17:36
Stephanus (1^st thru 3^{rd ed} only): [omit verse]
Beza: include entire verse*

John 16:33
Stephanus: ἔχετε = “have” tribulation
Beza: ἕξετε = “shall have” tribulation*

Romans 12:11
Stephanus: καιρω = “time”
Beza: κυριω = “Lord”*

1 Timothy 1:4
Stephanus: οικονομιαν = “dispensation”
Beza: οικοδομιαν = “edification/edifying/building”*

Hebrews 9:1
Stephanus: σκηνη = “tabernacle”
Beza: [omit word]*

James 2:18
Stephanus: εκ = “by”
Beza: χωρις = “without”*

1 John 2:23
Stephanus: [omit]
Beza: ο ομολογων τον υιον και τον πατερα εχει = “[but] he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also.”*

Indicated with an asterisk are the readings that ultimately became part of the English translations. In every case, the T.R. of Elzevir, 1624 ed., also agreed with Beza, except in Hebrews 9:1 and James 2:18. It is also worth noting that the difference in the book of Revelation 16:5 amounts to Beza’s expansion of a nomen sacrum, so it does not amount to a translational difference as nomina sacra are always expanded into their original form in the translation. Interestingly, Elzevir of 1624 followed Stephanus on this, while the Elzevir (1633) edition concurs with Beza. The final case to touch upon is the one substantive variant found in the Authorized Version (KJV) that is in neither T.R. of Stephanus or Beza. This is the case of John 8:6.

The Authorized Version reads: “This they said, tempting him, that they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not.”

The last six words are based on the known source text: “μὴ προσποιούμενος”

The later T.R. did not include these words here at all, but interestingly, the 1516 first edition of Erasmus, the Complutensian Polyglot, and perhaps importantly, the Nuremberg Polyglot did include them. The Nuremberg Polyglot of 1599 is a twelve-language interlinear, including Elias Hutter, the publisher’s, own translation of the New Testament into Hebrew. The Greek column contained this form of John 8:6, which is found in the King James Version.

With regard to these standing locations: with a few exceptions, all of these had been included as early as the Geneva Bible of 1560 and the Bishop’s Bible of 1568, two independent English translations of the Bible, long before 1611. The only exceptions are that in James 2:18, the Bishop’s Bible alone followed Stephanus; and in 1 John 2:23, the Geneva Bible omitted, while the Bishop’s Bible included with brackets.

The King James Bible for its part, included the last six words of John 8:6 and the last part of 1 John 2:23 in italics. This can be seen in the latter case because the word “but” would have been in italics already, so it was placed (since the 1769 edition) in brackets as well to signify double-italics.

In light of this, it is also worth noting emphatically that none of these projects disagreed on their steadfast inclusion of the last twelve verses of Mark, of Acts 8:37, of 1 John 5:7, and of the respective received versions of verses 21:24 and 22:19 in the book of Revelation. The evidence shows that had Beza, Stephanus, Elzevir or the A.V. translators seen any reason to deviate here, or even add a condition, any one of them would not have hesitated to do so. We have to conclude in light of this that they had at their disposal manuscript evidence that we are not considering today, perhaps manuscripts that are no longer available. This should come as no surprise, considering that we rely on many copyists of former times (many of whom we know not their names) having access to former reliable copies of scripture in their respective time. So it makes equally as much sense to say so then, as to say so here. They held these verses in the original Greek, to be the received version of Scripture: the word that all Bibles have ever contained. They agree in unison to throw out the eclectic text variants of modern times, such as the removal of 1 John 5:7. These are the verses that they held up. Considering their superior historical provenance, the conditions under which it so happens they independently worked, their sources’ unfalsifiably preserved existence until this day, and how tightly their independent works, which we have just proven to be independent, conform to one another, it follows that the legitimate study of textual criticism in the original language will be forever limited to at most whatever margin of difference between these witnesses exists. Anything else is equivalent to denial of the doctrine of preservation of the scripture.³³

It so happens that legitimate textual criticism has since strengthened the inclusion of Luke 17:36 and of the second part of 1 John 2:23. Considering the axioms on which the study of preserved scripture rests, additional manuscript evidence is only able to strengthen existing conclusions, never the other way around. Logically speaking, one can always wait to see more evidence that the received text is right, and has no reason to be concerned with anything that suggests the world has experienced a contra-scriptural history. This is also true, by definition, of anything stated in the word of God. But it seems important to start with the immutability of that word itself, as we have so far done. It seems to have been important to the enemies of that word to start by attempting, by whatever angles and avenues seem available, and in whatever small ways it can manage, to attack this immutability. This is often done by feigning to be a textual critic. When presented with the above, and no longer able to rely on an assumed ignorance of them, it has seemed important to them always to resort to whatever is the next best thing that can be thought of to try to attack its immutability— which is usually, by simply claiming to be a textual critic and scholar that dissents from the above facts, but without providing any justification except that which ignores the above facts.

Now we may close this first part and begin to examine the early English translations of the aforementioned T.R., beginning with William Tyndale in 1524. Again, contrary to common misconception, these translations were not written in Old English or Middle English, but rather they form much of the basis for modern English, as would eventually become formalized in later English literature. The lack of press glyphs such as “þ” at this time would ultimately result in them being dropped from the English language, in this case being replaced with the digraph “th.” This outline will now cover the approach of the Bible to standard English.

Part 2: Timeline of the Bible in early modern English

Within a year of Tyndale’s translation project, he was able to first release an initial draft, in 1525, of his New Testament in English. However, this was interrupted, prompting Tyndale to move his printing activity from Cologne to Worms. He completed the New Testament here in the year 1526, and soon after, these translations were being printed in Antwerp, with the intention of smuggling in the finished work to the people of England. The main virtue of his translations were their low production cost and mechanical consistency, as well as the fact that they were translations based on the received Greek language textus receptus. Great amounts of wealth poured into the project, keeping the print shops running from customers who were interested to obtain a copy.

Also in 1525, a press floor in Venice had begun publication of Daniel Bomberg’s standardized Hebrew-language Old Testament, which he had compiled and edited along with his chief editor, Yaakov ben Hayyim ibn Adonijah (aka ‘Jacob Ben Chajim’). This would serve as an important textual reference for many Old Testaments in Europe until Rudolf Kittel’s Biblia Hebraica in 1906, which became the preferred reference for modern translations. However, the Bomberg 1525 edition was not the only resource available, as the Complutensian Polyglot had for instance included a Hebrew Old Testament in 1517.

By 1530, William Tyndale had completed his own translation of the Hebrew-language Pentateuch into English to go along with the New Testament. In 1531, he also separately translated the book of Jonah. In 1534, he began mass-producing the second edition of his Bible, which contained the New Testament and the five books of Moses from the Old Testament. Around this time, he began further translation projects, by producing the translation of Joshua through 2 Chronicles. In 1535, Tyndale was betrayed to the authorities and imprisoned. Ultimately, approximately one third of the words in the Authorized Version overall are derived from Tyndale’s work.

The project was handed down to Miles Coverdale, who in 1535 published the first Coverdale Bible. This first edition consisted of the second edition of the Tyndale Bible, plus Miles Coverdale’s own translation of the remaining books (Joshua through Malachi, plus apocrypha) but these were derived using his Latin and his German skills, not Hebrew; most likely derived from standardized versions that had long been in print by then. Thus, this became the first printed English translation of the full Bible from any source. A second critically edited edition followed in 1537. By 1538, Coverdale was in negotiations with authorities in England to begin printing officially sanctioned Bibles.

In 1537, John Rogers began publication of the Bible called the Matthew Bible, under a pseudonym Thomas Matthew. This translation contained not only Tyndale’s 1534 work, but also what is likely the unpublished translations of Tyndale from the Hebrew, for Joshua through 2 Chronicles. This edition also included the latest revisions Tyndale had made to his translation of Genesis which could also be found in Tyndale’s rare third 1536 edition. Matthew’s Bible was still in demand and being printed as late as 1551.

The Great Bible is the fourth major translation to bring up. Having been given official sanction from Henry VIII, Miles Coverdale was part of this project. This edition took the Matthew Bible as a base text, and with the endorsement of English authorities it added a handful of interpolations from the Vulgate that were not found in any of Tyndale’s editions of the New Testament up to that point. The Psalms in particular, as the state church Psalter, received editorial attention as they were to be a part of the state church liturgy. However, major or permeating changes did not occur as this Bible still mostly reflected its base text. The Great Bible was released in 1539 and by the end of 1541 it had undergone six editions in quick succession.

As formerly discussed, the later T.R. editions of Stephanus in the years 1546-1551 helped to drive further translation projects of many languages from the reformed academy in Geneva. By 1557, a full translation of the Greek New Testament had been produced by the scholarship in Geneva, who made use of all the reference materials they had available to them, such as the original language manuscripts for textual criticism, versions and manuscripts from the Vaudois and other intermediate-language materials of lexicographical use for the translation, and a library of existing English translational and literary works that would have been available to them at that time to provide further context for the translation. With all of this, the complete Geneva Bible of the first edition was released in 1560. This was the first English Bible to derive entirely from the original languages in both Old and New Testament. It was also several other firsts: first to make use of Stephanus’ critical textual basis, it was printed in a format that was easily carried in the hand and sold cheaply, and it used a more readable Roman typeface font. The Geneva Bible also introduced all the traditional verse divisions. In addition to this, it also contained voluminous marginal notes, of a notably provocative and incendiary reformed theological slant. Most particularly, its footnotes were considered as being subversive to royal authority by high authorities in England. Nevertheless, the Bible came to be very widespread.

At this time the legacy of the Great Bible was seen by many English royalist officials as so strongly challenged, that a new translation was needed on their part, in order to maintain the conformity of the state church sanctioned Bible to the highest standards of textual criticism. In other words, they were motivated to keep pace with the Geneva Bible which everyone knew was more accurate. They were aware of the fact that the officially mandated Bible to be read in churches, the Great Bible of 1539/41, was not fully based on the original language sources and was therefore less accurate. They realized that accuracy of translation to the preserved original language version of the Bible was important.

By 1568, English officials had published their own much more accurate translation, the Bishops’ Bible. This had also made use of Greek and Hebrew scholarship to construct an English text in accordance with the universally acknowledged work underlying the Textus Receptus. The work done was on a scale significantly greater than the Great Bible, with the main feature being a reflection of Stephanus’ corrections to Erasmus, as well as the use of Hebrew for the entire Old Testament, just as the Geneva Bible had done. This represents another independent start-to-finish translation project from the original languages, with consideration for the already existing state of the English language at the time. The only exception to this is the apocrypha were not worked on and remained in their former state from the 1539/41 translation.

However, with the Bishops’ Bible, some unusual choices were made. In their new 1568 translation of the Psalms, the Bishop’s Bible translators had reversed (almost) every reference of LORD and God. This is strikingly apparent in verses such as Psalm 46:7³⁴ or Psalm 91:2.³⁵ Despite this, the Psalter in the back retained the Great Bible translations, which did not exhibit this unusual characteristic. Starting with the 1577 edition, all future editions of the Bishops’ Bible remove the newer translation, and the Great Bible’s version of Psalms is reinserted. Also, starting with the second edition in 1572, future editions of the Bishop’s Bible contained more “ecclesiastical” translations in English as compared to the Geneva Bible. Some of these made it into the Authorized Version, such as “bishoprick” in Acts 1:20 as opposed to “charge,” and “presbytery” in 1 Timothy 4:14 instead of “eldership,” and “charity” instead of “love” in many passages.

It wasn’t long before the Geneva Bible was allowed openly in England. Starting in 1576, at the time of the first major revision, editions of the Geneva Bible began to be printed in Britain. The last major edition of the Geneva Bible was the 1599 edition, following which no major changes have been made. It continued to be printed until the outbreak of the English Civil War. This is when the mostly puritan, presbyterian, independent, and nonconformist parliamentarians began to advocate for the Authorized Version, due in part to endorsements by Oliver Cromwell and others such as William Kilburne. A civil war-era plan to add the Geneva’s footnotes into the Authorized Version was cut short by the dissolution of the long parliament by Cromwell’s faction on Dec. 7, 1648.

The second part of our outline closes with the following notes on the making of the King James Bible (KJV). This was the “Authorized” Version. By its printers and commissioners, it was the official translation, as it succeeded what the previous Bibles authorized by the state had been. This 1611 translation of the Bible was also called ‘Authorized’ in comparison to the ‘Revised Version’ (1880) at the start of the history of the modern versions. The informal name King James Bible specifies details of its origin as having been produced in the year 1611, which was during the reign of King James.

The unacceptability of the Bishops’ Bible editions for the puritans and nonconformists of Britain, and the continued unacceptability of the Geneva Bible (primarily for its footnotes) by royalist authorities of England, led to a situation where one Bible was read in non-conforming congregations and in homes, while another was to be read in state churches. This cause eventually found its way to the heir of the English crown, James VI and I. It was agreed upon between the factions and concluded by the king that an even more substantial translation project would be undertaken, with unlimited access to resources and a large gathering of scholars of all the classical languages. The timing of this project would almost coincide with the latest developments on the T.R. problem set, and had the council been called even five years earlier, the result may have been different in those places where Beza’s T.R. was ultimately used; most notably in the eight locations of substance mentioned earlier. Not only was this the most accurate in that respect, but the translation work was also far more sophisticated and well-supplied than any previously had been, being composed of 54 worthy scholars, of which at least 47 took part. They had more time than anyone had before to focus on completing one translation from the source material. This is, as I will show soon, a great advantage for us today. The entire project was completed in two phases, with the first phase breaking the group into six groups, and the second phase allowing time for a ‘General Committee of Review’ to review the entire translation, line by line. The first phase lasted from 1604-1608, and the second phase began in January 1609. By 1611, editions of the Authorized Version were being printed and sold under official auspices.

Now, we turn to the third section of this outline: an outline of the history of the Bible under modern English or “proper” English, beginning in 1611 until today. To understand what this means, we should first distinguish proper English from the many variations of non-standard English that are out there. That which was used to define words in both the Dictionary of the English Language, 1755 by Samuel Johnson and the American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828 by Noah Webster is considered to be the foundation of the English language as we now know it. It so happens that the only Bible that was in use in the English-speaking world in those years was the A.V., so it follows that since both of these dictionaries cite it as authority for the definitions of words, proper English must then, by its own very definition, conform to the Authorized Version. The alternative would be to say that not only was the Bible wrong in one of its translational choices, but so too are the British and American dictionaries which rely on it as an unchallenged authority. If one is questioning the dictionary on the definition of a word, it follows that one is either trying to change the language from its standard to a non-standard form, or to create a new language entirely. This practice may be simply referred to as the attempt to redefine words.

So, in addition to the unparalleled accuracy of the 1611 translation project— which can be commended to its unique access to what we know are received original language and also intermediate resources, and to its untold level of sophistication and amount of resources dedicated to its task— we may also, from the above remarks which also happen to be true, conclude its unique and singular history in the formation of the English language, as well. By this, it may be said that instead of trying to change the usage of the words in the Authorized Version of the Bible, we ought rather to change our usage of these words to be in line with the Authorized Version. This is if we want to understand standard English. Our word definitions derive from it. As an example, a better precision in measuring light gives us a more accurate realization of the meter because the meter is defined scientifically by the speed of light. So also an increased understanding of the Biblical passages in the Authorized Version gives a better understanding of the English words that it uses and defines, because those words are defined as used in the Authorized Version. This also helps at the same time to understand how one translates from those original languages into the “standard” version of our own.

Part 3: Timeline of the Bible in standard English

It follows from this that the history of the English Bibles from this point on consists of the editorial history of the Authorized King James Bible of 1611. We shall not dwell too much here on the particularities of every subsequent edition— this will be a later subject— but will endeavor to outline the major points of editorial historical development surrounding the A.V., heretofore referred to as being written in proper English. This language may be contrasted with the generally less precise vernacular English dialects of the same era, including contemporary English, which at times will be neutrally referred to in the above context as non-standard. See the appendix below for an example of this usage.

In the first seventeen years of the printing of the Authorized Version, the only holder of the royal letters patent was an official known as the royal printer to the King, Robert Barker. With this came official license to print the Bible for sale. He oversaw the publication of the earliest editions of this Bible. Compared to the consistency of today, these, earliest of all, contained disproportionately many typographical errors and clearly unintended misprints. However, by careful consideration of the evidence, an enormous effort was clearly taken in the first six years to spot and correct every misplaced letter or glyph on the printing plates for subsequent runs.

These corrections would have been made in reference to the handwritten master copy, or by noticing and correcting obvious misspellings in the print sheets. The handwritten copy is now believed to have been destroyed in the London fire of 1666. Nevertheless, it was available and as one might expect, it would have been used as a reference for bringing what are clearly minor printing errors, when noticed, fully in line for future editions. These were especially plenteous in the early editions under Barker, and his editions in the opening years may be categorized as: 1611 1^st ed., 1611 2^nd ed., 1612, 1613, 1616, and 1617 editions.

Looking past unintended misprints however, the 1611 1^st edition is still found to be the true base text for all KJV editions, despite its harder to read archaic word spellings and type font. Nothing to the contrary has been found, despite extensive searching.

Using as examples the most noticeable misprints that exist in the first edition help to explain this. They are as follows:

— In Exodus 14:10 the following was accidentally repeated twice:
and the children of Israel lift vp their eyes, and beholde, the Egyptians marched after them, and they were sore afraid:

— In Leviticus 17:14 the phrase “ye shall eat” was mistyped as “ye shall not eat”

— In Ruth 3:15 the phrase “she went” was mistyped as “he went”

— In Ecclesiastes 8:17 the phrase “yet he shall not find it” was omitted

— In Hosea 6:5 the word “hewed” was mistyped as “shewed”

Of these five instances, four of them were corrected in the 1611 2^nd ed., and the Ecclesiastes phrase “yet he shall not find it” was restored in the 1629 edition. Of all the misprints, these five stand out the most, mainly because the last four might be difficult to detect without referring to the master copy; nevertheless these were caught and corrected within the end of the year. Usually, the unintended misprints where they existed would invalidate the spelling or grammar of the sentence in a noticeable way and the correct reading could be easily ascertained. For instance, the 2^nd edition corrected Matthew 26:34 which had misspelled “night” as “might” and Mark 14:67 which had misspelled “warming” as “warning” in the 1^st edition. The 2^nd edition removed the extra repeated word “that” in Jeremiah 15:10, and in Matthew 4:25, when it repeated the word “great” twice.

Other among the few of the most noteworthy corrections were neither drastic misprints, nor were they as unusual as the above, but they were found to be noteworthy for the fact that they reinsert a word that was mistakenly left out in a former edition, which would have probably required access to the master copy in order to rectify. Combined with these was an endless wave of minor typographical errors. Unfortunately, due to the demanding process of the earliest years, Robert Barker did not have time to recycle out the older printing sheets. His solution was to make the first two editions match up in each of their page contents, which allowed him to quickly assemble copies that, we find today, contain some pages from either 1^st or 2^nd 1611 edition. Neither was Barker’s production process free from the unfortunate instances where new misprints cropped up in his later editions. Although the trend was certainly for more corrections to be found than new mistakes arise, the reputation even in those days of the royal printer’s copies was not fantastic. Until 1628, Barker held the monopoly, so the first seventeen years chronicle his efforts to create a consistent representation of the master copy that he had been given using the archaic technology of the time.

By far the most noteworthy misprints of the 2^nd edition were in Exodus 9:13, where it misprinted “serve me” as “serve thee” and in Matthew 26:36, where it misprinted “Jesus” as “Judas,” although the latter would have been easy to detect. These were not in the 1^st edition. This is known as the “she” Bible because it fixed the misprint in Ruth 3:15 which had written that “he” went into the city in the 1^st edition.

The third edition that Barker released came in the year 1612. It is clear that this project branched off at some point from that of correcting the 2^nd edition, because of the 28 most noteworthy corrections found there, the 1612 edition only had 13 of them. The difference with this edition is very noticeable, because this edition was smaller and used the Roman typeface font, as opposed to the gothic-style blackletter of the oversized pulpit Bibles that were the 1^st and 2^nd edition. Not only did this edition include those 13 of the most obvious misprint corrections, it also included a vast multitude of its own corrections that the 1^st and 2^nd edition had both missed. These range from the straightforward such as correcting “fro” to proper spelling “from” in Genesis 7:4, and correcting “cried loud” to “cried aloud” in 1 Kings 18:28; to interesting catches as “house of the God” to “house of God” in Ezra 4:24 and “reign therefore” to “therefore reign” in Romans 6:12.

All of these can be seen as clearly unintended misprints being corrected according to a master copy. The relative rarity of substantial misprints (only a tiny fraction of total misprints), the highly consistent translational quality of the text elsewhere, and the relative speed with which the corrections came gives great confidence in this process. Also beginning with the 1612 edition and continuing to the very end of the line, we begin to see another kind of change that is less clearly understood, namely the practice of systematic capitalizations. This may simply have been paid far less attention in the past by the royal printer due to the fact that blackletter capital letters, especially of ‘S,’ are much less visibly different compared to their lowercase. Now that a version was being printed in Roman typeface, it appears an effort was made to bring the text into consistency with itself. It is worthwhile to note, however, that these changes are seen as purely a matter of format, as the words read aloud make absolutely no difference whether capital or lower-case. However, in an effort to convey as much precise meaning as possible, we see that the printers formatted the text as precisely as possible to account for as much minute cross-referential information as could be done.

For this reason, then, it seems that the 1612 edition KJV changed “son of God” in Daniel 3:25 to “Son of God.”³⁶ Likewise, the word “spirit” was capitalized in 1 Samuel 16:14 (first instance),³⁷ and in Romans 8:2, 8:9, 8:11, 8:14, 8:16, Galatians 3:2, 4:6, 5:5, 5:16, 5:17, 5:18, 5:22, 6:8, Ephesians 6:18, Philippians 1:19, Hebrews 10:29, 1 John 4:2, and Revelation 2:11. At the same time the capitalization was removed from “Spirit” in Revelation 17:3.

By 1613 Barker had completed the printing sheets for another blackletter edition, this time in a slightly smaller format than 1611 with more lines per page, thus not allowing him to intersperse pages with the 1611 editions. In this edition the most important corrections from all the previous ones were retained, and more corrections were added.

Included in 1613 are the first examples of another interesting kind of correction. Due to the lack of any standardized spelling procedures, as this was before any dictionary had been written, Barker had arranged the word spellings to align each line, substituting ‘&’ and adding extra ‘e’ to the end of words where needed to make the line breaks as manageable as possible. He even used different spellings of the same word mere sentences apart: for example in the 1^st edition, the word “flower” was alternatively spelled as “floure” and as “flowre” in James 1:10-11. This lack of any standard spelling of words had an interesting effect on certain word-pairs, for example, “be” and “bee” were used interchangeably in Barker’s editions. Context made it clear which word it is, but later, these spellings would be standardized, so that “bee” only occurs when the insect is being spoken of. Similar pairs are “prey-pray,” “born-borne,” and “than-then.” But perhaps among all word pairs, the most inextricable would be “travail-travel.” We find the first such word spelling resolution here with both Isaiah 13:8 and 21:3 being fixed from saying “travelleth” to saying “travaileth.” It is interesting to note that among the very last set of corrections, not until after 1885, would at Numbers 20:14 also update the spelling of the word “travel” to “travail.”

Other examples of first-time corrections we can attribute to the 1613 edition are those of “my lord” to “my Lord” in Exodus 4:10,³⁸ of “Lord” to “Lᴏʀᴅ” (small-caps) at Numbers 20:7, and, most stunning, “spirit” to “Spirit” at John 16:13.³⁹ Also the year 1613. An interesting restoration is the missing word “hand” to Matthew 6:3 where before it had just said “thy right”. Lastly, however, we mention two short-lived misprints originating in 1613 edition, which are at Ezekiel 23:7 which said “delighted” instead of “defiled” and at 2 Timothy 4:16, it said “may be laid” instead of “may not be laid.”

The 1616 edition followed the 1612 edition as another Roman typeface. It made three interesting restorations that would not be obvious unless the printers had recourse to the original sources. In Leviticus 26:40 the phrase “the iniquity of” was restored to “their iniquity and the iniquity of.” In Ephesians 6:24, the final “Amen” was correctly restored to the Bible. This also happens to be removed by textual critics. Also, in 2 Timothy 4:13, the words “and the books” were now correctly included.

The 1617 edition was a blackletter that seems to most closely resemble the 2^nd 1611 edition, and somehow it missed out on most of the corrections of 1612 and 1613, but it did include some that the others missed. Most importantly, in Psalm 69:32 it restored “seek good” to “seek God,” and in Malachi 4:2 the edition redeemed the grammar “and shall go” to “and ye shall go.” It is worth noting that basically all of these (of which I note the most interesting) corrections not only would have brought diffuse misprints in Barker’s KJV editions back in line with the handwritten master copy, but also, bring them back into agreement with the Geneva and Bishops’ Bible, which hold a high degree of conformity in most places and provide further indication that these were unintentional misprints, and where they happened to be found, were never meant to be in the final copy.

After this, demand started to come under control and Robert Barker wouldn’t release any further updates until 1629. However, he had lost the monopoly when in 1628, Charles I also granted the rights to print the Bible to Cambridge University, where for accuracy and editorial prowess Barker’s so-called “London” editions were very quickly left behind. They would also sell for close to production price, ruining Barker’s business. In 1629 the Cambridge edition of the KJV, probably well-prepared in advance, was released to the market. Barker would go on to release several more versions after 1629, but their influence is barely felt; disputably his 1630 edition pre-dated Cambridge 1629 in two locations; In Jeremiah 52:1 the singular “one and twenty year” was corrected to “one and twenty years” and in the book of Revelation 17:4, “precious stone” was corrected to “precious stones,” which makes more sense. The biggest downturn for Barker came in 1631 when one of his presses turned out an edition in 1631 which contained the misprint “thou shalt commit adultery” in Exodus 20:14, leaving out the word “not”. He was fined an excessive amount of money and all the copies were destroyed at his loss, so he ended up spending much of his time in prison after that.

Cambridge University, in league with several of the translators, released their 1629 edition. It offered several advantages. It was printed in a neat Roman typeface, and it updated the word spelling so that the letters ‘u’ and ‘v’ were in their normal places. It also began to use the letter ‘J’ where before ‘I’ had been (archaically for the time) used. These were all causes of complaint that buyers had against all of Barker’s editions. The scholars also started introducing apostrophe as a symbol of punctuation, where before, Barker had included none. They also apparently took over the project of amending the marginal notes and of the apparatus of italic words in the text. They had clearly prepared in advance, because it took them only one year to get an edition to market that corrected far more than any of the “London” editions had. For instance, the word “bee” alone was changed to “be” in 1347 places between Genesis 1:14 through book of Revelation 22:11. The only remaining instances of “bee” referred to the animal. They also had no time to include the apocrypha, which was left out of this edition.

Another interesting distinction the scholars made at Cambridge was the fine subject/object distinction of “ye/you.” They found thirteen places from Genesis 18:5 (third instance) to 1 John 2:13 to correct “you” to the more technically correct “ye” and one place in Isaiah 30:11 to do the reverse.

Several particle corrections of importance were: in 2 Samuel 16:8 the phrase “taken to thy mischief” is really “taken in thy mischief,” in 1 Chronicles 11:15 the phrase “the rock of David” was really supposed to be “the rock to David,” and in Mark 14:36 “not that I will” is supposed to be “not what I will.” Most of the remaining improvements are regimental in nature, having to do with exhaustively improving the spelling consistency, while the rest have broad support from the predecessor Geneva and Bishop’s Bibles as very likely having been in the master copy but misprinted by Barker or his team.

Capitalization corrections continued here with Lord → LORD six times, LORD → Lord a single time, Lord → lord six times, and LORD → lord twice in 2 Chron. 13:6, and Zechariah 6:4.
Also spirit → Spirit 36 times, Spirit → spirit 22 times, and God → god once.

Also, before the 1629 Cambridge KJV, there are two spots in which leave a sour note if left unchanged, these are 1 Corinthians 14:23,⁴⁰ mistakenly said “into some place” instead of “into one place” and 2 Corinthians 9:4,⁴¹ which had “happily” instead of “haply.” The 1629 Cambridge corrects these. Two other stand out corrections are Galatians 3:13, which had “on tree” instead of “on a tree” and finally book of Revelation 18:12, which now spelt “Thine” as “thyine”. Lastly, the words “yet he shall not find it” were restored to Ecclesiastes 8:17.⁴²

The blogwriter has in his possession a fine copy of this edition that was printed in 1637 and can confirm that there are no apocrypha therein.

The quality of presentation improved with a second major edition by Cambridge and its league of A.V. translators, known as the 1638 edition. The Authorized 1638 Cambridge KJV then became the base text for editions to come by other authors – who were mainly interested in publishing their marginal notes and did little to change the text. This status quo would prevail until the year 1755 when Samuel Johnson’s dictionary came out.

The capitalization corrections in the 1638 KJV stand as LORD → Lord two times and that’s it.

There were also exactly two instances of “you” being corrected to “ye.”

However, in at least some copies, “Ænon” was misspelled as “Enon”. It had been rendered as “Ænon” in 1629.

Incredible are the nature of many of the biggest corrections in this edition, which I have noticed specifically that restore words in a manner rather unlike other editions in this series. The specific sections I refer to here are, as follows, (with 1629 → 1638):
Genesis 19:21 — “concerning this thing” → “concerning this thing also”
Exodus 21:32 — “shekels” → “shekels of silver”
Leviticus 26:13 — “reformed by” → “reformed by me by”
1 Kings 9:11 — “that then Solomon” → “that then king Solomon”
2 Kings 11:10 — “the temple” → “the temple of the LORD”
2 Chronicles 28:11 — “wrath of God” → “wrath of the LORD”
Mark 10:18 — “there is no man” → “there is none”
Romans 14:10 — “we shall” → “for we shall”
2 Corinthians 9:5 — “not of covetousness” → “and not as of covetousness”
Jude v. 25 — “now and ever” → “both now and ever”
Revelation 1:4 — “Churches in Asia” → “churches which are in Asia”
Revelation 5:13 — “honour, glory” → “and honour, and glory”

The reason why these caught my attention is because they all moved the A.V. specifically away from the Bishops’ Bible reading and onto or close to the Geneva Bible reading for those verses.

These at least I did notice among the noteworthy updates of this edition. There may be other changes, which I haven’t checked for this quality among the many less substantial changes. Beyond that, there were some restorations of words which the Geneva and Bishops’ Bible both had, including Mark 5:6 where it is restored from “he came” to “he ran,” and Matthew 12:23 which is restored from “is this the son” to “is not this the son.” Also 1 Timothy 1:4 is returned from “edifying” to “godly edifying”— just as the Bishops’ and Geneva before had.

Needed grammatical corrections followed as well: 1 Corinthians 14:10 was corrected from “are without signification” to “is without signification” and Hebrews 11:23 was corrected from “and they not afraid” to “and they were not afraid”.

Two places are of interest that correct word particles, which are Ezekiel 5:1, which returned from “take the balances” to “take thee balances” and also Daniel 12:13 which returned from “stand in the lot” to “stand in thy lot”. Also, the word “Saphir” updated its spelling to “sapphire” in Lamentations 4:7, in Ezekiel 28:13 and in Revelation 21:19.

After this came many KJV editions that adhered very closely to the Cambridge 1638 edition. They appeared to proceed in three lines. The first line consisted of the 1664 KJV with marginal notes by John Canne, which had a further revision in 1682 that also added an introduction by Canne, and was then used for the 1747 “Scotch” edition. This line appears to have been the first to use spirit → Spirit in Acts 10:19 and 1 Thessalonians 5:19; and Spirit → spirit in Ephesians 1:17. In any case, these three capitalizations ended up in the 1769 revision. The second line consisted of the 1683 KJV which was edited and with marginal notes by Dr. Anthony Scattergood. The most substantial result of the editing here resulted in a greater use of “graduated” punctuation, meaning more colons and semicolons. This seems to have possibly had an influence on the graduated punctuation that was enacted in the 1769 revision. The 1683 KJV was also later used for the “High Anglican” 1701 KJV version by Dr. William Lloyd. It is noteworthy for being the first to include the Ussher chronology tables⁴³ in the back of the book, which we may discuss another time. But the 1701 version was not as widely used as they had intended it would be. The third line consists only of the 1743 edition that was made for the SPCK and edited by F.S. Parris. It is known for making a few obvious corrections that fine-tuned the grammar.

Also, by 1675 Oxford University had obtained rights to print the Authorized Version and began selling its slightly different version of the 1638 edition. The “Oxford” editions are easy to identify by their unremarkable variant spellings of specific words. Finally, the royal printers— that is, whoever held the letters patent from London— also began to sell a slightly modified version of the 1638 text, beginning in 1672, which also used slightly different spelling conventions. These are known as the “London” editions.

After a run of Bibles in 1683, the Cambridge side fell silent for about sixty years. Among other things, the publication in 1755 of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary of the English Language would cause a partnership to be formed for updating the 1638 text, between the printer Joseph Bentham, the bookseller Benjamin Dod, and the editor Dr. Thomas Paris in 1760. Also known to have worked on the project is Dr. Henry Therond. Both editors were of Cambridge University. This group would be instrumental in preparing what became the 1762 revision of the Authorized Version. This is not however to be confused with the 1769 revision.

Armed with the tools needed to perform a permanent update to the spelling and other orthographic conventions of the A.V., as well as other items of interest, Dr. Paris finished the work in 1762 and had the final products printed in Dod’s warehouse. However, a fire subsequently raged through the warehouse, apparently leaving only a small margin of the product, possibly rendering their project unable to replicate any further copies. In any case, only a small handful of copies survived, some of which survive today, but the project was never published. Therefore it is often known as the Cambridge 1762 draft. It is unmistakeable that one of these copies fell into the hands of another editor by the name of Dr. Benjamin Blayney, who worked for Oxford University. Dr. Blayney would eventually incorporate most of the revisions that we see were made by Dr. Paris and would himself make almost as many additional revisions of his own to this, which became the 1769 Oxford edition KJV.

Starting in the 1762 draft, we notice the following advantages over its basis text, the 1638 format. The use of apostrophes to signify possessives becomes standard throughout, whereas previous forms such as “Asa his” are now rendered “Asa’s”. Spelling standards are implemented, where for instance in 477 places, the word “than” is changed to “then” or the inverse according to English convention. Similar with “rend–rent” and others. The italics are also extensively more amended toward the place where they are today.

The word “you” is changed to “ye” in 136 places, and “ye” is changed to “you” in one place.

lord → Lord once in Judges 6:15, Lord → LORD once in Isaiah 34:16.
spirit → Spirit seven times in the Old Testament, and also in Luke 2:27, 4:1.
Spirit → spirit once in 1 Corinthians 2:12 (second instance)⁴⁴
son → Son once in Daniel 7:13
also, Jesus Christ → Christ Jesus once in Romans 3:24.

The following notable individual cases can also be considered to be improvements on the basis of standardized orthographic convention:
Exodus 21:19— “throughly” → “thoroughly”
1 Kings 6:1— “and fourscore year” → “and eightieth year”
Job 14:9— “sent” → “scent”
Isaiah 23:4— “travel” → “travail”
Jeremiah 15:7— “sith” → “since”
Luke 8:5— “the ways side” → “the way side”
1 Corinthians 13:2— “have no charity” → “have not charity”
2 Corinthians 5:17— “past” → “passed”
Philemon v.9— “such a one” → “such an one”

The following may be made on the basis of precise grammar, verb tense or plurality bases:

2 Samuel 4:4— “his feet, and was” → “his feet. He was”
Isaiah 44:20— “feedeth of ashes” → “feedeth on ashes”
Zechariah 4:2— “which were upon” → “which are upon”
Luke 20:12— “the third” → “a third”
Acts 15:23— “and wrote” → “and they wrote”
Romans 4:12— “but also walk” → “but who also walk”
Romans 4:19— “hundred year” → “hundred years”
Romans 11:28— “your sake” → “your sakes”
2 Corinthians 11:26— “In journeying often” → “In journeyings often”
2 Timothy 1:12— “And I am persuaded” → “And am persuaded”
Revelation 22:2— “of either side” → “on either side”

Finally we take note of two irregularities for later, which first appeared in this edition, and would eventually be reversed over time. We note that the 1762 draft says “and Sheba” instead of “or Sheba” at Joshua 19:2, and that at Jeremiah 34:16 it says “whom he had set” instead of “whom ye had set.”

Next to examine is the 1769 Oxford KJV which, as previously discussed, inherited so many of the same revisions as the 1762 Cambridge draft, that it is safe to say that the 1762 edition formed the base text on which further modifications for the 1769 were made. Whereas the Cambridge draft had originally been printed by Bentham at Cambridge, the Oxford KJV of 1769 was printed by Clarendon Press, at Oxford.

Below is a report by Dr. Blayney about this Bible in 1769:

“The Editor of the two editions of the Bible lately printed at the Clarendon Press thinks it his duty, now that he has completed the whole in a course of between three and four years’ close application, to make his report to the Delegates of the manner in which that work has been executed; and hopes for their approbation. In the first place, according to the instructions he received, the folio edition of 1611, that of 1701, published under the direction of Bishop Lloyd, and two Cambridge editions of a late date, one in quarto, the other in octavo, have been carefully collated, whereby many errors that were found in former editions have been corrected, and the text reformed to such a standard of purity, as, it is presumed, is not to be met with in any other edition hitherto extant.
“The punctuation has been carefully attended to, not only with a view to preserve the true sense, but also to uniformity, as far as was possible. Frequent recourse has been had to the Hebrew and Greek Originals; and as on other occasions, so with a special regard to the words not expressed in the Original Language, but which our Translators have thought fit to insert in Italics, in order to make out the sense after the English idiom, or to preserve the connexion. And though Dr Paris made large corrections in this particular in an edition published at Cambridge, there still remained many necessary alterations, which escaped the Doctor’s notice; in making which the Editor chose not to rely on his own judgment singly, but submitted them all to the previous examination of the Select Committee, and particularly of the Principal of Hertford College, and Mr Professor Wheeler.”

It is often stated that the King James Bible that is in use today is that of the 1769 revision, and while this is true on some level, the fact remains that the physical format of the 1769 Oxford edition did still contain some differences significant enough to mention for our study. As with the 1611 edition to this point, none of the changes amounted to a real difference in the translation itself, as it may be read aloud; except where obvious typographical errors were discovered by the producers of the text, which caused it to misalign with the original handwritten translation. In the early days of the Barker editions, through 1629, most of the obvious misspellings were quickly eliminated. But some of the more pernicious typographical errors, ones disguised as legitimate words or almost-correct grammar, lay hidden for longer as the easier ones were removed more quickly. As the proofreading technology and orthographic standards improved, these inaccuracies— whether of a minute technical typographical nature, or of a failure to precisely conform to the original language source in a “difficult to see” way— were corrected: Either way these can all be attributed to some misprint at some stage causing a temporary misalignment to exist. At the same time, many ambiguities of not having standard spellings for words were resolved by the development of these standards. Many times, what originally had been an accepted spelling became technically incorrect, so the spelling was later fixed to account for this. Finally, the format and quality of the apparatuses provided with the Bible only became clearer and more consistent over time. But there could only be so many imprecisions left to find at the end of all of this, and then no more would remain. And, many times, the revisions were purely orthographic, as in the case of capitalizations. It is with this in mind that we continue to proofread the path forward from the 1769 Oxford edition to now.

The 1769 has few capitalization changes aside from the 1762. They include:
God → god once in Acts 28:6
LORD → Lord 4 times: Genesis 30:30, Jeremiah 7:14 (2nd and 3rd), Acts 2:34
Spirit → spirit once in Matthew 4:1
spirit → Spirit twice, in Acts 11:12 and 1 John 5:8

It so happens that all of these, but the first, will be reversed in future editions, so Dr. Blayney’s changes here, did not end up in KJVs of the 20th century, except where he changed “God” to “god” in Acts 28:6.

In the 1769 edition, the word “you” is changed to “ye” in 59 further places, and “ye” is changed to “you” in 11 places.

Starting with the original 1769 edition, the following words no longer share the same spelling but are always used in one correct way: “besides–beside,” “wife’s–wives,” “lifted–lift.”

The following notable individual cases can also be considered to be improvements on the basis of standardized orthographic convention:
Deuteronomy 11:30— “champion” → “champaign”
1 Kings 16:23— “thirty and one year” → “thirty and first year”
2 Kings 11:18— “throughly” → “thoroughly”
Ezekiel 1:17— “returned” → “turned”
Ephesians 2:11— “passed” → “past”

The following may be made on the basis of precise grammar, verb tense or plurality bases:

Leviticus 11:10— “not fins nor scales” → “not fins and scales”
2 Chronicles 16:6— “was a building” → “was building”
Psalm 141:9— “snare” → “snares”
Luke 23:32— “two other malefactors” → “two other, malefactors,”
John 11:34— “they say unto him” → “they said unto him”
Acts 19:19— “many also of them” → “many of them also”
Titus 2:13
— “the great God, and our Saviour” → “the great God and our Saviour”

This essentially concludes all of the most important differences in format that Dr. Blayney introduced, of that which ended up being permanent. What’s listed above was part of the original print 1769 edition printed by Clarendon press in Oxford, and also made it through subsequent editions until today.

As it happens, during the course of the enormous spelling, punctuation and word tense regimenting that was going on beneath the surface of all this – which no future edition would need to repeat – Dr. Blayney’s edition by this point had also amassed some inaccuracies which could be found in the 1769 edition but which had not existed in 1611 1^st edition. These imprecisions had been picked up somewhere along the line of Bible editions to this point. Some, but not all, appear to originate with Dr. Blayney’s edition itself. Later editions would keep all of the standard spelling, punctuation and grammar from this edition, but over the course of time those other few changes that were misaligned with the original would be reversed (or rolled back,) to the 1611 format by other editors who, in the grand scheme of things, carried the Authorized Version forward from this point. In addition to this, there still survived a very decreasing number of the most ambiguous and meticulous revisions (as will be seen) that had yet to be found, even since 1611. These we will point out below.

Complicating this picture even more, the fact that Blayney had operated out of Oxford and not Cambridge means the original 1769 edition used the Oxford variants of many word spellings, some of which would actually stick while others would remain distinctly Oxford-only. A couple of the characteristic spellings are “ax” instead of “axe” in Cambridge editions; “razor” instead of “rasor” in Cambridge editions, and “counsellor” instead of “counseller” in Cambridge.

A few of the most notable misprints that are seen in the original hard-copies of the 1769 Oxford edition printed by Dr. Blayney:

Exodus 6:21— the name “Zithri” was written instead of “Zichri”, whose name had been at the same place in Exodus 6:22. An obvious misprint.

Numbers 20:14— the word “travel” was written instead of “travail.” This had formerly been correct in 1611; it would be permanently corrected back to “travail” much later, after 1885. Screenshot of 1769 Oxford hardcopy:

Joshua 19:2— the word “Sheba” stands by itself. In the 1762 draft, it had said “and Sheba.” But in both 1611 and today, the A.V. says “or Sheba.”

2 Chronicles 4:12— the phrase “the pillars” was written instead of the phrase “the top of the pillars” as it was in 1611 A.V.

These are the kinds of very minor misprints we’re discussing at this point. Considering that they were corrected, they are really nothing to make such a big deal about. For consistency, we continue tracking the most notable changes in each successive edition until it becomes no longer necessary. This gives you an idea of the level of precision that the editors operate on, since these are now the most notable misprints. So to continue a bit further:

Psalm 107:16— “gates of iron” was written, instead of “bars of iron” as it had been in the 1611 A.V.

Ecclesiastes 1:1— “king of Jerusalem” instead of “king in Jerusalem.”
Jeremiah 34:16— “whom he had set” instead of “whom ye had set.”
Daniel 5:10— the first two commas were removed.
John 14:6— “and the truth” instead of “the truth.”
Ephesians 6:2— The parentheses were removed.
Hebrews 10:12— “sins, for ever sat” instead of “sins for ever, sat.”
1 John 1:4— “our joy” instead of “your joy.”

And finally, there are two cases where an apostrophe was added, but it was placed in a location other than where it finally ended up. This is the case in:
1 Samuel 2:13— “priest’s custom” instead of “priests’ custom.”
Psalm 107:27— “wit’s end” instead of “wits’ end.”

So, what was the effect of Blayney’s 1769 work? All future A.V. editions would stem from his extensive revision. However, the fact that he got much of his work from the 1762 Cambridge draft whilst his own project was at Oxford in the aftermath of the Dod warehouse fire, and the fact that starting in 1835, we will see, the Cambridge versions of the A.V. would regain supremacy once again, creates a lot of confusion about where exactly the 1769 revision comes from, what work it involved, and also about what happened, not during, but immediately before and after it. It also doesn’t help that the editor for the 1762 draft was Dr. Thomas Paris while the editor for the earlier 1743 KJV for the SPCK was Dr. F.S. Parris, as the existence of these two as individual editors has been confused.

As an aside at this juncture, it is worth highlighting one major branch of KJV that came in the near-aftermath of the above. Starting in 1777, the American Revolutionary War had cut off the supply of Authorized Bibles to the thirteen colonies, so a printer named Robert Aitken took it upon himself to print copies he had obtained, out of his shop in Philadelphia, PA. According to Journals of Congress, 9-1782:

“Resolved. That the United States in Congress assembled highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitkin, as subservient to the interest of religion as well as an influence of the progress of arts in this country and being satisfied from the above report (by the congressional chaplains), they recommend this edition of the bible to the inhabitants of the United States and hereby authorise him to publish this recommendation.”

These became known as the “Aitken Bible.” They were KJV Bibles.

Another moment for the future of the A.V. came with the 1817 printing of ‘The Holy Bible according to the Authorized Version; with notes explanatory and practical’, which was a newly proofread version of the 1769 Oxford edition by two churchmen, Richard Mant and George D’Oyly. This edition caught many of the immediate misprints in the main text of Dr. Blayney’s work, and subsequently, all Authorized Versions still in print today also trace the main text back to this 1817 edition.

Its capitalization changes are: Lord → LORD three times,
and LORD → Lord three times, including Psalm 135:5 (second word)

Of these capitalization changes, five of them are simply returning the text to what it said in the 1611 A.V., while the last one newly adjusts (the second occurrence of) “Lord” in Psalm 135:5⁴⁵ to its final state for the first time.

Among the many “restorations” to the 1611 text, the most important “re-corrections” of the 1817 edition are: John 14:6 “and the truth” → “the truth” and 1 John 1:4 “our joy” → “your joy.”

Around the year 1833, a man named Thomas Curtis began writing treatises on how the Authorized Version had been corrupted from its 1611 (1^st edition) roots, and made notes comparing the differences and also criticizing the differences between current Cambridge and Oxford editions. He demanded that Cambridge and Oxford University both return to printing the 1^st edition of the 1611 KJV. For the reasons noted above, this was not a good idea.

Now up until this time, Cambridge University had been making use of Dr. Paris’ 1762 draft to create successive A.V. editions branching off of that. However, these Cambridge versions did not include all of the vast number of changes that Dr. Blayney had compiled in his 1769 revision. They only contained Dr. Paris’ portion of it. When the invective against Cambridge and Oxford by Thomas Curtis came in 1833, university officials from the two came together to decide their course of action. In that year, the Oxford-based theologian Edward Cardwell published an accurate reprint of the 1611 1^st edition KJV, and in the back included a table of about 400 revisions between it and the 1613 edition, highlighting some of the major corrections that had needed to be done because of misprints in the first edition.

When this failed to stem the tide, Thomas Turton, an academic of Cambridge, responded to Curtis’ campaign with the following remarks:

“As early as the year 1638, the Text of 1611 underwent a systematic revision the nature of which will be in some degree ascertained … If it should hereafter appear that an earlier revision had taken place, the argument from antiquity will be so much the stronger.
“…[I]t cannot be too steadily borne in mind that, two centuries ago, there lived men who possessed learning to discover the anomalies with which the Text of 1611 abounded; formed resolutions to remove them; and had diligence sufficient to carry their purposes into execution.
“In this way was transmitted to succeeding times a Text which compared with that of 1611, may be considered as a model of correctness. The Italics of 1638 were speedily adopted. They became part of the established Text; which Text, after having been more than once subjected to the scrutiny of persons well qualified for the undertaking, was revised, for the last time, in the year 1769.”

One thing that resulted from all of this was that the printers in Cambridge “silently abandoned” their 1762 draft-based text, with the last being printed in 1833. Beginning in 1835, Cambridge University began printing KJV editions based on the 1769 Oxford edition, though with their own characteristic spelling variants (as still used today) reintroduced to it.

The long and short story of what happened after this is that both Oxford and Cambridge continued to publish KJV editions separately. To summarize, during the years 1835-1885, there were about 46 noteworthy misprints that were found and accounted for with very careful editing work. Of these, the Oxford editions found about 40 by the year 1885, while Cambridge editions found all 46.

There were also, however, two other projects printing their own editions of the KJV that most likely worked on this same problem set during this time. It appears that either of them could have been the first to deserve credit for some of these corrections, while apparently, the others typically followed suit in most cases. If this is so, then these projects may also have had an influence on the final form of the A.V., sometimes called 1900 KJV. All of the Bibles we’re talking about were, of course, initially based on the 1817 revision of the 1769 revision. The two other projects are the American Bible Society editions, published by the ABS from 1818 to 1871, and also F.H.A. Scrivener’s Cambridge Paragraph Bible which was released in 1873.

Now we are ready to review the main updates that followed and compare the performance of the KJV editions of this era. This is based on my research of these editions and confirmation of the differences.

Of the 46 inaccuracies I note that were resolved during this time, 31 of them were from reverting the 1769 KJV version of the text in that verse, as it was, purely back to the 1611 first edition; while 15 of them involved some other kind of change. In addition to the 46, I also want to keep track of the two “misplaced apostrophes,” that I mentioned earlier, at 1 Samuel 2:13 and Psalm 107:27. We start by listing the first 40/46, which both Cambridge and Oxford resolved in their 1835-1885 editions.

There are 27 reversions to the 1611 text, primarily these:
2 Chronicles 4:12— “the pillars” → “the top of the pillars”
Ecclesiastes 1:1— “king of Jerusalem” → “king in Jerusalem”
Micah 7:4— “a brier” → “as a brier”
Matthew 4:1— “spirit” → “Spirit”
Romans 11:23— “not in” → “not still in”
1 Corinthians 4:13— “earth” → “world”
2 Corinthians 12:2— “about fourteen years” → “above fourteen years”
Hebrews 10:12— “sins, for ever sat” → “sins for ever, sat”

Of the other 13 which are not “reversions,” nine are capitalization changes. The capitalization changes are:
LORD → Lord seven times: Genesis 20:4, 1 Kings 22:6, 2 Kings 7:6,
2 Kings 19:23, Nehemiah 1:11, Psalm 2:4, Psalm 44:23.
LORD God → Lord GOD one time in Exodus 23:17.
God → GOD one time in 2 Samuel 12:22.

And the four remaining are:
Lamentations 3:5— “travel” → “travail”
Luke 19:2 , 5 , 8— “Zaccheus” → “Zacchæus” (3x)

Beyond these, there are 6 additional inaccuracies that only the Cambridge editions would resolve in 1835-1885. Of these, 5 are reversions to the 1611 text:
Exodus 23:23— “the Hivites” → “and the Hivites”
Deuteronomy 32:8— “Most High” → “most High”
Joshua 4:5— “take you up” → “take ye up”
Daniel 5:10— first two commas that were deleted are restored
Ephesians 6:2— parentheses that were deleted are restored

The last inaccuracy that Cambridge resolved is at Jeremiah 32:5 which is: “prosper.” → “prosper?”

After all these reversions, the Cambridge KJV text was within one step of becoming the KJV 1900. We know this by comparison of our Bibles today with the official Authorized Version that was printed by Cambridge in The Parallel Bible (1885), which was originally published to place the A.V. in parallel with the Revised Version (R.V.). The 1885 version of the Cambridge KJV is identical to ours, with exactly 47 exceptions between 1885 and 1900. Of this last 47, 33 are basic name spellings. Of the 14 non-name-spellings, 12 are reversions to the 1611 text. The other two are: In 1 Samuel 2:13, the apostrophe is moved from “priest’s custom” to “priests’ custom” and in 2 Kings 19:26, “house tops” is changed to “housetops”.

As for the twelve final “reversions” to 1611, the KJV 1900 ed. has the following:
Numbers 20:14— “travel” → “travail”
Joshua 19:2— “and Sheba” → “or Sheba”
2 Chronicles 33:19— “sins” → “sin”
Job 30:6— “cliffs” → “clifts”
Psalm 148:8— “vapours” → “vapour”
Ecclesiastes 8:17— “farther” → “further”
Jeremiah 34:16— “whom he had set” → “whom ye had set” (correct Hebrew)
Nahum 3:16— “fleeth” → “flieth”
Matthew 26:39— “farther” → “further”
Mark 1:19— “farther” → “further”
1 Corinthians 4:15— “instructers” → “instructors”
Revelation 21:20— “chrysolyte” → “chrysolite”

These changes are estimated to have been made sometime in the vicinity of A.D. 1893-1905. After this point, the Authorized Version printed by Cambridge did not change at all. We know this because it is still the same today. Copies of the 20th century almost always follow this line. Their ancestor is this 1900 text. Most of what varies are things not in the main text. Most of the variation in the main text among the Cambridge AV Bibles (and other printers who used their standard text) after c. 1900-1905 appears to be incidental typos, and not intentional or systematic editing by anyone.

To reconstruct the order of events for this final format, I had to rely on the Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges, a collection of heavily annotated commentaries published separately by the University as individual books between the years 1882-1928. However, for our purposes, the last two commentaries— Genesis in 1921 and Deuteronomy in 1928— were of no use, because they used the R.V. of 1881 as their main text. With these removed, as well as the books that contained none of the variations in question, the relevant books of this series were published between the years 1884-1913.

By looking through each of these and tracking the dates, there is firm evidence that most of these corrections, if not all, occurred before 1900. A few of the early commentaries give us a narrower band of possibility. These are the two instances of the “Matthew 26:39 and Mark 1:19” spelling corrections.

In the case of Mark 1:19, our commentary from 1892 still used the word “farther.” As it had been in the 1885 AV-RV parallel edition. However, again, it is reasonable to think that Cambridge staff at this time changed the word “farther” to the more grammatically correct “further” in both spots in Matthew and Mark at the same time. And if this is the case, then it is very convenient to have the Matthew commentary from 1905 which says “further” in its place at Matthew 26:39, in line with our common translation of the KJV that is now used. It is interesting that we can use this dual-correction of “farther” to the word “further” to pinpoint the timeframe when both places in Scripture seem to have been changed.

For these reasons I placed the window of time when the last correction would have most likely taken place as 1892-1905. And this is where I gather the name of this edition to be the 1900 format of the KJV, which Cambridge University edited, and which they also printed on certain occasions. This 1900 format (or 1900 edition) describes our standard layout of the KJV text.

While all indications are that it was this 1900 format of the main text which became used by most Bible printers after this, there were and are other variations. Most notable are the Oxford, London, and American versions. At the end of the outline, we will go back to the 19th century editions to revisit these and say somewhat more about them. For the time being, the strongest supporting evidence that the KJV has not changed its format since, continues to be the overwhelming number of copies in existence today. They all seem to have the 1900 text as their ancestor. However, when I mentioned that there were exactly 47 variations between the 1885 text to the 1900, I meant specifically to the 1900 format. There has been one single letter changed after 1900, and the readers can freely judge this for themselves. In 1985, someone sent a letter to Cambridge about the capitalization of “spirit” in 1 John 5:8.⁴⁶

So, in many of the “legacy” King James Bibles printed after 1985, there will often be a capitalized “Spirit” in 1 John 5:8. For an 85-year period from 1900 to 1985, the format of the main text had remained unchanged down to the last minor variation. I consider either the pre-1985 or the post-1985 KJV to be in the 1900 format, as both contain all of the distinguishing 47 corrections listed earlier. Of the main lineage of KJV Bible editions that are usually used, only the oldest Bibles (hard to find) predating around 1900 will not have those 47 corrections. And the two main variants of the main line of printed editions differ on 1 John 5:8 only and its capitalization of the word “πνεῦμα”. Note however that the Greek Textus Receptus does not distinguish between capital and lowercase letters, and there is also no way to talk in capital or lowercase letters either, if you were to read it aloud, so this difference is, to my mind, purely orthographic. I still regard it as interesting, because I think the choice of capitalization was a deliberate one by the various printers of the KJV.

Just like with the Greek received text, it’s better to go with a multitude of witnesses (the many manuscripts and the different editions of the TR) than to reduce ourselves to a single witness, or let a single person be the arbiter of our English Bible. It seems like God used many different people to bring the Bible into the conformity that it has now. The principle of Matthew 18:16 also says, “in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.” Hence, we wouldn’t want to be reduced to a single witness, and I believe that God operates through many.

However, the history of Bibles in English still has something more to say regarding the 20th century. The next major development regarding editions of the KJV actually occurred before 1985. Since at least the 1970’s, there has been a second line of Bibles printed by Cambridge University which is known as the “Concord” edition. The differences are that the Concord KJV uses a combination of Oxford and Cambridge spellings, so that the Concord differs from the 1900, in spelling all the words “inquire” as instead, “enquire,” and “rasor” as “razor,” and “counseller” as “counsellor” while using Cambridge spellings elsewhere.

The two most noteworthy variations for the “Concord” line of A.V. are:
Exodus 23:23— “the Hivites” instead of “and the Hivites”
Jeremiah 32:5— “prosper.” instead of “prosper?”

The Concord KJV also has 3 capitalizations, which are “spirit” → “Spirit” in Acts 11:12, Acts 11:28, and in 1 John 5:8.

To trace down the origin of this edition, I looked at differences between the two, and I noticed one thing that may help show its production process. This is the case of the italics in 2 Samuel 18, verses 29 and 32:

After Dr. Blayney finished his overhaul of the italics apparatus in 1769, there was one irregularity remaining in 2 Samuel chapter 18. In both verses 29 and 32, the king asks:
—Is the young man Absalom safe?⁴⁷
However, in the original hardcopy of the 1769 edition, Blayney had only italicized the word “Is” in the second occurrence of the question in verse 32. In other words, that first word was in italics. The same exact question in verse 29 had no words in italics.

It turns out that during the 1835-1885 period, Cambridge printers had noticed this slight discrepancy in the italics, and they followed suit by italicizing “Is” in verse 29 also. However, in later Oxford editions, they undid the italicization in verse 32 instead. Hence, the later Oxford editions italicize neither “Is” from either verse. It turns out that the Concord edition which Cambridge prints today follows the Oxford editions of the 19th century in this place by italicizing neither word. But the legacy 1900 format (which is also still in print via many different printers) still italicizes both. This indicates that the Concord KJV took a later Oxford KJV as its base text in 2 Samuel. We will have more to remark on the Oxford editions in part four.

The next event, after this, was the advent of digital copies of the Bible. In the early 1980’s, there were a few projects where someone transcribed the Bible into a computer which was later copied by others numerous times. There were at least three separate original projects which appear to be the most widespread from the time.

The first one is known as “Adam’s missing comma” because it follows the 1900 format King James Version (pre-1985 update), but it has a few telltale mistypes. The first of these is in Genesis 2:21, where the digital copy has no comma after “Adam”. It also spells “chestnut” in Ezekiel 31:8, but the spelling for the word is “chesnut.”⁴⁸

The second one is the “Digital Concord” which follows the Concord format King James Version, and has its own mistypes. In Genesis 5:3 this digital copy has “likeness, and after” instead of “likeness, after”. It adheres closely to the Concord KJV however and several Bible websites host it.

A third one that is out there is the “AKJV” (as it calls itself) variant. This digital copy has grouped and reformatted the lines of the Bible into paragraphs, whereas conventionally each verse starts a new line. It seems to be based on the 1900 format, but it is known to vary, such as using the spelling of “counsellor” instead of the usual “counseller”. See Isaiah 9:6 for example.

Also in 1987, a fourth unique digital copy was made, but it did not quite make it to the level of the 1900 format (or the original 1769 from which it is based) despite claiming to do so. This edition actually reproduced the Concord edition, except with regard to the italicization of 2 Samuel 18:29 as mentioned above, where it indeed follows the 1769 edition. This is the edition released by Larry Pierce. It comes with the reassurance that:

“Sharp Electronics of Japan has verified that the electronic version is indeed exactly the same as the printed Cambridge 1769 Blayney edition.“

As we have discussed, the printed 1769 Blayney edition was printed by Oxford at Clarendon Press. It was not printed by Cambridge. Furthermore, this digital copy appears to be based on the mid-20th century Concord edition, which is not the exact same as the printed 1769 edition by Blayney (although it is very close).

In more recent times more accurate digital copies of the printed versions have been made, but it is still possible to find these older digital versions being used in various digital formats on some websites.

The next development after this, and after the 1985 update, was in 1990. The “letters patent” that King James had originally granted to Barker in 1611 now fell into the possession of Cambridge University, as they claim here. As a result, the so-called “London editions” are no longer being printed.

However, in 1993 Cambridge began selling another King James Bible— apart from the “legacy” edition (now with the 1985 update) and the Concord edition. Since 1993 they call this one the “Standard Text Edition” or STE. This type of KJV basically follows suit with the former London Editions which had been discontinued in 1990.

Lastly, in 2005 Cambridge started selling another critically edited version of the KJV, known as the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, in a sort of grand succession to the original CPB edited by Scrivener in 1873. It has many changes.

Part 4: Other Information

Leaving the main timeline now, there are some details that I wanted to go over in this fourth section dedicated to other information.

If we wanted to go over all the work that contributed to the 1900 edition as it is now, it would not make sense to leave out the ABS editions of the Authorized Version printed from 1818-1871. Remarkably, within a year of the release of the Mant and D’Oyly 1817 edition, the ABS had already found and corrected the punctuation error at Jeremiah 32:5, which should have ended the sentence in a question mark. The quote begins with Zedekiah’s question: “Wherefore dost thou prophesy, and say, Thus saith the LORD, […] not prosper?”

We can think of the unbolded text in the above quote as Zedekiah quoting Jeremiah as part of his question. If we made a shorter quotation of just the last words of Jeremiah instead of the entire quote as in Jeremiah 32, we can see more clearly how this is indeed a question. We might phrase the sentence like this:

Wherefore dost thou prophesy, and say, “Thus saith the LORD, you shall not prosper”?

In the end, the sentence is essentially a question, because Zedekiah is asking Jeremiah wherefore (or why) he prophesies certain things. It just happens to be a very long quote in Jeremiah 32:3-5. Without the context of verse 3, verse 5 might appear to end in a period when it is actually a question mark.

Although the 1817 (and earlier) edition did not have Zedekiah’s question mark, later Cambridge editions do have it, including the 1900 KJV. But the question mark seems to have first appeared in the 1818 American Bible Society edition.

We can find results in the ABS for many of the 46 notable improvements found in the 1835-1885 Cambridge editions. We can say that 34 out of 46 are observed, and may have first appeared, in an ABS edition! These, we also know, eventually appeared in the Cambridge Bible of 1885. Of these 34 improvements to the KJV text, 22 improvements were already in the ABS 1818 ed. The ABS 1818 is also the second to enact and follow the specific change Spirit → spirit in 1 John 5:8 (after Oxford 1817) which is a change that later became standard in Cambridge editions in 1885 and 1900, until 1985.

The other likely influence on the Cambridge edition of 1885 was the Cambridge Paragraph Bible in 1873 by Scrivener. In his case, 40 of the 46 notable updates occur. In fact, if we look at the final 47 changes between 1885 edition and 1900 edition, we notice that Scrivener had included 39 of those 47 as well. Compared to the 1900 edition, Scrivener’s 1873 edition only missed 7 name spellings and the one change to 2 Kings 19:26.⁴⁹ Regarding the last 47 changes (1885 → 1900), the ABS had 6 out of 47 in the ABS 1818 edition and 11 out of 47 in the ABS 1871 KJV edition.

But going back to the 46 important changes pre-1885: both Scrivener and ABS editions missed the updated spelling of “Zaccheus” → “Zacchæus” in the Gospel of Luke, and both of them missed the change of the apostrophe, “wit’s end” → “wits’ end” which is solely found in the 1885 Cambridge edition.

Also, the ABS had included three that Scrivener missed, namely Exodus 23:23, Psalm 2:4, and the question mark at Jeremiah 32:5. But for the ABS own part, the ABS editions never corrected Jeremiah 34:16 back to “whom ye had set” while Scrivener in his 1873 edition had included this correction (this time a correct reversion back to the 1611 wording).

Amazingly, due to the above chain of events: no Bible before the KJV 1900 edition had both Jeremiah 32:5 and Jeremiah 34:16 in the way that it does. Since Jeremiah 34:16 had a misprint from 1769 through 1885 editions. And the question mark at Jeremiah 32:5 was added in 1818, not appearing before. This also gives you a convenient way to check if a Bible is from the 1900 format, as both passages are close to each other. If it has both the question mark in Jeremiah 32:5 and “who ye had set” in Jeremiah 34:16, it must be based on the 1900 Cambridge edition, as no earlier edition of the KJV (to my knowledge) had both of these corrections. However, there had been one previous English Bible predating the KJV that contained both of these readings: Wycliffe’s Bible – as according to the manuscript attributed to him, his version had also included the question mark at Jeremiah 32:5, which Coverdale and all others (before 1818) had not, instead punctuating this sentence ending as a period.

So we see that all of the editions up until now have been closely looked over for the slightest imprecision in all of its words. And after around the year 1900, it is abundantly clear that no further updates to the text of the translation were any longer required. The updates to the format of the translation of the text that we have seen here are all advantageous. Yet they have not displaced any correctly rendered reading from what it was before or done any harm to the KJV translation. They have only acted to bring it in line with the original translation and accurately render the original translation in the places where these minor edits have occurred. Basically, I can still say with confidence that my Bible is the same translation as it was in 1611, just improved with updated formatting and spelling.

I would like to make a few notes about this format of the Bible, before finishing with a quick examination of some “variant” KJV. First of all, I want to make special mention of one consideration often lost in the process of consideration of this translation: the Authorized Version was commissioned with the intent that it was “appointed to be read in Churches,” as it says on the title page. To that end, many of the seemingly inane changes to words, such as whether “thy” or “thine”, or “a house” or “an house”, or whether “diverse” or “divers”, to give a few examples, were chosen with the concept of ‘metre’ which is the balance of the sentence as it is read aloud. The prosody of words and the syllables of adjoining words and sentences played a part in such decisions. This is rather different than in some newer translations, where this factor is entirely disregarded, rendering a low-quality translation. Technically correct English prosody is often (unfortunately) forgotten as a good reason for translation choices in many cases. If a Bible translation is written in poor English, it causes the readers to disrespect the words they are reading and the writers behind those translations, because the readers know they could do a better job writing English.

Samuel Johnson, using this as the very basis for establishing English pronunciation, gave 20 rules for prosody that help govern the meter and cadence through how words should be pronounced, from which we note two examples:⁵⁰

3. Of disyllables, which are at once nouns and verbs, the verb commonly has the accent on the latter, and the noun on the former syllable, as, to contráct, a cóntract; to recórd, a récord.
This rule has many exceptions. Though verbs seldom have their accent on the former, yet nouns often have it on the latter syllable.

16. Polysyllables, or words of more than three syllables, follow the accent of the words from which they are derived, as árrogating, cóntinency, incóntinently, comméndable, commúnicableness.
We should therefore say dispútable, indispútable, rather than dísputable, indísputable; and advertísement rather than advértisement.

Another point often left out of discussion between translations is the use of the transliterated name spellings of Old Testament figures in the New Testament. In the Authorized Version, as well as in the Greek, the difference is consequential. This helps to show us whether we are reading narration or a quotation. For instance in Matthew 2:17 and in Matthew 27:9, the word used is “Jeremy” which is a phoenetic-approximation of Jeremiah in Greek script. But in Matthew 16:14, we instead see “Jeremias” which represents the Greek-form of the name, not the closest approximation. It is due to the fact that the author is quoting the disciples, who spoke that Greek word, verbatim. This also proves that they sometimes spoke Greek. This effect of transliteration also applies to other words as when comparing John 1:38 with John 20:16. Notice that in the former it says “being interpreted,” but in the latter, it does not say that, since John 20:16 is a Greek saying (of the same word), instead of an Aramaic one, as in John 1:38.

Yet another important aspect to consider is the apparatus of the italicized words. The famous example is the translation of 2 Samuel 21:19,⁵¹ which is simply translated the same way as 1 Chronicles 20:5.⁵² The italicized words here accurately represent the grammar and context of the whole sentence that necessitates a translation of a different number of words than is found in the original language. For example, in Joshua 22:34,⁵³ the translators called for the word “Ed” and “witness” to be translated, while in Hebrew the word for “witness” is literally pronounced “Ed.” Therefore the word “Ed” ends up italicized, as the Hebrew grammar only had one occurrence of the word. Another example of this is found in John 18:5-8,⁵⁴ wherein it is written that Jesus spoke the words for “I am” while, due to this construction, correct grammar (in English only) would necessitate the inclusion of “he.”⁵⁵ Having these is additionally useful but the italicization is not needed to preserve the core translation. The normally italicized words cannot be removed because, as the Joshua 22:34 example shows, they are integral to the translation. The rest of the sentence in the translation assumes their presence for correctness, and they provide context to the rest of the words in that sentence, so that they cannot be removed or ignored any more or less than the non-italicized words can, but they can sometimes be used to help make a point about the underlying sentence. Many times, one underlying word might cause two equally important words in the translation, either of which could be italicized, but that shouldn’t invalidate either one. But copying scripture without preserving which words are italicized is not destroying it any more than reading it aloud, because one cannot speak in italic, nor it seems in capital letters. It also seems to me that Luke 17:27 should match Luke 17:29 in italicizing “them,” considering that it uses the same Greek text, as an example of an improvement to this apparatus.

Finally, the words themselves (in the main text) are selected in a way that is rigorously adherent to the proper English that we have all come to expect. They communicate the precise tense, plurality and syntax relationships that anyone would expect from an exactly proofread English Bible. Just as the source languages are, proper English – when written or spoken – is capable of every exquisite minute detail, and in the Bible every lever has been carefully adjusted, every gear precisely tuned; it is now the case that nothing has any longer been overlooked in the presentation of the main text. With that in mind, I would like to look at the conventional format in which the Authorized Version has been presented in terms of the apparatus.

The division of the Bible includes the following:
39 books in the Old Testament, 27 in the New Testament
929 chapters in the Old Testament, 260 in the New Testament
2539 paragraph marks in the Old Testament, 431 in the New Testament
23,145 verses in the Old Testament, 7,957 in the New Testament
789,630 English words
116 Psalm titles consisting of 1034 words
22 Hebrew alphabet subtitles in Psalm 119
810 hyphens
1 triple-hyphen
1996 apostrophes

Often included as further apparatus are:
Italics in the text
Pronunciation marks in the text
The Title and Book Titles
Epistle subscriptions (including 14 paragraph marks)
Marginal Notes (1611 – 1885)
Chapter Headers (1611 – 1876)
Page Headers
Table of Signs (c. 1900)
Epistle from the translators to the reader
Epistle Dedicatory
Apocrypha (western)
Calendars, Geneologies, Tables, Maps
Official Title Page, Table of Contents

Of note is that the standard AV Bible discontinued the use of roman numerals to denote chapter divisions in the 1900 format. Until that time, roman numerals for chapter numbers had been used. The 1900 format is also when the pronunciation marks were added. This was almost certainly the work of the noted editor H.A. Redpath, whose Table of Signs appears in the editions which contain the pronunciation marks. The same Table can be found that was published in his Self-pronouncing New Testament of Oxford (1897), along with an additional prefatory note, included below.

Extra details for the 1900 format, and the majority of older editions are as follows. The first word of each chapter is fully capitalized, and its first letter is a dropped capital. In addition, Luke 1:5, and, since 1769, Revelation 1:4, start this way. But any time a chapter starts with “LORD” [in full-capitals], it would have been “Lᴏʀᴅ” [in small-capitals], except in Psalm 90:1, where it would have been “Lord.” The first word of every verse is capitalized, which fits well with the translation because every verse, except seven⁵⁶, ends with a punctuation mark. The em-dash or triple hyphen only occurs once, in Exodus 32:32,⁵⁷ and sometimes digital copies fail to render this correctly which can affect derivative copies.

Some special cases that occurred during the 1611-1900 editorial process include,
That Exodus 23:23⁵⁸ was corrected first in the 1629 edition, then undone in the 1769 edition, and finally corrected again around 1835-1885.
Also John 15:20⁵⁹ began as “than the Lord”, then in 1629 was “than the lord” then from 1762 until now, “than his lord”⁶⁰

In Song of Solomon 6:12,⁶¹ the name “Amminadib” (with no hyphens) was on a line break in the 1611 1^st edition; in subsequent editions it was transcribed as “Ammi-nadib”. This wasn’t reverted until the 1900 format. The short-hyphens of the pronunciation marks here divide the word differently, as “ Ăm-mĭn´-ă-dĭb ” but the pronunciation marks are an apparatus, unlike full hyphens which are part of the main text.

In Ecclesiastes 8:17,⁶² the words “yet he shall not find it” were mistakenly absent in the first edition, until 1629, when it was returned by Cambridge.
Later, in the 1769 edition, Ecclesiastes 8:17 began to contain “farther” which was then corrected back to “further” in the 1900 format. This word is immediately after “yet he shall not find it,” one of the most noteworthy of all the omissions of the 1611 first edition. So then Ecclesiastes 8:17 received an important correction at the earliest part of the editorial process, and a separate one at the very end of the process in 1900, as one of the last 47 corrections!

The only three verses to change the capitalization of the word “spirit” multiple times were Acts 11:12, Acts 11:28 and 1 John 5:8. But each of them changed in a different order.
In Acts 11:12, the word went from lowercase to capital in 1629 then from capital back to lowercase in 1817.
In Acts 11:28, it went from lowercase to capital in 1769 then from capital back to lower-case in 1817.
In 1 John 5:8, it went from capital to lowercase in 1629, then lowercase back to capital in 1769, then capital to lowercase in 1817. If we include also the 1985 update, where only this verse was changed, it changed capitalization four times; this is noteworthy because few verses have even changed one time. The capitalization of this word also seems to have been changed by someone once (at least) every century so far. In looking for possible motivations or reasons why the capitalization might be changed so much, one might also notice the proximity of this word to the Three Heavenly Witnesses in 1 John 5:7.

Finally, the marginal notes, which include both cross-references and footnotes, and the revision of these, proved to be a large motivation for many of the subsequent editors, especially Dr. Paris and Dr. Blayney. Even more particularly, the chapter headers providing an outline at the beginning of the chapter were a staple of the early editions until at least Cambridge 1876 edition. The heavily rewritten 1769 version of the chapter headers was generally disregarded later, though, and the 1611 version was typically preferred. However, these were not free from novelty of opinions, notably the case of the Psalm 149 header, which read: “1 The Prophet exhorteth to praiſe God for his loue to the Church, 5 and for that power, which hee hath giuen to the Church to rule the conſciences of men.”
Dr. Paris in the 1762 edition ended this chapter header abruptly with “…given to the church.” In the 1769 edition Dr. Blayney ended the header with “…given to his saints.” The page headers also were subject to this, e.g. by consistently placing page headers implying certain typologies. Unlike the chapter headers, the page headers at the top of each page many times continue into present Bibles, but also unlike the chapter headers, they naturally vary with every new printing as the page contents differ.

We will look more into the content of the marginal notes, especially from the cross-references and footnotes, at another time. In general, all of these apparatus seem to have been included with the idea that more information is better— similarly to the alternate (italic) typeface and pronunciation marks. It is also interesting to note that none of the “legacy” editions by Cambridge or Oxford used red text, (as introduced by Louis Klopsch in 1901,) and that the use of “red text” creates ambiguities at places such as Acts 1:4. Where should the “red text” begin and end?

I would also like to give a quick rundown of a few other editions, of the 19th century, which predated the 1900 format. This will close out the outline. Two branches that still continue to present are the Oxford and the London editions. The Oxford editions continue to use minor spelling variants such as “grey” and “sope.” In addition to this, they still print the inaccuracy, “whom he had set,” in Jeremiah 34:16, and are missing the parentheses that should be in Ephesians 6:2.⁶³ In twelve places in the gospels they write “son of David” instead of “Son of David,” and they likewise change the capitalizations of “Spirit” to lowercase in Matthew 4:1 and Mark 1:12. They also reverse their capitalizations at Acts 11:12, Acts 11:28, 1 John 5:8, and book of Revelation 11:11.

The “London” editions use the spellings “flotes,” “havoc,” and “cloak.”⁶⁴ They also follow all the capitalization changes of the Oxford editions. Later in the 20th century, these “London” editions of the KJV also made 33 more capitalization changes of “Spirit” → “spirit” in the Old Testament, including at Genesis 1:2 and Job 33:4. This seems to be theologically motivated changes to the text of the KJV in these editions.

Finally, there are two what we might call extra translations, which used the Authorized Version as their basis, but also changed a number of things.

The first is Webster’s Bible of 1833, which is essentially a carbon copy of the most recent Oxford edition in that year (before Cambridge adopted the 1769 text as their standard, while only Oxford had used it), with a few obvious word changes. In particular, Noah Webster insisted on the following word changes to his edition:
“wherefore” → “why”
“mine/thine” → “my/thy”
“even/eventide” → “evening”
“did eat” → “ate”
“record/witness” → “testimony”
“Holy Ghost” → “Holy Spirit”
“give up the ghost” → “expire”
“quicken” → “revive”
“made whole” → “healed”
“man child” → “male child”
“usury” → “interest”
“meat” → “food”
“whoredom” → “lewdness”
“went a whoring” → “went astray”
“fornication” → “impurity”

Also in Genesis 10, the term “sons” becomes the neutral “descendants” and in Deuteronomy 1:1, “the red sea” is replaced with simply “suf ”. And in the New Testament only, Webster changed “devils” to “demons,” while in the Old Testament at Leviticus 17:7 he instead changed “devils” to “idols.”

A few one-off alterations were “hell” changed to “grave” in Ezekiel 31:16,17 and “strain at a gnat” changed to “strain out a gnat,”⁶⁵ also “Easter” changed to “Passover,”⁶⁶ and “beasts” changed to “living beings” in Revelation 4. Even more interestingly, Webster unequivocally altered Matthew 26:73 by changing “bewrayeth” into “betrayeth,” which he should have known has a different definition. He also changed 1 Corinthians 4:4 from “I know nothing by myself” into “I know nothing against myself”.

Webster also changed the wording in 1 Thessalonians 1:4 from
“knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God”
into
“knowing, brethren beloved by God, your election”.

Webster also changed “throughly” to “thoroughly” at 2 Timothy 3:17. Lastly, he wrote the following in the documentation in his edition:

“In 2 Chron. 13.19, there a is [sic] mistake in the English, French and
Italian versions, Ephraim for the Hebrew Ephron, which I have corrected. The Septuagint is correct.” (for a breakdown of the Septuagint, see here)

The problem with this, is that 2 Chronicles 13:19 does not say “Ephraim” except in one outdated London edition. It doesn’t say it in the version that he seems to have copied his own text from.⁶⁷ Could this have been a typographical error in his attempt to document the change?

Last on our list comes the Cambridge Paragraph Bible, mentioned previously, edited by F.H.A. Scrivener in 1873.

His edition also exhibits egregious alterations. He seems to have used his earlier collation work in order to make changes that return this version in many places to a previous state, usually the 1611 first edition or another very early edition. For instance, in 9 places he used the word “fet”, which had been spelled “fetched” since the 1769 edition. He also changed “years old” back to the incorrect plurality of “year old” in 5 places. Some other words sent back to their former state were “scent” → “sent,” “rie” → “rye” and “scroll” → “scrole.”

Scrivener also in the following cases undid the 1769 grammar structure:
Genesis 31:20— “Jacob stole away” → “Jacob stale away”
Numbers 25:1— “people began to commit” → “people begun to commit”
2 Samuel 12:15— “the LORD struck the child” → “the LORD strake the child”
2 Chronicles 13:20— “the LORD struck him” → “the LORD strooke him”
Ezra 3:11— “And they sang together” → “And they sung together”
Daniel 3:19— “wont to be heated” → “wont to be heat”
Daniel 5:4— “they drank wine” → “they drunk wine”
Matthew 18:24— “which owed him” → “which ought him”
Mark 14:36— “not what I will” → “not that I will”
Luke 7:41— “one owed five hundred” → “one ought five hundred”
Acts 11:21— “that owneth this” → “that oweth this”
1 Corinthians 13:2— “have not charity” → “have no charity”
2 Corinthians 5:17— “are passed away” → “are past away”
2 Timothy 1:12— “and am persuaded” → “and I am persuaded”

Other changes were of his own volition, not in any KJV. In Matthew 23:24, he changed “strain at a gnat” to “strain out a gnat.” In John 8:35, he changed “the Son abideth ever” to “the son abideth ever” (possibly a misprint). And in Hebrews 10:23 “faith” was retranslated to “hope.”

Scrivener also made changes in less detectable punctuation:
1 Chronicles 7:2 and 40— “their father’s house” → “their fathers’ house ”
Psalm 105:6— “children of Jacob his chosen” → “children of Jacob, his chosen” Psalm 140:3— “adders’ poison” → “adder’s poison”
Micah 6:5— “answered him from” → “answered him: from”
Matthew 9:20-22— added parentheses around verses
Matthew 14:9— “the oath’s sake” → “the oaths’ sake”
Luke 1:70— added parentheses around verse
Romans 5:13-17— parentheses removed
Romans 8:20— “the same in hope” → “the same, in hope”
2 Corinthians 5:19—
“God was in Christ, reconciling” → “God was in Christ reconciling”

Colossians 2:2— “God, and of the Father, and” → “God and of the Father and”
2 Peter 1:2— “Jesus our Lord,” → “Jesus our Lord.”
2 Peter 1:4— “world through lust.” → “world through lust:”

Also in Proverbs 1:27, and in Proverbs 6:2, he changed the period at the end of the verse with a colon and a comma, each time creating a run-on sentence. And in John 4:9, he changed “for” to “For” which changes the speaker being quoted. Finally, Scrivener placed 1 John 5:7 in italics, and he combined Psalms 9 and 10 into a single chapter called “PSALMS IX & X.” Therefore, his version of the Psalms actually only has 149 Psalms instead of 150 Psalms, making it unusual among all Bibles.

I would lastly remark that modern day critics which advocate the modern versions are generally distinct from the true scholars by their own admission: through their acceptance of multiple differing and contradicting versions of scripture as being equally valid. Or in other words, being equally invalid! By their own admission also is their denial of the doctrine of preservation of the scripture— they frequently claim only to do the best they can, not to be able to reconstruct a perfectly preserved text, and admit that no higher standard is possible. It is. Despite any of this, no one yet has been able to eliminate the real presence of God’s word, which is very real and unchanged, and such efforts therefore to corrupt and confuse the word of God amount to little.

They continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants.
—Psalm 119:91

Thanks:
Special thanks also to Matthew Verschuur at Bible Protector for providing information that is in this article.

Appendix

An excellent and appropriate example of standard English would be when it comes to the question of the proper translation of words in the case of differences between the Authorized and modern translations of the 2nd epistle to the Corinthians 2:17. We see that the Authorized version reads here—

For we are not as many, which corrupt the word of God: but as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God speak we in Christ.

In modern translations, the word “corrupt” is sometimes replaced by the word “peddle” meaning to sell goods. It is argued by those attempting to defend this change in the modern versions precisely one of two ways— either they attempt to argue that the two words are the same, or otherwise, they actually attempt to argue that the KJV is incorrect and the modern version is correct. In the latter case, see the point made earlier at the end of part 2 regarding the use of the KJV as unchallenged authority in the British and American Dictionaries. It follows that the latter disagreement is merely an attempt at redefining words for one’s personal use, which should not be allowed.

In former case, therefore, where some try to argue the words corrupt and peddle are equivalent, consider the definitions given of these two words in the dictionaries aforementioned.

Webster’s Dictionary (1828)⁶⁸
CORRUPT, verb transitive [Latin , to break.] Literally, to break, separate or dissolve. Hence,
1. To change from a sound to a putrid or putrescent state; to separate the component parts of a body, as by a natural process, which accompanied by a fetid smell.
2. To vitiate or deprave; to change from good to bad.
— Evil communications corrupt good manners. 1 Corinthians 15:33.
3. To waste, spoil or consume.
— Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt. Matthew 6:19.
4. To defile or pollute. Exodus 32:7.
5. To entice from good and allure to evil. 2 Corinthians 11:3.
6. To pervert; to break, disobey or make void. Malachi 2:3.
7. To pervert or vitiate integrity; to bribe; as, to corrupt a judge.
8. To debase or render impure, by alterations or innovations; as, to corrupt language.
9. To pervert; to falsify; to infect with errors; as, to corrupt the sacred text.

Johnson’s Dictionary (1755)⁶⁹
To Corrúpt. v.a. [corrumpo corruptus, Latin.]
1. To turn from a sound to a putrescent state; to infect.
2. To deprave; to destroy integrity; to vitiate; to bribe.
— I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. 2 Cor. xi. 3.
— Even what things they naturally know, in those very things, as hearts void of reason, they corrupted themselves. Jude, v. 10.
— Evil communications corrupt good manners. 1 Cor. xv. 33.
3. To spoil; to do mischief.
*

Now the second definition:

Webster’s Dictionary (1828)⁷⁰
PED′DLE, verb intransitive To be busy about trifles.
1. To travel about the country and retail goods. He peddles for a living.
*
PED′DLE, verb transitive To sell or retail, usually by traveling about the country.
*

Johnson’s Dictionary (1755)⁷¹
To Péddle. v.n. To be busy about trifles. Ains. It is commonly written piddle: as, what piddling work is here.
*
Péddling. adj. Petty dealing; such as pedlers have.
— So slight a pleasure I may part with, and find no miss; this peddling profit I may resign, and ’twill be no breach in my estate.
*
Pédler. n.f. [a petty dealer; a contraction produced by frequent use.]
One who travels the country with small commodities.
— All as a poor pedler he did wend,
Bearing a trusse of trifles at his back;
As bells and babes and glasses in his packe. Spenc.
— He is wit’s pedler, and retails his wares
At wakes and wassels, meetings, markets, fairs. Sha.
— A narrow education may beget among some of the clergy in possession such contempt for all innovators, as merchants have for pedlers. Swift.
— Atlas was so exceeding strong,
He bore the skies upon his back,
Just as a pedler does his pack. Swift.

And so by comparison of these two definitions, it becomes increasingly clear that the term “corrupt the word of God” has no overlap with the term “peddle the word of God.” In fact, the meaning is different. The word pedler comes from the frequent contraction of the term “petty dealer.”

The difference isn’t that so many people, unlike Paul, are peddling the word of God; the difference is that so many people, unlike Paul, are corrupting the word of God. The modern version implies a sort of disdain for those selling petty things (such as the word of God, apparently!) for personal profit. The actual verse implies a disassociation against those who damage or destroy, pervert, falsify, infect with errors, debase, or render impure, the word of God itself, by alterations or innovations. We see that, according to the true version of 2 Corinthians 2:17, the Apostle Paul is not part of the ‘many’ which are known to corrupt and pervert the word of God, thereby rendering it impure. We do not see that the Apostle Paul is making a comparison to the word of God as being something “petty” that would be the object of being “peddled.”

In this manner the argument that the two words (peddle and corrupt) are the same can be shown objectively not to be true.

Despite what we have pointed out above, when such instances are brought up, I have at times heard a relativist view which demurs that, to someone, two non-synonymous words might really be the same. But to the forty-seven A.V. translators, Samuel Johnson, and Noah Webster, and to every individual speaking English, this relativist idea about truth is false.

Καπηλεύω. f. ενσω, (pr. to be ὁκάπηλος, either an innkeeper, or a retailer, huckster; and as these persons, in ancient as well as modern times, seem to have had the reputation of increasing their profits by adulteration, hence) to corrupt, adulterate, 2 Co. 2. 17.

Such disagreements therefore imply that the objector to the original translation is no longer communicating in English, but would choose rather to speak in a language of their own making, and from this inability to accept English, communication itself breaks down. This is because relativists, who, trying to substitute one word definition for another, have willfully removed themselves out of the English language, in the course of their translational attempts to change various passages of Scripture as they see fit.

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3 thoughts on “Outline of English Biblical History”

Rodney Brodtmann says:

September 11, 2020 at 5:31 pm

Thanks for this article, it has been pretty helpful to me! Way better written than other bloggers out there.

Matthew Verschuur / Bible Protector says:

December 18, 2023 at 3:58 pm

Although I detect some of my work utalised in this article, I don’t have any objection for people to examine the situation and do good research. This article makes a reasonable summary of available information. Of course I am in favour of that KJB Edition which existed in the late 1920s to 1985 from Cambridge, and in many Collins productions in the latter part of that period to about 2009, and in Holman productions since about 2019, which is called the “Pure Cambridge Edition”. I do wish that Turquoises and Cameos and all such beautiful large print typeface KJBs went back to the lower case “spirit” in Acts 11:12, Acts 11:28 and 1 John 5:8.

1. admin says:
  
  January 12, 2024 at 8:03 pm
  
  Hi Matthew, thanks for visiting. I really appreciate the work you and others have done to shine more light on these facts. Scans that have become available online have been a big help for verifying a lot of information as well. I have a TR comparison from the scans, in which I use work by Scrivener and Hoskier, that will hopefully be posted here soon.