Introduction

The three official guardians of the text, the two University presses and the King or Queen's Printer, became two when Cambridge took over Eyre and Spottiswoode. So the standard English editions of the text are those currently issued by Cambridge in its own right and as Queen's Printer, and Oxford. They are identical in the Testaments but not the Apocrypha.

Only six new changes to the text have been introduced into them since 1769. In the OT ‘Lord’ is changed to ‘Lord’ at Neh. 1:11, and in the NT ‘Zaccheus’ becomes ‘Zacchæus’. In the Apocrypha ‘Ioribas’ becomes ‘Joribus’ (1 Esdras 8:44), the verbs following ‘alms’ are changed to plural at Tobit 4:10, ‘generation’ is made plural at Ecclus. 4:16, and the apostrophe is moved in ‘king's sons’ (Baruch 1:4), making ‘kings’ plural (only the last of these is in the Oxford text). Besides these, at least thirty old readings, of which twenty-two are spellings of names, were reintroduced.

So small a total is partly a reflection of the commercial realities amid which printers and publishers continued to work: it was often more than they could do to keep up with demand, and, while there was often demand for greater accuracy and quality in printing (and cheapness in price), there was little demand for textual innovation.

Introduction

There are two main kinds of pre-1611 evidence for the text of the KJB: the sources, and the written or printed versions directly, physically involved in the making of the translation. The sources are, of course, the original language texts (Hebrew and Greek), the ancient translations (particularly the Vulgate and the Septuagint), modern translations (including Luther's German and the Latin of Tremellius and Junius) and the earlier English translations. These contribute intellectually (and of course crucially — without them there would be no KJB) but not physically to the KJB. Crossing the line between an intellectual and a physical source is the Bishops' Bible of 1602. In a sense Bois's notes also cross the line, for they are evidence of the intellectual process that led to the text. MS 98 and the annotations in Bod 1602 are physical sources. Though they contain no direct evidence of the thinking that led to particular readings, they show the particularities of the text being established.

Until now these physical sources have not been used for editorial work on the text: whatever they might tell about why the 1611 text reads as it does has been ignored. On the other hand, the chief intellectual sources, the original language texts, have been treated as direct evidence for how the text of the KJB should read. This is a natural way of working: errors in the printed text of 1611 may be discovered by reference to the originals.

Introduction

The text of the KJB is commonly thought to be the fixed and stable work of one collection of translators. This is not the case. First, as the translators recognised, it is a revision of earlier work. In the Preface, they declare:

The KJB, first printed in 1611 by the King's Printer Robert Barker, is the culmination of a sequence of work begun by William Tyndale and continued by Miles Coverdale, the Great Bible, the Geneva Bible, the Bishops' Bible and the Rheims New Testament (to name only the chief predecessors). Second, the development of the text did not stop with the publication of the translators' work in 1611. Changes — sometimes deliberate, sometimes accidental, some for the better, some not — were made in subsequent printings by the King's Printer. From 1629 on, editorial work on the text began to be a major factor in creating the texts that we have today: the spelling was modernised, changes were made in the translation, and the punctuation was revised. Most of the changes were made by 1769, but work of this sort has never quite ceased.

The purpose of this collation is to show where the 1613 folio appears to use the first and where the second edition as copy text. Readings from the first edition are aligned left, those from the second edition aligned right.

The following four groups of readings have been omitted because they probably do not give a clear indication as to which edition is being used as copy text:

1. errors one would expect a compositor to correct;

2. readings found in some copies of the first edition and in the second edition, except for Exod. 21:26, which, in combination with v. 27, constitutes a distinctive first-edition reading;

3. readings that are found in the first edition and some but not all copies of the second edition;

4. readings frommy hypothetical King's Printer's list, since these may be deliberate changes to the copy text.

I give here all the errors listed by William Kilburne in Dangerous Errors in Several Late Printed Bibles (Finsbury, 1660). Where possible, the editions are identified in relation to Herbert's catalogue. General comments are given first, followed by references where Kilburne does not specify the error. Individual errors are given with the correct reading in parentheses. Where Kilburne is unclear I have reproduced his text.

1631, Barker and Assigns of Bill. 8° (H444)

Exod. 20:14: Thou shalt commit adultery (shalt not commit)

1643 (identification uncertain)

Gen. 36:24: Ana that found rulers in the wilderness (found the mules)

Ruth 4:13: The Lord gave her corruption (conception)

Luke 21:28: your condemnation draweth nigh (redemption)

1648, Field. 4° (H605)

Ps. 105:29: slew their flesh (fish)

1653 Pearl Bible, Field. 24° (H635–7)

Dedications and titles of Psalms omitted

John 9:21: or who hath opened his eyes we know not (omitted)

Rom. 6:13: instruments of righteousness (unrighteousness) [also in Field's 1653 4°, H633]

1 Cor. 6:9: the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God (shall not inherit)

1655, Field. 12° (H647–8)

‘91 notorious faults’, including omission of 2 Cor. 13:6

1655, Field. 12°, another edition (?H647–8)

‘10. notable faults’ in Matthew 1–6

1656, Field. 12° (H651)

Contents (chapter summaries) ‘generally are falsly perverted, andmultilated, to the great impediment, and obstruction of the right understanding of the scope and Text of the Chapters’.

If the King's Printer had a list of changes to be made to the text of the first edition when using that edition as the copy text for a later setting, it would have contained some or all of the entries given below. The list given here derives from variant readings in the second edition that are also found in other early settings; a tick indicates that the edition has the change. Pairs of editions in the three smaller formats are given, one of which has ‘he went’, the other ‘she went’ at Ruth 3:15. The 1613 and 1616 folios, as independent settings, are also given. Finally, though it used the second edition as copy text, the 1617 folio, the third edition in the large Black Letter series, is included.

The 1612 octavos (H315 and H316, as represented on microfilm) are mixed, and so are sometimes identical.

Readings that are found in some copies of the first edition are not included (Exod. 21:26–7, ‘let them go’ followed by ‘let him go’; 2 Sam. 17:25, ‘Abigal’; Song 2:7, ‘till he please’; and 1 Macc. 13 summary, ‘40’); all except the last are found in all the editions listed below.

An asterisk indicates a reading found in the Cambridge Concord and, for the Apocrypha, Pitt Brevier editions, taken as the modern standard; the marginal variants in the Apocrypha have been compared with Scrivener's Cambridge Paragraph Bible.

The first Cambridge edition, 1629 (H424)

In 1534 Henry VIII granted a charter to Cambridge University licensing it to ‘assign, appoint and in perpetuity have among them … Three Stationers and Printers or Sellers of Books’. These men were to ‘have lawful and incontestable power to print there all manner of books approved, or hereafter to be approved, by the aforesaid Chancellor or his deputy and three doctors there’. In keeping with this charter, John Legate, the second of the University's printers, ventured into Bible printing in the 1590s (H207 and H208). Occasional attempts on the lucrative Bible market continued. In November 1623 the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge was ‘willing to forgo the printing of the Bible in 8° and be content with 4° and 12°’. Though this is the earliest surviving reference to the University wanting to print the KJB, it implies earlier suits by its appearance of offering a compromise. At this point the University may simply have been trying to establish its position, particularly in relation to octavo Psalm books its printer, Cantrell Legge, had lately printed (Greg, pp. 64, 181). However, there is some reason to think that it had started work on or was contemplating a new edition of the KJB. The initial response was totally discouraging: in December the Privy Council forbad printing of the Bible by the University printer (Greg, pp. 64, 181).

Three Bibles

Three outstanding folio Bibles were produced in the 1760s. The most famous was John Baskerville's (1763, H1146), ‘one of the finest books ever to have been printed in Britain’; McKitterick adds that ‘as such, it must take pride of place in the history of printing in Cambridge’ (II, p. 195). Yet, except in a negative way, it is an irrelevance as far as the history of the text is concerned. Baskerville had been appointed University Printer at Cambridge alongside, but not in co-operation with, the incumbent, Joseph Bentham. He was to undertake specific projects, including the folio Bible. His declared ambition was ‘to render this one Work as correct, elegant, and perfect as the Importance of it demands’; he would give his country ‘a more correct and beautiful Edition of the SACRED WRITINGS, than has hitherto appeared’. This is very much what Baskett's aim had been with his folio Bible, but this was no ‘Baskett-ful of errors’. Negatively, what is so striking is that ‘correct’, while promising freedom from typographical error, does not involve work on the text or the annotations. Baskerville's was a printer's, not a scholar's, Bible.

Though Baskerville could designate himself ‘Printer to the University’ on the title page, he was in competition with the Press's main commercial activity, as Bible printing now was — a major change since the beginning of the century. Cambridge's printing had been in a parlous state.

Two principles

The text needs to be revised in two basic ways: one is to undo mistaken changes, the other is to revive the work of modernisation that, in the English text, stalled in the eighteenth century.

The first principle is that the text should be that of the translators, not that of subsequent revisers, and that the text of the translators is the first edition. Variant readings should be decided in the light of the deliberate decisions of the translators, even if the reasons for those decisions are not necessarily apparent. The test is not whether a later variant can be argued to be better in some way, but whether there is a strong likelihood that an error of copying or printing is involved in the first edition. No attempt should be made to correct perceived errors of scholarship.

The second principle is that the text should be modernised. This is not to change the text but to continue to allow it to speak as clearly as possible in its own authentic voice to the contemporary reader. The basic elements of the modernisation are spelling and punctuation. From the variety and inconsistency of the 1611 text it is clear that, for the most part, neither of these involve deliberate intentions of the translators and so do not demand respect and reverence in the way that the readings do.