Monday, July 19, 2004

I'm in summer German jetzt, I mean now, and will be releasing in true millinerd fashion the following six English Bible Printing Curiosities to maintain fondness for the mother tongue.  I got them from an exhibit at the library here on famous English Bibles.  Included were William Blake's illustrations of Job which were pretty, as they say in German, fantastiche.  (Had a hard time committing that word to memory.)  These however were a snap. 
 
#1.  The Murderer's Bible is a nickname for  a printing of the King James' Version from 1795 with the typographical error in Mark 7:27: "Let the children be killed" (instead of filled).   
  
#2.  The Printer's Bible is a 1702 edition of the KJV, so named because of a printer's error in Psalm 119:16:  instead of "princes have persecuted me without cause," David complains, "printers have persecuted me without cause."  
 
#3.  The Bug Bible is the 1535 translation in which Psalm 19:5 is rendered "So yet thou shalt not need to be afraid for any bugs by night." 
 
#4.  The Unrighteous Bible is a 1635 KJV printed in London which renders 1Cor. 6:9 as "the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God." 
 
#5.  The Vinegar Bible is a 1717 Oxford printing which refers to the parable of the Vineyard in Luke 20 as...  take a guess? 
 
#6.  And The Wicked Bible comes from a 1631 printing of the KJV in which the sixth commandment is misprinted as "Thou shalt commit adultery."  For this, Robert Barker, who also printed the 1611 Authorized KJV, was fined and ruined, eventually ending up in debtor's prison. 

Unrecognized in his day, Barker is now heralded for being the "progressive" translator of the Bible that he in fact was - the martyr and patron saint of contemporary Biblical interpretation.