The Authorized Edition of the English Bible (1611) by Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener

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PREFACE

THE following pages comprise in substance a reprint of the author's Introduction to the Cambridge Paragraph Bible of 1873, with such additions and corrections as more recent studies have enabled him to make. The original work was the result of seven years' continuous labour, and has been generally recognized as the only attempt hitherto made to construct a critical edition of the Authorized Bible of 1611.

One interesting portion of his previous work, the discussion of the Greek text underlying the Authorized Bible and embodied in Appendix E, has been virtually re-written, in the hope of attaining a higher degree of accuracy than he or others have reached aforetime. The author has been blamed for stating that Beza, late in life, and through mere forgetfulness, asserted a claim to the revision of the Greek text which appeared in parallel columns with his Latin Version of 1556. Yet it is hard to put any other construction on the language of his Preface to his own latest edition, dated Calmdis Augusti 1598:

Annus agitur quadragesimus secundus, Christiane lector, ex quo Novi Testamenti Latinam interpretationem emendare sum aggressus, Graeco contextu, non modo cum novemdecim vetustissimis quam plurimis manuscriptis et multis passim impressis

codicibus, sed etiam cum Syra interpretatione collate, et quam optima potui fide ac diligentia, partim cum veterum Grsecorum ac Latinorum patrum scriptis, partim cum recentioribus, turn pietate, turn eruditione prasstantissimorum Theologorum versionibus, et variis enarrationibus comparato.

HENDON, February, 1884.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Preliminary explanation (page 1)
• Section I. History of editions of the Authorized Bible, 1611-1863 (page 3)
• Section II. Its marginal notes and original texts (page 40)
• Section III. Its use of Italic type (page 61)
• Section IV. Its punctuation (page 81)
• Section V. Its orthography and grammar (page 93)
• Section VI. Parallel references in the margin (page 116)
• Section VII. Miscellaneous observations (page 127)

• Appendix A. List of wrong readings of the Bible of 1611 amended in later editions (page 147)
• Appendix B. Variation between the two issues, both bearing the date of 1611 (page 203)
• Appendix C. List of original readings of the Bible of 1611 restored, later alterations being withdrawn (page 215)
• Appendix D. Dr Blayney's Report to the Delegates of the Clarendon Press (page 238)
• Appendix E. The Greek text adopted in the Bible of 1611 examined and arranged (page 243)
• Note on the Synod of Dort (page 264)
• Original Epistle of the Translators to the Reader, with notes (page 265)
• Index of Persons and Subjects (page 305)

P. 147, last line but one: for I Mace. xiii. 15 read I Mace. xiii. 51.

P. 148, col. I : for Gen. xii. read Gen. xli.

" "  : for Lev. xviii. 20 read Lev. xviii. 21.

P. 159, i Chr. xv. 18, 20 (first reference): for 1639 read 1638.

THE AUTHORIZED EDITION OF THE ENGLISH BIBLE (1611), ITS SUBSEQUENT REPRINTS AND MODERN REPRESENTATIVES

A CRITICAL edition of the Authorized Version of the English Bible, having reference to its internal character rather than to its external history, and indicating the changes for good or ill introduced into the original text of 1611 by subsequent reprints, would have been executed long ago, had this Version been nothing more than the greatest and best known of English Classics. And such a design has been rendered all the more necessary by the fact that a formal revision of the Translation itself is now in progress, having been undertaken about fourteen years ago under the auspices of the Convocation of the Province of Canterbury. If a judgment may be formed from previous experience in like cases, the revised and unrevised Versions, when the former shall be at length completed, are destined to run together a race of generous and friendly rivalry for the space of at least one generation, before the elder of the two shall be superseded in the affections of not a few devout persons, who, in so grave a matter as the daily use of Holy Scripture, shall prove slow to adopt changes which yet they will not doubt to be made, on the whole, for the better. With so sharp a struggle before it, it is only right that the Authorized or King James's Bible should be represented, as far as may be, in the precise shape that it would have assumed, if its venerable Translators had shewn themselves more exempt than they were from the failings incident to human in firmity; or if the same severe accuracy, which is now demanded in carrying so important a volume through the press, had been deemed requisite or was at all usual in their age. The purpose of the present work is to discuss, within as moderate a compass as the subject will permit, the principles which have been adopted in editing the following pages, the reasons whereon they are grounded, and the difficulties which have been encountered in the prosecution of an arduous but by no means a wearisome task. For the reader's convenience it will be divided into seven Sections, the chief contents of which are here sub joined.

Section I. On the history of the text of the Authorized Version, from A.D. 1611 down to the present time.

Section II. On its marginal notes; and on the original texts, both Greek and Hebrew, employed by the Translators.

Section III. On the use of the Italic type by the Translators, and on the extension of their principles by subsequent editors.

Section IV. On the system of punctuation adopted in 1611, and modified in more recent Bibles.

Section V. On the orthography, grammatical peculiarities, and capital letters of the original, as compared with modern editions.

Section VI. On the references to parallel texts of Scripture which are set in the margin.

Section VII. Miscellaneous observations relating to the present edition, and general Conclusion.

To this short treatise is annexed, besides several other Appendices, a full Catalogue of the places in which the text of modern Bibles differs from that of the standard of 1611, with the dates at which the variations Were severally adopted, so far as by diligent care they have been ascertained.

The Translators' address to the Reader, prefixed to the edition of 1611, is reprinted at the end of this volume.

SECTION I