360 - The "Wicked" Bibles

The "Wicked" Bibles
By Ray Russell

DOES THE BIBLE condone adultery, or urge us to hate our wives? Did Adam and Eve wear pants? As I discovered while doing research for my latest novel, it depends on which Bible you read.

There was an edition that seemed not only to condone adultery but to command it. That Bible, the handiwork of a pair of printers named Barker and Lucas, was published in England in 1631. It was a handsome volume, as well it should have been, for Messrs. B&L were the King's printers. But it had one little flaw: a three-letter word, not, was missing from the Seventh Commandment, making it read "Thou shalt commit adultery." The careless printers of the book that became famous as "The Wicked Bible" were fined 300 pounds, which effectively put them out of business.

Ten times that amount was the fine imposed on another firm of printers, during the reign of Charles I, for perpetrating what has come to be known as "The Fool Bible." Their slip-of-the-typestick occurred in Psalm 14, which came out reading, "The fool hath said in his heart there is a God" - instead of "there is no God."

At Cambridge in 1653 was printed the justly nicknamed "Unrighteous Bible." It was marred by two bloopers, both concerning righteousness. In I Corinthians, it asked the question, "Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the Kingdom of God?" Obviously a not is missing from between shall and inherit-probably dropped on the floor by the same gremlins who lost a Barker and Lucas not twenty-two years before. As if that weren't bad enough, in this edition's version of Romans may be seen, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of righteousness unto sin." Of course, unrighteousness is the correct word. This proves, perhaps, that the power of positive thinking can be carried too far.

Absent negatives appear to be the single most prevalent kind of error, and they always succeed in completely reversing the scriptural meaning. "And there was no more sea," we are told in Revelation-except in a certain 1641 edition which has, "And there was more sea."

It wasn't Jesus who, in the garden of Gethsemane, told his disciples to

Under the title "The 'Wicked Bibles' or, Let Him Who is Without Sin Among You Cast the First Line of Type," this item is reprinted with permission from Verbatim ("The Language Quarterly"), Vol. VI, No. 4 (Spring 1980), pp. 1-2 ( Copyright 1980). Ray Russell is the well-known poet, script writer, editor, and author of such books as Case Against Satan (1962), Holy Horatio (1976), and Incubus (1976).

361 - The "Wicked" Bibles

"Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder." It was Judas-at least according to an edition of 1611.

Eight thousand copies of one Bible were printed and bound in Ireland in 1716 before it was discovered that the command, in John, to "sin no more," had come out as "sin on more," a directive with somewhat more appeal to chronic sinners.

"The Parable of the Vinegar" (instead of "Vineyard") appears in a chapter heading of Luke in a 1717 Oxford printing. Philip, rather than Peter, is singled out as the apostle who will deny Jesus, in Luke of the 1792 "Denial Bible." Poor Luke again gets its lumps in "The Forgotten Sins Bible" of 1638, where "Her sins, which are many, are forgotten" may be seen, rather than the correct forgiven. "If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother ... yea, and his own wife also ...So begins another passage in the long-suffering Luke, as given in the so-called "Wife-Hater Bible" of 1810. Here, one letter is the culprit-w. It should be l, and the phrase should read "and his own life also… ."

"The Murderers' Bible" of 1801 slips in murderers for murmurers in a line from Jude: "These are murmurers, complainers." "Who hath ears to ear, let him hear" is the way a line in Matthew is misrendered in "The Ears to Ear Bible" of 18 10, "The Discharge Bible" of 1806 reads, in Timothy, not "I charge thee before God" but (you guessed it) "I discharge thee..."

Sexual identity has been in question more than once. He is substituted for the correct she in what today some might call "The Male Chauvinist Bible," but which is more commonly and more simply known as "The He Bible." This was the first of the two editions of the Authorized Version, 1611, and its sin was to say, in Ruth, "And he went into the city" instead of she. Another mix-up of gender happened in a much more recent edition of 1923 which contained a table of affinity with the stern admonition, "A man may not marry his grandmother's wife," a feat which The New Yorker might call Neatest Trick of the Week.

An edition organized by Anglican Archbishop Matthew Parker, and therefore known affectionately as "The Bishops' Bible," made its first appearance in 1568 and was gratifyingly popular. Its third edition, however, published in 1572, didn't fare so well. Nothing was wrong with the words, but the decoiations left a lot to be desired. The printer used highly ornamental initial letters at the beginnings of several books of this Bible, which would have been a splendid idea if the letters hadn't been left over from printings of Ovid's Metamorphoses and other classics of pagan literature. The greatest offender was the graphically pictorial letter that met the eye at the beginning of Hebrews a vivid depiction of the god Zeus, desguised as a swan, offering his amorous attentions to the lady known as Leda.

Depending upon your point of view, these howlers might be considered either the work of the Devil, or Freudian slips-the printer's

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unconscious advocacy of adultery, wife-hating, Leda-chasing, or what have you.

But by no means all such mistakes result in "wicked" texts. Many are simply amusing. Take "The Camel's Bible," for instance. In Genesis of this 1823 edition, "Rebekah arose, and her camels"- in place of damsels. Or "The Standing Fishes Bible" of 1806, which tells us, in Ezekiel, "And it shall come to pass that the fishes shall stand upon it." As much as one hates to dispel that lively image of our finny friends standing upright on their tails, it must be disclosed that the right word is fishers.

The second edition of The Geneva Bible, 1562, is known as "The Placemaker's Bible," for good reason. In Matthew it converts a great utterance into "Blessed are the placemakers, for they shall be called the children of God." Again, one letter is the villain a mischievous l which replaced the first e of peacemakers.

The largest number of typos crops up in "The Lions Bible" of 1804, so named because, in I Kings, it speaks of "thy son that shall come forth out of thy lions," instead of loins. But there are other disaster areas, as well: "The murdered shall surely be put together," rather than put to death (from Numbers); and "For the flesh lusteth after the Spirit," instead of against the Spirit (from Galatians). And there are many more.

Eccentric translations, rather than printing errors, make armfuls of other Bibles worthy of note. There are, for example, two "Bug Bibles." Miles Coverdale's Bible of 1535 has earned that creepy sobriquet; and so has the Bible printed in Antwerp two years later as the translation of a certain Thomas Matthews, which was probably a pen name for one John Rogers. In both editions, a passage in Psalm 91 is presented as "Thou shalt not nede to be afrayed for eny bugges by night." In most other English language Bibles, it's terror by night.

Today, the thought of Adam and Eve wearing breeches may provoke us to laughter, because the word conjures up images of trousers or pants, complete with pockets and zippers, cuffs optional. But in The Geneva Bible, mentioned above, the appropriate passage in Genesis is given as: "And they sowed figge-tree leaves together, and made themselves breeches." The same word is used in other early Bibles; and in all of them, it was almost certainly meant in the sense of "aprons" or "loin cloths" (or, possibly, "lion cloths").

Translations have played havoc with the well-known balm in Gilead, too. The phrase, which occurs in Jeremiah, is rendered in the 1609 Douai Bible as "Is there noe rosin in Galaad?" Perhaps you prefer treacle over rosin? Take your pick: both The Bishops' Bible and Coverdale's Bible offer treacle in place of the more generally accepted balm.

Those Bibles are legion which tell us that a rich man will have more trouble entering heaven than a camel passing through a needle's eye. Considering, however, that the Greek for camel (kamelon) bears a striking resemblance to the Greek for rope (kamilon), isn't it likely that

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the latter, earthier, better, more realistic, less outlandish image was lost in translation?

But printers, more often than translators, have been to blame for bloopers in the Bible, so it's only fair that they pointed the accusing finger at themselves in an edition published about 1702. In this version's Psalm 119, David, instead of complaining the "Princes have persecuted me without a cause," says, "Printers have persecuted me… ." That edition is now known as (what else?) "The Printer's Bible."