P056 A Short History of the English Bible.
P056 A Short History of the English Bible.
One singular and interesting fact has been brought to light within a few years, and that is, that in the year 1611 there were two distinct folio editions of this Bible published, having marked differences.
There are some copies extant where the sheets from the two are combined; and some, where the title-page of 1611 is prefixed to later editions. The two editions of 1611 had distinctive titles, though it is said that in some cases these were interchanged; one being a wood-cut which had been used before in the Bishops’ Bible, edition of 1602, and the other an elegant copperplate. The wood-cut initials are frequently different in the two. Each of them has also errors and readings peculiar to itself. One edition has, for instance, "Judas" instead of "Jesus" in Matt, xxvi, 36; the other has a part of the verse repeated in Exod. xiv, 10, making what printers call "a doublet." In Gen. x, 16, one copy reads the "Emorite," and the other the "Amorite." One has in Ruth iii, 15,"He went into the city;" the other has,"She went into the city." This has led Mr. Stevens(1) to designate them, somewhat humorously, as THE GREAT HE BIBLE, and THE GREAT SHE BIBLE. Which of these two editions is really the earlier is a question in dispute. Mr. Stevens and Mr. Francis Fry, both of whom have given great attention to the subject, maintain that the He Bible is the original, while Dr. Scrivener, equally good authority, as stoutly affirms the reverse.
Into this discussion it is beyond the province of this work to enter. The style of the version is peculiar. The translators did not give the English of their day, either written or spoken. Indeed, one distinguished writer asserts that the dialect used was not at any period "the actual current book language nor the colloquial speech of the English people."(2) Be that as it may, we must go back of the time of the translators to find the origin of the style of our present version.
We can trace it through all the various versions up to Tyndale’s, and then, coming down from one to another, we can see how each succeeding reviser has improved by the labors of his predecessors, until our own version combines many of the excellencies of them all.(3)
------------ (FN1)"The Bibles," etc, p. 109.
(FN2)"Lectures on the English Language." By George P. Marsh. Lecture 28.
(FN3) On Tyndale’s style, see page 27.
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