Saturday, March 26, 2011

Biblical Printing Errors | Bloopers

The following is adapted from the article "Bible, specially named editions" in Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia. Third Edition. (New York: Harper and Row, 1987)—

In the so-called Wicked Bible, printed in London by Baker and Lucas in 1632, the word not was omitted from the seventh commandment, to make it "Thou shalt commit adultery."
 
Genesis 24:61, which is supposed to read "Rebecca arose, and her damsels," was mistakenly printed as "Rebecca arose, and her camels" in an edition known as Rebecca's Camels Bible, printed in 1823.
 
Published in 1702, the Printers' Bible contained an error in Psalms 119:161 in which the word printers was substituted for princes, so that King David was said to complain that "printers have persecuted me without a cause."
 
In the Murderers' Bible, published in 1801, the word murmurers was misprinted as murderers in Jude 16, resulting in a verse that reads "These are murderers, complainers, walking after their own lusts..."
 
The To Remain Bible refers to a flawed edition, published at Cambridge in 1805, in which Galatians 4:29 was mistakenly printed as "he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit to remain, even so it is now." The words to remain are erroneous. While checking the galleys, a proofreader questioned if there should be a comma after the word spirit. The editor responded by penciling "to remain" in the margin, which was then mistakenly typeset.