PRINTING ERRORS IN THE BIBLE

It is well known that before the invention by Gutenberg of his printing press, for the most part copies of the Bible had to be produced by hand copying, and that therefore individual manuscripts are subject to a number of accidental and purposeful errors. But the vast majority of these mistakes can be easily corrected by textual scholars using well-accepted principles of scholarship to reconstruct the reading in the original document.

What is not as widely recognized is that even after copies of the Bible were printed off rather than being laboriously transmitted by scribes, errors continued to creep in due to incorrect typesetting. Below in chronological order are some such examples of mistakes printed in English editions, often with humorous results. These have been collected from several sources, mainly from one article in The Guardian and another by the textual scholar Bruce Metzger. The printed version is quoted with the intended wording given in parentheses.

1562 “The Whig Bible” – “Blessed are the place (peace) makers.” (Matthew 5:9)

“Christ condemneth (commendeth) the poor widow.” (Luke 21:1-4)

1608-1611 – “Judas (Jesus) said to the twelve, 'Will you also go away?'” (John 6:67)

1612 “Printers (princes) have persecuted me.” (Psalms 119:161)

1631 “The Wicked Bible” – “Thou shall (not) commit adultery.” (Exodus 20:14)

For this error, the publisher was ordered to pay a fine of 300 English pounds and destroy all 1,000 copies.

1641 – “And there was (no) more sea.” (Revelation 21:1)

1653 – “Know ye not that the unrighteousness shall (not) inherit the kingdom of God.” (I Corinthians 6:9)

1682 “The Cannibal's Bible” – “If the latter husband ate (hate) her” (Deuteronomy 24:3)

1716 “The Sinner's Bible” – “Sin on (no) more.” (Jeremiah 31:34)

1770 “The Bride's Bible” – “a whip for the horse, a bride (bridle) for the ass.” (Proverbs 26:3)

1795 – “Let the children first be killed (filled).” (Mark 7:27)

1801 “The Murderer's Bible” – “These are the murderers (murmurers), malcontents, etc.”(Jude 16)

1804 “Thy son that shall come forth out of your lions (loins)...” (I Kings 8:19)

1805 “But as then he that was born after the Spirit to remain, even so it is now.” (Galatians 4:29)

In this case, the italicized words were actually a note by a proof-reader to the editor asking whether the following comma should remain or be taken out. A similar example supposedly occurred when the legally-blind author James Joyce was dictating Finnegans Wake to his secretary, the future novelist and playwright Samuel Beckett. The story goes that Joyce heard the knocking of a branch against his window and said “Come in.” Beckett thought it was part of the book and it found its way into the final book.

1806 – “It shall come to pass that the fishes (fishers) shall stand upon it.” (Ezekiel 47:10)

1810 “The Wife Hater's Bible” – “If any...hate not his own wife (life) also...” (Luke 14:26)

1950 Episcopal Bible – Among the unclean animals in Leviticus 11:30 which crawl on the earth, “skunk” appears in place of the lizard “skink.”

1966 – Ironically, in the original edition of the Jerusalem Bible, Psalm 122:6 reads “Pay for the peace of Jerusalem” in place of “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”

1970 – New American Bible – “God (John the Baptist) will go before him, in the spirit and power of Elijah.” (Luke 1:17)