Holmes County Republican. [volume] (Millersburg, Holmes Co., O. [Ohio]) 1870-1895, 1873-02-20
THE SCRIPTURES.
Printers Errors in the English
Bible.

The errors of the foreign editions OF
the Dutch and Scotch Bible are ealmost
innumerable. In black-letter testa-
ment of 1864, printed at either Edin-
burg or in Holland, a mistake may be
met with in nearly every column. In
England itself a vigorous attempt to in
sure correction was made by the restric-
ton of the right of publishing Bibles to
the Kings printers; and no more cur
ious' proof ofthe perpetuity of English
usages could be found that in the his
tory of this monopoly. The house of
Christopher Baker, to which the patent
was granted in 1877 went on steadily
printing it until 100. The right was
held for sixty years by Thomas Basket
and purchased in 1863 by Charles Eyre.
whose representatives, Messrs, Eyre &
Spottiswoods, continue a succession
which has been unbroken since 1865.
But the monopoly failed in securing
the various editions from even ludicrous
and profane blunders. In one of the
earlier issues, the second folio of 1911
in which the mistakes of the first were
supposed to have been corrected, we find
Then cometh Judes with them into a
place called Gethsemane. A folio of
1881 has received its name of the Vine
gar Bible, from a misprint in the head
ing of the parable of the Vineyard. In
two quartos of the present century we
are told that the blast of the terrible one
is as stone against the wall, and that
the "dogs liked his blood" We may
perhaps expect a little irony in the COM
positor, of 1888 (he may have been an
acquaintance of Milton's) who makes
the heathen vex the Israelites, not with
their "wiles," but with their "wives,' p
or in the printer of 1910, who sub
stituted ''rulers i'm the wilderness" tor
"mules."
But the real mischief of such blum
ders lay in their tendency to perpetual
ton. The omission in the first folio OF
two important words in the fifth chap
ter of st. Johns First Epistle is still per
petuated in our prayer-books, though it
has been corrected in the text of our
Bibles. "Strain at gnat" was proba-
bly, typographical blunder in the first
issues of King James Bible for the
''strain out'' of the Bishops and Gene
van versions; but it remains to this
day. So misprint in the First Epis-
tie to Timothy, which originated at
Cambridge about 1929, went on uncor-
rected after edition till 1903. The fine
of $4,000 inflicted by the Star Chamber
on Baxter, for his omission of the pro-
hibitory ''not" in the Seventh Com
mandment is well-known instance OF
the fruitless efforts to obtain correctness
the fine, however, as we hear. from Mr.
Loftie, dwindles ON investigation to
f3OO, and this again is compounded for
by the presentation of set of Greek
types to one of the universities.
Nor was free trade more conducive to
correctness than monopoly. The great
rebellion for time threw open the mar
ket, but the popular editions of Field
and Hill were disfigured with greater
number of blunders than had appeared
before. Their defects are mercilessly
exposed in a rare tract by Mr.. Kel-
bourne, which Mr.. Loftie has reprinted
in the preface. Besides the great errors,
however, which we have noticed, we
find a great number of smaller modifi-
cations going on in spelling and pune
tuation. During the first century which
is included in Mr.. Loftie's list, the SPELL
ing of no two editions is the same. In
such a change as of sometimes" for
Sometime" spelling becomes an im-
portant organ of revision. awe still, +"
says Mr.. Loftie, "have such words as
aastonied," "throughly," "pransings,"
scope" although the authority by
which they are retained has no more
existence in reality than that by which
such words as "shamefastness" or un-
possible were altered.