First Edition Typographical Error

First-edition printings of any book are known to be prone to typographical errors. The Bible is no exception even throughout history. I have in my collection a 1613 edition of the King James that was part of the first printing. This Bible (still in its original binding and leather) is what has come to be known as the “He Bible”. It contains a typographical error in the book of Ruth where the printers printed the word “he” rather than the correct word “she”. This wrong printing of the Bible was printed from 1611-1613 when it was corrected. Below, I have listed a few other famous errors in the King James text.

• In an edition now known as “The Unrighteous Bible” of 1653, the text of 1 Corinthians 6:9 was misprinted by having the second negative of the sentence accidentally omitted, so that Paul in this version actually says: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom?”
• The version now called the “Sin On Bible” of 1716 provides an unusual ending to the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, in which he sends her on her way unpunished but with an exhortation. In this edition, though, Jesus tells her to “Go and sin on more” (“on” instead of “no”)
• Many KJV Bibles will have paragraph headings that indicate what each passage is about. These are not part of the manuscripts of the Bible, but are added by publishers/editors in order to help the reader along.  For one of Jesus’ most famous parables, “The Vinegar Bible” of 1717 gave the following as the title for the parable: “The Parable of the Vinegar” (instead of “The Parable of the Vineyard).
• According to “The Lions Bible” of 1804, in 1 Kings 8:19 God speaks to king David about “thy son that shall come forth from thy lions” (rather than “loins”).
• One of the most serious typographical errors is found in “The Adulterous Bible” of 1631. Here there was a rather serious and, well, unfortunate typographical error.  The “not” was inadvertently left out of the seventh commandment, so that now it reads: “Thou shalt commit adultery.”

As we have been receiving advanced copies of The Preacher’s Bible, we have found a “first edition error”.

The Scofield introductory note for 1 John was somehow digitally replaced by the introductory note for 2 Peter. We will be including a card explaining the error and containing the correct introduction to 1 John with all Bibles. Those of you who already possess a Bible (prior to this post) and feel that you cannot be satisfied with a Bible containing that error may contact us to discuss the matter further. We have gone to prayer, to our pastors as well as other pastors and experts in Bible dealing and history, and to our printer/binder, Royal Jongbloed, with this issue: the overall consensus is that we must press forward with our Bibles as they are.
Obviously, we will have corrected this error in subsequent print runs, but we feel that, as children of God desiring to walk in honesty and integrity, we must announce this possibility of typographical error to all who will purchase these first edition Bibles.
We have looked at several options of trying to correct the already printed Bibles, but Royal Jongbloed stated to us directly that to try to do anything to this Bible other than announce and move forward would be, in their exact words, “A crime” against the quality and “caliber” of this Bible.

We understand if this affects the ability to purchase one of these high quality Bibles. We expect the next printing to be within the next two years or so; we currently have around 2000 Bibles printed. The next printing will take place as soon as we have gone through these printed Bibles. At the end of the day, this is the highest quality Bible on the market, and that hasn’t changed.

If you were to find another typographical error, please let us know immediately. While we have done everything possible to ensure accuracy from the first printing (we had 6 different proofreadings done), when humans are involved in anything, there is a possibility and even probability of error. We are continuing to proofread now that we have copies available. Any errors will be corrected in the next printing.