The Presentation Of The Text In The First Printing
THE PRESENTATION OF THE TEXT IN THE FIRST PRINTING
One of the most important developments in sixteenth-century book production was the gradual rise to prominence of the title page. The origins of this can be traced back to the formation of the firm Fust & Schoeffer in 1462, following the failure of Johannes Gutenberg's original printing firm. As a means of identifying their products, Fust & Schoeffer began to print a simple woodblock design as a trademark at the end of their books. The idea was that the reader of the work would realize who had produced the book. Although a tradition had developed of leaving the first page of the book blank—perhaps to protect the text from wear—it gradually became increasingly common to find the author and title of the work printed on this otherwise blank opening page.
In the early sixteenth century, Parisian printers began to experiment with larger trademarks, which often would not fit into the limited space available at the end of a book. As a result, the first page of the text was seized upon as a means of identifying the author, title, and publisher of the work. This trend, which led to increasingly decorative title pages, can be observed clearly in the editio princeps of the King James Bible (1611), which includes an impressive and ornate engraved title page. As the page is of such importance in relation to the presentation of the work, we may consider it in a little detail. The title reads as follows:
THE HOLY BIBLE, containing the Old Testament and the New. Newly translated out of the original tongues: and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by his Majesty's special commandment. Appointed to be read in Churches. Imprinted at London by Robert Barker, Printer to the King's most excellent majesty. Anno Domini 1611.
The use of the phrase “appointed to be read in churches” has attracted much interest. It is sometimes assumed that the words “appointed to be read in churches” imply that the work has been authorized for this purpose. In fact, this is not the case. Although a twenty-first-century reader would naturally interpret the word “appointed” to mean “authorized,” this is not the seventeenth-century meaning of the English term. The words—which were in any case omitted from many later editions—simply mean that the work was laid out in a way suitable for public reading in churches.
As we noted earlier, the Hampton Court Conference had set out a proposal for the translation of the Bible, in which translation would be undertaken by “the best-learned men in both Universities, then reviewed by the Bishops, presented to the Privy Council, lastly ratified by Royal authority.” Yet there is actually no documentary evidence that the 1611 Bible ever received final written authorization from the bishops, Privy Council, or the king. While it is possible that such authorization—which would have taken the form of an Order in Council—may have been lost in the Whitehall fire of January 12, 1618 (which destroyed the Privy Council registers for the years 1600–13), it is more likely that no such order ever existed.
Yet, as matters turned out, the new Bible did not really need the royal authority to command respect. As the noted English New Testament scholar B. F. Westcott commented in 1868:
From the middle of the seventeenth century, the King's Bible has been the acknowledged Bible of the English-speaking nations throughout the world simply because it is the best. A revision which embodied the ripe fruits of nearly a century of labour, and appealed to the religious instinct of a great Christian people, gained by its own internal character a vital authority which could never have been secured by an edict of sovereign rulers.
But such acceptance actually lay some distance in the future. The new translation's first decades were marked by violent criticism from both Protestant and Catholic opponents, and a failure to gain widespread support. We shall consider the troubled reception of the new work in a later chapter; our attention now concerns the presentation of the text of the new translation.
The title itself is surrounded by a decorative frame, designed by Cornelius Boel, an artist originally based in Antwerp who had settled in Richmond, and who had painted portraits of members of the royal family. The upper panel depicts the Trinity in a conventional style. God the Father is represented by the four Hebrew letters “YHWH,” a combination of letters that is often referred to as the “tetragramma-ton.” This word is the Hebrew name for the God of Israel, and is used extensively in the Old Testament to distinguish the God of Israel from all other deities of the Ancient Near East. The King James Bible occasionally translates this special name as “Jehovah;” more often, it is translated as “the LORD.” Immediately below this is an image of a dove, often used as a representation of the Holy Spirit. This imagery is based partly on the account of the baptism of Jesus, as related in Matthew 3:16–17:
The Title Page of the 1611 edition of the King James Bible
Jesus Christ himself is depicted within an oval frame, toward the base of the panel, using the image of a lamb and flag. This image is based partly on the book of Revelation, especially the reference to “the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing” (Revelation 5:12). The “lamb and flag” is generally interpreted as a symbol of the resurrection of the crucified Christ. To make sure that the reference to the crucifixion is not overlooked, Boel places a cross slightly to the left of the image of the lamb and flag. The figures of Peter and James are directly to the left and right of the oval, with figures of the apostles—including Paul—dispersed in the background.
Four figures are placed in the corners of the rectangular frame, each holding a pen. These figures are the evangelists—the gospel writers. Matthew is placed in the top left; Mark in the top right; Luke at bottom left, and John at bottom right. To the sides of the frame, at the same level as the title itself, stand the figures of Moses and Aaron. Boel has placed them in niches, similar to those familiar with the church architecture of the period. The six figures just mentioned—Moses, Aaron, and the four gospel writers—are seen as representing the Old and New Covenants, which are contained in the translation. Although this edition of the King James Bible includes the Apocrypha, attention is not drawn to this fact on the title panel.
Finally, an oval panel is placed on the bottom of the frame, depicting a pelican feeding her young. This symbol is of particular interest, and merits close attention. The image of the pelican is widely used in Christian iconography to depict Christ's work of salvation. It was once thought that the pelican fed her young with blood pecked from her own breast, and this was interpreted as an image of Christ's blood sustaining the faithful. The image of the pelican “vulning” herself seemed ideally suited to expressing the basic Christian idea that Christ saved and sustained his people through his shedding of blood on the cross. The image is thus intended to supplement that of the lamb and flag, already noted, to stress the centrality of Jesus Christ to the message of the Bible.
There is a curious irony to this symbol. In the Middle Ages, the image of a pelican came to be linked with the Lord's Supper or Mass, especially with the medieval ecclesiastical feast of Corpus Christi (literally “the body of Christ”). Oxford and Cambridge colleges were often named after the religious festival nearest to the day of their founding. One Oxford and one Cambridge college derived their names from this medieval religious feast. And who was the president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, at the time of commissioning of the new Bible? None other than the same John Reynolds, who had been the original inspiration for the new translation.
The title page is followed by the “Dedication to the Most High and Mighty Prince James, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, etc.” Note that English monarchs had ceased to have any authority in France with the loss of the final English possession—Calais—under Mary Tudor fifty years earlier. However, the title was retained as a minor conceit for some time. This dedication was written by Thomas Bilson. It was followed by the extended literary preface entitled “The Translators to the Reader,” written by Miles Smith, which explained some of the thinking that lay behind the new translation.
After this, we find a substantial amount of material relating to the ordering of the church year, reflecting the primary purpose of the volume—to be read aloud in the churches of England. First, a “calendar” identified the main holy days for the church year. This was followed by “An Almanack for 39 years,” which set out the main religious festivals for the period 1603–1641. This was followed by a series of directions intended to allow readers to work out the precise date of Easter in perpetuity. A lectionary then followed, setting out the order of Psalms and other readings from the Bible set for Morning and Evening
Prayer throughout the year. Finally the names and order of the books of the Old and New Testaments were set out, along with the numbers of chapters they contained.
This section of material is of considerable interest, as it indicates that the primary envisaged function of the King James Bible was ecclesiastical. This was not intended to be a Bible for personal study. In addition to being far too large for personal use—its folio size demanded that it rested on some kind of lectern—the Bible included material that showed its users how it was to be used in church services. It is this material which was “appointed”—that is, laid out—to enable the Bible to be read in churches, as the title page makes clear. Later editions dropped this material altogether, as it was provided in the 1662 edition of the Book of Common Prayer.
This was followed by a section of material consisting of thirty-four pages of highly decorative biblical genealogies, followed by a map of Canaan, with a list of its main place names printed on the reverse. This material, which was of little use to anyone, was added on account of an arrangement negotiated with James I by the noted entrepreneur John Speed in October 1610. On the basis of this “privilege,” every edition of the Bible printed for the next ten years had to include this largely useless material. Speed gained something in the region of sixpence to two shillings per copy for this material, a proportion of which had to be paid to the crown. This increased the cost of the Bible considerably. There are good reasons for thinking that these thirty-six pages were printed by Speed, and bound into the Bible at a late stage; the material is occasionally found inserted at different locations, suggesting that it was originally distinct from the material produced by Robert Barker.
Finally, the reader passes to the body of the translation itself. The text is laid out in two columns, using black letter type. This contrasted sharply with the much more legible and attractive roman type used by the Geneva Bible. The two columns of text were enclosed within rules, with each verse beginning on a new line. Words that were added to the text to allow English readers to make sense of the original Greek or Hebrew were indicated, not by the use of italic type—as in later versions of the text—but by the use of small roman type. This unsatisfactory solution gave rise to an inelegant presentation, particularly on pages where many such words had been added. The first printing used fifty-nine lines of type per column; later printings increased this. For example, the folio edition of 1613 used seventy-two lines per column, allowing the work to be reduced from 732 leaves to 508.
The ruled margins allowed space for the insertion of marginal notes. These, however, did not take the form of the Geneva Bible's annotations—which were basically a theological commentary on the text—but explained the literal meaning of Hebrew translations, or identifying variant readings of the text. The Old Testament alone contained 6,637 marginal notes of this kind, of which roughly a thousand dealt directly with the literal meaning of Hebrew words.
The New Testament is prefaced by its own title page. Whereas the title page to the volume as a whole was engraved on metal, that for the New Testament was a cheaper woodcut, reproducing some features of the earlier page. The title page reads as follows:
THE NEW TESTAMENT of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Newly translated out of the original Greek; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised by his Majesty's special command. Imprinted in London by Robert Barker, Printer to the King's most excellent majesty. Anno Domini 1611. Cum privilego.
Demand for the work was such that a reprint was inevitable. This came in 1613, when a new folio edition was printed, which corrected some of the errors noted in the first printing of the work. Sadly, the magnificent title page engraving of 1611 was replaced by a less satisfactory woodcut, based on the 1611 title page for the New Testament. Some of the copies of the 1613 edition appear to have included a number of printed sheets left over from the 1611 printing—presumably an economy measure, reflecting the weak financial base of the operation.
St. Luke's Birth of Christ from the King James Bible