Subject: Re: 1769 or 1833

From: "Harold P. Scanlin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 30 Mar 1997 23:16:16 -0500

Minton asked about the 1833 Webster KJV and the 1769 edition..

Perhaps the real answer is neither.There are MANY print versions of the
KJV, some claiming to be based on the "best" KJV of 1769.  That certainly
was a quality edition, the printer having gone to great lengths to get rid
of typos and ensure consistency where appropriate.  However, this was only
one of many efforts in this regard.

The need to occasionally reestablish the text was due in part to the way
books were printed.  Any 1000+ page book required a large inventory of
movable type.  Some printers actually had to print the sheets for part of
the Bible, then break down the setting to get enough individual letters to
set the rest of the Bible.  This kind of practice intoroduced the
possibility of inconsistent spellings, etc.  (Cf. what can happen when more
than one scribe works on a single MS.)

In the 18th century a largely successful effort to avoid this problem, and
significanty reduce the price of Bibles, was accomplished by the wealthy
von Canstein who was able to fund the cost of enough moveable type to set
the entire Luther Bible and keep the typesetting in place.  General
printers could not afford to do this, even if they had enough type to do an
entire Bible, since they would need the type for other books.  Canstein's
Bible Society was the immediate predecessor of the German Bible Society and
the 19th century Bible Society movement. 

Noah Webster, of dictionary fame who also was interested in spelling
reform, undertook a review of the KJV text, but he had another motivation
as well.  He prepared his edition for a public(!) school audience and
wanted to spare the youths some of the more blunt language of the
traditional KJV text.  Accordingly, he introduced a small number of
bowdlerizing changes.  Since I think someone has an electronic version of
Webster 1833 it would be interesting to crossmatch this file with one of
the "standard" KJV's.  Incidentally, this may be a good context to mention
one of my pet peves: there are several electronic KJV's, but they generally
get distributed without any information on which KJV they were based on.

For information on the 1769 "establishment" (I purposely avoid the use of
"revision") see the note in Herbert's published update of the English
section of Darlow and Moule's Catalog of the BFBS Bible collection. 
Herbert generally includes notes on major efforts at reestablishing the KJV
text.  For similar notes on US editions, including Webster 1833, see
Margaret Hills's published catalog of the ABS Bible collection.

There were, of course, a number of notable efforts to "revise" the KJV, in
most cases rather modest changes.  A few of the more famous efforts include
John Wesley's, where he introduced some readings bsed on Bengel's
recommended departures from the MT.  Webster may qualify as a revision,
depending on how many changes one believes are required to qualify as a
revision.

In the 1850's ABS tried a minor revision involving mostly spelling.  The
committee was composed of some of America's leading biblical scholars of
the day, including Edward Robinson, the "father" of biblical archaeology
and the first major translator of the Gesenius Hebrew lexicon. I think his
name is still on the title page of BDB.  This edition was published but was
met with such a furor from some quarters that ABS withdrew this edition and
made a more modest revision, instead.

Pardon ths rambling on, but I think the whole history of textual variants
in printed editons is relevant to the practice of textual criticism in
general.  This same point was made in a very interesting round of list
discussions a few months back.

Harold P. Scanlin
United Bible Societies
1865 Broadway
New York, NY  10023

---

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 08:27:28 -0500 (EST)

The "Online Bible" CD-ROM (I have version 6.12, dated Oct. '94) has both
the 1769 and the 1833 KJV texts, and allows one to compare them side by
side.

*******************

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 08:22:35 -0700

>depending on how many changes one believes are required to qualify as a

I always though it was ironic, though, that Wesley's changes did not
include the Three Heavenly Witnesses in 1 John 5. I once saw his bible,
with a cover note saying that it incorporated changes from the TR text.
Naturally I checked that passage first. And, yes, it has the spurious
reading.

Sigh.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                            Robert B. Waltz
                         [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A very rough draft of part of the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)

---

From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Mar 1997 10:15:03 -0500 (EST)

> the "standard" KJV's.  

The Webster 1833 edition circulates in electronic form either as ASCII
text exported from the Online Bible software program or within the Online
Bible program itself. Any other software programs which might use the
Webster 1833 text, so far as I know, have taken that text directly from
that which originally appeared in the Online Bible. 

Since I have been involved in some of the details involving the Online
Bible (primarily the manual entry and proofing of the entire Greek NT text
plus parsing data in four different editions [Stephens 1550 TR, Scrivener
1894 TR, my own Byzantine/Majority Textform, and Westcott-Hort 1881]), I
should probably speak to the text of the Webster 1833 text included
within that software package.

The Webster 1833 text appearing therein was prepared electronically from
the Baker (or was it Hendrickson?) reprint edition by Larry Pierce, the
programmer of the Online Bible, but the Online Bible form of that text
does _not_ in all places reflect the original Webster 1833, but has been
modernized in either spelling or removal of further archaisms which
Webster left intact.  The "thees and thous" and older English endings
remain in that text, but one should not think that by running an
electronic comparison with the KJV that a _true_ list of differences
between Webster 1833 and the KJV will result. 

> Incidentally, this may be a good context to mention

This is definitely a reasonable complaint, especially due to the
differences between the Oxford and Cambridge editions of the KJV. The
Online Bible does note that its text is that of the 1769 Cambridge
revision, and in its documentation even gives the specific printed edition
currently available with which it was compared.  As I understand the
situation, at this time the Online Bible's KJV text is considered to be
100% accurate with that Cambridge edition, and after examining other
electronic KJV texts currently available Franklin electronics chose to use
only the Online Bible 1769 KJV text for their handheld electronic KJV
product. 

_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~