18 Ways the Bible has Changed throughout History

18 Ways the Bible has Changed throughout History

Larry Holzwarth - April 19, 2019

18 Ways the Bible has Changed throughout History
A 1772 printing of the 1769 Oxford Edition, which changed spelling and standardized the English. Wikimedia

6. The Authorized Version continued to change through the 18th century

Between the years 1700 and 1800 the English language, its spelling and its grammatical construction, changed measurably, and printers of the Authorized Version, more frequently referred to during the century as the King James Version, altered the text and the spelling in the bibles they produced. Their motives for doing so were not religious in nature but were rather aimed at making the books they printed more readily accessible to their readers. By the middle of the 18th century, there were countless editions of the King James Version in England (and in the growing American colonies), with wide variations in their text. Both Cambridge and Oxford took steps to address the growing disparity.

Cambridge produced a revision in 1760, which was based on a series of revisions written by Francis Parris. In his 1743 revision and all subsequent editions including that of 1760, Parris made changes which though seemingly small proved significant. In the 1611 edition of the King James Version, the translators had written, “and the glorious appearing of God, and our Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Parris removed the comma, combining God and Jesus in the sentence in accordance with the Trinitarian concept of the Westminster Confession. The change remained in subsequent editions of the Cambridge revision, and in the Oxford edition of 1769.

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