Curious Editions of the Bible.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 68, 20 September 1884, Page 5

Curious Editions of the Bible.

I came across an interesting article in the " Leisure Hour " a short time ago, enumeating the curious misprints which have occurred in the Bible at different periods. Besides the better known "Breeches Bible," so called because the passage about^ Adam and Eve sewing fig leaves together, is thus rendered : " And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves breeches." There seem to be six other versions which contain remarkable errors and renderings. In a Bible published in Geneva in 1561-2, the following misprint occurred : — " Blessed are the place-makers ; for they shall be called the children of God." In an edition of the authorised version, published at Oxford in 1717, the heading—'' The Parable of the Vineyard," appears as "The Parable of the Vinegar." In another edition of the Oxford Bible, the following misprint, with which I should think many Sheffielders, if one may judge from their stylo of pronunciation, -nill have much sympathy, occurred— "Who hath ears to ear, let him hear." Two other instances are the so-called " Printers' Bible," and the " Standing Fishes Bible." The passage from which the first takes its name is Ps. cxix., 161, and runs thus :—" Printers have persecuted me without cause." In the "Fishes Bible," the word "fishes" is substituted for "fishers," in Ezek. xivii., 10, and makes the clause read— "And it shall come to pass that the fishes shall stand upon it." But though these blunders are ludicrous, they do not alter any essential point of the doctrine, as the one given in an edition of the authorised version published in 1631 does, where the negative is left out in the Seventh Commandment. For this serious mistake Charles I. fined the printer either £3000 or £300, the authorities cannot agree which. The article is only a short one, but it will be read with interest by many who have not the opportunity of studying these different editions of the Bible for themselves.— Correspondent of English paper.

Mr Oscar Wilde has returned from his honeymoon, and is looking forward to a season of fresh literary and lecturing activity. He lias added three new lectures to his repertoire — one on "Dress," one on "The Value of Art in Modern Life," and one on "Benvenuto Cellini." M. Zola, in his brick house on the hillside at Medan, on the Ouse, twenty miles from Paris, reads English novels in translations, and thinks that they are written senti mentally for young girls. For his new novel of mining life he himself can write from his notes three pages a day. Here is a good story from New York. Two ladies met over five o'clock tea, in what is called a high social circle. Both were rich and accomplished, and both claimed to have ancestors. The elder of the two referred, in the course of conversation, to the fact that her ancestors had come over in the Mayflower. "Indeed," cried the other, in the softest of voices, " I didn't know that the Mayflower carried steerage passengers."