Jots & Tittles

Bible Bloopers

You may have heard of The Vinegar Bible. It was published in 1717 with the chapter heading of Luke 20 reading “The parable of the Vinegar” instead of “The parable of the Vineyard.” Because of that one little mistake, copies of the Vinegar Bible sell for ungodly sums on the antiquarian book market, and libraries with copies in their special collections bill themselves as tourist attractions. But the Vinegar Bible wasn’t the only edition that could have used a good proofreader.

Take the Sin On Bible (which in more modern parlance might be called “the Surfer Dudes’ Bible”). It came out just before the Vinegar Bible, in 1716. In it, Jesus tells the same man he had just told to “take up your mat and walk” to “sin on more.” In other Bibles, Jesus says “sin no more.”

Errors in Bible printing were fairly commonplace in the 17th and 18th centuries, but that doesn’t mean they were taken lightly. During the reign of Charles I, the Fool Bible came out. In it, the printers left out a word in Psalm 14 to make the first verse read “The fool hath said in his heart there is a God.” The printers were fined 3,000 pounds for their mistake. The printing company Barker and Lucas was fined only 300 pounds for printing the Adulterous Bible in 1631, but it was enough to put them into bankruptcy. And all for one little slip that a lot of people still make: “Thou shalt commit adultery.”