Early Bibles and Bible-Making.

Editor’s Note.—There is no one book about which there are so many things to be known as the Bible. No one knows them all. Some are well acquainted with the Bible narrative, others make more of a study of doctrines which they suppose the Bible teaches. Some investigate the authenticity of the text in the ancient manuscripts. Others imagine how the books were originally written and constructed. Some look after chronology, others geography. Still others are busy with the search for confirmations in profane history. Bible students may know more or less of all these matters and yet know nothing of the processes by which the modern English Bible comes into their possession. No one is more competent to initiate these Bible students into the marvels of its manufacture and world-wide distribution than Mr. Henry Frowde. Somewhat over forty years ago, at the age of sixteen, he entered the service of the Religious Tract Society, London, and subsequently had considerable experience in the publication of Bibles and prayer-books. At the close of 1873, he was invited by the delegates of the Oxford University Press to undertake the management of their London businesses. This included the Oxford University Press warehouse and the binding business. In 1879, the learned and educational publications of the Clarendon Press were transferred to him from the Macmillans, and he was appointed publisher to the University. In the following article, Mr. Frowde gives an interesting account of successive translations and editions of the English Bible from the earliest period. In the paper of next week, he will tell how our modern Bibles are manufactured.

I HAVE been asked to write on the making of Bibles as it has been conducted in the past and is carried on now. It is an ancient industry, and one’s thoughts go back to those books of the Law and the Prophets which were to be found in every synagogue throughout Palestine in the time of our Lord. But it is the complete canon of Scripture as embodied in our present Bible that we have to consider, and the multiplication of copies undoubtedly dates from the close of the apostolic days and has been steadily going on and increasing in magnitude from that time to this.
The work of translation commenced early, and Syriac, Coptic, and Latin versions are believed to have been produced in the second century, Arabic in the third, Armenian in the fourth, and Ethiopic in the fifth. Portions of the Bible were translated into Early English by Caedmon, Guthlac, The Venerable Bede, and others, in the seventh and eighth centuries, but there is no evidence of the existence of a complete English version till 1382, when the first Wycliffe Bible appeared. Of the Wycliffe versions, multitudes of copies were made, and, although large numbers of them were burned by enemies of the book, and many more have perished during the lapse of five hundred years, about a hundred and seventy copies are known to be still extant.
The making of Bibles has passed through countless vicissitudes. Thousands of those who labored at it in the olden time did so secretly, and at the peril of their lives, and numbers of them were put to death. For upwards of thirteen hundred years, every copy had to be written throughout with pen and ink,—a process which must in any case have occupied several months, while many an elaborate copy which has come down to us is so beautifully illuminated on vellum or parchment, that it must have taken years of patient labor to produce. The ancient copyists were for the most part exceedingly careful and conscientious; but it was inevitable, when every word had to be written by hand, that errors of one kind and another should from time to time occur, and these were constantly being reproduced in subsequent copies. So it happened that, while those thirteen centuries were slowly rolling on, while versions and copies were being multiplied, translators and copyists were persecuted, and Bibles burned wherever they could be found, the text was becoming more and more inaccurate until the year 1450, when Johann Gutenberg of Mentz invented the art of printing from movable type, and in so doing, not only inaugurated the era of Bible manufacturing as we now understand it, but opened the way for a return to a more accurate text, which the revival of the study of Greek that was then about to take place throughout Europe, and the subsequent development of the science of textual criticism that has culminated in our own Revised Version, were destined eventually to accomplish.
Gutenberg had no sooner made the discovery, than he applied it to the production of a magnificent Latin Bible in two folio volumes, and some connoisseurs consider that in beauty of typography, this Bible, which was the first book ever printed, has never been surpassed. It is known as the ‘‘Gutenberg,’’ or ‘‘Mazarine’’ Bible, and bears no date, but there is evidence to show that it was issued between 1450 and 1455.
At once, an enormous impetus was given to the making of Bibles, and editions appeared at upwards of a dozen different towns in Europe within twenty years. Most of the printers began with the Bible, and the late Mr. Henry Stevens of Vermont records the fact that "some half dozen huge folio Bibles, besides the magnificent psalters of 1457 and 1459, had appeared in type before a single volume of the classics saw the ‘new lamp for the new learning.’ ’’ To this day, no other book, or series of books, approaches the Bible in the number of copies that are printed, or in the care and skill that are devoted to their production. But in the beginning, the work must have been so laborious as to repel any except enthusiasts. Some of the early Bibles may have been printed from wood letters, for as these were, even in the case of quarto volumes, printed page by page, or sheet by sheet, a small amount of type sufficed. Possibly the type, wood or metal, was threaded on wire. The early printer, having set up as much ‘‘copy"’ as his supply of type allowed, had laboriously to dab the ink on to the letters, and print on coarse paper, or possibly vellum, by means of a crazy wooden hand-press, leaving the initial letters to be painted in by hand, in the fashion of the old manuscripts.
Germany and the Low Countries remained the chief centers of Bible-making for nearly a century, and it did not gain a footing in England, where it afterwards found its chief home, for upwards of eighty years. It is worth recording that Anthony Coberger, a Nuremberg printer, opened a warehouse in London in 1480 for the sale of Latin Bibles. Half a century later, such was the trade in Bibles in London, a law was made, compelling foreigners to sell their books in sheets, so that the English binding business might not suffer. As illustrating the fact that Bible printing best flourished with liberty, it may be pointed out that the eighteen Italian editions which are known to have been issued up to 1567, were all printed at Venice, at that time, the only free city of Italy.
Naturally enough, Germany was the first country to possess a printed version in the vernacular, in the year 1466. England was the eighth, in 1535. Before the close of the eighteenth century, the Bible had appeared in thirty-five different languages. The English could not boast of a Bible in their own language, printed in their own land until 1537. In the British Museum are preserved a hundred and ninety-seven different editions which had been printed prior to that date. Of these, a hundred and forty-six are ponderous folio tomes, eighteen quarto, twenty-six octavo, and seven. sixteenmo. Perhaps the most sumptuous was the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, in six folio volumes, giving the Chaldee, Greek, and Latin texts. It was printed at Alcala, in Spain, under the care of Cardinal Ximenes, in 1514-17, but was not issued till 1520.
Some of the characteristics of these early Bibles are noteworthy. The first Bible with a printed ornament or vignette was Fust and Schoeffer’s in 1462, the ornament consisting of their arms. As early as 1474 (?) the Latin Gospels printed at Basle have marginal references.
The first Bible of which the leaves were numbered was a German version printed in 1475; the first with the printer's signature was probably a Latin Bible printed at Naples in 1476; the first with a titlepage was printed at Venice in 1487; the first with an illustration on the titlepage was also a Venetian Latin Bible, issued in 1492; the first in which chapters were headed by summaries was a Latin version that appeared in 1497; the first with verses numbered was Pagninus’s edition of 1528; and Sebastian Munster, in his Latin version of the Old Testament (1534), was the earliest to use different type to indicate words unrepresented in the original.
In the beginning, all the Bibles were folios; the first quarto was a Latin one printed at Placentia in 1475; the first octavo, known as ‘‘The Poor Man's Bible,’’ a Latin volume printed at Basle in 1491; the first sixteenmo was a Dutch version printed at Antwerp in 1525; and the first twelvemo in the British Museum, at any rate, was a Latin book printed at Antwerp in 1790.
Turning to the English printed Bible, the place of honor must, of course, be given to William Tyndale, who translated the New Testament from the Greek of Erasmus’s version, and had printed at Cologne and Worms, in 1525, both a quarto and an octavo edition of three thousand copies each. Of these latter, only two specimens, and of the former only a fragment, have survived. Tyndale’s was a wonderful translation, and most of its renderings are in use, without any great alterations, to-day. Tyndale also translated the Pentateuch, whether from the Hebrew itself is not known; and this portion, printed at Marburg by Luft in 1530, was the first portion of the Old Testament to be printed in English.
Tyndale brought out a revised edition of the New Testament printed at Antwerp in 1534, but not before various pirated copies of his earlier work had been published, and in the autumn of 1536, he suffered martyrdom.
A year earlier, almost to a day, the first complete English Bible issued from the press, the work of Miles Coverdale, and printed, in all probability, at Zurich.
Coverdale was employed on this congenial task by Jacob Van Meteren of Antwerp, who is supposed by some to have first translated the Scriptures from ‘‘the Douche and Latyn’’ versions; but, if this theory were true, Coverdale would be more correctly described as editor than as translator.
Mention must be made of ‘‘Matthew's Bible,’’ published in 1537, and the first to be printed in England. This was edited by John Rogers and consisted chiefly of Tyndale’s New and Coverdale’s Old Testament. "Matthew" was a pseudonym, used for safety’s sake by Rogers himself, or it was printed instead of Tyndale’s name. This was the first Bible ‘‘set forth with the Kinges most gracyous lycece," and it had a great sale. Rogers, however, shared too much the views of Tyndale to please Thomas Cromwell, who interested himself in the production of the famous folio of 1539 known as “The Great Bible’’ edited by Coverdale.
Seven editions of this monumental work were issued in less than three years, each differing from its predecessor. The titlepage bore Holbein’s well-known design, and it was printed cum privilegio. Henry VIII issued a declaration that it was ‘‘to be read by all curates," although only a few short years before, this monarch had issued a proclamation forbidding all translations of the Scriptures into the vulgar tongue. The second Great Bible was published with the sanction of the primate, and "appoynted to the vse of the churches,” and it is therefore distinguished as ‘‘Cranmer's Bible.'’ The price of the Great Bible was ten shillings unbound, and twelve shillings bound.
I come now to the Genevan version of the Bible, in 1560, prepared by a band of Englishmen resident at Geneva. In this version, Roman type was substituted for "black letter," and the chapters were first divided into verses as at present.
This fine quarto Bible was inscribed to Queen Elizabeth by her ‘‘humble subjects of the English church at Geneva.’’ It had a marvelous popularity, and about two hundred editions are still known. This Genevan version was printed in England from 1575 to 1616, and editions were issued yearly from 1560 to 1616,—fifty-six years. In 1599, no fewer than ten large additions were printed. The printing of the Genevan version was prohibited in England in 1616, but after that date, a hundred and fifty thousand copies were imported. In a word, it retained its popularity long after the present so-called Authorized Version of 1611 was published, much in the same way as the latter is holding its ground eleven years after the appearance of the Revised Version. The notes of the Genevan version, some of them bewraying Calvin's influence, were not acceptable to the English Church party, and in 1558, Archbishop Parker of Canterbury and a number of bishops and others, set about revising the Great Bible. The revisers made use of all previous versions, and in 1568 appeared the so-called ‘‘Bishops’ Bible,’’ which was formally sanctioned by Convocation.
It was, with the exception of the ‘‘authorized version’’ folios, the largest Bible ever printed, and contained upwards of a hundred wood engravings and twenty-four leaves (folio) of preliminary matter in the nature of ‘‘helps.’’ Between 1569 and 1606, nineteen editions were issued, each revised and differing from the preceding one.
Many of the Genevan explanatory notes were incorporated by the bishops, and they added others, such as Psalm 45: 9: ‘‘Ophir is thought to be the Ilande in the West Coast, of late founde by Christopher Columbo, from whence at this day is brought most fine golde.’’
Next in order comes the Rheims New Testament (1582), translated into English from the Vulgate; and to finish with the Roman Catholic versions.
It may be added that the Old Testament translated by the English College at Douay appeared.in 1609-10, the whole Bible, however, not being published until 1763-64.
It was at the Hampton Court Conference between the rival factions of the Church, in 1604, that James I approved the suggestion that a new translation should be made by ‘‘the best learned in both Universities, after them to be reviewed by the Bishops and the chief learned of the Church; from them to be presented to the Privy Council; and lastly, to be ratified by his Royal authority." But the king stipulated that no marginal notes should be added and characterized some of the Genevan notes as ‘‘very partial, untrue, seditious, and savouring too much of dangerous and traiterous  conceits." The revisers contented themselves, therefore, with marginal references.
More than half of these are derived from manuscript and printed copies of the Vulgate. In the year 1611, two editions of the new Bible appeared, and they are known as the ‘‘he and she’’ Bibles, on account of the pronoun being set up differently in Ruth 3: 15. Although commonly called the "authorized version,’’ no evidence can be found that this Bible was ever actually authorized by the king, by Parliament, or by Convocation. Its authority, as has been said, exists in its superiority over the preceding translation,—superiority that has enabled it, with trifling departures from the original, to hold its own for nearly three hundred years.
The first editions were folios, and in 1612, appeared quarto and octavo volumes, while in 1616, the first folio in Roman type appeared. In 1629, the first Cambridge Bible was printed; four years later the Authorized Version was first printed in Scotland. The first Oxford Bible was printed in 1675, ‘‘at the Theater,’’ when the spelling was revised by the famous Dr. Fell; and in 1769, appeared the folio and quarto volumes, considerably revised by Dr. Blayney, known as the standard editions of the Oxford University Press.
In passing, it may be noticed that in the Oxford Bible of 1701, were printed for the first time, the chronological dates in the margin, for which Bishop Lloyd of Lichfield was solely responsible.
The first edition of the 1611 version avowedly printed in America, bears the imprint, R. Aitken, Philadelphia in 1782, a twelvemo volume. Of course, the first Bible manufactured in the United States was the Eliot Bible in the Indian language, printed at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1663; then comes the Saur Bible, a German version, printed at Germantown, Pennsylvania, in 1743. The Aitken Bible was followed by a Douay Bible, printed in Philadelphia in 1790. Although this was naturally a Roman Catholic version, Mr. Carey, the printer, announced in his prospectus that it would be printed "on the same kind of type, as fine paper, and with the same number of pages, as in the Oxford edition of the Bible.’’
Next appeared the Thomas Bible, a copy of the 1611 version, printed at Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1791; and we are told it was compared, while going through the press, with ‘‘six of the most correct British modern versions from the presses of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, and with two ancient British copies of the present translation.’’
In the same year, the Collins Bible was reprinted at Trenton, New Jersey, page for page, from the Oxford edition, committees being deputed by various religious bodies to read the proofs. It is said that only two errors have ever been found in it,—one, a broken letter, the other, a punctuation blunder. For particulars of other interesting versions, the reader is referred to Dr. John Wright's ‘‘Early Bibles of America.’’ There is no evidence to show that the Bible has ever been printed in Canada.
We come now to the Revised Version, undertaken at the expense of the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge by the most prominent English and American scholars of the day. The circumstances of its publication will still be fresh in the minds of most, for only seventeen years have passed since the first instalment of the revisers’ work—the New Testament—was issued. Two million copies were called for on the day of publication at the Oxford warehouse alone, so that it may readily be imagined that the pressure on the universities to supply so enormous a demand was severe in the extreme. It speaks well for the honorable loyalty of the thousands of the people through whose hands the revised Bible passed before publication, that, notwithstanding bribes and temptations manifold, not a page was untimely published.

How Our Bibles are Made.
Editor’s Note.—Last week's issue contained an article on Early Bibles and Bible-Making which was mainly a historical account of the various translations and editions of the English Bible from the earliest period down. Mr. Frowde's article this week treats more particularly of the mechanic arts by which a Bible is manufactured.

I HAVE already pointed out that the invention of printing was beneficial in other respects than mere rapidity of reproduction, This in itself, however, is striking enough. It was found possible to produce a Coverdale Bible with pen and ink at the rate of one copy in ten months. One Wharfedale machine will produce Ruby Bibles at the rate of 1,125 copies per minute. The present printing machinery at the Oxford Press, if it were all running on Bibles, would turn out 8,375 copies per minute.
It may be mentioned incidentally that the Oxford Type Foundry is the most ancient in England. Founts cast there in 1666 are in use to this day. Some Bibles are still printed from standing moveable type, but, for the most part, electrotyping is used in book-printing. In 1805, the delegates of the Oxford University Press purchased for £4,000 the right to adopt the then secret process of stereotyping, which had been improved by Earl Stanhope; and ten years later the first Bible was printed in the United States from stereotyped plates made in America. A plaster process of Earl Stanhope’s was succeeded by the papier-maché mold, now used in newspaper printing, and has long ceased to have any practical value.
Except for some slight modifications, the wooden hand-press of 1490 continued in use for three hundred years, and (as Mr. Horace Hart remarks in his interesting work on ‘‘Charles Earl Stanhope and the Oxford University Press’’) ‘‘long before any further change was made in the constitution of the hand-press, the principle of the cylinder machine—a principle upon which all the past printing machinery of the nineteenth century is based—had been patented.’’ The Earl Stanhope referred to was the first to invent iron presses. One of the very earliest of these is still preserved at the Clarendon Press. Any reader who may be passing through Oxford in the course of their European travels, are heartily invited to pay a visit to the ancient press, where this and many other curious typographical antiquities, which have contributed to the production of the Bibles used by our forefathers will be shown to them, and where they will also be afforded opportunities of witnessing all the operations of Bible manufacture as now carried on. The hand press has been almost entirely ousted by the marvelous modern machines.
To ink the forms, the workman of old, dabbed the type with a round ball or leather pad, stuffed with wool, and nailed to a wooden handle. Lord Stanhope introduced rollers made of leather. Nowadays, of course, the inking rollers are made of treacle and glue.
The first mention of rag-paper—made from woolen fabrics—is found in a tract of the early twelfth century, and linen paper was first made in the fourteenth century. The first paper-machine erected in England dates from 1804,—it was invented in 1798,—and there is record of one in the United States in 1820. Before this innovation, all paper was made by hand. Many of the early Bibles were printed on vellum. With respect to binding the Bible, time saving machinery has been invented to meet the needs of every phase of the process except gilding the edges. Thus you can fold the sheets, cut them, and sew them by machinery, ‘‘round’’ and “back’’ the volumes by machinery, and make the covers by machinery; but in the case of better editions, on the appearance of which binders pride themselves, every detail is still done by hand in almost the same fashion as before the invention of printing.
Many thousands of persons in England are directly or indirectly engaged in the making of Bibles; they are, for the most part, skilled work-people in receipt of good wages. Even the women who fold the sheets are paid at a higher rate than those who fold the sheets of ordinary books.
It has been computed that the Bibles issued between 1653 and 1657 contained upwards of twenty thousand faults, some being particularly gross. The cost of setting up and reading a modern reference Bible is about one thousand pounds, It is usually read and reread a dozen times, even after electros have been taken, before publication, and perfect accuracy is now usually secured. The various sizes of reference Bibles are sometimes made to correspond with one another, page by page, and this involves the taking of an infinity of pains.
The smaller sizes of the early Bible would now be considered unduly thick. Even so, as late as 1739, when Mr. Saur issued his proposal for the Saur Bible, he promised that “in thickness, it shall be about the breadth of a hand, for we are willing to take good paper to it.” The early bindings were usually clumsy, though sometimes very elaborate. Nowadays, especially within the last twenty-five years, every characteristic of the Bible must contribute towards usefulness. The popular Bible must be portable, thin, legible, and durable; the paper must be thin, opaque, and tough; the type large, on pages with narrow margins, except when wanted for manuscript notes; and then the paper must be specially prepared for pen-and-ink writing; the binding has to be light, strong, and extremely flexible, so that the pages will lie open freely of their own weight. Everything points to the fact that the books are now wanted for constant use and actual study.
Within this period, nothing has been more remarkable than the development of teachers’ Bibles. Glosses and commentaries have been numerous from the first, but the modern teachers’ Bible originated with the American Tract Society. The Society bound up an admirable Bible text-book and other useful matter for reference with the pocket Bible, and the volume met with such marked success that similar editions quickly followed from other publishers’ houses. The matter bound up with the old Bibles consisted merely of chronological tables, harmonies, indices, etc., reprinted times without number (King James sold the right of inserting with every copy of all editions of the 1611 Bible “Genealogies of Holy Scriptures'’), but readers of The Sunday School Times are well aware of the merits that some of the modern helps possess. These have not aimed to expound or to apply the truths of Scripture, but to furnish incontrovertible information on all biblical subjects in an easily accessible form.
The number of languages in which the complete Bible is printed has been tripled during the present century. More Bibles are needed now than ever before, and the number is constantly increasing. The American Bible Society, in its last report, points out that upwards of 257 millions of Bibles, Testaments, and Scripture portions, have been distributed through the agency of Bible societies alone since the year 1804. The Oxford Press alone sent out approximately 500,000 complete Bibles in the year 1875, 650,000 in 1880, 700,000 in 1885, 900,000 in 1890, and five years later the yearly output reached 1,000,000. The other Bibles produced in Great Britain would probably amount to twice as many more, while it is wellnigh impossible to estimate the numbers that are being printed in America and other parts of the world.
Thus, the book, which was made so laboriously at first in single copies at long intervals, is now being manufactured and poured forth at the rate of a myriad copies a day. The demand is still increasing, and, although we cannot tell how long this will continue, we know that “as the rain cometh down and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall my Word be that goeth forth out of my mouth; it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.’’
 —Henry Frowde. Publisher to the University of Oxford. London, England.
"The Sunday School Times" Jan. 7, 14, 1899