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1602 Bishops' Bible, Item # BF1011

The 1602 Bishops’ Bible
The Last Edition and the One
Used by the King James Translators

[Bible in English.] The/ Holy Bible,/ containing … Authorized and appointed to be/ read in Churches./ Imprinted at London/ by Robert Barker … Anno 1602.

Black Letter Folio in sixes. Lacks general title and subsequent preliminaries (A-C6), 18 leaves. First few leaves tired and repaired / extended, affecting some text, which settles by the second gathering, (B). Edge tiredness, wear and repairs from Mmmm 1 through 4; 4M 5 & 6, 4N6 and 4O4 supplied from another copy, the final 12 leaves. Gathering O tired, soiled, chipped, repaired. Final leaf mounted

Occasional stain or soiling (e.g., rough on Oo6, a smudge on Bbb5 from pentrials, Eee4). Repair on Ggg1 affects some letters. Some light general toning. Some Seventeenth Century family notes in the margins of the last leaf of 2 Maccabees, facing the New Testament title.

Full old calf, rebacked, decorated in blind; lightly scuffed and worn at extremities.

The last edition of the Elizabethan Church of England’s “Bishops’ Bible” and the edition utilized by the King James translation committees for their new translation, the production of which was authorized in 1604. That work was first published in 1611. The Bodleian has a copy of the 1602 Bishops’ which contains a profusion of manuscript corrections and may well be a relic of the King James translation committee’s work there. (see N. Pocock in The Athenaeum, 25 February 1888. Also Westcott, History, p. 122 n.)

Herbert 271. DM 206. STC 2188.
(inv. LK04069601 X0030) (CL1602.362)

The Bishops' Bible was first published in 1568, but was then re-issued in a revised form in 1572. The Bible had the authority of the royal warrant, and was the second version appointed to be read aloud in church services. However, it failed to displace the Geneva Bible from its popular esteem. The version was more grandiloquent than the Geneva Bible, but was harder to understand. It was also physically enormous, with many full page illustrations - the second edition being bigger in all dimensions than either the earlier Great Bible or the subsequent Authorized Version.

It lacked most of the footnotes and cross-references in the Geneva Bible which were helpful to people among whom the Bible was just beginning to circulate in the vernacular.

The last edition of the complete Bible was issued in 1602, but the New Testament was reissued until at least 1617. William Fulke published several parallel editions up to 1633, with the New Testament of the Bishops' Bible alongside the Rheims New Testament, specifically to controvert the latter's polemical annotations. The Bishops' Bible or its New Testament went through over 50 editions, whereas the Geneva Bible was reprinted more than 150 times.