1769 Blayney "Standard Text" KJV

The Revised Standard Oxford Edition Compiled
and Edited by Dr. Benjamin Blayney.

[Bible in English] The Holy Bible… Oxford: Printed by T. Wright and W. Gill, Printers to the University…, 1769.

First edition of the Blayney revision of the Authorized Version (King James Bible); printed in royal quarto format, which is generally acknowledged to have preceded the notoriously rare folio edition of the same year. This edition, often referred to as the "Revised Standard Oxford Edition", is quite scarce with very few complete copies in original binding known. It is the most sought after original King James text second only to the original issues of the First Edition First King James done in 1611.

Quarto. Complete. Preliminaries: a2; b4; General title-page; Epistle Dedicatory; The Translators to the Reader. Old Testament: A-Z4; Aa-Zz4; Aaa-Zzz4; 4A-4Z4; 5A-5K4. Apocrypha: A-Z4; Aa4. New Testament: 5L-5Z4 (with [5L1] as NT title); 6A-6U2 (Revelation ends on 6U2v). Back matter: through 6Z4 (4, a blank, excised).

Generally fresh and clean and crisp; very nicely margined. A near fine copy overall of this highly important Bible. With a strong, crisp impression.

Blaney made extensive use of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s 1755 First Edition of the English Language Dictionary, which sought to bring uniform and correct modern spelling, punctuation, and formally accepted rules of grammar, to the English language for the first time. However, beyond simply correcting more than 20,000 spelling and punctuation “mistakes” in the 1611 King James Bible, such as using modern spellings like “city” rather than “citie”; Blaney also initiated more than 400 corrections of wording. Here are just three examples:

Numbers 6: 14
1611 to 1768 KJV Bibles:  one lamb without blemish
1769 to 2017 KJV Bibles:  one ram without blemish

Ezekiel 24: 7
1611 to 1768 KJV Bibles:  poured it upon the ground
1769 to 2017 KJV Bibles:  poured it not upon the ground

John 15: 20
1611 to 1768 KJV Bibles:  The servant is not greater than the Lord.
1769 to 2017 KJV Bibles:  The servant is not greater than his lord.

Herbert 1196. (cf. H 1194 for the Blayney folio.) DM 887. ESTC T91970. Scrivener, The Authorized Edition (1884), pp. 28-35. Norton, Textual History of the King James Bible, Cambridge University Press, 2005

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Please Note: This is a low-resolution photo, which shows the format, but makes reading the text nearly impossible. In reality, the text of these Bibles is large enough and clear enough to read very easily.

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