While we were living in Montana a stray Manx cat acquired us. We named him “Grizzly Bob.” “Bob” has to do with the fact that he is tailless, while “Grizzly” was a nod to a sign from Yellowstone National Park which was hanging on our patio and which read, “Stay Alert! Grizzly Country!”

While in Montana he was mostly an outside cat. Since we moved to Alabama, however, he has largely become an indoor cat, thanks to the luxury of his own “cat door.” At night he sleeps with us at the foot of the bed.

A few weeks ago my wife woke in the middle of the night and asked, “Where’s Grizzly Bob?” As I am prone to do at times (or so I am told), I answered the question while still asleep. Whatever I said apparently surprised my wife. The next thing I knew she was awake and I heard, as if from some great distance, “What did you say?” As if I were observing myself talking, unable to do anything to stop the words which were ushering forth from my mouth, I heard my voice saying, “He’s at the bottom of the page.”

We both got a good laugh out of that one, deciding that the demands of working on a doctorate are beginning to get to me.

Perhaps some of the folks in centuries past who worked so diligently on the printing of the King James Bible had just such a feeling at times. Some editions of the King James were, well, unusual, in that they contained rather interesting misprints, as F.F. Bruce relates in his book, The English Bible.

The most infamous King James version was a 1631 edition which came to be known as the “Wicked Bible.” In that version, Exodus 20:14 read, “Thou Shalt Commit Adultery.”

A shrewd marketer could have made a fortune off of such a mistake. As it was, the printers were fined 300 pounds by the Archbishop.

A 1717 Oxford edition was known as the “Vinegar Bible.” The chapter heading to Luke 20 read, “The Parable of the Vinegar” (instead of “Vineyard”). The “Murderer’s Bible” was a 1795 Oxford edition which translated Mark 7:27 to read, “Let the children first be killed” (instead of “filled”). Other notable misprints included one which translated 2 Samuel 23:20 as “Benaiah … slew two lions like men” (instead of “lionlike men”); a mistaken rewriting of 1 Kings 22:38 to read, “the dogs liked his blood” (rather than “licked”); and an edition in which Psalms 119:161 read, “Printers have persecuted me without cause” (instead of “rulers”).

I’m thinking those poor printers were probably working 15 hour days in order to meet a deadline and made such mistakes out of sheer exhaustion. Or perhaps they simply seized the opportunity to make the Bible say what they wanted it to say.

Certainly no one in today’s world would ever be guilty of the latter!

In any case, if you are ever driving down the road and you see a church sign which reads, “1631 King James Bible-Believing Church,” you may want to think twice about dropping by for a visit.