14 days ago

Chapters
Chapter 1: Introduction and Review of Colonial Bible Printing
0:00 - 3:00
We review the early history of Bible printing in colonial America, including the first American printing by Robert Aitken in 1782 and the challenges faced during the Revolutionary War period.
Chapter 2: Post-Revolutionary Printings and Congressional Petitions
3:00 - 9:00
We explore the four significant King James Bible editions printed between 1783-1800 and examine how concerns about textual accuracy led to petitions to Congress that were ultimately rejected due to First Amendment protections.
Chapter 3: Matthew Carey's Collation and Early Spelling Variations
9:00 - 15:00
We examine Matthew Carey's 1801 collation of 18 Bible editions, which identified five types of variants including orthographical differences, and trace the genealogy of standing type from Hugh Gaines through Carey's printings.
Chapter 4: Stereotyping Technology and the American Bible Society
15:00 - 21:00
We discover how stereotyping technology revolutionized Bible production after 1812, enabling the American Bible Society to mass-produce hundreds of thousands of Bibles annually with varying orthography across different stereotype plates.
Chapter 5: Orthography in the ABS Text and Implications for Modern Debates
21:00 - 30:00
We examine how the American Bible Society's 1816 edition already contained 37% of the spelling changes criticized by modern King James-only advocates, demonstrating that Americanized spelling predates textual controversies by decades.

Key Points:
The First Amendment (ratified 1791) prevented Congress from regulating Bible printing in America, despite petitions from religious groups concerned about textual accuracy.
Four significant King James editions were printed in America between 1783-1800: Isaac Collins (1789), Isaiah Thomas (1791), Brown Self-Interpreting Bible (1792), and Hugh Gaines (1792).
Orthographical variations appeared immediately in American printings, with words like "stablish/establish," "razor/rasor," "throughly/thoroughly," and "alway/always" showing spelling differences.
Matthew Carey's 1801 collation compared 18 editions and identified five types of variants: punctuation, orthography, italics use, verbal differences without sense changes, and variations in both words and sense.
The Hugh Gaines standing type from 1792 was purchased by Matthew Carey in 1802 and used through 1813, representing 21 years of identical textual reproduction with American spellings.
Stereotyping technology, introduced to America in 1812, revolutionized Bible production by allowing mass printing from preset plates rather than resetting type for each edition.
The American Bible Society (founded 1816) embraced stereotyping and by 1820 possessed 10 different sets of stereotype plates producing five different Bible types.
By 1830, the American Bible Society was producing 300,000 Bibles annually, compared to normal commercial print runs of 2,000 copies.
Of 100 words identified by modern King James-only advocates as "corrupted" spellings, 37% had already been changed to American conventions by 1816.
Noah Webster's 1828 American Dictionary reflects American spelling conventions, not British ones, making it inconsistent to use Webster while rejecting American Bible spellings.
No two American editions of the King James Bible between 1782 and 1881 are identical in orthography throughout.
American editions maintained doctrinal integrity, including passages like Mark's long ending, the woman taken in adultery (John 8), and Acts 8:37.

PDF Notes
https://gracelifebiblechurch.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Lesson-268-Assessing-the-Printed-History-of-the-King-James-Text-American-Text-1783-1820-1.pdf

From This Generation For Ever Complete Class (GLBC Website Format)
https://gracelifebiblechurch.com/sermon-category/from-this-generation-for-ever/

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