God’s Word Purified Seven Times:
If you knew anything about the printing process back in the old days before they perfected it, you would understand that printing errors was a common thing in many books (Especially larger ones like the Bible). Book authors’ complaints to the printers was a common thing. Printing back in the early days was a messy and difficult process that they could not master; Especially for larger works until one day the technology was perfected. Also, there were updates in spellings, and font changes, as well. But those are not changes to what the words say. Yes, there were updates in various editions, but this was to get back to the handwritten master copy, and even those who made corrections would make mistakes sometimes themselves. So that is why you will see subtle differences in wording for certain verses between the KJB editions. But God is sovereign over His Word. I believe that God is in control of the outcome of the casting of lots (See: Proverbs 16:33). So then if there was a printing error, God would be in control of that if it was His Word that He wanted the people to have.
In addition, more importantly, Psalms 12:6 refers to the words of the Lord being purified seven times, I believe this is also a prophetic verse and it prophetically refers to the 7 Major KJB editions God chose involving the Bible.
So any small differences between the MAJOR six editions (due to printing errors) would be true. One purification was the removal of the Apocrypha in 1885 in the 1769 Blayney Oxford Edition by the Church of England. While the Apocrypha was never considered Scripture by true Christians, I believe it was included as a witnessing tool to reach Catholics because of the times they lived in. In other words, we could point out inconsistencies in their Apocryphal books in comparison to the Old and New Testaments.
As I mentioned before, we learn in Jeremiah that God can edit His own Word. When the King cut up and burned the scroll in the fire, God told Jeremiah to make another scroll and add many like words to it. Granted, there are things that needed to be filtered out of the first KJB 1611 edition like the Apocrypha, the marginal notes, the Greek pagan pictures, and stuff. I believe it was not until the Pure Cambridge Edition (circa early 1900) when the printing process and standardization of spelling and grammar whereby we had a Word that was finally purified the seventh time.
Here is….
Others like Matthew Verschuur at BibleProtector.com, and John M Asquith at PureCambridgeText.com have different lists.
Bible Protector’s List of the Seven Purifications in Psalms 12:6.
PureCambridgeText.com website offers a different list of the seven purified KJBs, and he offers some great reasons why, although I do not agree entirely with his list.
- The 1629 Cambridge
- The 1638 Cambridge (authored by the King).
- The Paris 1762 Cambridge
- The Blayney 1769 Oxford
- The Scrivener 1873 Cambridge Paragraph
- The Pure Cambridge (A.W. Pollard) (circa 1914-1918)
- The Updated Public Based Pure Cambridge (used between the 1920s and 1985).
The changes to actual words and their meaning are very minute. But again, this was the fixing of printing errors and the mistakes made by some of the editor’s corrections on certain editions. This is why we see that the words were different. But God is in control and He can convey truth despite printing errors and the imperfections of men. The testimony of the KJB itself is a book unlike any other book on the planet. It is a holy and special book unlike any other.
Have faith in God’s Word the Bible!
It will change your life unlike any other book.
Side Note:
@GRACE_ambassador
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May God bless you.