Scripture Plainly Laid

Making the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible
by David Norton

More than 30 years ago Cambridge University Press needed to re-set its text of the King James Bible. The images it printed from were showing their age, and the digital age was imminent. The Press had purchased files of the text, which needed proofing and correction before being used to make the new camera-ready copy. But what text should be used as the basis for this proofing? As had happened in the past, the Press did not know the basis of its present text, nor what edition it should use as the basis for the correction. Perhaps F. H. A. Scrivener’s Cambridge Paragraph Bible (1873)? It was scholarly, and the rationale for the work filled a whole book. Moreover, wrote the Bible printing manager, “it has stood the test of years and no one can say that it is not ‘The Real KJB.’” Or, “without making a show of it,” should the Press use the current Cambridge Concord edition? But no one knew its exact basis, nor whether it needed any amendment.

I was one of the people consulted. I suggested that a new setting was an opportunity to revise spelling, punctuation, and presentation, and that it might also be an opportunity to edit the text in light of the first edition, other material from the translators, and the history of the text. After much correspondence and development of principles for the work, the Press asked me to do what I had described. This was an almost overwhelming privilege: to edit one of the most important texts of English Christianity, a text, moreover, that was embedded in English culture.

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David Norton is Emeritus Professor of English in the School of Arts and Media, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. His work includes History of the Bible as Literature (1993), which won the Conference on Christian Literature Book of the Year Award (1994) for having “contributed most to the dialogue between literature and the Christian faith,” and The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today (2011).

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