Bible. English. 1897. THE HOLY BIBLE CONTAINING THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS TO WHICH Is prefixed AN INTRODUCTION BY J. W. MACKAIL VOL. I GENESIS TO NUMBERS London MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY INTRODUCTION WHEN Shakespeare died at Stratford-on-Avon, the great treasury of English prose known as the Authorised Version of the Holy Bible had been for five years before the world, and had even then obtained, quietly and by the mere force of its own merits, that decisive predominance which it retains up to the present day, effacing all earlier versions and rendering any later version impossible. To trace its history from then till now would be foreign to the present purpose. In the earlier part of its course it was subject to perpetual and minute revision. The two first editions simultaneously printed in 1611 have several hundred variations. A systematic revision of the text was carried out in the edition of 1629. Other variations occur in nearly every one of the successive issues until the great revision by Blayney, just one hundred and twentyeight years ago. Blayney's Oxford folio of 1769 was adopted as a standard by the Oxford University Press; by his labours a received text was established from which later issues have only departed in an inconsiderable and easily reckoned number of instances. It is certain that no other book has ever had such minute and continuous pains bestowed on its cor |