Chronological History of the Bible - 19th Century
| home | chronology page | 1851-1900 | updated 03/31/2008
1800 - 1850
1800 First Greek New Testament printed in America; President John Adams signs the Act establishing The Library of Congress.
1800 Macklin’s Embellished Bible. The Old Testament [and New Testament], Embellished with Engravings, From Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists. Printed by Thomas Bensley, London, 1800. First edition in Six Volumes, Folio. 72 full-page illustrations by prominent artists of the day, including Henry Fuseli, Philippe Jacques de Louthenbourg, Joshua Reynolds, and American expatriate Benjamin West; engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi and others. Thomas Bensley letterpress and type design exclusive for this edition. produced at a cost of £30,000, and subscribers included King George III; [Darlow and Moule 982]. Macklin died on October 25, 1800 and it is uncertain whether he lived to see the finished work.
1801 The Idle Shepherd Bible – “Woe to the idle shepherd that leaveth the flock.” – Zech. xi. 17. The word idle shepherd is used instead of idol shepherd in a very faulty 8vo Bible by Oxford University Press (OUP). The printers no doubt intended to correct what seemed to them a mistake, and which is no doubt an unfortunate rendering. The exact meaning is vain, empty, and therefore foolish. Jerome and Pusey consider this idol shepherd as an Antichrist of the future, and Bishop Wordsworth sees in him the Pope of Rome as adored in the church of St. Peter by the cardinals after his election.
1802 The Discharge Bible - “I discharge thee before God.” – I Tim. v. 21. From a King’s Printer’s 4to (Quarto) Bible published in London, a mistake not found repeated.
1804 British and Foreign Bible Society founded
1804 Gospel of Saint John translated into the Mohawk Indian language, and is the first Canadian native translation to the published by what would eventually become the Canadian Bible Society.
1805 First printing of the New Testament at Cambridge University by the newly perfected stereotype process from stereotype plates. Inventor was Stanhope.
1805 First Bible of Reading, Pennsylvania
1805 Brooklyn, NY New Testament
1806 Standing Fishes Bible – “and it shall come to pass that the fishes shall stand upon it,” etc. – Ezek. xivii. 10. The word fishes is used for fishers in a 4to Bible printed by the King’s printer in London, then reprinted in a 4to edition of 1813, and an 8vo edition of 1823.
1808 First Septuagint in English, the first in the world, and the first complete re-translation of the Bible by an American, Charles Thomson, was printed in Philadelphia. The work was done by Jane Aitken, daughter of Robert Aitken, and sold in four volumes, beautifully crafted. This was the culmination of Charles Thomson’s 19-year effort to produce an accurate Septuagint translation that would validate the genuineness of the bible.
1808 Philadelphia Bible Society founded – the first Bible society founded in the United States; William White, president.
1809 New York Bible Society (later renamed the International Bible Society) founded in New York City; to date, the IBS has translated scripture into more than 600 languages. (see also 1816, ABS)
1810 The Ears To Ear Bible – “Who hath ears to ear, let him hear.” – Matt. xiii. 43. This adaptation to Cockney usage is found in an 8vo Bible published by the Oxford Press. The same book contains a more serious blunder in Hebrews ix. 14: “How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from good works to serve the living God.”
1810 The Wife-Hater Bible – “If any man come to me and hate not his father…yea, and his own wife also,” etc. - Luke xiv. 26. Found in an Octavo Bible printed by OUP.
1812 First Vermont Bible; KJV OT, Apochrypha, and NT; 4to; published in Windsor, VT by Merrifield and Cochran; crudely illustrated with Isaac Eddy’s copper engravings; Eddy was probably self-taught, and produced some of the most ghastly and amateurish Bible illustrations of early 19th century America.
1812 Philadelphia Bible Society acquires stereotyped plates from England for a KJV of the Holy Bible, and prints the first stereotyped book in America. The British and Foreign Bible Society contributed £500 towards the cost of the plates, from which William Fry produced 1050 copies of the complete bible, and 750 copies of the New Testament for the PBS; By the 1820s, 50 percent of American-made bibles were stereotyped.
1813 First Bible (German Lutheran) printed west of Alleghenies in Somerset, Pa.
1814 First Hebrew Bible printed in U.S. (Philadelphia)
1815 First New Hampshire Bible (Walpole)
1816 American Bible Society founded; Elias Boudinot, first president of the Continental Congress, becomes the Society’s first president; the ABS became a pioneer of American publishing with innovations such as centralized production, national distribution, steam-powered printing, machine-made paper, and in-house binding. The stated goal of the ABS was “a bible to every household.” By 1820 the Society had ten different sets of stereotype plates able to produce five different types of bibles and New Testaments. By 1830, 300,000 copies of the scripture were being produced yearly. The ABS was also one of the earliest American publishers to sell books already bound, and in keeping with its practice of providing bibles “without note or comment” this practice kept out editorial commentary, ads, the apocrypha, etc., and kept the product simple, and affordable to produce. By the 1860’s ABS book production was one million volumes a year. Note: The New York Bible Society becomes an auxiliary of the American Bible Society in 1816, but declares its independence from the ABS in 1913.
1818 The three epistles of the Apostle John are published for the first time by the American Bible Society into the Delaware Indian language. Translated by Christian Frederick Dencke, a Moravian missionary, this is the first time any portion of the bible is translated into the Delaware dialect.
1821 First Rhode Island Testament (Providence)
1823 Rebekah’s Camels Bible - “And Rebekah arose, and her camels.” – Gen. xxiv. 61. The word camels instead of damsels occurs in an 8vo Bible by the King’s Printers.
1823 Abner Kneeland, a Universalist minister, publishes The New Testament in Greek and English.
1825 The
American Tract Society is founded in New York
City; from
the address of the Executive Committee: "Next to the bible and the living
ministry, one of these means of light and salvation will be found to be short,
plain striking, entertaining, and instructive Tracts, exhibiting in writing
some of the great and glorious truths of the gospel." among the society’s first publications
- A Friendly Visit to the House of Mourning, by Rev. Richard Cecil; Dialogue Between a Traveller and Yourself; and The Happy Negro.
1831 The English Version of the Polyglot Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments, published in London by Samuel Bagster.
1833 Published at Oxford, UK, an exact reprint, page for page of the first issue, 1611 King James Version. A large quarto, with the spelling, punctuation, italics, capitals, and distribution into lines and pages followed with the most scrupulous care; the type is Roman instead of Black Letter, and the ornamental initials at the beginning of the chapters are mere fancy work.
1833 Noah Webster's Revised Bible
1837 Swedenborg
Bible
1839-1845
The
mission at Waiilatpu, Oregon , run by Dr. Marcus and Narcissa Whitman, is the
site of the first printing press in the Pacific Northwest. From 1839-45, nine books were printed, with
the most elaborate being the Gospel of St. Matthew in the Nez Perce language by
Henry and Eliza Spalding.
1842 Champlain Bible Burning: Several Protestant copies of the scriptures are burned by a Catholic missionary priest in Carbeau, New York on October 27th. Apparently he was angered that Protestant Bible Societies were distributing copies of the Bible to his parishioners. The incident caused a national firestorm of Protestant indignation and fueled the No-Popery crusade
1843 The
Englishman’s Hebrew and Chaldee Concordance of the Old Testament. This First Edition contained both
Hebrew-English and English-Hebrew indexes.
The work was financed by George V. Wigram, but he was neither the author
or compiler. A major 20th
Century revision retains Wigram’s name. (see 1984)
1844 Fourth Century parchment manuscript (the Codex Sinaiticus) discovered by scholar-editor Constantine Tischendorf at the Convent of St. Catherine on the Sinai Peninsula; Tischendorf obtained forty-three leaves, but it was not until 1859 that he recovered the entire remaining document from a convent house steward, what he considered “the most precious Biblical treasure in existence.”
1846 Harper Illuminated Bible
1847 First Gutenberg Bible brought to the North American continent by the American book collector and philanthropist James Lenox; cost: $2,500.00, and now in the New York Public Library.
1850 Oxford University Press prints the first complete Wyclif Bible in the original translation, nearly five centuries after he (Wyclif) completed the manuscript (1380)
1851-1900
| Top |
1853 Rabbi Leeser translation of Hebrew scripture into English
1860-63 Bonaparte Dialect Books of the Bible
1862 Catholic Bible revised by Archbishop Kenrick from Rheims-Douai version
1862 Facsimile
reprint of The First New Testament in English, translated
from the Greek by William Tyndale.
Produced and Edited by the English Bible scholar Francis Fry; 177 copies were produced, with twenty-six
printed on vellum and signed by Fry. Darlow & Moule 1212.
1867 The Holy Scriptures, translated and Corrected by The Spirit of Revelation, by Joseph Smith (also known as the Inspired Version or IV); Published by Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints; issued in eleven different bindings; as of 1927, 23 reprints have been made from the same stereotype plates as the First Edition; 1,212 pages, double columns; (see Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible by Robert J. Matthews. BYU, 1975)
1872 Child’s Commentator on the Bible, by Irvin Cobbin; Published in NY by Henry S. Goodspeed.
1876 Julia E. Smith Bible; (Hartford) American Publishing Company; Smith was the first American woman to translate and publish The Holy Bible, word-for-word from the original Greek; not commercially successful, only one edition of 1,000 copies was produced; view portions of the Andover-Harvard Library copy on line. Ms. Smith’s name does not appear on the title page.
1877 Caxton Exhibition "12-hour" Bible
1878 Rotherham Emphasized Bible
1881-85 Revised version of King James Bible
1884 The
New Testament, The Old and New Versions on Opposite Pages. (Chicago) David C.
Cook. Includes a 22-page Preface, 483
facing pages (966-page total) and 11 pages of readings and renderings preferred
by the American Committee, recorded at their desire.
1884 The
New Testament With Brief Notes, published by the American Baptist
Publication Society. The Gospel notes were
written by George W. Clark, D.D. and those on the Acts, Epistles and Revelation
by J. M. Pendleton, D.D. In preparing
this volume of commentary and Bible study help, the scholars made careful use
of the Greek text, avoiding in their notes the use of words from foreign
languages, so that the profound truths of the Scriptures would be available in
brief, simple and forceful English. A
popular publication, mine is the 1959 reprint.
1889 First Edition of the Oxford Greek-English Lexicon by H. G. Liddell and Scott. Published by OUP.
1892 New Testament and Book of Mormon published by the RLDS together, and called The Two Records; the text of the New Testament is the same as the Inspired Version of 1867.
1895 The
Woman’s Bible. (NY) European Publishing Co.; a collection of essays and commentaries on
the Bible compiled by a committee headed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, a founder
of the National Woman Suffrage Association; portions of the work are based on
the Julia E. Smith translation of 1876.
1896 Oldest fragment of New Testament (Third Century) found at Oxyrhynchus, Egypt; preserved at University of Pennsylvania.
1896 Hechal
Hakodesh (“The Holy Sanctuary”) Hebrew and Aramaic Concordance on The Bible
by Dr. Solomon Mandelkern is published in Leipzig by Veit & Co. “The whole based on the Masoretic text of
the Bible and following the accepted sequence of the books of the Bible.”
1898 Pope
Leo XIII issued his Encyclical Letter on the study of the Holy Scriptures. In the letter he announced a grant of three
hundred days’ indulgence to all who devoutly read the Gospels for at least
fifteen minutes, and a plenary indulgence for doing so every day for a month
besides fulfilling the usual conditions of such an indulgence.
1899 Gideons
[Gideon Bible Society] founded in Boscobel, Wisconsin. Taking their name from the Old Testament
hero who had been divinely guided to devise a screening test for the selection
of soldiers fit for a commando operation against the Midianites (see Judges,
vii). Gideon Bibles were first placed
in hotel rooms in 1908. They continue
to be distributed to the armed forces, hospitals, ships, railroads, prisons, schools
and airlines, to mention just a few.
continuously revised, corrected and
updated. send all comments to bookmail@clausenbooks.com
home
| chronology page | return to the top | Gutenberg Bible Census |