Bodleian Oxford Library to feature KJV Bible Anniversary Exhibit
The Bodleian Library at University of Oxford will be hosting an exhibit this summer about Oxford’s role in the creation of the King James Bible in honour of the KJV Bible’s 400th anniversary.
“Manifold Greatness: Oxford and the Making of the King James Bible” will highlight the work of two Oxford Bible translation committees at Corpus Christi and Merton Colleges.
The exhibit will feature the Bodleian 1602 Bishops’ Bible, the only surviving edition of the 40 Bishop’s Bibles sent out for use by Bible translation committees as the base text for the KJV Bible. The copy shown in this exhibit is made up of several different sheets of paper and is marked with handwritten additions and deletions to the text.
The exhibit will also showcase working materials used in the creation of the original King James Bible in the 16th century.
Visitors can see a copy of the set of rules given to the translation committees by the Church for their translation of the Bible.
Visitors can also see John Bois’s notes from the General Meeting in 1610 where the KJV Bible was reviewed and finalized. Bois took extensive notes about the discussions at the meeting, including the decision to reorder some words in the Bible to make the text sound “more majestic.”
A number of reference books used by the Oxford Bible scholars are featured in the exhibit, including the infamous “Wicked Bible” of 1631. The publisher of this Bible accidentally omitted “not” from the seventh commandment, so the commandment read, “Thou shall commit adultery.” Copies of this edition of the Bible are rare because most of them were burned shortly after publication for this egregious typographical error.
The “Manifold Greatness” exhibit delves into the lives of two Oxford men who were instrumental in the creation of the KJV Bible, John Wycliffe and William Tyndale.
Wycliffe completed the first full translation of the Bible from Latin to Middle English in 1382. Tyndale began a translation of the Bible from Latin into Early Modern English in 1522, with the intention of making the Bible easy to read for laypeople. But Tyndale was executed in 1536 for heresy before his Bible translation could be completed.
The Bibles of Wycliffe and Tyndale proved to be instrumental to the formation of the King James Bible. Both editions of the Bible were used as the base text of the KJV Bible.
A copy of Tyndale’s English Translation of the New Testament owned by Anne Boleyn in 1534 is featured in the exhibit.
Dr Helen Moore, Chair of Corpus Christi’s Curatorial Committee, said she hopes visitors enjoy learning more about the history of the King James Bible through the “Manifold Greatness” exhibit.
“It is an enormous privilege that we are able to breathe life back into the translation process for a modern audience, by showing these books and documents in public – some of them for the first time,” she said.
The exhibit will be held from 22 April to 4 September 2011 in the Exhibition Room of Bodleian Library, on Catte Street in Oxford. Admission is free.