The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha is a newly edited edition of the King James Version of the Bible (KJV) published by Cambridge University Press in 2005. This 2005 edition was printed as The Bible (Penguin Classics) in 2006. The editor is David Norton, Reader in English at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Norton is author of A History of the Bible as Literature (1993) revised and condensed as A History of the English Bible as Literature (2000). He wrote A Textual History of the King James Bible as a companion volume to the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.
The original Cambridge Paragraph Bible
A previous edition of the KJV called the Cambridge Paragraph Bible was published in 1873. That volume was edited by F.H.A. Scrivener, one of the translators of the English Revised Version and a noted scholar of the text of the Bible. For a long time it was perhaps best known as the KJV text in the standard reference work The New Testament Octapla edited by Luther Weigle, chairman of the translation committee that produced the Revised Standard Version. But more recently, the publisher Zondervan has attempted a revival of Scrivener's text by conforming all its newer editions of the KJV to it, such as its Zondervan KJV Study Bible. And the popular Logos Bible Software includes an electronic text of the Cambridge Paragraph Bible as of certain editions of version 3 of its Bible program.
Considerable honour is due to Scrivener for his work on the 1873 Cambridge Paragraph Bible. Nevertheless, there are some instances of misrepresentation of the original KJV text in Scrivener's work, since, as Norton suggests, he felt himself entitled to "correct" what the translators wrote. For example,
in Matthew 23:24, Scrivener changes KJV's "strain at a gnat" to "strain out a gnat" (emphasis added) on the basis of the belief that it was a printer's error or a mistranslation, as it is commonly known that hulizō means "to filter". he changes Hebrews 10:23's "Let us hold fast the profession of our faith" to "Let us hold fast the profession of our hope" (emphasis added); this change was allegedly to fix a translator error; there are instances of spelling that are intentionally left unmodernized, such as "ebeny" for "ebony" and "mo" for "more"; Additionally, the passage in 1 John 5:7–8 often referred to as the Johannine Comma is thrown into italics by Scrivener because of its disputed authenticity, although the original translators left no indication that they doubted its genuineness. (This italicization has been removed from Zondervan's reprints of the Cambridge Paragraph Bible text but can be seen in the New Testament Octapla's reprinting.)
Although Scrivener's text has been highly regarded since its appearance, it has not had a major influence on current editions of the KJV, which are essentially reprints of the 1769 Oxford edition by Benjamin Blayney. Therefore, current KJV printings feature certain post-1611-edition editorial changes, 18th century spelling, an enhanced system of "supplied words" (the words printed in italics as having no equivalent in the original Biblical texts but added for clarity), and emended punctuation.
The reasons for a new recension
In his Textual History, Prof. Norton describes the process by which Cambridge University Press commissioned the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible. The beginning dates back to 1994, when the press' Bible Publishing Manager needed to decide on any changes or corrections that would have to be made to the KJV text published by Cambridge, given that the film from which the press printed its text was becoming worn and in need of replacement. Two possibilities that emerged were to use Scrivener's text or to simply adopt Cambridge's own Concord KJV edition as the basis; however, neither gave exactly the translator's text or used consistent modern spelling. Cambridge eventually chose a different option, to have the KJV edited afresh. This also provided the opportunity to give the KJV a new formatting, one which follows the path broken by Scrivener in the first Cambridge Paragraph Bible but is by no means bound to his decisions regarding presentation; instead, the formatting of the volume has been completely reworked by Norton.
Features of the new edition
Using such sources as the first edition published in 1611, a manuscript preserved from the first stage of the KJV men's work (known as Lambeth Palace MS 98), and a complete Bishops' Bible annotated by them (known as Bodleian Library Bibl. Eng. 1602 b. 1), Norton re-edited the KJV. His edition: