Dr. Blayncy makes an accidental admission, tending
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to lower confidence in the book, that two proofs were read, "and, generally speaking, the third likewise," whicli is quite insufficient for a standard edition of any work, or even an ordinary edition of the Bible. Four proofs are the least allowable on such a work. It is no wonder that afterward one hundred and six- teen typographical errors were discovered in it. The most important is in Rev. xviii, 22, which in the quar- to copy reads :
22 And tlie voice of harpers, and musicians, and of pipers, and trumpeters, shall be heard no mure in thee; and the sound of a milstone shall be heard no more at all in thee ; Reference to a correct Bible will show that the fol- lowing words are omitted: "at all in thee; and no craftsman, of whatsoever craft he be, shall be found any more." But, saying nothing of accidental errors like this, there is yet abundant ground for complaint against the text for incorrectness. In Joshua iii, 12. all previous editions had read "Take ye twelve men ;" it appears here, to the confusion of the grammar, "Take you twelve men." In Joshua xi, 19, "unto my place" is changed to "into my place ;" and, so far as there is a difference in the sense, the change is in- correct. But these errors, though utterly out of place in a standard Bible, are venial by the side of others. In Judges xi, 7, all editions before, and most after, read "the elders of Gilead ;" he has, "the children of Gilead." In Psalm xxiv, 3, instead of " and who shall stand in his holy place?" he introduced "or who shall stand." In Psalm cvii, 16, he, followed only by editions copied from him, reads "for he hath broken the gates of brass, and cut the gates of iron in sunder," the true reading being "bars of iron." In Psalm cxv, 3, he is the first to read " whatsoever he hath pleased," the inserted "hath" being quite super- fluous. His is the only edition we have met with •which reads, in Isaiah xlvii, 9, " But these two things ■which shall come in a moment." Most important is the change he introduced into Matt, xvi, 10, where he reads "Thou art the Christ" instead of "Thou art Christ." In this edition we find, for the first time, in 2 Cor. xii, 2, " I knew a man in Christ about fourteen years ago" instead of "above." In 1 John i, 4, the reading "our joy" for "your joy," though often met with now, is only an error first made in this edition. In punctuation, too, Blavney did but little better. There are few places where lie for the first time mis- pointed a verse, but he has perpetuated many errors. In Dent, ix, 3, the original, and all down to his time, are pointed substantially thus : " The Lord thy God is he which goeth over before thee as a consuming fire: he shall destroy them," etc. ; but the sense is entirely changed by putting the colon after "thee," and no point at "fire." In Acts xxvii, 18, the translators placed the comma after "day," but he perpetuated the mistake of placing it after "tempest," the effect of which is to make the mariners endure an exceeding storm for twenty-four hours before the}' lightened the ship. In Heb. x, 12, the sense is entirely lost by placing the comma after "sins" instead of at "for- ever," according to the translators. Other typograph- ical errors remained uncorrected. For instance, the marginal reading of Jonah iv, 6, is the meaningless " palmcrist." In 1 Tim. ii, 9, Blavney reads " shame- facedncss" instead of "shamefastncss," a word of an entirely different meaning ; and this error, unfortu- nately, has been continued to our day. In the same text he perpetuated the nonsensical corruption " broid- ered;" and in 1 Tim. iv, 1(5, he continues the error made a century before of " thy doctrine" for " the doc- trine." He is faulty in a critical point : the distinc- tion between " Lord" and " Lord." The word seems to be uniformly printed " Lortn" with him ; certainly in ever}' case we have noticed, including many where the Hebrew is Adonai. On the other hand, Blavney did some good things. He changed the obsolete
unchanged in two others : Ezek. xxxv, 0, and the heading to Bom. v. In a few cases in which "mo" had remained unaltered to his time, he changed it to "more." lie changed "fet,". taken as a preterite, into "fetched ;" as a verb present it had been altered before. He attempted, too, to change "glister," but, as with "sith," only partially. Had he carried out his plan of translating significant proper names, he would have conferred a great benefit on his readers ; but here again he stopped halfway.
The quarto edition, the one here referred to, is in three volumes, containing respectively the Old Testa- ment, the Apocrypha, and the New Testament. It contains no special preface, or mention of its peculiari- ties on the title-page or elsewhere, but is simply dated " Oxford : Printed by T. Wright and W. Gill, printers to the University." It was published at four guineas. The University of Oxford paid Dr. Blayney £5000 for his labor in revising the Bible. They thereupon concluded that they had an available standard, and in- continently adopted it. The other privileged presses followed. But very soon his errors, one by one, came to light; some were corrected at one press, some at another; just as had been the case before, passages really correct were changed in ignorance, and the up- shot "of it all was, that in a very few years there was no standard again.