An example of one of the three 1589 printings of the 1560 Geneva Bible, probably no. 199 in Herbert, below (since the "test passage" matches). This copy has been deprived of its opening title page.
“The Geneva Bible of 1560 and its later editions are often called by the somewhat absurd title of ‘Breeches’ Bibles.” (And indeed this copy bears that title on the spine of its current binding.) But “The rendering breeches (for aprons) in Gen. iii.7 had already occurred in Wycliffe’s MS. Bible, as well as in Caxton’s edition of the Golden Legend (1483)” (A. S. Herbert, Historical catalogue of printed editions of the English Bible 1525-1961 (London: The British and Foreign Bible Society, 1968), no. 107, p. 62).
This copy was “Presented. | To Judge [Edmund J.] Senkler | County Judge of Lincoln[, Ontario] | By | Rev. Robert Ker | Rector of St. Georges Church | St Catharines[, Ontario] | Christmas 1892” (see, just for example, St. George’s Parish Church, St. Catharine’s. Jubilee celebration and historic and centenary review, ed. Rev. Robert Ker (St. Catharine’s, ON: Star Print, [1892])), and, so, seems likely to have come in with the other Senkler titles owned by SPU, just for example the 1676 Book of homilies first owned by the Judge’s father, the Rev. Edmund John Senkler. Noted as present in the files of the University Librarian, this copy of the Geneva Bible was "rediscovered" in the Emmanuel Room closet by Lee Staman in the Spring of 2011 and quickly added to the electronic catalog.
Probable full title: [The Bible. Translated according to the Ebrew and Greeke, and conferred with the best translations in diuers languages. With most profitable annotations upon all the hard places, and other things of great importance, as may appeare in the epistle to the reader. And also a most profitable concordance for the readie finding out of any thing in the same conteined.]
SPU possess three of the Luther Bibles published by Wolfgang Endter and descendants from 1629 to 1788. The Luther Bibles published by the Endter clan came in three basic forms: the octavo-sized Saubert (from 1726 the Mörl) Bible (1629-1822), and the small and large folio-sized Weimar (1641-1768) and Dilherr (1656-1788) Bibles. All three of the copies owned by SPU lack a firm date of publication, and the first two, an opening title page. For this reason I refer to them by the donor-names Monroe, Marston, and Frost.
Hans Rudolph, an important collector of these Bibles from Bad Wimpfen, Germany, working in collaboration with some of the major libraries in that country, has determined that Frost (which bears on its detatched and fragmentary title page the “Mit Römisch-Kayserl. auch Königl. Polnisch- und Chur-Fürstl. Sächsis. allergnädigsten PRIVILEGIIS" characteristic of the Dilherr Bibles of 1747/1755 and 1765, but lacks the other distinguishing marks of the two editions of 1765, as enumerated by Jahn) must be a 1747 (rather than a 1765 or even a 1755) Dilherr. According to Jahn, the 1747/1755 Dilherrs are virtually identical, but Sabine Tolksdorf of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin has confirmed via Mr. Rudolph that the first page of the book of Genesis in Frost matches only their copies of the printing of 1747.
Mr. Rudolph has also been instrumental in helping me to get beyond my own reading of Oertel and Zwink to pin Monroe (which, again, is missing its opening title page) to the year 1679. Cf. this MDZ digitization of the copy of the 1679 Dilherr in the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, as also confirmed via Mr. Rudolph by Esther Sturm of the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart. Attached to OCLC record no. 38766146 are a copy at the Ambrose Swasey Library of the Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, NY, and another at the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library in Toledo, OH. Because the former was actually sold via Southeby's in 2005, the latter may be the only other copy of the 1679 Dilherr owned by a North American library.
This Endter Dilherr Luther Bible was a gift of SPU Instructor of Nursing Heidi Monroe, who says that it would have come over from Germany with her paternal great grandfather Hermann Robert Baum, who was a druggist and the proprietor of the former Baum's Pharmacy in San Francisco.
Possible fuller title: Biblia, Das ist: Die gantze H: Schrifft, Altes un[d] Neuen Testaments/ Teutsch/ Hernn Doct. Martin Luthers S. . . .
Published sources:
This Dilherr Bible (which I have dubbed Marston, and which, like Monroe, lacks a title page) cannot have been published earlier than 1700 because 1) many of its copperplate engravings (including but a single one of the portraits of the eleven Herzöge of Saxony completely absent from Monroe (above), but common in Dilherr Bibles from 1679) bear the signature “A. Nunzer Sculp.”, and Andreas Nunzer is known to have been active between 1700 and 1750.
Consistent with this are a number of additional clues as well, for example the presence of 2) the text of the Augsburg (and prior) confessions characteristic of Dilherr Bibles, too, from 1702; 3) woodcuts by Johann Jakob von Sandrart del. (abbreviated IIVS in various stages of monographic collapse) characteristic of Dilherr Bibles after 1710; and 3) the traditional four Registers brought over from the Weimar Bible after c. 1720.
Probably decisive, however, is a note from the German collector Hans Rudolph, of Bad Wimpfen, Germany, dated 14 January 2015. In this Mr. Rudolph matches the page bearing Gen 1:1 ff. with a Dilherr Bible whose main title page is clearly dated 1733.
Back to those copperplate engravings and Frost: not just one (as in Marston), but fully five of the eleven portraits of the Herzöge in Frost (a gift of the daughters of Class of 1959 alumnus Fay A. Frost) bear "A. Nunzer Sculp.", a further indication that Frost (which Mr. Rudoph has pinned to the year 1747) post-dates Marston.
Gift of former members of the SPU faculty Margaret Bursell, E. E. Cochrane, E. Walter Helsel, Florence Jordan, Gail Kiser, Thelma Larson, C. May Marston, and Kenneth Miles.
Published sources:
Acquired by the Rev. "Edm[und] John Senkler" in 1826, this copy of the two-volume Whitby commentary was also owned by a "Wade Gascoigne" (“E Libris Wade Gascoigne”), very possibly the Rev. Wade Gascoigne (1757-1801) who happens to be Person no. 60891 in the Clergy of the Church of England Database.
This "second improved edition" edition of Christoph Starke (1684-1744)'s "well-known theological-homiletical commentary" (New-Schaff-Herzog encyclopedia of religious knowledge 11 (1911), 66) on the Pentateuch is displayed with the other volumes from the Old and New Testament series owned by SPU, all gifted by Dr. Stanley D. Walters. The volumes range in date-of-publication from 1744 to 1750, and were once owned by (in addition to Dr. Walters) a C. H. R. Sange and, from 1892, the Rev. Ludwig von Schenk, at that time the pastor of the Zion Lutheran Church in Dexter, Iowa. Having pastored churches in Illinois as well, the Rev. von Schenk died in Dexter in 1898 (Necrology Index, Concordia Historical Institute, citing Der Lutheraner 54, no.26 (1898): 240, and the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod Statistical yearbook 1898 (1899): 122, as graciously communicated by my colleague Lyle E. Buettner, Special Collections Librarian, Concordia Seminary Library). In an online transcription of his will, he (if this is to be trusted) calls himself "Baron Ludwig August Friedrich Philipp Schenk zu Schweinsberg", and bequeaths to his wife "Theirse von Schenk nee Lauge" (who elsewhere appears as Theresa Lange) his "library of books, manuscripts and works of art".
Fuller title: Synopsis bibliothecae exegeticae in Vetus Testamentum. Kurzgefasster Auszug der gründlichsten und nutzbarsten Auslegung über alle Bücher Altes Testaments, in Tabellen, Erklärungen, Anmerkungen und Nutzanwendungen, mit Zuziehung des Grundtextes, und fleissiger Anführung der dabey gebrauchten Bücher, zum erwunschten Handbuch, sowol Kirchen-Schul- und Haus-Lehrern zur Unterweisung ... und mit einer Vorrede tit. Herrn Johann Bernhard Hassels. Erster Theil, welcher enthält die fünf Bücher Mosis. . . .
This Danish Bible-with-Apocrypha has been cataloged as a new edition of the revised "Mission Bible" based on the Resen-Svane version and prepared by the Dano-Norwegian College of Missions (Missionskollegiet, or Kongelige Missions-Kollegium). Published in Copenhagen, it was owned by (and presumably therefore also a gift of) Mattie J. Peterson (1882-1977).
Mattie was one of the five (Norwegian) Peterson children who constituted almost 42% of the enrollment of sub-collegiate Seattle Seminary (now Seattle Pacific University) on opening day, 4 April 1893. She graduated in 1902, earned a Ph.B. at Greenville College in 1906, returned to the Seminary where she taught German for two years, and then left for the mission field in 1909. Expelled from China by the Japanese in 1942, she spent the rest of her years on a portion of the Nils Peterson homestead that hadn’t been bequeathed to the Seminary in 1891, and remained, until her death in 1977 (at which point "Her house became her final gift"), a faithful member of First Free Methodist Church across the street (McNichols, Growing vision, passim; Adrienne Meier, SPU Archivist; and Georgann Kurz-Shaw of the Ruby E. Dare Library at Greenville College, among other sources).
On the recto and verso of the page following the front pastedown is some handwriting that remains to be deciphered, but appears to be signed by an "Ole And_____".
Fuller title: Biblia, det er, den gandske Hell. Skriftes: Bøger, ved Hans Kongel. Majests. vor allernaadigste Arve-Herres, Kong Christian den Siettes Christelige Omsorg, med Fliid og efter Grund-Texten efterseete og rettede; saa og med Paralleler forsynede.
The Peterson sisters, with Mattie at the far right. Courtesy of the Seattle Pacific University Archives.
Nathanial Scarlett (1753-1802), “was. . . . educated at Kingswood School, Bath,” “under the patronage of John Wesley” (Universal theological magazine 7 (November 1802): 279). “Originally a Methodist, Scarlett . . . came to believe in universal redemption. He joined the Parliament Court Universalist congregation in . . . London, . . . and was closely associated with . . . [its pastor] William Vidler.” Together they collaborated on “a Universalist New Testament translation project based on a manuscript translation by an Anglican clergyman [with Wesleyan Methodist leanings], James Creighton. Once a week Vidler, Creighton, John Cue (a Sandemanian), and Scarlett met at Scarlett's house for breakfast and ‘compared Creighton's translation with all Mr. Scarlett's collations and with the Greek, and disputed on them till they could agree’ (Monthly Repository, 13, 1818, 6). Passages on which they disagreed were taken home after tea for private consideration, and resolved by majority voting." A translation of the New Testament is "arranged in dramatic form, and . . . distinguishes between ‘the saved’ who needed no future punishment and ‘the restored’ who did. Hence God, who is love, is the saviour of the elect, but the restorer of all” (Andrew M. Hill, Oxford dictionary of national biography online (2005), 20 May 2014).
Tempted to open A translation of the New Testament to some of its lovelier features, just for example the opening foldout harmonizing the genealogies of Matthew and Luke, I decided in the end to display 1 Tim 2:4, which reads "For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Restorer [(σωτῆρος)]; who willeth that all men should be restored [(σωθῆναι)], and come to the acknowledgment [(ἐπίγνωσιν)] of the truth."
This set was acquired by a John Edwards, of Ness Strange, Salop, in March of 1822. Vol. 4 is the one on display. SPU lacks vol. 2.
The scroll, a gift of Alan and Cynthia Boyce, has been opened to Exodus 16:4-23:31. Exodus 20 begins after the first break in the center column. The first לֹא (“no” or “not”) of the Ten Commandments is visible in the third line below that.
SPU owns, in addition to the three volumes on the Psalms, the one on Job (1824) and the two on Ezekiel (1826). With the exception of the one on Job (which bears on its title page the stamp "REV. H. BULTEMA LIBRARY"), all were once owned by the library of the Royal Joachimsthal Gymnasium (“EX | BIBLIOTH: | GYMNASII REGII | JOACHIMICI”), “the most significant secondary school in Prussia".
The Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium was a prestigious prep school for the children of nobility, as well as the most promising of Prussian students generally. It was founded in Joachimsthal in 1607 by the Elector Joachim Friedrich von Brandenburg; moved south to (ultimately various locations in and around) Berlin in 1649/50 after the devastation inflicted upon town and school by the Thirty Years War; granted “Royal” status at the time of its centennial in 1707 (the adjective “Königlich” was dropped during the period of the Weimar Republic); moved back north to Templin in 1912; thoroughly Nazified in 1944 (though pressure had been exerted from 1933); commandeered by a Red Army tank division in 1945; renamed the (in spirit largely unrelated) Landesschule Templin in 1948; and, in 1956, dissolved by the Communist council of the district of Neubrandenburg in retaliation for its royalist past and for having succumbed to the Nazis during the Second World War. Having been put to a number of different uses over the course of the next forty years, the lovely buildings on the final Templin site were completely abandoned in 1996, and remain so today.
Established with an eye to the formation of a humanistically Lutheran (“Wittenberger”, even “philippistisch”) elite destined for the University of Frankfurt an der Oder (1506-1811), the Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium moved decidedly Reformed-ward after the conversion of Elector Johann Sigismund in 1613, and his forced conversion of the faculty in 1619. The theological commitments of the school remained obvious right on into the twentieth century. For example, churches were founded for the school specifically at the Kaiseralle site in the Wilmersdorf district of Berlin (1880-1912) and in Templin both.
The move to Berlin and the rigorously classics-oriented reforms introduced by Rector August Meineke (1826-1857) resulted in close feeder-ties to the University of Berlin. Not surprisingly, therefore, the volumes on display are, if nothing else, a testimony to “the first-class scholarly library [(die ausgezeichnete wissenschaftliche Bibliothek)]” enjoyed by the faculty and the more advanced of its (high school!) students in the 18th and 19th centuries.
From there they made their way somehow to Knox College, "a theological school of The Presbyterian Church in Canada, a federated college of the University of Toronto, and a founding member of the Toronto School of Theology"; and then into the collection of Dr. Stanley D. Walters, a member of the Knox College faculty from 1976 to 2002. Dr. Walters added them to the rest of the Walters Collection here at Seattle Pacific University in 2013.
A library had been foreseen and indeed promised from the foundation of the Gymnasium in 1607, though Electoral funds were tight and a proper facility was lacking. What little in the way of a collection the school had managed to assemble was wiped out along with the Gymnasium itself in 1636, during the Thirty Years War. Indeed, it was not until the intra-urban move onto the Burgstraße in 1688 that there was space for real development. But it was the purchase of the library of Frankfurt an Oder Professor of Medicine Conrad Johrenius that in 1717 triggered the rise of the Bibliotheca Joachimica, supplemented as that acquisition was by the targeted budgeting and buying of the eighteenth century. After several decades, and the ingress of some key additional collections (for example that of the composer Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia—not to be confused with that other musician, the founder of the famous Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek—upon her death in 1787), its holdings were considered significant enough to be protected from the students, and in 1823, almost forty years after the construction of a second library for student use, a policy restricting the riches of the scholarly collection (now called the Lehrerbibliothek) to the faculty and its older and more promising students was put in place. For some decades before 1861 the acquisitions budget of the Bibliotheca Joachimica was comparable to that of the University of Berlin, and it was during this period (which is to say, before 1900) that it peaked. Already in 1865, however, Ernst Förstemann, writing in defense of the concept of the Lehrerbibliothek (secondary-school library for a productive faculty of learned Polyhistoren or generalists), was finding it necessary to denounce as a form of Philistinism the conviction that a Gymnasium needed not a collection capable of supporting the rising new culture of faculty research and highly specialized, top-flight publication, but only those materials that could be put to immediate use in secondary-level instruction. Though from this point its faculty began to fall behind their "scientifically" specialized and increasingly better-resourced peers at the University of Berlin and elsewhere, the Bibliotheca Joachimica continued to cling to its now slowing fading reputation by buying scholarly materials right on through the turn of the century. After that point, however, and after the outbreak and then close of World War I in particular, it fell, along with the German economy itself, into a serious and terminal decline. Rector August Nebe had been able to draw upon the cultural capital the library had accumulated over the previous century in defying a 1910 directive of the Prussian Ministry of Culture; moving the library along with the school back north to Templin (rather than into the Royal Library of Berlin) in 1912; and thus presenting the Ministry with a bit of a fait accompli (though he did lose to the Royal Library in 1913 or 1914 most of the music donated by Princess Anna Amalia more than a century before (and, in light of what was to happen from 1945, perhaps providentially so)); but the writing was on the wall. Worse, scholars saw little point in following the library all the way out to Templin. In 1935 the collection was only 5,000 volumes larger than it had been in 1900, and when that Red Army tank unit vacated the premises in November of 1945, “burned and badly soiled books” (not to mention theft) were everywhere in evidence. That next summer the Red Army was observed pitching about 10,000 volumes out of the upper stories of the library and into waiting lorries. (Former Director of the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung, Christian Ritzi, watching the documentary Die Spur der Bücher, was surprised to catch a glimpse of a volume bearing the Bibliotheca Joachimica ex libris depicted above in a dank cellar in the Georgian capital of Tiflis (Tbilisi), and thinks that that may be where at least some of these 10,000 books ended up.) Residents of Templin came in after the Red Army had gone, picked the books that had missed the lorries up off the ground, and crowded into the library itself to pinch whatever caught their fancy. And then, in 1950, the Prussian policy of redistribution partially staved off by Rector Nebe in 1912 began in earnest under the Communist regime. One portion of the collection went to the Brandenburgische Landeshochschule Potsdam (from 1951 the Pädagogische Hochschule Potsdam), and is therefore now in the Golmer Division of the Universitätsbibliothek Potsdam; another to what is today the Hochschüle fur Musik Franz Liszt in Weimar; another to the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; another to the Zentralstelle für wissenschaftliche Altbestände in Gotha (now Berlin); the theology to the Zweigbibliothek Theologie of the Humbolt-Universität zu Berlin; and much of the rest to the antiquarian booksellers. By 1956 the “library of the Joachimsthal Gymnasium no longer existed; its holdings had been . . . destroyed or carried off to points now unknown; and the balance, parceled out among several [different] libraries” or sold (Ritzi, 262 and passim). By which of these many potential routes the volumes given by Dr. Walters made it eventually to Knox College in Toronto is not known.
Sources: Jonas Flöter, “Das Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium: Fürstenschule der Hohenzollern, Humanistische Gymnasium, Bildungsstätte von Eliten” (2007), a summary of the papers presented at a scholarly conference organized in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the Joachimsthalsches Gymnasium, held on the premises of the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung, Berlin, 15-16 July 2007, and later published in Das Joachimsthalsche Gymnasium: Beiträge zum Aufstieg und Niedergang der Fürstenschule der Hohenzollern, ed. Jonas Flöter and Christian Ritzi (Bad Heilbrunn: Klinkhardt, 2009). Long paragraph number six summarizes my own reading of another article on pp. 261-294 of that same volume, "Bibliotheca Joachimica: zur Funktion von Gymnasialbibliotheken im Wandel der Zeit," by former Director of the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung Christian Ritzi. For the information about the volume of the Bibliotheca Joachimica he caught a glimpse of in the documentary Die Spur der Bücher I am indebted to a private note from Mr. Ritzi dated 9 October 2014. Mr. Ritzi also kindly corrected some of the errors that I would otherwise have promulgated via the notes above. In col. 486 of vol. 1 of the 1949 edition of the encyclopedia Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart is information about the partial transfer to the Royal Library of 1913 or 1914 (MGG says 1914, but Mr. Ritzi says Rector Nebe said 1913).
Though the title of this printing claims that A Christian library was “First published in 1750”, Baker’s A union catalogue of the publications of John and Charles Wesley, 2nd ed. (Stone Mountain, GA: George Zimmerman, 1991), at no. 131 on p. 85, gives 1749 for vol. 1.
As Dr. Robert W. Wall pointed out in the three SPU Walls Lectures of 2007, 2008, and 2009, 1 John was very important to John Wesley. For this reason I have opened vol. 17 (1823) of SPU’s copy of A Christian library to the selections he made from the Rev. Hugh Binning (1627-1653)’s Fellowship with God: or, XXVIII sermons on the First Epistle of John, chapters I. and II. (first published posthumously in 1671). Gift of Dr. Stanley D. Walters.
Fuller title: A Christian library: consisting of extracts from and abridgments of the choicest pieces of practical divinity which have been published in the English tongue. In thirty volumes. First published in 1750, in fifty volumes, 12MO.
From the Erlangen edition of Luther’s Works.
The first (1826-1857) and second (1862-1885) Erlangen editions, which extend well beyond the Latin appendices selected from here (Latin exegetical works (1829-1886)), were later replaced by the now-standard Weimar edition (the Weimarer Ausgabe, usually abbreviated WA), 1883-1983 (though subject to ongoing, post-1983 revision). The Erlangen edition of Labors on the Psalms (1519-1521) has been opened to the claim, characteristic of Luther's so-called theologia crucis ("theology of the cross"), made at the end of the first paragraph on p. 330 (or Ps. 6:11), that the "Crux Christi unica est eruditio verborum Dei, theologia sincerissima" (“The cross of Christ is the only (acquired) knowledge of (or instruction in) the words of God there is, the purest theology”).
Wesley's well-known Explanatory notes upon the New Testament first appeared in London in 1755. This printing is merely the 41st listed in Frank Baker's A union catalogue of the publications of John and Charles Wesley, 2nd ed., rev. (Stone Mountain, GA: George Zimmerman, 1991), where it appears fourth from the top of p. 101 as a printing of (presumably) the 4th American. For a glimpse of the printing of 1757 (3rd on the Baker list), go here. On the opening to 1 John, see no. 11 (1823), above. The Explanatory notes upon the Old Testament appeared in Bristol in 1765. SPU did not, at the time of this writing, own any 18th- or 19th-century copy of the Explanatory notes on the Old Testament. Gift of the Rev. John H. Van Lierop.
This copy of vol. 3 (the "Job to Solomon's Songs" volume) of a 6-vol. London reprint of the popular commentary by Wesleyan Methodist minister and scholar Adam Clarke (1762-1832) was owned by both theologically-trained Seattle Seminary founder Hiram H. Pease (1834-1919), and student, registrar, professor of mathematics, and dean Burton L. Beegle (1892-1960), after whom, in 1962, Beegle Hall was named. Clarke's commentary was first published between the years 1810 and 1824 inclusive. I have searched both WorldCat and COPAC fairly extensively. Yet despite the popularity of of this work, I have yet to locate another set that matches this one exactly. Nonetheless, indications are that it was published sometime in the 1850s.
Fuller title: The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testament: the text carefully printed from the most correct copies of the present Authorized Translation, including the marginal readings and parallel texts. With a commentary and critical notes . . . by Adam Clarke, LL.D., F.A.S.
Hiram H. Pease (left) and Burton L. Beegle (right). Courtesy of the Seattle Pacific University Archives.
According to William of Tocco (1240/1250-c. 1323) and others (Bartholomew of Capua claimed to have heard the story from royal counselor Nicholas of Mallesort), the students of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) once asked him if he wouldn't like to be lord (dominus) of the beautiful city of Paris. His reply was that he would rather have a copy of the "'Omelias Crisostomi super Euangelium beati Mathei'" (Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino cap. 42, in Ystoria sancti Thome de Aquino de Guillaume de Tocco (1323), ed. Claire Le Brun-Gouanvic (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1996), 172 and 172n17). Mindful of this, I have opened Jean-Baptiste Jeannin's 19th-century edition of the works of Chrysostom in French to that point in vol. 7 where the homilies on Matthew begin. Gift of the Jean-Léon Allie O.M.I. Library, Université Saint-Paul, Ottawa.
The volume on display is a "presentation copy" of the New Testament volume of the Revised Version of the Authorized Version of 1611.
Work on the Revised Version began in Great Britain in June of 1870, and "For the first time" incorporated "modern discoveries of Greek manuscripts and textual criticism" (New interpreter's dictionary of the Bible (2006), s.v. "Versions, English," by Donald L. Brake, Sr.), as well as a commmitment "always to render a [given] Greek word by the same English word" throughout, no matter the context (!). "After the project was well underway, it was decided to invite Americans to participate, and Dr. Philip Schaff assembled a group from various denominations who began work on October 4, 1872." The Revised Version was printed in both Great Britain and America between the years 1881 and 1885 inclusive (with the exception of the Apocrypha, which took another ten). American suggestions rejected by more than a third of the British committee but still deemed (by the British) worthy of inclusion were relegated to an appendix. In 1898 the Riverside Press of Cambridge, MA, operating in the interests of the American branch of Oxford University Press, and the New York office of Cambridge University Press, and responding to the claim that "'several such editions of the Revised New Testament had already been published without authority'" (Herbert, Historical catalogue of printed editions of the English Bible 1525-1961 (London: The British and Foreign Bible Society, 1968), #2077 on p. 439), issued an edition that "inserted the American preferences into the text and printed the British preferences in the appendices." But the ultimate American response was the publication--at the close of the 14-year embargo to which the Americans had committed themselves--of the American Standard Version in 1901 (Anchor Bible dictionary (1992), s.v. "Versions, English (Pre-1960)," by Jack P. Lewis).
Page facing the title page: “This Edition is authorized by the | American Committee of Revision. | Philip Schaff, President. | George E. Day, Secretary. | New York, May 20, 1881. | Published by . . . J. B. Lippincott & Co., | 715 & 717 Market Street, | Philadelphia.” Cover stamped “Presentation copy | from the| American Committee of Revision | A. D. 1881.”
Owner’s mark on the title page reads “M. F. Force". This would have been the Civil War Brevet-Major General, jurist, and writer Manning Ferguson Force (1824-1899). SPU owns the (four in) two Old Testament volumes of this “presentation copy” as well. They and the New Testament volume on display were given to SPU in 1949 by the general's son Horton Caumont Force (1878-1956), the Seattle lawyer who in c. 1920 gave a Manning “Force Collection” to the University of Washington (Washington historical quarterly 12, no. 1 (January 1921): 78-79). Indeed, the entry on Manning Ferguson Force in vol. 8 of American national biography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), though quite mistaken in the claim that he and his wife Frances Dabney Horton Force “had no children” (217), implies that there are Force papers at the University of Washington in addition to those in the Houghton Library of Harvard University.
Some day it would be fun to attempt to figure out what General Force's connection to the American Committee of Revision (which had to be almost entirely reconstituted by the time the ASV was taken up in earnest in 1897) was, or whether, failing that, he picked his "presentation copy" up in some other way.
Portrait of General Force: Civil War Photograph Collection no. 2970, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
“This special edition of The New Testament translated by William Tyndale, 1534 includes facsimiles of two title-pages, and of the twenty-two woodcuts illustrating the Book of Revelation. It is printed on mould-made paper and limited to 500 copies”, of which the one owned by SPU is no. 98. It seems to have been purchased for $25 from Baptist historian of awakenings and revivals J. Edwin Orr. The Rev. Dr. Orr was, among many other things, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Fuller title: The New Testament translated by William Tyndale, 1534: a reprint of the edition of 1534 with the translator’s prefaces and notes and the variants of the edition of 1525. Edited for the Royal Society of Literature by N. Hardy Wallis, M.A. . . . with an introduction by the Right Honourable Isaac Foot. . . .
For more information on the first hand-written and hand-illuminated Bible in 500 years, go here. To thumb through a greatly miniaturized (not to mention subdued!) version of all seven volumes, go here. But neither the coffee table edition on display nor the Saint John's Bible website can give you anything close to a real sense of what it's like to see the real thing up close and in person. The closest thing to that experience is a glimpse of the Heritage Edition, and there are copies of the Heritage edition at Saint Martin's University in Lacey, Gonzaga University in Spokane, and the University of Portland.
