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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 July 2013
The King James Bible was widely celebrated in 2011 for its literary, religious and cultural significance over the past 400 years, yet its staunch critics are important to note as well. This article draws attention to Catholic critics of the King James Bible (KJB) during its first 300 years in print. By far the most systematic and long-lived Catholic attack on the KJB is found in the argument and afterlife of a curious counter-Reformation text, Thomas Ward's Errata of the Protestant Bible. This book is not completely unknown, yet many scholars have been puzzled over exactly what to make of it and all its successor editions in the nineteenth century – at least a dozen, often in connection with an edition of the Catholic Douai-Rheims Bible (DRB). Ward's Errata, first published in 1688, was based on a 1582 book by Catholic translator and biblical scholar Gregory Martin. The book and its accompanying argument, that all Protestant English Bibles were ‘heretical’ translations, then experienced a prosperous career in nineteenth-century Ireland, employed to battle the British and Foreign Bible Society's campaign to disseminate the Protestant King James Bible as widely as possible. On the American career of the Counter-Reformation text, the article discusses early editions in Philadelphia, when the school Bible question entered the American scene. In the mid-nineteenth century, led by Bishop John Purcell in Cincinnati, Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick in Philadelphia and Bishop John Hughes in New York City, many Catholics began opposing the use of the KJB as a school textbook and demanding use of the Douai Rheims Bible instead. With reference to Ward's Errata, they argued that the KJB was a sectarian version, reflecting Protestant theology at the expense of Catholic teachings. These protests culminated in the then world-famous Bible-burning trial of Russian Redemptorist priest, Fr Vladimir Pecherin in Dublin, in late 1855. The Catholic criticisms of the KJB contained in Ward's Errata, which was reprinted for the last time in 1903, reminded the English-speaking public that this famous and influential Protestant version was not the most perfect of versions, and that it was not and never had been THE BIBLE for everyone.
This article was originally given as ‘Catholic Critics of the King James Bible, 1611–1911’, at a conference held at Princeton Theological Seminary, ‘The King James Bible 1611–2011: Its Champions, Critics, and Continuing Legacy’, 16 Oct. 2011.
2 First published as The Errata to the Protestant Bible, or, the Truth of the English Translations Examined, In a Treatise shewing some of the Errors that are to be found in the Protestant English Translations of the Sacred Scripture, against such Points of Catholick Doctrine as are in Debate between them and the Church of Rome (London, 1688; Wing W833); later republished as Errata of the Protestant Bible . . . (1737 edn onwards).
3 Gregory Martin, A Discoverie of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretikes of our daies, specially the English Sectaries, and of their foule dealing herein, by partial & false translations to the advantage of their heresies, in their English Bibles used and authorized since the time of Schisme (1582; STC 17503).
4 See the Preface to The New Testament of Iesus Christ, translated faithfully into English, out of the authentical Latin, according to the best corrected copies of the same, diligently conferred with the Greeke and other editions in divers languages: With Arguments of bookes and chapters, Annotations, and other necessarie helpes, for the better understanding of the text, and specially for the discoverie of the Corruptions of divers late translations, and for cleering the Controversies in religion, of these daies: In the English College of Rhemes (1582; STC 2884), sigs. b iii v–b iv r.
5 William Fulke, The Text of the New Testament of Iesus Christ, translated out of the vulgar Latine by the Papists of the traiterous Seminarie at Rhemes. With Arguments of Bookes, Chapters, and Annotations, pretending to discover the corruptions of divers translations, and to cleare the controversies of these dayes (STC 2888). Thomas Cartwright, A Confutation of the Rhemists Translations, Glosses and Annotations on the New Testament, so farre as they conteine manifest Impieties, Heresies, Idolatries, Superstitions, Prophenesse, Treasons, Slanders, Absurdities, Falsehoods, and other evills (1618; STC 4709).
6 Including Ryan, Edward, Analysis of Ward's Errata of the Protestant Bible; a Work Published in England in the year 1688; for the Purpose of Exposing the Protestant Bible and Protestant Clergy to Ridicule and Contempt; and Re-Published in Dublin for the same Purpose in September, 1807 (Dublin, 1808)Google Scholar, and Grier, Richard, An Answer to Ward's Errata of the Protestant Bible; to which is added, an Appendix, Containing a Review of the Preface to the Fourth Edition of the Errata (London, Dublin, and Cork, 1812)Google Scholar.
7 Also see Ward, Thomas, Some Queries to the Protestants Concerning the English Reformation, by Gent, T. W. (London, 1687; Wing W836)Google Scholar.
8 Hennesey, J., American Catholics: A History of the Roman Catholic Community in the United States (New York and Oxford, 1981), pp. 82–3Google Scholar; Green, J. N., Mathew Carey, Publisher and Patriot (Philadelphia, 1985), p. 22Google Scholar.
9 After the venture in 1790, Carey printed only a few more edns of the Catholic Bible. In 1805 he produced one more edn of the entire DRB. In the same year, he printed the Catholic New Testament, reprinting it in 1811 and 1816 (as a school edn, with the Psalms). See the Supplement, ‘American Editions of the Catholic Bible’, in Pope, H., English Versions of the Bible, rev. S. Bullough (London and St Louis, 1952), pp. 720–1Google Scholar, and Hills, M., The English Bible in America: A Bibliography of Editions of the Bible and the New Testament Published in America 1777–1957 (New York, 1961), p. 51Google Scholar.
10 Billington, R. A., The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860: A Study of the Origins of American Nativism (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1938, 1952, 1964), p. 143Google Scholar.
11 Pope, H., English Versions of the Bible, rev. Bullough, S. (London and St Louis: B. Herder, 1952), pp. 721–8Google Scholar.
12 New York Observer, 20 Sept. 1834. Italics in original.
13 See Lannie, V. and Diethorn, B., ‘For the Honor and Glory of God: The Philadelphia Bible Riots of 1840 [sic]’, History of Education Quarterly (Spring 1968), pp. 44–106, esp. pp. 49–50Google Scholar; Boles, D. E., The Bible, Religion, and the Public Schools (Iowa: Iowa State UP, 1963), p. 209Google Scholar; Shaw, R., Dagger John: The Unquiet Life and Times of Archbishop John Hughes of New York (New York and Toronto: Paulist Press, 1977), pp. 139–43Google Scholar; Billington, Protestant Crusade, pp. 144–8.
14 Quoted in Nolan, H. J., The Most Reverend Francis Patrick Kenrick, Third Bishop of Philadelphia (Philadelphia: Catholic University of America Press, 1948), p. 294Google Scholar.
15 The two Bibles in question do not bear dates on their title-pages, but the appended edns of The Errata are dated 1844 and 1845, respectively.
16 New York Observer, 9 Nov. 1844.
17 Billington, Protestant Crusade, pp. 153–5; NY Observer, 19 Oct., 9 Nov. 1844.
18 Whig & Courier (Ellsworth, Maine), 10 Nov., 5 Dec. 1853.
19 Whig & Courier, 5, 24 Dec. 1853.
20 The Tablet (Dublin), 29 Dec. 1855, pp. 826–7.
