Introduction

The three official guardians of the text, the two University presses and the King or Queen's Printer, became two when Cambridge took over Eyre and Spottiswoode. So the standard English editions of the text are those currently issued by Cambridge in its own right and as Queen's Printer, and Oxford. They are identical in the Testaments but not the Apocrypha.

Only six new changes to the text have been introduced into them since 1769. In the OT ‘Lord’ is changed to ‘Lord’ at Neh. 1:11, and in the NT ‘Zaccheus’ becomes ‘Zacchæus’. In the Apocrypha ‘Ioribas’ becomes ‘Joribus’ (1 Esdras 8:44), the verbs following ‘alms’ are changed to plural at Tobit 4:10, ‘generation’ is made plural at Ecclus. 4:16, and the apostrophe is moved in ‘king's sons’ (Baruch 1:4), making ‘kings’ plural (only the last of these is in the Oxford text). Besides these, at least thirty old readings, of which twenty-two are spellings of names, were reintroduced.

So small a total is partly a reflection of the commercial realities amid which printers and publishers continued to work: it was often more than they could do to keep up with demand, and, while there was often demand for greater accuracy and quality in printing (and cheapness in price), there was little demand for textual innovation.