If you’ve ever winced with embarrassment when a spelling mistake has slipped through the net despite careful proofreading, spare a thought for the printers responsible for a rare typo in the Ten Commandments published in a 400 year old edition of the bible. The seventh commandment in the so-called Sinners’ Bible (also known as the Wicked Bible) printed in 1631 is missing the word “not” so inadvertently states “Thou shalt commit adultery.” To this day, it is not known whether it was a genuine error by the royal printers or an act of sabotage.
The story goes that King Charles I was furious when he discovered the error and ordered the bibles to be withdrawn and burnt but a handful escaped destruction. As for the poor printers, they were stripped of their printing licence and fined £300 – equivalent to about £40,000 today.
The bible, one of just nine to have survived, will be auctioned on 11 November by Bonhams. Simon Roberts of the auction house’s books and manuscripts department says, “It does seem rather unlikely that a mistake of this enormity could be made and not spotted before it was printed. It remains a lesson to us all to make sure we proofread everything we write.”
Quite.
