A Light in the Darkness of Knowledge.

While the main web page has not been updated for several months, I have been busy scanning new material. One of the perks of my new job is that I have access to a high speed scanner. While I do not get to use it very often (I am at work after all), there are days that are slow so I take advantage of it while I am working.

I have scanned off this interesting book: E. E. Cunnington, The Adelphi New Testament. London: T. Foster Unwin. 1919.

It is the seconded edition of The New Covenant, commonly called the New Testament of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: A revision of the version of A.D. 1611. As far as I can tell it looks like only the title and publisher changed with this printing. I was hunting around for this book for some time. Not because of any ‘value’ that it has in the history of Bible translations. It has been largely forgotten and it did not influence any later translators (as far as I can tell).

Most of the appeal was brought on by the fact that I had never seen it before. It is listed in catalogs and some library databases, but no one had bothered to scan it. I did finally find it online for purchase so I quickly forked over the cash. To my disappointment, it is printed on rather poor quality paper and I was afraid I would damage it by the scanning process. Thankfully I was able to manage with out much harm to the book.

While working through the renewals I found some time ago that the forerunner to the King James II Bible by Jay P. Green had not been renewed. This earlier incarnation is called the Childrens’ King James New Testament. I was able to pick up a copy for really cheap, and since it is a modern printing, I had the binding cut off at Kinko’s.

(Well, there were really two really cheap copies involved. The first one had its binding cut off at Staples. Needless to say the quality of the simple cut left much to be desired. Then they had the nerve to charge me after they blotched the simple job. So with half of my text in loose leaf and half of it still attached to the binding I searched for another copy. Then promptly took it to Kinko’s).

Then I loaded all of the approximately 700 pages into the high speed scanner at work and had it jammed up on the third page. With a little tweaking and coaxing about 25 minutes later I had it scanned off in 600 DPI glory. The only problem is that as it is a Children’s Bible, there are many pictures in it, so I am going back through and scanning the pictures off in color.

On the completed scanning list and waiting for be to stop being lazy and process the files are also The Shorter New Testament and The Norlie Simplified New Testament. The Shorter New Testament is one of the many abridged Bibles that came out around a century ago. Once again it seems to have had little influence on later editions.

The Norlie translation has some interest as it was published later by Zondervan. He first did a private printing of it back in 1951. This private printing was for family, friends, several academic institutions and potential publishers. It consisted of memo graphed pages bound in a hard cover. I was able to find a copy of this early edition, but it is bound to tightly to scan it with out harming the pages. To my surprise, it is autographed by the translator and has a small dedication to the college he taught at for many years. Apparently it was given to the college library. As I do not know how to scan it will out destroying it, it now sits on my shelf waiting for the day it can be turned into a digital copy.

To make up for not having the memo graphed edition in digital format, I was able to find one of the later, professionally published editions that lapsed into the public domain. Zondervan did two printings. One in 1961 an another a year later. The first one was never renewed. The second one is a different edition called The Children’s Simplified New Testament. It was renewed.

At any rate, these are some of my projects I am trying to finish.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Website. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.