10 October 2015 A.D. ST. GILES, WREXHAM: Rev. Dr. Jason Bray and the 1st edition of the King James Bible
Ward, Victoria. “First edition of King James Bible from 1611 found in church cupboard.” Telegraph. 8 Oct 2015. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11918537/First-edition-of-King-James-Bible-from-1611-found-in-church-cupboard.html. Accessed 9 Oct 2015.
First edition of King James Bible from 1611 found in church cupboard
Rev Jason Bray found the forgotten tome when doing a stock take at St Giles Church, Wrexham
8:57AM BST 08 Oct
2015
A vicar clearing
out a cupboard at his church found a forgotten first edition King
James Bible dating back to 1611.
There are believed
to be fewer than 200 such Bibles still in existence.
The Rev Dr Jason
Bray stumbled upon it as he was taking stock at St Giles Parish Church in Wrexham
town centre.
He said: "We
basically found it when we were going through the cupboards.
"We didn't
know it was a first edition, but we sent photographs to the National Library of
Wales and they confirmed that it was, dating back to 1611.
"It has been
authenticated, and as far as we know, has always been here."
He added:
"King James wanted everybody to use the same Bible and have it put in all
the churches. What he was trying to do was create some sort of
uniformity."
The
Bible is an
important find for the church as it is one of just a few copies of the first
edition of the authorised Bible, which set guidelines not just for Christian
worship in the English language, but also for the English language itself.
It was printed in
London by Robert Barker, printers to King James I, who commissioned the Bible's
translation at Hampton Court in 1604.
"We basically found it when we were going through
the cupboards."
Rev Dr Jason Bray
Known as the
Authorised Version (AV) of the Bible in English, the King
James Bible was the third Bible to be translated into English and
officially approved by the Church, putting together a number of translations
agreed on by scholars working in Westminster, Oxford and Cambridge.
It went on to
become the internationally accepted and authorised version of the Bible in
English, although parts of the Bible were first translated into English by
William Tyndale and published nearly 100 years earlier.
The St Giles copy
is not completely intact, with a frontispiece missing from the Old Testament
and some pages missing from the back.
But it is otherwise
in good condition and the text is still legible due to the use of woven paper,
which has a low acid content.
A similar copy
found in Great St Mary's at Cambridge University in 2011, also a first edition,
was valued at several thousand pounds.
Dr Bray, who has
been at St Giles Church since April, said he read Alfred Palmer's The History
of the Parish Church of Wrexham and decided to go looking for some of the items
mentioned as being in the church's collection.
He added he was
unable to guess at the value of the Bible.
"I have
absolutely no idea of its value. I don't know how many there are in existence
and you can buy pages on the internet for about £500 each.
"It's not
absolutely complete, but it's not far off."
Dr Bray is now keen
to see the church's first edition given a proper storage and display space.
"We're keeping
it safe at the moment, but we would like to have somewhere to display it - but
to do that, we'll need money."
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