Christians believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, safeguarded through the generations by God’s hand. But physical copies of the Bible are typeset, printed, and published by fallible humans, which means that the occasional typographical error slips through. There have been some impressively unfortunate typos in the long publishing history of the Bible, and a recent article at The Guardian lists some of the most memorable:

‘Sin on more’
A 1716 edition of the 17th-century King James version (known as the Party Bible – OK, no it isn’t) replaces “Sin no more” from Jeremiah 31:34 with “Sin on more”. There were 8,000 copies printed before anyone noticed.

‘Let the children first be killed’
This is very awkward. It’s Mark 7:27 and it’s supposed to be: “Let the children first be filled.” A 1795 edition of the King James version.

‘If the latter husband ate her’
Known as the Cannibal’s Bible (yes really), a 1682 printing alters this passage from Deuteronomy 24:3, which is meant to read: “If the latter husband hate her.”

(Note that, as the article says, several of the items in this list are better described as questionable translations rather than typographical errors.)

The presence of occassional typos in Bible printings throughout history is not a secret, and it crops up periodically in entertaining lists like this one. The Washington Post published another list of historical Bible typos earlier this year, and there’s a very extensive list of typos and other quirks at the International Society of Bible Collectors website. Fortunately, most such errors are easily identified as such once they’re noticed (although I distinctly remember wondering, as a child, if a misplaced comma I’d noticed in my children’s Bible cast doubt on the reliability of Scripture!). Fortunately, there is good reason to be confident that modern Bibles accurately convey the language and intent of the original Scriptures, and that the Bible is reliable.

Over the years we’ve touched on some of the interesting questions that crop up in the course of Bible translation. You might take a look at R.C. Sproul’s discussion of Bible discrepancies and Lee Strobel’s explanation of the mysterious missing verse in the book of Matthew. And for a fun example of a translation question that centers around the capitalization of a single letter, you might enjoy this dicussion of the difference between ‘S’ and ‘s’ in Psalm 2:7.