The Earliest Known Draft of the King James Bible
Front cover of MS Ward B
It is rare that archival research makes the national news. Jeffrey
Alan Miller’s identification of a draft of a portion of the King James
Bible hit the headlines in October 2015: not only was it the earliest
known draft, but was uniquely a draft written by the hand of one of the
translators, who was known by name. The notebook in which Miller found
this work – Sidney Sussex College, MS Ward B – had belonged to Samuel Ward
(1572-1643), Master of the College from 1610 until his death. Eighteen
months after the discovery, the notebook has been digitised in full and
published on the Cambridge Digital Library, in the latest instance of
an ongoing collaboration between the University Library and the
Cambridge Colleges to make archival and manuscript material available
online.
Inside front cover of MS Ward B, showing an inventory of furnishings and fabrics, with itemised costs.
Looking at the notebook, one can easily understand why the true
significance of its contents remained unrecognised for so long. Its
physical form is quite unremarkable, typical of economically produced
early modern commonplace books. It is small, pocket-sized even, formed
of four quires of paper. Its edges are rough and uneven; many leaves
have been stained by damp and some corners have been heavily thumbed.
Its soft wrapper was made by recycling a leaf from what appears to have
been an old account book or inventory. Within, the handwriting is
rough, cramped and difficult to decipher; there are passages not only in
English and Latin, but frequently Greek too and occasionally Hebrew.
The order in which notes were added is as yet unclear. MS Ward B
resists straightforward reading in both physical and digital versions:
text is written from the front and back of the volume, the latter
appearing upside down when first encountered; there are crossings-out
and interlinear insertions; and pages with densely written notes are
interspersed with others that are blank but for the odd entry.
MS Ward B, f. 50v (inverted): Ward’s notes for the translation of Wisdom 3-4
The significance of this notebook for our understanding of how the
King James Bible was produced has been elucidated by Miller in his
introduction on the Digital Library and in an earlier article in the Times Literary Supplement
(no. 5872, 16 October 2015). His findings concern those portions of MS
Ward B that he has been able to identify as preparatory draft
translations of New Testament Apocrypha: 1 Esdras, Wisdom 3-4 and Judith
2:26. On f. 50v, for example, Ward proposes various changes to the
translation provided by the Bishops’ Bible, bringing the English text
closer to the Greek source. Some amendments were incorporated into the
King James Bible, others not – and MS Ward B sheds new light on how the
work of an individual and the teams of translators was patched together
prior to printing.
MS Ward B, f. 47v (inverted): Ward’s notes on the sins of different social classes
MS Ward B, f. 48r (inverted): Ward’s notes on his personal sins
Excitingly, many of Ward’s remaining notes in MS Ward B have yet to
be fully understood. Some notes are clearly personal: on f. 48r, Ward
compiled a list of some eight shortcomings, including ‘contempt &
want of zeal of thy glorious gospell’, ‘coldness in our holy
profession’, ‘want of courage & spirit in the defense of good men
& good causes’, and ‘fervency & devotion in Christian exercises
so much abated’. On the facing page, he inserted a diagrammatic
catalogue of the sins of the various estates – princes, counsellors,
clergy and commons – setting his own failings in a broader
post-lapsarian context. Ward’s puritanical habit of critical
self-examination is recorded in the diary he kept during his late
twenties, but MS Ward B reveals that he persisted with the practice well
into his thirties.
MS Ward B, f. 6v: notes by an unknown hand, followed by Ward’s notes for the translation of 1 Esdras
What else did Ward write in this notebook – and does it have any
further bearing on his work as a Bible translator? Over what period did
he use this notebook? When and from whom did he acquire it? Another,
as yet unknown, hand made notes on the opening leaves concerning Romans 6
and Galatians 5, apparently prior to the notebook’s use by Ward; was
this another translator? These questions and many others are prompted
by Miller’s discovery. The availability of MS Ward B for all to view
online means that further revelations will surely follow.
A further post on the possible provenance of Samuel Ward’s papers – including MS Ward B – will be published soon.
Select bibliography
Two Elizabethan Puritan Diaries by Richard Rogers and Samuel Ward, ed. by M.M. Knappen (London: SPCK, 1933).
Margo Todd, ‘The Samuel Ward Papers at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge’, Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 8 (1985), 582-592.
Margo Todd, ‘Ward, Samuel (1572–1643)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004) [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28705].
Jeffrey Alan Miller, ‘Fruit of Good Labours’, Times Literary Supplement, no. 5872, 16 October 2015.