Sabotage or Typo?

Debate surrounds the source of the Wicked Bible. Some believe the misprints to be innocent mistakes. A missed “not” can happen within the hours long process of printing an entire Bible, especially when taking human error into account, and spelling errors happen. Barker had also printed and circulated incorrect Bible prints before so he had a history of errors. Many see the misprints differently, however.

A popular theory is that Bonham Norton, in an act of sabotage, sent a double agent to work for Barker and purposefully ruin the prints. This would result in Barkers defamation and provide Norton with more business opportunity. This is believed to be true because of the suspicious placement of the errors, both being near the Ten Commandments, and because “greatasse” is and uncommon misspelling for “greatnesse.” Replacing an “ne” with just an “a” is unlikely to happen in typesetting. Further, it would take very little effort to simply remove a few letters without it being noticed and there would be plenty of opportunity to do so.

Whichever version of events you believe, the Wicked Bible presents a unique look into the early business of printing Bibles and the scandal that can occur when a Bible is printed incorrectly.