Robert Barker

Robert Barker is widely viewed as the primary King’s Printer during the Jacobean period as well as the most controversial. Robert Barker inherited the position of Printer to Her Majesty the Queen in 1593 from his father, Christopher Barker, who passed in 1599. He used his position to print authorized versions of the Bible which proved to be very lucrative and allowed him to buy the transcripts of the English translation for the King James Bible at £3500. This would lead to one of the most catastrophic misprints in printing history, though it would not be Barker’s first time creating Bible errata.

In 1613, Robert Barker printed copies of the Geneva Bible. Two mistakes in particular stand out in this particular print. The first misprint appears in Genesis 3:7, where Adam and Eve are written as making “breeches” out of leaves, as opposed to the more commonly written “aprons” or “coverings in that time. The second, more serious, printed mistake is found in John 6:67. The line is supposed to read, “Then said Jesus to the twelve,” but instead reads, “Then said Judas.” Many of these misprinted copies were corrected by pasting a written “Jesus” tab overtop of the error, but some copies were left uncorrected. The misprinted garnered this Bible edition with the title “Judas Bible.”