Holy Bible and Book of Common Prayer 1630

6B Holy Bible and Book of Common Prayer including the Apocrypha. London: Bonham Norton and John Bill, 1630.

Notes

The history of the Bible is a long story of composition, translation, and dissemination, beginning with texts written over centuries in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, and preserved through careful manuscript copying in Jewish and early Christian communities. As Christianity spread across Europe, translations into vernacular languages became central to worship, teaching, and personal devotion, culminating in major printings after the invention of the movable-type press in the 15th century. One of the most influential English translations is the King James Version (KJV), first published in 1611 under the sponsorship of King James I of England. It was intended to unify the English Church and replace earlier versions like the Geneva and Bishops’ Bibles. The KJV is celebrated for its majestic language, literary quality, and enduring influence on English-speaking Christianity and literature.

Bibles from the 1630s use Early Modern English, which shares identical grammatical structures and vocabulary foundations with our current tongue, meaning it can be read completely fluently today despite its archaic pronouns like "thou" or "thee." The primary barrier for modern collectors isn't the language itself, but rather the typographical formatting of the 1630s, which frequently relied on dense, Germanic Blackletter (Gothic) typeface and utilized confusing historical printing conventions—such as substituting the letter "v" for "u" (e.g., "euery" for "every"), using "i" for "j" (e.g., "Iesus"), and incorporating the lingering "long s" (ſ) which modern readers easily mistake for an "f."

Description

Rebound with careful attention to restoration of the interior with a new cover in polished wood, leather spine, and ornate brass clasps. All edges gilt. Marbled endpapers. Handwritten fragments preserved on rebacked papers at the beginning of the text. Some dark ink stains over the first 6 or so pages. Dampstain from lower edge up from Exodus to Jeremiah. No obstruction to text but discoloration. Genealogies in beginning. Significant loss to translation note page following genealogies, rebacked. Final page also heavily restored with patching but all text is present. Some instances throughout where the page edges are restored with no lack to text. Very good condition overall and impressive restoration work to create a sound edition of a 1630 bible.