The Comprehensive Family Bible; Containing The Old and New Testaments, According to the Authorized Version. With Copious Critical, Explanatory, and Practical Notes, and Reflections; A General Introduction, Parallel Passages, Index of Subjects, and Chronological Tables.

DAVIDSON, David.

$1,600.00

Item Number: 130348

Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London: Blackie and Son, 1858.

First edition of Davidson’s finely illustrated family Bible. Large quarto, bound in contemporary full calf with gilt titles and tooling to the spine in six compartments within raised gilt bands, elaborate decorative tooling to the front and rear panels stamped in blind, marbled endpapers, all edges marbled. Illustrated with numerous hand-colored maps and engraved plates by Holl, Robinson, Knight, and Whitfield including frontispiece and engraved title page. In very good condition. Interior hinges reinforced. A nice example of this popular 19th century illustrated Bible.

The Bible has had an unprecedented influence on literature and history, especially in the Western World, where the Gutenberg Bible was the first book printed using movable type. Commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611 under the sponsorship of James I and VI, the King James Version of the bible, or Authorized Version, includes the 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world. It was first printed by John Norton and Robert Barker, both holding the post of the King's Printer, and was the third translation into English approved by the English Church authorities. The first had been the Great Bible, commissioned in the reign of King Henry VIII (1535), and the second had been the Bishops' Bible, commissioned in the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1568). In Geneva, Switzerland the first generation of Protestant Reformers had produced the Geneva Bible of 1560 from the original Hebrew and Greek scriptures, which was influential in the writing of the Authorized King James Version.