KJV Clarion Reference Bible vs. NCPB

In 2011, to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the KJV, Cambridge University Press published two new personal-size, single-column, paragraph-format, black-letter King James Bibles: the Clarion Reference Bible and the Revised edition of the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.  It might be useful to compare and contrast these two editions.

Biblical text
Clarion: Standard 1769; words that have no equivalent in the original text are printed in italics.
NCPB: 1611, but with modern spelling and punctuation; no words are in italics.

Apocrypha
Clarion: Not included.
NCPB: Available with or without the Apocrypha.

Also on each page
Clarion: Cross references in the outside margin.
NCPB: Marginal notes in the inside margin.

In both editions
Epistle Dedicatory.
The Translators to the Reader.

Also included
Clarion: Reader’s Companion (a combination concordance and dictionary) and 15 maps.
NCPB: Editor’s Introduction.

Font
Clarion: Lexicon No. 1, in 8.75 point.
NCPB: Swift, in 10.9 point.
Despite the different font sizes, the type in these two Bibles appears to be similar in size.

Page size
Clarion: 5 x 7 1/16 inches.
NCPB: 5 3/4 x 8 1/4 inches.

Printed text (not including cross references or marginal notes)
Clarion: 3 1/2 x 6 1/16 inches.
NCPB: 3 3/4 x 7 1/8 inches.

Lines per page
Clarion: 42 (5.946 lines per vertical inch).
NCPB: 48 (5.818 lines per vertical inch).
There is slightly more space between the lines of the NCPB than in the Clarion.

Books begin...
Clarion: where the previous one ended.
NCPB: almost always at the top of a page, and usually on a right-hand page.

Text sample
Clarion
NCPB 

Paper stock
Clarion: Indolux India paper
27 grams per square meter
Thickness 30 (1690 pages per inch)
Opacity 79.5, Whiteness 87

NCPB: 



OP Opaque Bible paper
31 grams per square meter
Thickness 36.5 (1390 pages per inch)
Opacity 81, Whiteness 83

As defined in the Cambridge Glossary, India paper weighs less than 30 grams per square meter and Bible paper weighs at least 30 grams per square meter.

Bindings available 
Clarion: Black or brown leather.
NCPB: Hardback or black leather.

An original-spelling edition?

David Norton begins his Editor’s Introduction to the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with these words: “Though it is the most important book in the religious life and the culture of the English-speaking world, the King James Bible or Authorised Version of 1611 has never been perfectly printed.” He goes on to say, “what we now read as the King James Bible contains numerous deliberate and some accidental changes to the text, and these can be revised to make it more faithful to the King James translators’ own decisions as to how it should read.”

I wonder if there isn’t a need for an edition of the KJV that prints the very text, in its original spelling, that was agreed upon by the translators. Indeed, Norton claims in his Introduction that his work “gives the reader as closely as possible the exact text that the King James translators themselves decided on - but which was far from perfectly realised in the first edition.” Wouldn’t this goal be even better achieved with an original-spelling edition?

Personally, I am glad that the NCPB uses modern-spelling, but to finally publish after 400 years the Bible that the translators thought they had produced would be a great tribute to them and an asset to us. Oxford University Press recently published The King James Bible: 400th Anniversary Edition, but it is simply a transcription of the first edition of the KJV. As the publisher explains: “It follows the 1611 text page-for-page and line-for-line, reproducing all misprints rather than correcting them.”

I love David Daniell’s modern-spelling edition of Tyndale’s New Testament, but I am grateful that W. R. Cooper has produced an original-spelling edition for purists. To have a first edition KJV with all misprints corrected would be wonderful.

The KJV, Standard edition

What shall we call this most prestigious of English Bible translations?  In the title of his 2004 book about its textual history, David Norton refers to it as the King James Bible.  However, the next year, on the cover of his New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, it is referred to as the King James Version.  For the sake of consistency, I will call it the KJV.

What shall we call the version of the text most commonly found in KJV Bibles?  Norton seems to use four words almost interchangeably: Current, Established, Received and Standard.  I will refer to it as the Standard edition.

Restoring a fine painting

David Norton, who probably knows more about the KJV than anyone else, is the editor of The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible.  After many years of meticulous research, he has produced an edition of the KJV that restores the text to that envisioned by the forty-six Church of England clergymen (and one layman!) who made the translation. 

Most people assume that the text of the KJV has remained unchanged since its publication, but this is not the case.  In a scholarly book entitled A Textual History of the King James Bible, Norton explains how minor changes were made to the text between 1611 and 1769 with the intention of improving or correcting it.  But Norton, like a man restoring a fine painting, would rather trust the original translators than second-guess them.  The NCPB, he declares, “is the translators’ Bible.”