What is the Wicked Bible?

The Wicked Bible, also called the Sinner’s Bible or the Adulterous Bible, is a seventeenth-century edition of the King James Version famous today for a misprint. New editions of the Authorized, or King James Version were published periodically. In 1631, King Charles I commissioned England’s royal printers, Robert Barker and Martin Lucas, to produce a new edition of the KJV. They set to work and printed about 1,000 copies of the new edition. Only after the printing did someone find an error, one that drastically altered the meaning of the text. Exodus 20:14, part of the Ten Commandments, read, “Thou shalt commit adultery.” They had omitted the word not.

King Charles summoned the printers of the errant passage to the Star Chamber where they stood trial. For their misprint, Barker and Lucas were fined £300, the equivalent of £50,000 in today’s currency. The fine was later revoked, but by then Barker and Lucas had lost their printing licenses. King Charles ordered all copies of their edition to be destroyed.

But some copies survived. Barker and Lucas’s edition of the KJV was dubbed the Wicked Bible in 1855 by a rare book dealer. Today, about fifteen copies of the Wicked Bible are known to exist. Some are displayed in various institutions, including the New York Public Library, the Dunham Bible Museum in Houston, Texas, and the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

The remaining copies of the Wicked Bible are prized by collectors. In 2015, a copy of the Wicked Bible sold at auction for about $48,000 (www.paulfrasercollectibles.com/blogs/books-manuscripts/17th-century-wicked-bible-auctions-for-47-500, accessed 4/20/26).

There are other editions of the Bible that contain famous misprints:

• The Cleansed Outside Bible. An edition of William Tyndale’s New Testament, published in 1534, had an error in Matthew 23:26: “Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first, the outside of the cup and platter, that the inside of them may be clean also.” The error consisted in transposing the words inside and outside.
  
  
• The Jesus Church Bible. One edition of the Geneva Bible from 1598 printed a phrase in 1 John 5:20 as “in his son Jesus Church” instead of “in his son Jesus Christ.”
  
  
• The Fool Bible. A seventeenth-century edition of the Bible left out a no in Psalm 14:1, which stated, “The fool hath said in his heart, there is a God.”
  
  
• The Third River Bible. The 1605 edition of the Geneva Bible said that Gihon is “the third river” instead of “the second river” in Genesis 2:13.
  
  
• The Judas Bible(s). The 1608 edition of the Geneva Bible switched the names of Jesus and Judas in John 6:67. The same error appears in Matthew 26:36 in the 1613 edition of the KJV.
  
  
• The He Bible. The first edition of the KJV, in 1611, contained a printing error in Ruth 3:15, describing Ruth’s movements as “he went into the city.”
  
  
• The Basketball Bible. An edition of the KJV changed the “hooks” of the pillars in Exodus 38:11 to the “hoops.”
  
  
• The Printers Bible. The 1612 edition of the KJV has the word printers substituted for princes in Psalm 119:161.
  
  
• The Praise Bible. In 1613, an edition of the KJV was published in which Paul told an erring church, “I praise you”; the printed text omitted the word not and should have read, “I praise you not.”
  
  
• The No Blame Bible. A 1632 KJV Bible misprinted Jeremiah 8:22 as, “Is there no blame in Gilead?” instead of “Is there no balm?”
  
  
• The Religious Bible. Another KJV Bible, the 1637 edition, contained a misprint in Jeremiah 4:17: “She hath been religious against me”; the text should have said, “She hath been rebellious against me.”
  
  
• The Vexing Wives Bible. In 1638, the KJV’s rendition of Numbers 25:18 said, “They vex you with their wives” instead of “with their wiles.”
  
  
• The Subtle Servant Bible. The KJV edition of 1640 changed the word serpent to servant in Genesis 3:1. The result was, “Now the servant was more subtil then any beast of the field.”
  
  
• The More Sea Bible. A misprint in the 1641 edition of the KJV omitted the word no in Revelation 21:1: “And there was more sea.”
  
  
• The Unrighteous Bible (or Field’s Bible). Printer John Field’s 1653 edition of the KJV omitted several words in various passages, including a not in 1 Corinthians 6:9, which read, “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God?”
  
  
• The Cannibal Bible. A Bible from 1682 printed an instruction from Deuteronomy 24:3 as, “If the latter husband ate her” instead of “hate her.”
  
  
• The Sin On Bible. The first English Bible produced in Ireland (in 1716) was discovered to contain an error after 8,000 copies had already been printed. Jeremiah 31:34 said to “sin on more” instead of “sin no more.”
  
  
• The Avenging Obedience Bible. A 1745 translation by William Whiston included an error in 2 Corinthians 10:6, stating that Paul has “readiness to revenge all obedience.” The word obedience should have been printed as disobedience.
  
  
• The Denial Bible. Oxford’s 1792 edition of the KJV inadvertently had Philip denying Christ instead of Peter in Luke 22:34.
  
  
• The Child Killer Bible. A 1795 edition of the KJV said, “Let the children first be killed,” instead of “Let the children first be filled” in Mark 7:27.

So, the Wicked Bible is not alone in its misprinting of the biblical text. Such printing errors highlight the discrepancy between the perfection of God and the fallibility of mankind. No matter how careful we are—no matter how closely we mind our p's and q's—we make mistakes. In contrast, “Every word of God is flawless” (Proverbs 30:5).