1611 KJV Bible Replica at Wal-Mart (!)

A friend of mine from Roanoke called me the other day and told me about an unusual find. Zondervan has published a 400th anniversary edition, digitally remastered replica of the 1611 KJV. It has a supple hard cover and is 1312 pages. It includes the OT and NT, but not the Apocrypha, in the original typesetting (even though the first AV printed without the Apocrypha was c. 1629). It also includes the original front matter (i.e., the epistle dedicatory, the translators to the readers, the calendar and table for finding holy days, the elaborately illustrated genealogy of Jesus, a map of the holy land, etc.). My friend pointed out that the packaging has an odd endorsement from Anne Graham Lotz, but I didn’t let that spoil it for me.

Here’s the thing. The book is being sold at Wal-Mart of all places for under $5.00 (you can also order it online here). I went to the local C-ville Wal-Mart yesterday and found three copies on the shelf. I bought two of them (one for myself and one for my fellow elder) for $4.97 each. BTW, this was the first time I had been inside this Wal-Mart in about four years. They had remodeled the place, and it took me about ten minutes to find the book section. I had made a pledge to stop shopping at Wal-Mart in favor of patronizing locally owned businesses, but made an exception to my boycott to pick up this book.

Just glancing at the text, I find that even in the original edition with flourishing script and archaic spellings it reads well. The KJV has undergone several revisions and updates, and the edition in use today is the result of a 1769 revision by Benjamin Blayney. For example, the 1611 edition of Ruth 3:15 reads, “and he went into the citie”; whereas, later editions corrected it to read, “and she went into the city.” Such revisions in later editions pose problems for the divine inspiration of the KJV position held by KJV-Onlyists.

Anyhow, a good book to pick up at a cheap price.

JTR