What is the Wicked Bible?

What is the Wicked Bible?

The Wicked Bible is an infamous edition of the King James Bible, printed in 1631 by the royal printers Robert Barkerand Martin Lucas in London. Its notoriety comes from a typographical error in the Seventh Commandment (Exodus 20:14). Instead of the intended:

"Thou shalt not commit adultery"

it was printed as:

"Thou shalt commit adultery"

Yikes.

💥 The Fallout

This wasn’t just a simple typo. Given the moral gravity of the commandments, this blunder created shockwaves in religious and royal circles. King Charles I was furious, and the Archbishop of Canterbury George Abbot declared it a "most scandalous and wicked error." As punishment:

• The printers were fined £300 (an astronomical sum at the time—roughly equivalent to tens of thousands today).

• Their printing license was revoked.

• Most copies of the Wicked Bible were recalled and destroyed.

📖 How Many Copies Survive?

Today, only about 10 known copies remain in existence, making it a rare collector’s item. A surviving copy was sold at auction for £31,250 (around $46,000) in 2015.

🔍 Was It Just a Mistake?

Most scholars believe it was an honest printing error—possibly the result of a typesetter's fatigue or a missing "not"slipping past the editors. But there are conspiracy whispers: some think it might have been sabotage by a rival printer looking to ruin Barker and Lucas’s reputation.

🌬️ Legacy of the Wicked Bible

The Wicked Bible has become a cautionary tale about the power of a single word. It’s studied in:

• Textual criticism courses

• Typography and printing history

• Religious history as an example of human fallibility in transmitting the "Word of God."

It also stands as a quirky relic of how even sacred texts can fall victim to very human errors—an almost poetic reminder that even the divine can get scrambled when filtered through mortal hands.