[Steven Avery]

Hi Folks,

Matthew 23:24 (KJB 1611)
Ye blind guides,
which straine at a gnat,
and swallow a camel.

The two earliest sources I have found for the "misprint" canard and false accusation are Adam Clarke and Noah Webster, both writing about 1820.

Clarke's section is as follows.

Verse 24. Blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.] This clause should be thus translated: Ye strain out the gnat, but ye swallow down the camel. In the common translation, Ye strain AT a gnat, conveys no sense. Indeed, it is likely to have been at first an error of the press, AT for OUT, which, on examination, I find escaped in the edition of 1611, and has been regularly continued since. There is now before me, "The Newe Testament, (both in Englyshe and in Laten,) of Mayster Erasmus translacion, imprynted by Wyllyam Powell, dwellynge in Flete strete: the yere of our Lorde M.CCCCC.XLVII. the fyrste yere of the kynges (Edwd. VI.) moste gracious reygne." in which the verse stands thus: "Ye blinde gides, which strayne out a gnat, and swalowe a cammel." It is the same also in Edmund Becke's Bible, printed in London 1549, and in several others.-Clensynge a gnatte. - MS. Eng. Bib. So Wickliff. Similar to this is the following Arabic proverb . He eats an elephant and is choked by a gnat.

How the Arabic proverb helps his exposition is a puzzle and I am not sure of the early Wycliffe English.

Noah Webster had many criticisms of the Authorized Version, along with a type of respect, and he ended up writing his own Bible with modifications, which version was an abject failure.

One of his major criticisms was indelicate language in the Authorized Version, and the Christian Examiner and General Review in 1835 humourously referred to this and to his attempts to discipline pronounciation :

To our author's somewhat jaundiced eye every thing, it must be confessed, is 'out of joint.'

Webster may have begun the 'misprint' canard, or been an early popularizer. from 1820 to 1835 Webster variously refers to how Tyndale, the Bishop's Bible and older English Bibles have "strain out".

One example of his writing on this issue was in A Collection of Papers given by Nesta Helen Webster (1843).

In Matthew xxiii, 24, the word at should be out : " Who strain out a gnat." Every boy in our grammar schools knows that the Greek verb used here signifies to filter. Christ did not refer to extraordinary efforts in swallowing a gnat, but to the purifying of liquor by filtering it. The use of at is evidently an oversight or misprint, for in the first version of the Bible by Tyndale, the word out is used. All the versions of the New Testament in my possession, six in number and in different languages, are correct, except the English. It is surprising that such an obvious mistake should remain uncorrected for more than two centuries.

With these two commentaries the false accusation took on a life of its own.

As a sidenote, Alexander Campbell's NT (1826) had:
"who strain your liquor, to avoid swallowing a gnat"

Clarke and Webster set the stage, and Albert Barnes, around 1860, followed in the 'misprint' path. Talking of 'earlier versions' some might have misunderstood this as a reference to earlier King James Bibles, especially considering the next sentence. Note that Barnes is the first one I have found to actually (falsely) claim in an assertive manner that the translators desired "strain out a gnat".

"Which strain at a gnat, etc. This is a proverb. There is, however, a mistranslation or misprint here, which makes the verse unmeaning. To strain AT a gnat conveys no sense. It should have been, to strain OUT a gnat; and so it is printed in some of the earlier versions; and so it was undoubtedly rendered by the translators. The common reading is a misprint, and should be corrected. The Greek means, to strain out by a cloth or sieve."

David Brown of Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (1871) a bit more guardedly referenced the misprint accusation.

24. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat--The proper rendering--as in the older English translations, and perhaps our own as it came from the translators' hands--evidently is, "strain out." It was the custom, says TRENCH, of the stricter Jews to strain their wine, vinegar, and other potables through linen or gauze, lest unawares they should drink down some little unclean insect therein and thus transgress (@Le 11:20,23,41,42)--just as the Buddhists do now in Ceylon and Hindustan--and to this custom of theirs our Lord here refers.

Scrivener's 1873 Paragraph Edition had "strain out a gnat" as one of his

"Wrong readings of the Bible of 1611 amended in later editions".

"So all the early versions from Tyndale to the Bishop’s Bible, and even T. Baskett’s 8 vo. edition of the Authorized, London, 8 vo. 1754, Brit. Mus. 1411. f. 5" - F H A Scrivener of his "strain out a gnat" 'correction'.

Note that Scrivener was more accurate in his Greek work on the King James Bible text than he was on the English !

In 1881 Schaff used the term "typographical error".
In 1897 Easton used "mere typographical error".

Thus we have a short overview of how the false misprint/typographical/printing error accusation gained currency in the 1800's and became the standard approach of King James Bible correctors.

The continuation of this in the early 1900's by Ryrie and Bullinger and Goodspeed and others is therefore of no surprise, although some add their own twist. The interesting question is how modern writers, like Price and Wallace and Minton and Norris and others (including many lemmings in the no-pure-KJB gang) who should have been easily able to discern that this accusation had no merit, continue to write improperly about the verse. Time and energy permitting, and if the readers like, we will look at some of the modern discussion in a future post.

Shalom,
Steven