The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha, rev. ed. (NCPB)
Overview
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 represented in print as the translators intended. David Norton's edition, first published in 2005, aims to address two main concerns with the standard editions as currently printed.
First, what we now read as the King James Bible contains numerous deliberate and some accidental changes to the text, and these have been revised to make it more faithful to the King James translators' own decisions as to how it should read. The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible 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.
Second, the presentation of the text—spelling, punctuation, and formatting—may interfere with the clarity with which it speaks to the minds and souls of present-day readers. An important aim of this edition is to give the reader consistent modern spelling and presentation in order to make it easier to read and study than the received text. The modernisation is kept within strict limits: spellings are modernised, but words and grammatical forms are unchanged. Like the spelling, the punctuation of the received text belongs to the eighteenth century and often appears heavy to modern taste. Since the original punctuation is often closer to modern practice, it is usually restored. Finally, the entire text is presented in paragraphs in order to contribute to the overall aim of making the King James Bible as readable and comprehensible as possible without falsifying the essentials of the translators' work.
Thousands of specks of dust have been blown away from the received text in The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, leaving the King James Bible presented with a fidelity to the translators' own work never before achieved, and allowing the most read, heard, and loved book in the English language to speak with new vigour to modern readers.
To learn more about The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible, visit our academic blog.
- Revised and updated text
- Consistent, modern spelling and punctuation
- Easy-to-read paragraph format
- Old Testament, New Testament, and Apocrypha
Most Highlighted Verses in The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha: King James Version
Genesis 1:14–19: And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night: and let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth’: and it was so. And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. …
Genesis 3:15: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.’
Matthew 5:31–32: It hath been said, “Whosoever shall put away his wife, let him give her a writing of divorcement”: but I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery.
Matthew 6:9–13: ‘After this manner therefore pray ye: “Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. …
Matthew 11:25–30: At that time Jesus answered and said, ‘I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. …
Matthew 12:31–32: ‘Wherefore I say unto you, all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.
John 14:16–17: And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.
1 Corinthians 15:51–55: Behold, I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. …
Philippians 4:6–7: Be careful for nothing: but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your request be made known unto God. And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.
2 Peter 2:20–21: For if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein, and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them.
It is hard to overstate Norton’s achievement: it is a work of colossal and magnificent scholarship and devotion to the text of sacred Scripture. Like a conservationist bringing back to life the colours of a faded and damaged painting, Norton has shed new light on an old treasure.
—Baptist Times
- Title: The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible with the Apocrypha: King James Version
- Edition: Revised edition
- Publisher: Cambridge University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2011
- Logos Release Date: 2018
- Pages: 1896
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Bible › English
- ISBNs: 9780521762847, 9780521198813, 0521762847, 052119881X
- Resource ID: LLS:NCPBWITHAPOCR
- Resource Type: Bible
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T20:25:46Z
David Norton is a professor of English at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He is the author of The King James Bible: A Short History from Tyndale to Today (Cambridge, 2011) and his previous publications include A History of the Bible as Literature, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1993; revised and condensed as A History of the English Bible as Literature, 2000) and A Textual History of the King James Bible (Cambridge, 2004), a full account of the history of the text and of the principles on which The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible was made.
Reviews
10 ratings
Robert Scull
5/21/2023
A Reformed
6/3/2022
As I consider a translation to actually fulfill the role of "the Word of God"; I'm not sure what to make of this effort by Norton. The "Logosed" review here is welcome and extensive, yet I am in opposition to the theory behind Norton's revising, in that Norton is claiming we never even had an authentic KJV as it was meant to be. And so here he is, coming down from the Mount Sinai of the English language with his tableted efforts. Apparently our historical KJV, which irrefutably changed the English language, as well as Western society and the world, was just a mess of printer's errors and even erroneous word changes that stop it from being what the translators had originally made. Weird stuff. Can't wait for the NIV edition of this 400 years from now. Norton's work is an interesting curiosity. Yet I never find it as useful (due to a question of trust) as say the generally Reformed character of Webster with his "bowdlerized" revision of the KJV, or the modern Evangelically altered NKJV. Well, consider the source... especially with Holy Scripture.
Logosed
7/10/2020
In the context of the history of publications of the Bible, one must go back to the publication of the New English Bible (1961) to find such an important moment. The New Cambridge Paragraph Bible (NCPB) is not a revision of the King James Version (KJV), unlike the New King James Version, but a new edition of the original, first published in 1611. When the translators of the KJV submitted their final manuscript to the King's printers, they could not have known that they would have to wait four hundred years before the text would be printed as they had envisaged it. That, however, is the tragic tale of the greatest masterpiece in the English language. The story of the printing of the KJV is a story of printing errors, multifarious editions, and hubristic intentions to improve on the work of the translators. Hundreds of readings in King James Bibles are wrong and not in accordance with the desire of the original translators. The standard text used today is the Oxford edition of 1769, an edition that has many problems associated with it, not least of which is antiquated spelling, neither true to the 16th century nor to the 21st. At last, Cambridge University has printed an edition, which renders the text of the King James in a way that the translators themselves envisaged. In fact, this edition of the King James is closer to the original text than the first edition printed in 1611, and is the result of painstaking analysis of all the sources available for recovering the 'original' KJV. David Norton has a clear advantage over those who have attempted to edit the KJV before him. First, he has made use of the latest computer technology. Second, Norton is not a biblical scholar or a theologian, but a Professor of English. As such, he comes to the text with a desire to preserve its original integrity, rather than the desire to improve its message. Many editions of the KJV contain changes in the interest of so-called fidelity to the Hebrew and Greek originals. In the past, those who worked on editing the KJV were tempted (and succumbed to the temptation) to improve perceived grammatical and theological errors in the KJV. Often these changes were arbitrary and led to lesser readings. An example is the confession of Peter to Jesus which reads in the Oxford edition: 'And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' However, the original edition omits the word 'the' giving the following reading: 'Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.' Those who added the word 'the' wanted to improve the text, but in so doing they made two mistakes. First they undermined the translators, whose omission of the article follows Tyndale and is deliberate. Second, they lost the impact of the verse since Peter's confession 'Thou art Christ' is parallel to Christ's confession 'thou art Peter.' Fidelity to the original King James' translators was only one of Norton's goals. To recreate the original text with original spelling would be of little use in a modern world. The aim is therefore to render the ancient text in such a way that a modern person can appreciate it. To achieve the latter goal a number of changes were made: First, one finds modern spelling throughout the NCPB. For example, 'stablished' becomes 'established', 'alway' 'always', 'thine' 'thy', 'spake' 'spoke' , 'mine' 'my'; 'excellency' 'excellence', 'throughly' 'thoroughly', 'shouldest' 'shouldst', 'an' 'a', 'astonied' 'astonished', 'withholden' 'withheld', 'brake' 'broke', 'shined' 'shone', 'holden' 'held', 'withholden' 'withheld', 'bare' 'bore', 'begat' 'begot', and 'builded' 'built'. One also sometimes finds the modernization of names: 'Timotheus' in Col 1.1, for example, becomes 'Timothy'. These changes help to place the text of the KJV in the 21st century while preserving the best of the old language. Few would quibble with the choices, although devotees might miss their `thines' and `mines'. Second, modern punctuation in the NCPB transforms the text, especially with the introduction of quotes to indicate direct speech. No longer is 1611 punctuation dressed in 18th century garb. Third, the new arrangement of the KJV in paragraph divisions as opposed to each verse appearing separately makes for a text that is easier to read. The font used is clear and bold, Swift 10/12.5. In addition, instead of the traditional double column text, we find a single column text. Fourth, one of the most important features of the NCPB is the integrity given to the original notes of the 1611, which are often left out of modern editions or lost in a maze of superfluous text references and comments. These original notes are an essential part of the original KJV because they contain revealing alternative translations. In the new format, they shine. Finally, in the original 1611 edition paragraph divisions surprisingly disappear at some point in the Book of Acts and do not appear again. This mysterious omission has plagued scholars and has simply been repeated in all King James Bibles to the present day. David Norton is the first to reintroduce these missing paragraph divisions into the New Testament text. In conclusion, I have no doubt that in time to come it will become the standard KJV text, replacing the antiquated 1769 Oxford edition. Even those who have now abandoned the KJV in favour of contemporary translations will find cause here to reconsider their decision to forsake the old masterpiece.
Andrew Heckmaster
6/13/2017
Got my hands on the print version on Amazon. This is the King James Bible the way it was intended to be. Six years after the print version, I don't know why this is not the top-selling bible in the US. First, they have changed spellings like colour to color, fixed capitalized words like spirit to Spirit and His to his as needed, and they have relentlessly gone through the Textus Receptus to ensure accuracy all while maintaining the way the text reads. There is no culture shock if you are used to the KJV. Buy this with confidence. Disclaimer: I cannot speak for the Apocrypha, as I am a Protestant and bought the version without it.Ross Purdy
3/9/2017
Interesting edition but really needs to have the companion "A Textual History of the King James Bible" published with it as it explains how and what Norton did and the reason for it along with a valuable history, and lists of printing errors and typographical errors many of which remain in our modern printings. He examines what sources we have for the original 1611 text and gives a history of how the KJv was corrupted through-out its print history. The Parris and Blayney editions and their changes to the text are discussed. Spelling changes in the American editions are noted. Norton explains how his NCPB is different from the PCB of Scrivener who actually did try to fix the KJv. His intent was to restore and produce exactly what the translators wanted to publish in the first edition and remove the changes of subsequent revisers. Therefore he did not do any repair work or fixing of the text except to restore it to what the translators (actually they only revised it) expected to see in the end product. Graig Perry: It was not a Geneva Bible with notes of the translators that he used, it was rather a Bishop's Bible since that was what they were revising. Norton also wanted to modernize the presentation to current spelling and punctuation. As example, he explains how "bewray" should not be changed to "betray" and how "shamefacedness" derived from "shamefastness" and why the latter as is in the first KJV should be retained. Norton would rather have a more difficult correct reading than a less difficult incorrect one. He also notes the important differences between "in stead" and "instead", and between "beside" and "besides", "divers" and "diverse", "farther" and "further" among others. So archaisms are modernized unless there is a genuine difference in meaning. He retains ye, thee, thou, etc. Norton concerns himself with changes due to sound and the number of syllables pronounced, forms coming in front of aspirates, retaining grammatical forms, and free variations still possible in English etc. All to show the care and seriousness he took to the job. On the flip side, I thought his choice in handling compound words to be a bit inconsistent but not a big deal. But what I thought to be huge is his choice not to deal with italicized words! It appears though that as huge an undertaking that the NCPB is, dealing with the inconsistent application of italicized helping words and present it authoritatively is overwhelming. Perhaps someone with more translation skills from the original languages could fill in what I see as the only lacuna in this amazing accomplishment.
