When the Bible endorsed adultery

When God Spoke English (BBC4) told the story of the King James Bible, writes Peter Rhodes.

It reminded us that some other translations of the Good Book were decidedly dodgy.

The so-called "Wicked Bible" of 1631 managed to drop a crucial word from the seventh of the Ten Commandments and solemnly informed its readership: "Thou shalt commit adultery."

As a footnote to the above, the printers of the Wicked Bible were fined about £38,000 in modern money and lost their printing licence.

Infuriated by the error, the then Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbot, thundered: "I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing . . . and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste, but now the paper is nought, the composers boyes, and the correctors unlearned."

Nothing changes. Every generation thinks it remembers a golden age when there were no misprints.