This was before I was baptized.

I met my wife’s Sunday school teacher of long ago, and we chatted about what it was that my wife had studied when she was living in Anderson. During the conversation I asked her

“when did the Baptists remove the Apocrypha from their printings of the AV?”, and

“why did they call their Bible the “King James version” when it so obviously was not?”

Well,I was quickly informed that the KJV never had the Apocrypha in it. “Well”, I said, “I will find a “real” KJV for you and show you.”

It was a Friday afternoon, after 5 P.M. I called the LifeWay Bookstore in Anderson - Lifeway is a Baptist owned bookstore - and discovered they were open until 9PM, so off I went. My wife stayed at home expecting her sister to visit at any moment - this was only three days after Elaine’s job with SourceOne had been “eliminated” and she was now unemployed.

I arrived at the bookstore on Main Street, and walked into the shop and headed for the Bibles. Every KJV Bible I looked at, although entitled “King James version” was without the Apocrypha, even the Cambridge printing. I thought I would have fun with the staff and quizzed them about the KJV asking what had the Baptists done with the Apocrypha, and where was the real AV. According to the store clerk - he was only a trainee, though he knew some Bible history - the Apocrypha was not a part of the KJV and had not been since the Geneva Bible in the 1500’s. He said that it was at the council of Trent that the Apocrypha became a part of the Catholic Bible. Some of the Early Church Fathers had not wanted the Apocrypha in the first place - he mentioned Jerome and Origen specifically.

We spoke for about ten minutes, arguing back and forth and another man nearby overheard our arguments. He was a swarthy looking man - from the Near East, I guessed. He wore a black coat and had dark black hair and a black beard - he could have been an Arab. You will see why I mention him, later. Anyway, the store clerk advised me to go to the Family Book Store on Main street towards Town, or to the Books a Million store in the opposite direction. I knew that BAM had Catholic books, so told him that I would be going there first and thanked him for the help. But instead of going to BAM, I turned right onto Main street and drove to the Family Book Store.

Five minutes later, I was headed for the Bibles which were on the rear wall of the book store - I could see the sign from where I entered - and one of the staff asked me what I was looking for. I hesitated in my tracks and turned around to meet the woman who had left the sales counter and was heading my way. I asked whether she might have a 1611 AV in the store. She said not - which is what I expected. She said she had worked in this store for seven years and had never seen a KJV older than 1800. But we walked over to the rear wall to look at what she did have. It was then that a strange thing happened. The same swarthy man that I had met in the Baptist bookstore was standing at the shelves and as we approached, he turned to me and handed me a brown book. He said “This is what you are looking for.” I looked down at the book. I saw the title “The Holy Bible” and underneath in large letters “1611 Edition”. The book was sealed in a plastic wrap. I handed it to the store clerk to open it for me. She looked at it. “I have never seen this before”, she said. I did the inventory last month, it must have just come in.”

The store clerk and I walked over to the checkout desk and she opened the sealed wrapping.

It was a facsimile printing of the original 1611 AV complete with the Apocrypha and all the translators’ notes. I could not believe my eyes. I sat down for five minutes and pored over the book. It was perfect. The printing was clear, and everything was as I had hoped. I looked around for the “saint” who had discovered the book to ask him how he found it, but he was gone.

Well what do you think? An accidental discovery - or was the book meant just for me? And who was that man?