Printed by the University Printers, Thomas Buck and Roger Daniel, this edition of the Authorized Version was considered by many seventeenth-century commentators to be the best available at the time, and it largely escaped the criticisms levelled at contemporary editions of the Bible by mid-century reformers. This opinion of its pre-eminence was also shared by most later authors, and it remained the standard text of the Authorized Version until 1762. The edition of 1638 built on corrections introduced into the Cambridge Bible of 1629, and incorporated revisions by Samuel Ward, Thomas Goad, John Bois, and Joseph Mede (an early friend and correspondent of Hartlib).
Although John Worthington later came to prefer Field's Bible of 1659, he had informed Hartlib in 1653 that 'the best Bible that ever hath been printed, in England is that by Daniel in folio with great Letters, which is most exactly and correctly performed' (Hartlib Papers, 28/2/77A [Ephemerides, 1653]). Like others, he particularly valued those revisions which made it more accurate than contemporary editions produced by the King's Printers in London, and appreciated the exactness and clarity of its typography, especially its use of italics to denote words and clauses, necessary to the sense of the English translation, but not to be found in the original Hebrew or Greek. The 1638 Cambridge Bible was printed in three sizes, at prices ranging from sixteen shillings to thirty shillings, unbound.
