Apr 15, 2021 - Sale 2564

Sale 2564 - Lot 255

Price Realized: $ 1,125
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 400 - $ 600
THE PHINNEY BIBLE, BASIS OF THE JOSEPH SMITH TRANSLATION (MORMONS.) The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments. 768 pages. 4to, contemporary marbled calf, worn, front board coming detached; intermittent foxing, minor dampstaining toward rear; edges tinted yellow; 4-page family register preceding the New Testament with births, marriages and deaths of the Nathan Beard family of Jefferson County in northern New York through 1867. Cooperstown, NY: H. & E. Phinney, 1828

Additional Details

When Joseph Smith set out to create a new translation of the Bible in 1830, he began with a copy of Phinney's 1828 quarto edition. Changes were written in the margins by a series of assistants; the Joseph Smith Translation was then published from the annotated Bible in 1867. The original annotated Bible is still in the possession of the Community of Christ (RLDS). This Phinney Bible is not annotated by Joseph Smith, but it is from the same edition. We notice one other unusual quirk in this Bible: a faint diamond pattern impressed across the length of each sheet, presumably to flatten the leaves as they came off the press. Only one other book comes to mind which is often seen with a similar pattern, the 1830 first edition of the Book of Mormon.

This copy is the discount issue, published without plates or the 99-page Apocrypha. Hills 618.