WASHINGTON — Under dim lights in a grand hall of the great Folger Shakespeare Library lies the “Wicked Bible,” so called because it omits one distinctly important word from the Seventh Commandment. It is a word with the power to prevent sin.

“Thou shalt commit adultery,” the Wicked Bible commands.

For this unfortunate typo, the printer of this 1631 edition of the King James Bible met with retribution. By order of the king, copies of the “Wicked Bible” were quickly gathered and burned. Its printer, Robert Barker, was chastised for stupidity.

“I knew the tyme when great care was had about printing, the Bibles especially, good compositors and the best correctors were gotten being grave and learned men, the paper and the letter rare, and faire every way of the beste,” wrote George Abbot, the archbishop of Canterbury, chastising Barker. “But now the paper is nought … and the correctors unlearned.”

Barker was relieved of his printer’s license and fined 300 pounds. After the burning, few copies remained of the Wicked Bible, which also has been called the Adulterous Bible or the Sinner’s Bible.

But a rare copy sits on display at the Folger as part of its new exhibition, “Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible.” The exhibition, which runs through Jan. 15, displays other rare Bibles, books and manuscripts, including the Folger’s own first edition of the King James Bible, printed in 1611.

“Manifold Greatness” — developed by the Folger, the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin — celebrates the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible and tells the story of the most-published book in the English language.

“The King James Bible is hugely influential, not just in America or in Britain, but anywhere the English language went,” says Hannibal Hamlin, co-curator of the Folger’s exhibition. “… It is one Bible among many, but many denominations are devoted to it. Many aspects of the King James Bible got things right. Nothing else has endured remotely as long.

“As to the number of editions,” he added, “it is vast. I am not sure anyone knows.”

‘Poetic power’

The King James was a Bible meant to be read aloud; the beauty of its language helped it to endure, says co-curator Steven Galbraith: “Its extraordinary poetic power allows the translation to find a home in settings as diverse as the poetry of John Milton, the lyrics of Bob Marley and the speeches of Martin Luther King. Because the King James Bible is a revision of the work of William Tyndale and other 16th-century translators, it isn’t a new translation, but rather a fusion of the best translations that preceded it, with fresh input from the most talented English theologians of the early 17th century.”

The exhibition includes fascinating mysteries, epic battles, stake burnings and other enthralling episodes in the lives of the men involved in Bible translation. It covers the events that led to the birth of the King James text as well as the book’s influence on art, literature, popular culture, music and history — from Handel’s “Messiah” to the reading of Genesis by the astronauts aboard Apollo 8, a broadcast heard by a quarter of the people on Earth at the time, making the Bible’s reach literally astronomical.

“The King James is the only Bible version I am aware of that has been read in space,” Hamlin says.

On Earth, the words and cadence of the King James have influenced political and civil rights speeches. Its language, rhythm and stories have found their way to Hollywood (think Charlton Heston in “The Ten Commandments”), and its tales have inspired works by writers both religious and radical: John Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” William Blake’s “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell” and Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.”

The King James Bible has been quoted in classics and in cartoons. In “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” when Linus decides to tell Charlie Brown “what Christmas is all about,” he recites Nativity passages from the King James. “Whenever I read this part of the Bible,” Hamlin says, “I can’t get Linus’ voice out of my head.”

Who was King James?

After Queen Elizabeth I died in March 1603, King James I came to power. He was a conservative Protestant and an advocate of a strong monarchy. During the second year of his reign, he called together the leaders of the Church of England in response to a petition urging him to further reform the church. The leaders thought there were too many lingering signs of Catholicism in the church’s liturgy and structure.

The king decided to make his mark on the Church of England by commissioning a new Bible. About 50 scholars from Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster were convened. Working from the Bishop’s Bible, they were ordered to produce a revised version.

The translators began in 1604, improving upon earlier texts, revising in keeping with the king’s tastes and editing the language to make it more concise and poetic.

The work took years, and it was not without minor peculiarities. But the King James Bible, called by some scholars the greatest work of prose in English, has endured, despite epic battles and ancient, wicked typos, now forgiven.

Unbinding the Jefferson Bible, Jesus’ life story

Thomas Jefferson’s Bible, “The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth,” which is undergoing conservation, is set to return to public display at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History on Friday.

The text, which Jefferson finished in 1820 and intended to remain private, includes excerpts from the four Gospels of the New Testament in Greek, Latin, French and English. Jefferson’s goal was to create a book that would tell a chronological story of the life of Jesus, highlighting moral teachings but deleting mentions of miracles and the Resurrection, which Jefferson said he found “contrary to reason,” according to the Smithsonian.

The Bible resembles a scrapbook, containing clippings that Jefferson pasted onto blank pages. In March, the Smithsonian began treatment of the text to ensure its preservation. The Bible will be displayed with two English editions of the New Testament from which Jefferson cut excerpts. Visitors to the museum will be able to view each page as well as videos about the Bible’s meticulous conservation.

Also Friday, a companion website goes live: www.americanhistory.si.edu/jeffersonbible.