# The Aitken Bible (1782) > Robert Aitken - 1782 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/robert-aitken-printer/aitken-bible-1782-american-bible-society/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-09-24 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** Robert Aitken - **Date:** 1782 - **Medium:** Letterpress printing on paper, complete text of the Old and New Testaments in the King James translation, in a single volume - **Dimensions:** Approx. 15 x 10 cm (6 x 4 in), the pocket octavo format typical of the edition. No institution-published measurement specific to this exact copy was located. - **Object type:** Printed book - **Period:** American, Revolutionary War and early republic - **Current location:** American Bible Society, Philadelphia. This copy was most recently on public display at the Society's Faith and Liberty Discovery Center on Independence Mall, which closed on 28 March 2024. - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary In 1782, the Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken published the first complete Bible in English printed in the newly independent United States, reprinting the familiar King James text at his own financial risk after wartime trade with Britain cut off the usual supply of imported Bibles. The Continental Congress commended the edition as accurate and recommended it to the public, but funded none of it and granted Aitken no printing monopoly, a distinction Aitken himself tested and lost when Congress later refused his request for an exclusive fourteen-year Bible-printing patent. Once peace reopened the British trade in 1783, cheaper imported Bibles flooded back into the American market and Aitken's edition became a commercial failure that left him deep in debt for the rest of his life.Of the roughly ten thousand copies Aitken printed, only a few dozen are known to survive. This record is anchored on one of them: a copy that was on public display at the American Bible Society's Faith and Liberty Discovery Center in Philadelphia until the museum's closure in March 2024, and that was photographed there, on the Society's own premises, in July 2023. How this particular copy came into the Society's hands, and exactly where it is kept today, are not documented in any source located for this record; both gaps are recorded here as open questions rather than filled with invented history. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1782** Robert Aitken, printer and publisher, Philadelphia `[documented]` (origin) Printed in Philadelphia in 1782 as part of an edition of about 10,000 copies, following the Continental Congress resolution of 12 September 1782 approving and recommending Aitken's edition. - **1782-unknown** Unrecorded `[unknown]` (gap) No source located documents this copy's ownership or whereabouts between its printing in 1782 and its appearance in the American Bible Society's collection. This is consistent with the broader pattern for the edition: the large majority of the roughly 40 to 50 copies known to survive have undocumented custodial histories for most of their existence. - **by 2021-28 March 2024** American Bible Society `[documented]` (exhibition) On public display at the Society's Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, Philadelphia (opened 2021, closed 28 March 2024). Photographed in the gallery in July 2023 by a Wikimedia Commons contributor; those photographs anchor this record. - **2024-present** American Bible Society `[unknown]` (custody after museum closure) The Society has not published, in any source located, a statement on the disposition of the closed museum's collection. No sale, transfer or deaccession has been reported. Continued Society ownership is the reasonable inference from the absence of any such report, but the object's exact current physical location and access status are not confirmed by a published source. ## Open questions - How and when did this specific copy enter the American Bible Society's collection? No source located documents its custody between 1782 and its appearance at the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center. - Does the American Bible Society hold an internal inventory or accession number for this copy? None was found published, despite a genuine search. - Where is the object physically held now, following the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center's closure on 28 March 2024? No published source addresses the disposition of the museum's collection. - How many 1782 Aitken Bibles actually survive? Institutional counts range from under 30 to about 40 (the Discovery Center's own figure for this copy) to 50 (Bishop Payne Library), and no reconciling scholarly census was located. - Does this copy carry any binding, inscription, bookplate or prior owner's mark that would help place it in the object's early history? Not established from the sources consulted. - What are this copy's own physical measurements and page count? The dimensions given in this record are for the edition generally, drawn from other institutions' copies, not from a published measurement of this specific object. ## Sources - [1] Wikimedia Commons, File:Robert Aitken 1782 Bible.jpg, photograph by Kreuz und quer, CC0, taken 4 July 2023 at the Faith and Liberty Discovery Center, Philadelphia. - [2] Wikimedia Commons, File:Robert Aitken 1782 Bible title page.jpg, photograph by Kreuz und quer, CC0, taken 5 July 2023. - [3] Wikimedia Commons, File:Robert Aitken (1734-1802).jpg, portrait attributed to Charles Willson Peale, sourced from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania Digital Library, public domain. - [4] Katherine Carte, 'Revisiting the Aitken Bible', UNC Press Blog, 11 August 2021. - [5] Wikipedia, 'Robert Aitken (publisher)'. Tertiary source; flagged for replacement with a full scholarly biography of Aitken. - [6] John R. Vile, 'Aitken Bible', The First Amendment Encyclopedia, Middle Tennessee State University, 10 July 2024. - [7] Bishop Payne Library, Virginia Theological Seminary, 'Repairing the Aitken Bible'. - [8] Compendium (Pennsylvania library consortium blog), 'Rare Collection Library: The Strange Case of the American Bible', 29 March 2016. - [9] Museum of the Bible, 'The Aitken Bible' (Book Minute). - [10] Museum of the Bible Collections, 'Aitken Bible', object BIB.002615. - [11] Founders Online, National Archives, George Washington Papers, document 05-05-02-0309 (Tobias Lear to Robert Aitken, on behalf of George Washington). Page did not render fully via direct fetch during this research; content drawn from search-engine indexing of the document and flagged for direct re-verification. - [12] Wikipedia, 'Faith and Liberty Discovery Center'. - [13] Wikipedia, 'American Bible Society'. - [14] Freeman's, Books and Manuscripts / Rare Americana, Lot 8, '[American Revolution] (Aitken, Robert) The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments...'. The live page returned repeated HTTP 429 errors on direct fetch during this research; the title-page transcription and documented errata are drawn from search-engine indexing of this lot description and should be re-verified against the live page. - [15] 'Jane Aitken', History of American Women, 2014. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.