As the Pilgrims saw it, the principal threat that they faced in Holland was not the scorching sun, but strangling thorns. Many of the people who settled in the New World came to escape religious persecution. In emphasizing the Pilgrims’ supposed search for religious freedom, we make the primary menace in their story the heat of persecution. The first colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. The latter stands for those who allow the word to be choked by “the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things” (Mark 4:19).
The former, Jesus explained to His disciples, represents those who receive the word gladly, but stumble “when tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake” (Mark 4:17).
The seed cast among thorns springs up and then is choked by the surrounding weeds. The seed that lands on stony ground sprouts immediately but the plant withers under the heat of the noonday sun. You remember how the sower casts his seed (the word of God), and it falls on multiple kinds of ground, not all of which prove fruitful. As the new United States of America moved into the 19th century, many new milestones of Bible printing would follow.The Pilgrims’ justification for relocating to America reminds me of Jesus’ parable of the sower. Thompson's Bible was a large pulpit folio, the largest Bible printed in America up until that time. This printing technique helped to sear the ink clearly into the paper with heat. And John Thompson in 1798 produced the first King James Bible to be hot-pressed in America. Isaiah Thomas published the first illustrated King James Bible in 1791. Religious persecution had prompted the Pilgrims to move from England to Holland in 1608, but none of the Pilgrim writers so much as hinted that a desire for greater religious freedom led them to leave Holland for America in 1620. Isaac Collins printed his Bible in 1791 the Collins Bible became known as the first "Family Bible" printed in America. The belief that the Pilgrims came to America in search of religious freedom is inspiring, but it’s just not so.
Late in the 18th century, other printers began publishing the complete King James Bible. His Bible became known as the "Bible of the Revolution," because it was printed in a small size so copies could be distributed to the soldiers in the Colonial army. With the coming of the Revolutionary War, the importation of British goods was seriously curtailed, so Robert Aitken, who had started printing the King James New Testament in the Colonies in 1771, gained the support from the United States Congress to print the entire King James Bible, which he did in 1782. Prior to that time, English Bibles were readily available as imports from England and the English Crown owned the "copyright" on the printing of the King James Version. It was much later in the colonial period, in 1782, when the first complete King James Bible was printed in America. The first Bible printed in America in a European language was Luther's German translation, printed in 1743. The very first was John Eliot's Algonquin Indian language Bible which was printed in 1663. However, the first Bibles printed in America were not English Bibles. But by the mid-1600s, the King James Bible was arriving in the New World with the increasing flow of settlers. The KJV was seen as the Bible of the English King and the state Church of England which had been persecuting them. The Pilgrims arrived in 1620 and brought with them the Geneva Bible, not the King James Bible. Many of the early settlers in America from England came seeking religious freedom.
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