This is the first page of the Apocrypha from our replica of the original 1715 Old Testament. The one on the left is the original scan and the one on the right is after we cleaned that page up. David Moody scanned this entire Apocrypha for us.
Was the Apocrypha in the original King James Bible? If so, why is it not in there now?
Answer: The answer is that the Apocrypha was in the original 1611 King James Bible. (For a really detailed answer go to pages 222-228 of Alister McGrath’s book, In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How It Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture.) The question of whether the Apocrypha should remain in the Bible continued for centuries, but while the debate did involve theology, the issue was ultimately decided on the basis of the cost of publication. The Apocrypha remained in most published King James Bibles until 1826 when the various missionary societies removed it for financial reasons. The first English-language Bible printed in North America in 1782, Robert Aitken’s “Bible of the Revolution”, did not contain the Apocrypha. Yet, it wasn’t until 1826 that the Apocrypha disappeared from most newly published King James Bibles. Today, it is almost impossible to get a major biblical publisher to allow the Apocrypha to be printed within a Bible, even when printing a reproduction of a Bible that originally contained the Apocrypha within.