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The Holy Bible


A non-denominational, nonsectarian work-in-progress; a chronological history of the book that is the world’s most widely printed and published work; the focus here is historical, with no attempt to judge theological superiority of one version over another;

Topics covered include:

-unique & significant editions

-historical milestones

-Bible Societies

-Bibliography

 

 

Pre-15th Century      15th Century        16th Century       17th Century

 

   18th Century       19th Century        20th Century       21st Century

 

The Holy Bible

 

·      comprised of sixty-six books, not counting the Apocrypha

·      The word bible was first applied to the Hebrew scripture in the 2nd Century A.D.

·      The word bible has been used for the combined Old and New Testaments since the fifth century A.D.

·      The word bible does not occur in the text of the Scriptures

·       A Codex is a leaf book invented and used first by the Romans, as distinguished from a roll or scroll

·      The Books of Moses are also known as the Pentatuech, or the Law, regarded as authoritative about 400 B.C.

·      200 A.D. The New Testament was generally accepted as scripture

·      In 367 A.D. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, listed the twenty-seven books which have been held as authoritative to this day

·      The Apocrypha's fourteen books have not been included in the Protestant Bible since the Nineteenth Century

·      The Old Testament was first written down in Hebrew and Aramaic; The New Testament in Greek

·       The Old Testament’s 39 books are divided into 929 chapters of 23,214 verses (Apocrypha not included)

·       The New Testament’s 27 books are divided into 260 chapters of 7,959 verses

·       The Bible was divided into chapters by Cardinal Hugo de Sancto-Caro about 1250

·       The Greek New Testament was divided into verses by Robert Stephens, a French printer, in 1551

·       Up to the end of 1961 the American Bible Society had distributed over 592,000,000 copies of the scriptures

·       Robert Aitken of Philadelphia printed the first English Bible in America in 1782 with the approval of the Congress

·       Christopher Sauer of Germantown, Pa., printed the first Bible in America in a European language (German) in 1743

·       Glossing or a gloss refers to a literal word-by-word rendering into a second language, preserving the order of the first.

·       The first Bible in America was printed in 1663 – a translation into the Massachusetts Indian language by John Eliot

 This website was originally conceived to celebrate the 550th anniversary of the printing of the 42-line Vulgate Bible by Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of movable type. The November 18, 1950 edition of the Antiquarian Bookman Magazine reported that by the end of 1950 (the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg's invention), over two billion Bibles and parts of bibles will have been printed, with 25 million more being added each year. At this rate, the total number of bibles printed by the year 2008 will exceed four billion copies, in thousands of languages and editions. This makes the Bible the first and undisputed best-seller of all time and no other book is likely to take its place.

Learn more about the Gutenberg Bible census.

 

Bibliography

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Adomeit, Ruth Elizabeth.  Three Centuries of Thumb Bibles: A Checklist. (NY & London) Garland Pub. Co. 1980.

“All Scripture is Inspired of God and Beneficial” (Brooklyn) Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of NY. 1990.

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Antiquarian Bookman. Gutenberg Bible Census and Bible History. 1950.

Astruc, Jean. Conjectures sur les memoires originaux; (1753)

Athearn, Laura Armstrong. Your Bible. The Graded Press, 1949. Paperback, 112 p.

Auzou, Georges.  The Formation of the Bible: History of the Sacred Writings of the People of God. (St Louis) B Herder. 1963, Hardcover. 386p

Barnstone, Willis (ed.).  The Other Bible. (NY) Harper & Row, 1984, First Edition. 740 p., including bibliography.

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Buck, Charles. A Theological Dictionary. (Philadelphia) Joseph J. Woodward. 1829.

Cahn, Walter. Romanesque Bible Illumination. (Ithaca) Cornell University Press, 1982, First Ed.  304p., incl. Index.

Cambridge History of the Bible. (Cambridge) University Press. 1970.

Carson, D.A.  The King James Version Debate: A Plea For Realism. (Grand Rapids) Baker Book House, 1979. pb, 123p.

Chamberlain, William J. Catalog of English Bible Translations. (Westport) Greenwood Press, 1991.

Comfort, Philip W.  The Complete Guide To Bible Versions. (Wheaton) Living Books, 1991. pb, 145p., plus ads.

Copinger, Walter A. Incunabula Biblica. (London) Bernard Quaritch, 1892.

Copinger, Walter A. Supplement to Hain’s Repertorium Bibliographicum . London, 1985-1902. 3  Vols.

Corns, A.R. & Sparke, A.  A Bibliography of Unfinished Books in the English Language. (NY) Burt Franklin. Reprint of 1969.

Crane, Frank. The Lost Books of the Bible. (NY) Alpha House, 1926; 293p.

Darlow, T.H. and Moule, H.E.   Historical Catalogue of the Printed Editions of Holy Scripture in the Library of the British and Foreign Bible Society. (London) 1903-11, BFBS.  Reprinted in four-volume set by Maurizio Martino.

Dearden, Robert R. Jr. The Guiding Light On The Great Highway. (Philadelphia) John C. Winston, 1929. First Edition.

De Hamel, Christopher. The Book. A History of the Bible. (London) Phaidon Press. 2001. First Edition.

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Dominick, Mabel A. The Bible and The Historical Design. (Norwood) Plimpton Press. 1936. First Ed.

Dore, J.R. Old Bibles: An Account of the Early Versions of the English Bible. (London) E&S. 1888. 2nd Ed.

Ehrlich, J.W. The Holy Bible and The Law. (NY) Oceana Publications, Inc., 1962. First Edition

Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament. 2003 (NY) Oxford University Press, 8vo, First Edition. 342p.

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Encyclopaedia Britannica. (London) 1910. Eleventh Edition.

Finegan, Jack. Handbook of Biblical Chronology. (Princeton) Princeton University Press, 1964. First Edition, 338p., w/index.

Fingernagel, A.; Gastberger, C.  In The Beginning Was The Word: The Power and Glory of Illuminated Bibles (Köln) Taschen. 2003.

Foster, Lewis. Selecting a  Translation of the Bible. (Cincinnati) Standard Publishing, 1978; Stapled wraps, 8vo, 76p.

Friedman, Richard Elliott. Who Wrote The Bible? (NY) Summit Books, 1987. Paperback Edition. 299p.

Froude, James A. (ed.) A Bibliographic Description of the Editions of the New Testament Tyndale's Version in English. (London) Sotheran, 1878, First Edition.

Gaebelein, Frank E.  Down Through The Ages: The Story of the King James Bible. (NY) MacMillan, 1925. 12mo, 106p., including index.

Gameson, Richard (ed.) The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use. Cambridge University Press, 1994

Geck, Elisabeth. Johannes Gutenberg; Vom Bleibuchstaben zum Computer. (Bad Godesberg) Inter Nationes, 1968; wraps.

Goodspeed, Edgar J. How To Read The Bible. (Philadelphia) John C. Winston, 1946. First Edition. 244 p.

Great Soviet Encyclopedia (Bol’shaia Sovetskaia Entsiklopediia) Third Edition English translation, 1973. (NY) MacMillan.

Greenhood, David and Gentry, Helen. Chronology of Books & Printing. (NY) MacMillan, 1936. Revised Ed.

Grierson, Sir Herbert.  The English Bible. (London) Collins, 1947.  Third Impression

Gutjahr, Paul C. An American Bible. (Stanford) Stanford Univ. Press. 1999. First Edition

Haight, Anne Lyon.  Banned Books. (NY & London) R.R. Bowker, 1970. Third Edition.

Hain, L. Repertorium Bibliographicum. Stuttgart, 1826-38.  4 Vols.

Hamilton-Hoare, Henry W.  The Evolution of the English Bible…Cornell University Library, 2009. a reprint.

Handover, P.M. Printing In London: From Caxton to Modern Times (Cambridge) Harvard University Press, 1960. 1st Ed.

Handy, Robert T. A History of the Churches in the United States and Canada. (NY) Oxford Univ. 1977.

Henderson, M.A. Sowers of the Word: A 95-Year History of the Gideons International 1899-1994. (Nashville) The Gideons International, 1995. 480p. 

Herbert, A.S.  Historical Catalogue of Printed Editions of the English Bible, 1525-1961.  (London) BFBS. 1968.

Hertz, Dr. J.H. (ed.). The Pentateuch and Haftorahs (London) Soncino Press. 5718-1958. One-Vol. Ed. 17th Imp.

Hervey, G. Winfred. The Story of Baptist Missions in Foreign Lands. (St Louis) Chancy R. Barns, 1886.

Hill, Christopher.  The English Bible and the Seventeenth Century Revolution. (London) Allen Lane, 1993.

Hills, Margaret T. (ed.) The English Bible in America: A Bibliography…(1777-1957). (Mansfield Centre) Martino Fine Books.

Hindman, S.; Farquhar, J. D. Pen To Press: Illuminated Manuscripts and Printed Books... (College Park) Univ. of Md. 1977

Holman. Holy Bible, 1878. Holman Edition.

Hunt, C.C. (compiler).  Masonic Concordance: A Comprehensive Concordance to the Holy Scriptures, Showing Especially the Relation of the Bible to the History, Symbolism and Teachings of Freemasonry. World Publishing, 1948.

Il Libro Della Bibbia: Esposizione di Manoscritti... (Vatican) Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MCMLXXII.

Ing, Janet.  Johann Gutenberg and his bible: A Historical Study. (NY) The Typophiles.  1988, First Edition.

Keller, Werner.  The Bible As History: A Confirmation of the Book of Books. (NY) William Morrow, 1956.

Kubo, Sakae; Specht, Walter. So Many Versions? (Grand Rapids) Zondervan. 1979, Fifth Printing.

Kugel, James L.  The Bible As It Was  (Cambridge, MA) Harvard University Press, 1997. First Edition.

Larson, Charles M. By His Own Hand Upon Papyrus: (Grand Rapids) Institute For Religious Research, 1992, Rev. Ed.

Leary, Lewis. The Book-Peddling Parson. (Chapel Hill) Algonquin Books. 1984. First Edition.

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Levi, Peter. The English Bible From Wycliff to William Barnes, 1534-1859.  (London) Constable, 1974. First Edition.

Lewis, Frank Grant. How The Bible Grew. (Chicago) Univ. of Chicago Press, 1919. Second Impression.

Lewy, Immanuel. The Growth of the Pentateuch: A Literary, Sociological and Biographical Approach. (NY) Bookman Associate, 1955; 288p.

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