Deep behind the locked doors of the Huntington Library's rare book collection, two Bibles tell a remarkable story.
One is the Gundulf Bible, a 1,000-year-old tome originally owned by an English bishop and written in Latin, a language that most of his flock did not understand. The other is a version of the New Testament published this year that looks like a teen magazine featuring splashy art design and such articles as: "Are You Dating a Godly Guy?"
The Bible's evolution reflects its dramatic transformation from a largely inaccessible book owned by high religious officials to a ubiquitous bestseller marketed to the masses in myriad ways. The story of that shift will be told in an exhibit, "The Bible and the People," set to open today at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.
"We like to start with a question: How did this book, which was so inaccessible in so many ways, become the best-known book in the Western world?" said Lori Anne Ferrell, co-curator of the show and a religion professor at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University.
The four-month exhibit will feature treasures from the library's collection of more than 2,000 Bibles spanning a millennium of history. Highlights include a 15th century Gutenberg Bible, the first produced by a printing press; a 14th century Ellesmere Psalter, a hand-painted volume of the Psalms; the Great Bible, England's first authorized English translation of Scripture; and a copy of the Bay Psalm Book of 1640, the first book printed in America.
Each book illuminates part of the Bible's long journey.
Tradition holds that God gave Moses the Ten Commandments more than 3,300 years ago, although some scholars argue that the laws were developed centuries later. Many agree that the Torah, or first five books of the Bible, was completed between 400 and 500 BC, and say the original Greek manuscripts of the New Testament followed by AD 100.
For centuries, however, few Christians read the Bible because of its enormous expense before the advent of the printing press, widespread illiteracy and church laws against translating the Scriptures into local languages. Those who tackled the text often found a forbidding work filled with incomprehensible words and contradictions.
"We live in a Bible-saturated culture, but not many people understand how difficult the book is to understand," Ferrell said.
