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Library of biblical proportions
By PAMELA SCHAEFFER
The American Bible Societys
building at 1865 Broadway houses the first Bible published in North America and
a French Bible once baked into a loaf of bread.
The societys collection of Bibles is the largest in the
Western Hemisphere (second-largest in the world after the British Foreign Bible
Societys collection at Cambridge University), according to society
librarian Liana Lupas.
The first North American Bible -- the most valuable book in the
collection, Lupas said -- was published in 1663 in the language of Native
Americans in the Massachusetts Bay area. Printing was arranged by John Eliot, a
zealous Puritan known as "Apostle to the Indians," with money from an English
corporation.
The French Bible that survived baking with only the edges of pages
singed was owned by the Charbonniers, a family of Huguenots pressed to hide the
book from soldiers who were marching toward the farm. In 16th-century France,
Bible-owning by commoners -- and the literacy it bred -- was considered a
threat to the monarchy. Bible owners often paid with their lives.
Lupas, another Catholic at the society and formerly a classics
professor in Romania, said the societys library -- which, along with its
archives, is available to scholars for research -- serves as a depository for
new translations. The library contains some 53,000 volumes in 2,200 languages
and dialects -- virtually all of the 2,212 languages and dialects into which
the Bible, or part of it, has been translated.
The society also provides a readers service librarian,
Jacqueline Sapiie, who takes calls from people with questions about the Bible
at (212) 408-1203.
The collection, though mostly books, contains a manuscript that
dates to the 13th century and four leaves of the Gutenberg Bible --- the most
valuable book in the world until a sale of Chaucers Canterbury
Tales sold at auction last July for $7.5 million. That price topped the
$5.39 million that a Japanese bookseller had paid for Volume I of a two-volume
Gutenberg Bible in 1987. Only 48 Gutenberg Bibles survive of about 185 believed
printed.
National Catholic Reporter, May 14,
1999
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