The indestructible Word

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Friday, October 24th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast.

Before we end today, a quick correction from Wednesday’s program…we misspoke in our story about George Santos. We should have said that President Trump had commuted his sentence. That means Santos doesn't have to serve the rest of his jail time, but it doesn't erase his record or time already served.

BROWN: Finally this week, a story in our occasional “destinations” series. This time, a museum in Houston that tells the story of the English Bible. WORLD’s Todd Vician recently visited and is here now with what he found.

TODD VICIAN: How many Bibles do you have in your home? I have 16 printed editions. One of them is my great, great grandmother's Bible.

It’s about five inches by three inches with a gold-embossed cover, yellowing pages, and a metal clasp on the side. It was printed in 1849. The title page says:

“The Holy Bible...translated out of the original tongues by His Majesty's Special Command...printed by...printers to the Queen's Most Excellent Majesty.”

Many of us have similar family heirlooms.

Recently I visited a unique collection of Bibles at Houston Christian University. Dunham Bible Museum director Diana Severance was my guide…

DIANA SEVERANCE: Well, we … first bought the … American collection from Jonathan Byrd, who had spent a lifetime collecting rare American Bibles...

That initial collection has grown to now more than 8,000 volumes. Visitors come from around the world. The day I visited, a group of about 8 women from a nearby assisted living facility admired the displays.

The first Bible on my tour was a manuscript from the 12th or 13th century. It’s known as a “Paris Bible.” Scribes at the University of Paris established the standard order of books, introductory remarks, and chapter breaks we take for granted in today’s text. It marks another unique milestone in Bible publishing.

SEVERANCE: And they are the first time that you could have a Bible that's small enough that a person could carry around. It’s the paper was thinner. And the format is much like ours we know with the two columns…hand written, very small, so that you could put all the Bible in one, easy to carry book.

With the format set and the arrival of better bookmaking technology, the scribes fed the growing appetite of itinerant priests and teachers to carry pocket Bibles to the ends of the earth.

Around the corner and past a display featuring the Gutenberg press, another Bible publishing milestone. Translations in common languages for common people. The Dunham Bible Museum has an original leaf on display from the 14th Century Wycliffe Bible.

SEVERANCE: He translated from the Latin Vulgate, and one of the reasons he did that is because the church was beginning to preach some things that were not in the Bible. But how could anybody know if they didn't have a Bible?

Eventually in 1408, Church authorities declared it illegal for anyone to produce or read any portion of the Bible in English.

SEVERANCE: There were even people executed for having, teaching their children the Lord's Prayer in English.

That law was still on the books in the 16th century when William Tyndale began secretly translating the Bible in Germany. He then smuggled copies into England.

Church authorities bought up as many copies as they could before burning them in front of St Paul's Cathedral. But they couldn’t keep up.

SEVERANCE: Tyndale used the money to encourage and print more Bibles, which he did, and smuggled them back into England…

I was surprised to discover a similar story closer to home.

SEVERANCE: In colonial America, it was against the law to print a Bible in English.

Historians estimate there were 50 printing presses in the colonies by the 1770s. They could print the Bible in German and even the language of native Americans in New England, but not in English.

Only printers licensed by the king could print the Bible in the common vernacular. The restriction was defended as a way to ensure accurate translations…but it was more likely retained to guarantee revenue for the Crown.

SEVERANCE: So not until independence do you have an English Bible printed in America.

In 1782, a Philadelphian petitioned Congress to print the first American English Bible.

SEVERANCE: And Congress sent over their chaplains and inspectors to see what he was doing, make sure he was doing a good job….So Congress approved the first English Bible printed in America.

One of the most unique Bibles on display at the Dunham Museum is smaller than the Paris pocket Bibles…much, much smaller.

SEVERANCE: This microfilm, in that frame, the one inch square of microfilm, has the entire Bible on it. You have to magnify it 200 times in order to read it with a microfilm reader.

Astronaut Ed White planned to take a printed Bible to the Moon on the Apollo 1 mission. Tragically, he and fellow astronauts Roger Chaffee and Gus Grissom were killed when a flash fire engulfed their capsule during a launch rehearsal in 1967. But four years later, astronaut Edgar Mitchell took over 100 microfilm editions of the Bible into space. He left one on the lunar surface in White’s memory and another copy is in the museum.

The Dunham Bible Museum has 250 Bibles—or pages from Bibles—on permanent display. It is a vivid testimony to how the Bible has been burnt, banned, and blasphemed, but never destroyed. It has been read by more people, and its words have changed more lives, than any other book in—and out of—this world…

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Todd Vician in Houston, Texas.

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