The Museum of Idaho is hosting a traveling exhibit called Ink and Blood, which is sort of a combination history of printing and history of the Bible. And I hate to say it, but I totally geeked out at the Museum. I couldn’t help myself, I was surrounded by very old books—some of them very famous books. I spent most of my two hours there trying to control myself from boring my mother silly by nattering on about how alphabets evolved, how the English language has evolved, St. Helena‘s tour of the Holy Land, Chinese printing techniques contrasted with Gutenberg’s methods, misprinted Bibles and what happened to the printers, and reading out loud from the various books on display.
I am truly a terrible museum geek.
Some of the artifacts that awed me:
- Dead Sea Scroll fragments–these were particularly awing. They’re in special darkened cases, and you can see the fragments by pushing a button that’ll turn a light on for 10 seconds.
- A copy of a Tyndale Bible
- A copy of the Wicked Bible and the Breeches Bible: I spent several minutes in front of these cases trying to snicker discretely.
- A copy of Foxe’s Book of Martyr’s
- Erasmus‘ parallel New Testament
- Three Books of Hours, beautifully illuminated
- Martin Luther‘s translation of the Bible into German
Check out the Exhibit Artifacts page to see some of the books and text fragments that they have on display.
A lot of exhibit was dedicated to attempts to translate the Bible into the vernacular. Today, Bibles are produced in just about every language that has a written version. But 650 some odd years ago, people like William Tyndale were violently put to death for daring to translate the Bible into their own language.
I also got to see a replica of a Gutenberg press in action. There was a short, fifteen minute talk about the invention of movable type and then a volunteer got to turn the screw and print a couple of pages (lucky guy!).
This exhibit is moving on in May. If you haven’t gone and you’re in the area, I really recommend it.