Still pretty solid, if a little ragged around the edges—having taken a beating over the years. Not unlike the physical book itself.
Despite (or perhaps because of) my attendance at a Catholic Primary School and Sunday School during my early childhood, I now reside very distinctly upon the atheistic end of a spectrum of religiosity. Assuming, of course, that atheism even has a place on any spectrum of “religiosity”, given that it is a refutation of that very concept. Perhaps it’s among the shadows in a corner, away from all that refraction, that I dwell.
Yet, despite this secular perspective of the world, I have maintained an interest in various religions and the artefacts of those cultural institutions. For many years I was in possession of four or five different versions of the Christian Bible in its various forms (and they do differ quite markedly at the level of nuance, I was surprised to find). At some point, that number must have become excessive because I reduced them to one.
There has always seemed to me to be a strange insecurity embedded within the necessity of a bible to be named “holy”. This is the word of god, is it not? Would that, then, not go without saying? Is it not just… the bible? There’s no need to preface other works in a similar way, such as the Factual Encyclopaedia. Perhaps because of the schismatic nature of doctrinal religion, there’s a likelihood of competitors out there which one might legitimately think of as ‘unholy’. Yet I doubt that’s what they put on their versions in order to distinguish themselves from the rest of the franchise.
This specific bible holds a special significance for me, not because of its content—which is broadly, if not specifically, consistent with any other Christian bible one might come across—but because of its age. As you can see for yourself in the image, it is quite worn, but what the image doesn’t properly capture (unfortunately) is the depth of the blackness of the cover, the vibrance of the gold leaf pages, nor of course its weight (which is considerable for a tome only 16cm tall). The thing is antediluvian; it’s certainly the oldest book I own.
In fact, I must confess that I have no idea when it was actually printed, and I have knowingly listed the date incorrectly as 1877 because that particular year is written in an elegant cursive in a note on the inside of its cover, and evidently the “Holy Bible” at the time was exempt from publishing requirements because nothing inside it bears any indication of its printing date (more on the insides shortly). Presumably, however, that was the year it was procured and given as a gift to “Harry Hurst from his affectionate wife”. The precise date is listed as October 28, 1877. One hundred and one years, and three days, before my own birth.
Whoever Ethel Hurst is, who perhaps received it from her father or uncle or father-in-law (ie. Harry) and inscribed her own name in a clearly different script and with a different type of fountain pen, she likely owned the book until it passed (most likely) to one or more intermediaries before arriving with one of my maternal grandparents, from whom I inherited it. It is possible that, assuming Harry was relatively young when he was gifted it in 1877, and Ethel was his daughter, it could have been Ethel who, as an older parishioner at my grandparents’ church, may have bestowed it directly. As neither are living it is now impossible to complete that aspect of its history even if they ever knew of it. Either that or the book is truly ancient and Ethel was a predecessor of Harry; she signs her surname with the Germanic Eszett (literally, ‘ess’ and ‘zed’, which merges the s-z sound); Hurßt. I would presume it unlikely that she would have retained that fashion when the preceding generation had abandoned it, but one can now never know.
Inside the cover, after several blotchy pages that attest to the idea that old paper does begin to look remarkably like it has been around sloppy coffee drinkers, the amusingly verbose full text of the title is revealed: “The Holy Bible, containing the Old and New Testaments: translated out of the original tongues; and with the former translations diligently compared and revised, by his majesty’s special command. Appointed to be read in churches.” Quite the mouthful. Ironically, despite having no printing date whatsoever, it does reveal that the font used is ‘Minion’ (appropriately) and beneath the seal of the United Kingdom reads “printed by G. E. Eyre and W. Spottiswoode, printers to the Queen’s most excellent majesty, for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge”.
Being 2019 as I write this, ‘the Queen’ who reflexively leaps to mind is Elizabeth II, but of course in 1877 the reigning monarch was Queen Victoria, the second longest reigning British monarch (after REII) and at that time still with twenty three-odd years left to rule, after which there would be two Georgian and two Edwardian kings of varying quality before another resolute Queen would again show them all how it should be done. Victoria had, in 1877, only the year before been created Empress of India, an utter anachronism to the perspective of the present day.
To my mind the book truly is an artefact of another time, quite distinct in so many ways from our own moment.