The Bible

The text known as the Bible has existed in a number of different editions and versions throughout the history of religion, in the course of which it has served the crucial historical functions of being the primary text of two of the world’s most influential religions, Judaism and Christianity, as well as serving in its ideas and stories to help influence the practice of Islam. The means through which a form of the Bible is made effective for the use by religious clerics and acceptable for being read by religious worshipers has been a central issue in the controversies which has arisen in Bible influenced religions. Issues related to the transmission of a Bible throughout culture have also served to influence sections of culture which are secular or at least not necessarily religious, such as the general practice of literature and the expectations regarding acceptable standards of literacy. One particularly important example of how the Bible has been transformed in its physical form and thereby has influenced the practice of both established standards of religion and the place of written language in the larger social context of a culture can be found in the historical scenario surrounding the Gutenberg Bible, which stands today as the first instance of a book being printed in Europe through the use of a printing press.

The fact that the Bible was the first text to be selected for the beginning of this revolutionary development in the course of European culture can be seen as an instructive indication of the place of religion and literacy in general in the European culture of the time, and of the Bible in particular. Though in some sources it may be referred to as the first book to be published through the use of the device of the printing press to be found anywhere in the world, it has been noted by historical and Bible scholars interested in dispelling the effects of a Eurocentric philosophy that the first book printed through the use of a printing press can be tied down as having been created in Korea prior to the printing of the Gutenberg Bible. This note does not, however, alter the fact of the widespread influence which the creation of the Gutenberg Bible would have both for the reception accorded to the Bible throughout Europe and to the rise in the publishing industry, popular literature and emphasis placed on literacy and rates of reading in that part of the world. The particular version of the Bible which is represented by the Gutenberg edition is the Vulgate, a Latin language version of the Bible which was heavily in use during the Middle Ages by religious figures in the Roman Catholic Church. The decision to print it was made by the printer Johannes Gutenberg, who created the book in Mainz, Germany, in the 1450s, from which there still survive twenty one complete copies which are still available for study by scholars of the Bible as well as the merely curious.