Bibles
Prayer
Books & Choir Books
Histories
Paper
& Parchment
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May
29 - June 27, 2004
Curated
by Paul Dyck (Assistant Professor, English, Canadian Mennonite University)
and Dietrich Bartel (Associate Professor, Music, Canadian Mennonite
University) with Shelley Sweeney (Head, Archives & Special Collections,
University of Manitoba)
Introduction
"Thy
word is a lantern unto my feet, and a light unto my path"
(Ps 119:105, Coverdale's Translation)
From its beginnings
as an offshoot of Judaism, Christianity has been a profoundly text-centered
movement. And from the first centuries of Christianity, there has been
a strong connection between the sacred text and the technology of the
book, or as its early form is known, the codex.
Jewish sacred texts
have traditionally been (and still are) communicated through and carried
by the technology of the scroll. Christianity is deeply indebted to both
these Jewish texts and to the way they were transmitted. The first Christians,
like their Jewish counterparts, read the scriptures as a collection of
scrolls, and the individual "books" of the Christian New Testament
most likely started off as scrolls. The word "Bible" itself
refers to the scroll. It comes from the Greek translation of Daniel 9:2,
in which Daniel looks "in the books," or en tois bibliois,
literally meaning 'the scrolls.' Bible, then, ultimately refers
back to a collection of scrolls.
When you pick up a
Bible, you are holding something that could not physically have existed
prior to the invention of the codex and of paper (or parchment). That
is, you are holding all of the Jewish and Christian canonical texts bound
into one physical object. A single scroll could hold, at maximum, one
of the longer New Testament books, such as Matthew. The technology of
the codex allows a relatively vast amount of text to be gathered together,
and the Bible probably contributed centrally to the acceptance of the
codex as a central technology of Western culture.
We might think of
the codex as involving two related inventions. The first of these is the
page, a piece of paper, papyrus, or parchment, and consequently the text
that is on it, as a relatively free-standing instance of reading material.
The second is the gathering; that is, the collecting of sheets of paper
into groups (such as a modern magazine does) which are then bound together
to make a codex. These together make it possible to quickly access various
parts of a long text. If you have ever used a concordance at the end of
a Bible (or the index of any book), you will likely have kept one finger
in an opening at the back of the book while you flipped through and found
other texts on other pages. When you have done so, you have participated
in one of the most striking and influential aspects of the technology
of the codex: its encouragement of multiple accessing and searching of
great amounts of text.
The books in this
exhibit illustrate the complex interaction between Christianity and the
book. The book is far more than a carrier of sacred text. Its strengths
encourage particular ways of reading, such as cross-referencing. At the
same time, particular needs of Christianity at particular times have greatly
effected the kinds of books Christians have produced. We have so far been
talking about the book as a technology, but we must as well talk about
it as an art. These books reflect an intense concern for beauty, whether
in the illuminations and letter forms of the manuscripts, or in the illustrations
and type design of the printed books. Not as readily apparent to untrained
eye is the craft that has gone into the preparation of parchment and paper,
the layout of text and illustration on the page, and the binding of the
gatherings into covers, themselves often considerable artistic achievements.
We might even think of each page (or opening of two facing pages) as a
textual and artistic event, an instance of human communication that appeals
to both discursive and sensory human needs. When you look at an illuminated
or illustrated page, think about how you are engaged in two activities:
reading and viewing. Each involves physical, mental, and emotional actions.
Your responses to the meaning of the text and to the appearance of the
page play off of each other, each informing the other in a kind of conversation
between word and image.
We tend to assume
that technologies progress forward smoothly with new ones replacing old
ones. A closer look, though, reveals that older technologies are not so
much replaced by new ones as complicated by them. Going back to the beginning
of the history of writing itself, one will note that the spoken word did
not become obsolete once writing was invented (and there still is knowledge
that circulates primarily orally rather than in writing: consider jokes
for instance). Likewise, using one's hand to write (manu + script)
still happens today, though generally not as a means of duplication. In
the centuries following the invention of the printing press, manuscripts
continued to be the preferred medium for certain kinds of texts and certain
kinds of audiences. Whereas the Bible was mass-produced by both reformers
and governments for a broad audience, a choir book would only be wanted
or needed in particular instances. Everyone, if you agree with Wycliffe
or Tyndale, should have access to a Bible; few, however, will need to
lead a choir. A book as big as the Spanish Antiphonary (Loewen 5) and
designed for such a particular use may well have been much more economical
to produce as a manuscript than as print.
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