A Thumb Bible is a type of miniature book. A usually paraphrased or abridged version of the Bible, it is a devotional volume whose name refers to its size. Many thumb bibles were intended for children and were decorated with pictures. The first Thumb Bibles were published in the early seventeenth century, with several hundred different editions being printed in subsequent centuries.
The first known Thumb Bible was written by John Weever in verse form. Entitled An Agnus Dei, it appeared in London in 1601. It measured 3.3 by 2.7 cm (1.3 by 1.1 in) and contained 128 pages of six lines. In 1614, John Taylor published his Verbum Sempiternum, which also summarised the Bible in verse form. These were designed to provide instruction to children who were not old enough to read the Bible itself. The first Thumb Bible in prose was published in London in 1727, under the title Biblia or a Practical Summary of ye Old & New Testaments. This contained 300 pages and measured 3.6 by 2.4 cm (1.4 by 0.9 in).
In 1780 Elizabeth Newbery who specialised in books for children printed a thumb bible. The bible had 256 pages that abridged both the old and new testaments. [1]
The term 'Thumb Bible' was first coined by Longman and Co. of London in the mid-nineteenth century, when they used it on the title page of an edition in 1849. Thumb Bibles continued to be printed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Approximately 300 different editions survive. As well as being published in English, versions were printed in French, German and Dutch.
The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version, is an Early Modern English translation of the Christian Bible for the Church of England, which was commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, by sponsorship of King James VI and I. The 80 books of the King James Version include 39 books of the Old Testament, an intertestamental section containing 14 books of what most Protestants consider the Apocrypha, and the 27 books of the New Testament. Noted for its "majesty of style", the King James Version has been described as one of the most important books in English culture and a driving force in the shaping of the English-speaking world.
The New International Version (NIV) is a translation of the Bible in contemporary English. Published by Biblica, the complete NIV was released in 1978 with a minor revision in 1984 and a major revision in 2011. The NIV relies on recently published critical editions of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts.
The Vulgate, sometimes referred to as the Latin Vulgate, is a late-4th-century Latin translation of the Bible.
TheNew American Bible (NAB) is an English translation of the Bible first published in 1970. The 1986 Revised NAB is the basis of the revised Lectionary, and it is the only translation approved for use at Mass in the Latin Church Catholic dioceses of the United States and the Philippines, and the 1970 first edition is also an approved Bible translation by the Episcopal Church in the United States.
The Codex Amiatinus is considered the best-preserved manuscript of the Latin Vulgate version of the Christian Bible. It was produced around 700 in the northeast of England, at the Benedictine Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey in the Kingdom of Northumbria, now South Tyneside, and taken to Italy as a gift for Pope Gregory II in 716. It was one of three giant single-volume Bibles then made at Monkwearmouth–Jarrow, and is the earliest complete one-volume Latin Bible to survive, only the León palimpsest being older; and the oldest Bible where all the biblical canon present what would be their Vulgate texts.
The Reina–Valera is a Spanish translation of the Bible originally published in 1602 until United Bible Societies in 1909 revised the earlier translation produced in 1569 by Casiodoro de Reina.. This translation was known as the "Biblia del Oso" because the illustration on the title page showed a bear trying to reach a container of honeycombs hanging from a tree. Since that date, it has undergone various revisions notably those of 1602, 1862, 1909, 1960, 1977, 1995, and more recently in 2011.
The Christian Community Bible is a translation of the Christian Bible in the English language originally produced in the Philippines.
Novum Testamentum Graece is a critical edition of the New Testament in its original Koine Greek, forming the basis of most modern Bible translations and biblical criticism. It is also known as the Nestle–Aland edition after its most influential editors, Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland. The text, edited by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research, is currently in its 28th edition, abbreviated NA28.
The Biblia pauperum was a tradition of picture Bibles beginning probably with Ansgar, and a common printed block-book in the later Middle Ages to visualize the typological correspondences between the Old and New Testaments. Unlike a simple "illustrated Bible", where the pictures are subordinated to the text, these Bibles placed the illustration in the centre, with only a brief text or sometimes no text at all. Words spoken by the figures in the miniatures could be written on scrolls coming out of their mouths. To this extent one might see parallels with modern comics.
John Weever (1576–1632) was an English antiquary and poet. He is best known for his Epigrammes in the Oldest Cut, and Newest Fashion (1599), containing epigrams on Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and other poets of his day, and for his Ancient Funerall Monuments, the first full-length book to be dedicated to the topic of English church monuments and epitaphs, which was published in 1631, the year before his death.
Several Spanish translations of the Bible have been made since approximately 700 years ago.
The Codex Sangermanensis I, designated by g1 or 7, is a Latin manuscript, dated AD 822 of portions of the Old Testament and the New Testament. The text, written on vellum, is a version of the Latin. The manuscript contains the Vulgate Bible, on 191 leaves of which, in the New Testament, the Gospel of Matthew contain Old Latin readings. It contains Shepherd of Hermas.
Codex Marchalianus designated by siglum Q is a 6th-century Greek manuscript copy of the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible known as the Septuagint. The text was written on vellum in uncial letters. Palaeographically it has been assigned to the 6th century. Marginal annotations were later added to the copy of the Scripture text, the early ones being of importance for a study of the history of the Septuagint.
A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestant Christians. Such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament, for a total of 66 books. Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional books in a section known as the Apocrypha bringing the total to 80 books. This is often contrasted with the 73 books of the Catholic Bible, which includes seven deuterocanonical books as a part of the Old Testament. The division between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books is not accepted by all Protestants who simply view books as being canonical or not and therefore classify books found in the Deuterocanon, along with other books, as part of the Apocrypha. Sometimes the term "Protestant Bible" is simply used as a shorthand for a bible which contains only the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments.
The Sixtine Vulgate or Sistine Vulgate is the edition of the Vulgate—a 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible that was written largely by Jerome—which was published in 1590, prepared by a commission on the orders of Pope Sixtus V and edited by himself. It was the first edition of the Vulgate authorised by a pope. Its official recognition was short-lived; the edition was replaced in 1592 by the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate.
The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate or Clementine Vulgate is the edition promulgated in 1592 by Pope Clement VIII of the Vulgate—a 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible that was written largely by Jerome. It was the second edition of the Vulgate to be authorised by the Catholic Church, the first being the Sixtine Vulgate. The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate was used officially in the Catholic Church until 1979, when the Nova Vulgata was promulgated by Pope John Paul II.
The earliest Bible translations into Polish date to the 13th century. The first full ones were completed in the 16th.
The Gustav II Adolf Bible was published in 1618 during Gustav II Adolf's reign and was a revised version of Gustav Vasa Bible. One of the aims of the Gustav II Adolf Bible was to make the text more accessible to the reader and to add verse numbers.
Elizabeth Newbery born Elizabeth Bryant was a British bookseller and publisher, notably of children's book at the "corner of St Paul's churchyard" in London.
