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Geneva Bible (1560)

The Geneva Bible was the first lay study Bible, written in the vernacular, hand-sized, portable, affordable, and designed with cross-references and explanatory notes for self-study. It was the Bible of Shakespeare, of the Puritans, of settlers in the colonies of New England, and of Scotland. The popularity of the Geneva Bible is evident in the way its verse divisions have endured to this day.

The Printing Revolution

The first thing one notices about the Geneva Bible is the small size: it fits in your hand. Second, it’s written not in Latin, but in English. Its design is both portable and accessible for the lay reader.

The title page indicates that it is translated not from Latin but from the original languages, reflecting up-to-date scholarship, with “most profitable annotations upon all the hard places.”

Contrast the readable typeface of this Bible to the gothic fonts of the other Bibles. Its clear, readable type appealed to lay readers. In contrast to large altar Bibles like Gutenberg’s or Koberger’s, the small typeface made the Geneva Bible portable and affordable. The Geneva Bible was made not to sit on an altar, but to be taken in hand and read, and carried to church and to the pub.

On a typical page one might notice introductory comments at the beginning of any biblical book. The text is broken up by numbered verses. These are the first verse divisions to appear in an English Bible. The popularity of the Geneva Bible is reflected in the fact that its verse divisions endure; they’re the ones used today.

Marginal explanations on all the “hard places” didn’t hesitate to promote the theology of the Protestant Reformation.

The verse divisions and cross-references encouraged a profound change in the act of reading. Readers began to pay less attention to the art of storytelling, reading from a single unbroken text, and to place more emphasis on comparing and contrasting short passages from diverse contexts, moving back and forth between different chapters and verses at will.

Across Europe, vernacular publications energized emerging nationalist and religious movements. The Protestant Reformation, like the “Scientific Revolution,” would hardly be conceivable apart from printing. Many therefore suggest that the printing press then caused greater cultural changes in Europe than the computer has yet wrought in ours, until we see political transformation on a super-continental or global scale equivalent to the Reformation.

For all these reasons, the Geneva Bible represents the subversive potential of the Printing Revolution. Lay study of the Geneva Bible, often in small groups at local pubs, helps explain why English translations of the Bible vexed Henry VIII. The king lamented that ordinary peasants, instead of accepting what they were taught by bishops, now disputed, rhymed, sang and jangled the scripture in every alehouse and tavern across the land.

Biblical Interpretation

Employing the principle of accommodation, the Reformer Jean Calvin elsewhere commented on Psalm 78:65, which depicts God as a drunken man: “The figure of a drunken man may seem somewhat harsh, but the propriety of using it will appear when we consider that it is employed in accommodation to the stupidity of the people. Had they been of a pure and clear understanding, God would not have transformed himself and assumed a character foreign to his own.”

Galileo, Dialogo sopra i Due Massimi Sistemi del Mondo (Florence, 1632)

This is Galileo’s witty and entertaining dialogue in defense of Copernicus. In the frontispiece, Aristotle and Ptolemy hold an Earth-centered armillary sphere (left). Copernicus holds a Sun-centered model of the universe (right). Just two systems appear in the Dialogo; Galileo nowhere mentions the Tychonic system then favored by most astronomers.

Galileo inserted statements about the hypothetical character of the work in the preface and conclusion. Nevertheless, the book as a whole was anything but even-handed, contrary to instructions issued to Galileo in 1616. Once published, Urban VIII gave orders for the Dialogo to be recalled and summoned Galileo to Rome for trial.

This copy is one of four first editions of Galileo held by OU which contain Galileo’s own handwriting.

– Salviati, named for a close friend of Galileo’s, defends the Copernican system with scientific brilliance and legendary wit. Master of both quantitative argument and experimental evidence, Salviati always seems ten steps ahead of anyone else. Never at a loss for words, Salviati clearly directs the flow of conversation.

– Sagredo, named after another friend of Galileo’s, represents an open-minded reader. As an inquisitive and bright student, he is not intimidated by Salviati, but comes up with insightful questions. Sagredo is the man in the middle; he desires neither to discard traditional authorities nor to embrace novelties unless there is compelling evidence.

– Simplicio, named after an ancient Greek commentator on Aristotle, ineptly defends the Earth-centered system. Simplicio frequently admits that he doesn’t understand an argument, and his requests for additional explanations provide comic relief along the way.

Galileo placed greatest emphasis in this book upon an argument for Copernicanism from the ebb and flow of the tides. This argument was physical in nature, based on causal explanation, rather than mathematical. It was an attempt to achieve a level of certainty which had proven elusive for mathematical methods alone. Unfortunately, the argument was not persuasive, then or now.

Most astronomers at the time were neither Ptolemaic nor Copernican, so Galileo displayed some chutzpah in rigging the debate as an exclusive choice between only two of the contemporary systems (see Cosmological Systems, Part 1).

One page displays a new sentence by Simplicio, handwritten in the margin, to go before a long paragraph by Salviati.  This sentence is included in the second edition.  Here it is written in Galileo’s own hand.

Galileo, “The Ancient and Modern Doctrine of Holy Fathers,” in Mathematical Collections (London, 1661), ed. Thomas Salusbury

This volume contains the first English translations of any of Galileo’s works, including Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief Systems of the World, the book for which he was put on trial. It also includes the most important documents related to Scripture and Copernicanism, including Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (shown here); similar essays by Kepler and Foscarini, a Carmelite monk; and an excerpt from Diego de Zuniga’s commentary on Job.

The volume is charred and blackened around the edges. Many copies perished in the Great Fire of London in 1665.

This volume contains the first English editions of: Galileo’s Dialogo; Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina; Kepler’s discussion of interpreting Scripture; Diego de Zuñiga’s Copernican commentary on Job; the Letter of Foscarini, and the hydraulics of Castelli.

Note on the provenance of this copy: The inside end-paper bears the name of “Thomas Wo” at Cambridge. A survey of all those in Alumni Cambridiensis to 1751 with surnames beginning with “Wo” reveals that Thomas was not a common Christian name and provides only one candidate, Thomas Worlich, who entered Jesus College in 1700, migrated to Trinity, and graduated MA in 1708.

Galileo, Lettera Madama Cristina di Lorena (Milan, 1967)

Galileo’s Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina provides a modern example of the book arts. The outer case opens to show a smaller case, the size of a miniature version published a century ago. The 1967 edition fits entirely within the circumference of a nickel. A magnifying glass to read it is included in the smaller case, along with one of the plates used to print it. This is no. 27 of 100 copies.

The larger gilt-morocco book-shaped case contains, bound within it, a 75-page preface by Giuseppe Cantamessa which discusses the process of printing.

Galileo, Nov-antiqua sanctissimorum patrum (Strassburg, 1636)

In response to gathering criticism, Galileo in 1615 wrote a reconciliation of Scripture and Copernicanism which circulated in manuscript as the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina. This is the first printed edition, which appeared in 1636.   Galileo cited Augustine throughout.  In theory, nothing would have prevented theologians at the time from accepting the Copernican system, had they rigorously followed their own explicitly formulated principles of interpreting Scripture.

Pope John Paul II used Galilean language to affirm similar hermeneutical principles in 1992. However, no theologian then or now was persuaded by the weakest and most provocative part of Galileo’s letter, where he argued that he could prove Copernicanism from scripture.

Isaac Newton, Observations on the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John (London, 1733)

For Newton, science and the Bible were not opposed, provided that one understood each correctly. In this study of the apocalyptic book of Daniel, Newton affirmed that God’s dominion in history is shown by fulfilled prophecy, and that God will soon put an end to idolatry and restore authentic monotheism.

“Blinded by the brilliance of the laws of motion, the laws of optics, the calculus, the concept of universal gravitation, the rigorous experimentation, the methodological success, we have seldom wondered whether the discovery of the laws of nature was all Newton had in mind. We have often missed the religious nature of his quest and taken the stunningly successful by-products for his primary goal. But Newton wished to look through nature to see God, and it was not false modesty when in old age he said he had been only like a boy at the seashore picking up now and again a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than usual while the great ocean of Truth lay all undiscovered before him…. Newton’s goal was a unified system of God and nature.” 

Betty Jo Dobbs, Janus Faces of Genius (1991)