The Book: A History of the Bible [Paperback]

First things first, the very title of this book may generate unfulfilled expectations.

Here is the author's statement of what this book is about: "This is the history of the Bible as a book. It is the story of a literary artifact. This is not an account of the writing of the Bible, or of the events in the ancient Near East and in Palestine which are described in the text of the Bible itself. The title, which has evolved several times during the writing of the text, is The Book, a History of the Bible, but it could as well be The Bible, a History of the Book...." [Page viii; italics omitted by reason of Amazon's technological limitations.] This book, then, is concerned with a series of tangible artifacts, words reproduced on various media and known collectively as Bibles.

The author is identified as "the Fellow Librarian of Corpus Christie College, Cambridge." For 25 years, we are told, "he was responsible for all sales of medieval and illuminated manuscripts at Sotheby's in London." He has a doctorate from Oxford University. He is a Fellow of the Society or Antiquaries. His previous publications are a book on Bible texts and two on manuscript illumination.

Mr. de Hamel is a manuscript man and a bibliophile. That is plain enough to see. What his religious beliefs, if any, might be, I haven't a clue, for he takes pains never to explain them. Perhaps the closest he comes to revealing himself is in an offhand remark toward the end of the book to the effect that in spite of centuries of diatribes, vitriol, finger pointing, and viewing with alarm, the competing texts of the Catholic and Protestant translations of the Bible are remarkably similar in meaning.

The contents of "The Book" are nicely summarized by the headings on its contents page:
Introduction
1. Latin Bibles from Jerome to Charlemagne
2. The Bible in Hebrew and Greek
3. Giant Bibles of the Early Middle Ages
4. Commentaries on the Bible
5. Portable Bibles of the Thirteenth century
6. Bible Picture Books
7. English Wycliffite Bibles
8. The Gutenberg Bible
9. Bibles of the Protestant Reformation
10. The English and American Bible Industry
11. Missionary Bibles
12. The Modern Search for Origins
Bibliography
Index of Manuscripts
General Index
Photographic Acknowledgments

As can readily be seen, even a book with 329 large pages of text and illustrations can provide only a very broad overview of a subject that consists of innumerable examples scattered over thousands of miles of space and more than two millennia of time.

As it happens, the author comes down from the mountaintop only once, in Chapter 8. There, he takes out the microscope of scholarly research to examine the astonishing Gutenberg Bible. And it is quite remarkable, to me at least, just how much scholars have gleaned from intense examination and close analysis of that book. By a series of convincing arguments, we deduce what niche in the market Gutenberg aimed to fill. We read an account of his marketing strategy from no less a personage than a future Pope. We examine his printing procedures, involving four separate compositors (and maybe four presses). We determine the date of his printing (sample pages ready to show to potential buyers in February 1455; a complete copy bound on August 24, 1456.) We take note of the increase in his print run mid-way through, probably owing to unexpectedly high sales. And we calculate the probable size of this first edition of all printed first editions: about 140 copies on paper and 40 on parchment.

An earlier Amazon US reviewer has written of "a slightly dry text." That is true enough, but I think that Mr. de Hamel has provided us with about as sprightly a text as we could hope from any serious treatment of his subject. That aside, there can be no dispute about the many illustrations. They are beautiful, with pride of place going to a wonderful, two-page spread devoted to a Gutenberg Bible flung open and displaying all its typographic glory. With, I think, the single exception of a still from Cecil B. DeMille's "The Ten Commandments," all the illustrations are in full color, even those reproducing monochrome images and texts.

For all the things I have mentioned so far, I would be happy to assign a full five stars to this book. However, there is another consideration. This is a book about manuscripts and printed books, some of them of magnificent quality and spectacular beauty. This book, this tangible object of the printer's and bookbinder's craft, does not measure up to its subject.

The binding of the hardbound edition is typical of the cheesy stuff dumped into the market these days: far from robust, almost flimsy; devoid even of cloth, simply paper pressed into boards. The paper within the book is smoothly coated, very white stock. It is as well-suited for photographic reproduction of images as it is terrible for displaying text. This is a picture book, you see, and the text is no more than a vehicle for the display of imagery.

Printing was accomplished by some sort of offset process. Shiny ink lies absolutely flat on the surface of the shiny pages. While reading the book, one is often obliged to shift it around in order to avoid unpleasant reflected glare.

The book is a large, squarish quarto. Its text runs 42 lines per page, just as in the Gutenberg Bible, something not likely to be a mere coincidence. This forces a comparison with that two-page spread I've already mentioned. Against such competition, this book appears very feeble indeed. The Gutenberg--as well as many of the illustrated manuscripts and printed books--lies symmetrically on its two pages, providing a serene balance of text against margins and dark printed letters against warm, creamy paper. This book has its single, wide printed column arranged asymmetrically, so that each page has a wide left-hand margin for notes and a narrow right margin. The paper is too white for extended reading comfort. The printed columns are too wide to take in with a single glance, requiring a reader to be shift gaze along each line. (The old scribes and the earliest printers knew better than to make that mistake.)

The typeface is quite unsuitable for such a monumental work. It is some transitional serif font that I do not recognize, quite similar to the Times New Roman so familiar to users of computers, but with slightly wider separation between letters, thinner vertical strokes and idiosyncratic designs for the lower case "k" and the "6." Considering the size of the pages and the wide spacing between the lines, the font could and should have been two or even four points greater in size. Considering the subject, it should have been a darker, more decorative, old-style font, perhaps Garamond or Goudy.

The book was printed in China with the English author's text generally edited to American standards and spellings. The printed text is set with ragged line endings on the right-hand side. I'd be willing to bet that it was composed on a computer with a minimum of adjustments from a human hand or eye. The ragged ends are far more mechanical and irregular than any manuscripts of the medieval scribes.

For a book about the most intensively proofread book in the last two millennia, there are an annoying number of typographical errors. Some of them are the sort of thing characteristic of computer spell checks, such as an inability to pick up "that" when "than" is intended or vice versa. Others are just plain slovenly, "Boywer" for "Bowyer."

Finally, there is the matter of the page numbering. The Introduction begins on the unnumbered page vi. It continues to page xi. Chapter I begins overleaf on an unnumbered page that is immediately followed by an unnumbered full-page illustration. The text continues overleaf on what is finally identified as page "14." Now, THAT is bush league book making!

Since this otherwise admirable book falls (as an artifact) well short of the standards of the very subject with which it deals, I reduce my rating to four stars.

Pleasingly non-theological account of the development of the bible (and therefore books and publishing in general). My only criticisms are the over-long analysis of obscure middle ages manuscripts and the fact it kicks off with St Jerome in the late 4th century. I would have liked a bit more on the origins of the books themselves, although to be fair the final chapter does touch on this. Most interesting and readable, even for atheists.

Partly a history of the art-form that is the biblical manuscript, this is also a well-told history of the development of the Bible's influence around the world as a cultural artefact. Coffee-table book sized, and wonderfully illustrated throughout, it's also a highly readable work by an expert in the field. De Hamel conveys both fascinating detail and something of the broad sweep of intellectual fashions that have shaped how we view the Bible and, latterly, have informed our search for its textual origins. Highly engaging.