Digitized Gutenberg Bible Available

Prince_Ali writes "A digital copy of the Gutenburg Bible, the first major Western book printed from movable type, has been made available by The University of Texas, available through the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center. The Ransom Center's copy of the Bible is claimed to be the finest in the world, and is now freely available to anyone who would like to examine it. More information can be found via this CNN.com article."

Comments

Is Gutenberg that nice?

[Creepy Crawler]

Of what I heard, Gutenberg made the movable type so he could make books cheaper. But he also made the "Publishers' Guild" and wreaked what he could have made known to the public.

He put back knowledge for 100 years by allowing of such a guild that muchg power.

Actually

[Raul654]

The Library of Congress (Jefferson Building, IIRC) has a copy on display. (Yep, that's me). Closeup available here

Re:Christianity and the Gutenberg Bible

[Skyshadow]

To begin with it's all in Latin.

Personally, I think it was a mistake to translate the gospels from Aramaic, too.

Realistically, this Bible is less useful for the study of modern theology than it is other things -- art, the history of print and bookbinding, the evolution of the scriptures, etc. I mean, look at the cover of the thing -- it's a stunning piece of work.

If you are truly serious about studying the Bible as a living book, and not as a museum piece, then pick up a New King James or NIV version.

IMO, the King James versions still suffer from their poisioned past. The NIV makes a good effort, but I disagree with some of the interpretations they make (although I do agree with the need to draw those interpretations).

The key to really understanding the Bible is to understand its sources and inspiration, examining the roots of the mythology being presented and the way in which things would have been intended. This isn't easy to do, but IMO is worthy of at least ameature study.

Re:Props to UT

[Shamashmuddamiq]

...tell me, have you ever been anywhere else? UT is good, but compared to dozens of other great sci/eng schools around the nation, it's just another engineering school. I myself have attended and taught at several engineering universities that had programs rated higher than UT's (though I don't place too much import on the ratings), and although I never strictly attended UT Austin, I lived in Austin for a year and spent quite a bit of time at the university.

It's a good thing to have school pride, but don't let it run away with you. UT Austin gets the recognition it deserves (e.g., it's rated highly, etc.). However, the tendency of Texans to give themselves too much credit for stuff like this is all too common, and is a turn-off to the rest of the nation and to those who come to visit. Listing a couple of obscure accomplishments and mentioning that it's "waaay underrated" is only going to invite deign laughter from those in positions similar to mine.

Just letting you know...you may mod me down now.

just ignore it

[Trepidity]

You can probably safely ignore it. If it's simply an accurate scan of the pages, then it is simply a reproduction of someone else's work (namely, Gutenberg's), not an independent creative work, and as such is only subject to Gutenberg's copyright, not an independent copyright. As the original copyright has obviously long expired, you can safely reproduce the work.

A similar principle applies to ignoring claims of copyright on digitized paintings painted before 1923 -- if it's simply an accurate copy of the painting, only the original (expired) copyright is in effect.