Opening my favorite Bible, I trace my fingers across the front cover, gently holding the book in my hands. The goatskin leather binding is soft, “as smooth as butter,” I told Lori when I first purchased it.
With an understanding grin as if for one who can’t help themselves, she gently reminded me that I have multiple copies of the Bible occupying at least two bookshelves.
She’s right, no doubt. I have Bibles: multiple modern translations, and others in the original language, plus numerous study Bibles, and many I’ve kept across the years, for the occasion in which they were given, including my very first Bible, whose cover is a mural depiction, now faded, of the scene where the little children gathered around Jesus with his arm draped across one child. “Presented to David Whitlock, From: Mom and Dad, December 25, 1963,” is written in Dad’s hand on the presentation page.
I cherish a small New Testament that someone, likely at school or church, gave to my brother, Dougie, whose life was abruptly cut short not long after receiving that gift. “Dug Whitlock” is penned on the inside cover.
My valued collection includes my dad’s New Testament, the red leather cracked from use, dated 1961 —the Bible I recall him reading and taking to church.
My row of Bibles also features a red-covered Bible, dated December 25, 1966, a Christmas gift from my grandparents.
Then there’s one of Lori’s, “Lori Lei Wilburn, Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma, February 20, 1970,” with a heart, “Love and Peace,” sketched on the inside—a personal label, words of a child approaching teenage years.
I could go on, from the Bible my parents gave me my senior year in high school to the Bibles I received through college, graduate school, and beyond, each one with a personal story.
The Bibles themselves have sentimental value, but it’s the words inside, from Genesis to Revelation, that stick and stay in my soul, thereby holding a meaning that’s in a different category than that of any other book collection I have, not just in subject matter, but in the eternal reach of the words themselves.
No one should be surprised that I was awed as I walked through the “500 Years of the Bible in English” display, which Campbellsville University recently hosted. Here was an array of Bibles, much more extensive, with stories far more dramatic than any found in my personal Bible collection.
There was a time when both the church and the state forbade unauthorized translations of the Bible. I listened as the tour guide—a retired state prosecutor for the State of Kentucky, who has passionately pursued this Bible collection—told the stories of notable Bibles on display, including portions of the 1535 Coverdale Bible, and the 1551 Stephanus New Testament (the first Bible to include numbered verses) and an original 1611 King James Bible.
The tour included the story of William Tyndale, the Biblical scholar and linguist, who was the first to translate the Bible into English from the original languages of Hebrew and Greek. A man named Henry Phillips, in Judas-like fashion, betrayed Tyndale to authorities in England, eventually resulting in Tyndale’s death by strangulation. But Tyndale had managed to print the Bible in Cologne, Germany, and then had smuggled copies to England. There was no going back; others, like Tyndale, would risk their lives to print and distribute the Bible.
These brave souls were persecuted not for fashioning fine book covers, but for printing the words that themselves would do their work, possessing as they do, the power to change the world.
Looking at my shelf of Bibles, I whisper a prayer of thanks, not only for my own Bibles— the history of which brings pleasant memories —but also for the truth which still changes lives, just as it has for centuries.
And so, with a sense of fear and trembling, I open my goatskin leather Bible, tenderly find the passage printed on its delicate paper, and, reflecting on those who sacrificed so much for me to hold this book in my hands, I peer inside.
And let the words do their work.