Let's think a
little about what the book has gone through in years gone by.
This is interesting because the history of the book is the
history of the Enlightenment, the Reformation, the Pilgrims, and,
ultimately the colonizing of the Americas and the American
Revolution.
Broadly speaking, there was a time when books were hand-printed
on rare leather by monks. The only people who could read them
were priests, who got a regular eyeful of the really cool
cartoons the monks drew in the margins. The priests read the
books aloud, in Latin [LATIN BIBLE] (to a predominantly
non-Latin-speaking audience) in cathedrals, wreathed in pricey
incense that rose from censers swung by altar boys.
Then Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press. Martin
Luther turned that press into a revolution. [LUTHER BIBLE] He
printed Bibles in languages that non-priests could read, and
distributed them to normal people who got to read the word of God
all on their own. The rest, as they say, is history.
Here are some interesting things to note about the advent of the
printing press:
[CHART: LUTHER VERSUS THE MONKS]
* Luther Bibles lacked the manufacturing quality of the
illuminated Bibles. They were comparatively cheap and lacked the
typographical expressiveness that a really talented monk could
bring to bear when writing out the word of God
* Luther Bibles were utterly unsuited to the traditional use-case
for Bibles.
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