Vatican and Oxford University Publish Trove of Ancient Bibles Online
For all the history buffs out there.
A treasure trove of ancient bibles and rare Greek and Hebrew texts are being made available to the public through a website set up by the Vatican and Oxford University.
A priceless 1455 copy of the Gutenberg Bible — the first major book to be printed with movable type in the West and one of fewer than 50 surviving copies — went online Tuesday in the first stage of the project between the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) and Oxford’s Bodleian library.
The four-year project, funded by the Polonsky Foundation, will eventually create an online archive of 1.5 million pages, the Vatican said in a statement.
One third of the fragile manuscripts will come from the Bodleian, which is one of Europe’s oldest libraries, and the other two-thirds from the Holy See’s collection.
The website, http://bav.bodeian.ox.ac.uk, includes video presentations by Vatican archivist Archbishop Jean-Louis Brugues and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby.
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