Saturday, January 3, 2009

The best family Bible EVER!


When I got to seminary, I started looking around for a family Bible for me and Melisa. Thankfully, I stumbled upon this one from Thunder Bay Press, published in 2000. I had misplaced it since we moved from Fort Worth and just found it in the garage the other day while looking for something else. It is by far the best large family Bible I have ever seen. The book is sturdy, leather-bound, with gold gilt edges and thick paper. About the only drawbacks are that it is not a red-letter edition and there is no Apocrypha. Unfortunately, they are out of print (heaven only knows why!), but you can still find a few copies around, plus some through Amazon. It is definitely worth the price. Here is the description from the inside, plus photos.

This Illuminated Family Edition of the Holy Bible combines the great beauty of Renaissance art and bookmaking with the text of the Bible considered by many to be the finest prose in the English language, that of the King James Version. The design for this edition is based on one of the masterpieces of fifteenth-century art and bookmaking, the incomparable two-volume Latin Vulgate Bible commissioned by Federigo di Montefeltro, duke of Urbino (1422-1482). This rare treasure was completed by the Florentine book dealer Vespasiano da Bisticci in 1478, its text having taken the scribe Ugo Comminelli of Mezieres four years to compose by hand. The numerous illustrations that grace the parchment of the Urbino Bible were handpainted by such masters as Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio, among others.

This volume contains all of the major illustrations in the Urbino Bible and features many other artisic details from that book, such as decorative borders, column dividers, and illuminated and historiated initial capitals. In designing this edition of the Holy Bible, we chose the Urbino Bible and other books from the Renaissance for the shear beauty of this period's artwork and it's appeal to contemporary aesthetics. All of the illustrations in this volume have been electronically scanned and removed digitally from their original backgrounds to maintain the highest quality and consistency of design. The extraordinary beauty of the illustrations and text, together with an extensive section reserved for the keeping of family records, make this Bible an heirloom worthy of being passed to generation to generation.














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