From Papyrus to King James: The Transmission of the English Bible is the online companion to a Special Collections exhibit at the University of Michigan’s Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library. It includes papyrus fragments (from circa ad 200) documenting early versions of Biblical texts, as well as examples of English translations of the Bible from the first editions in the 1530s to the King James Bible in the early seventeenth century. Many of the materials come from Michigan’s extensive Papyrus Collection which sponsors the Web‐based component of the exhibit. The site is a good introduction to the history of the Bible, as well as the history of the book. Although it is not an extensive collection of images, it can provide students a thumbnail sketch of the evolution from papyrus to parchment to the printed page.
The introductory screens give a brief overview of the transmission of the Bible from the Roman era to the Gutenberg era. Those expecting a detailed descriptive bibliographic analysis of the texts will find this section somewhat perfunctory; but it does give the novice enough information to understand the changing religious contexts and different contexts of information technology.
The viewer can then browse the online display cases, seven JPEG images of the manuscripts and pages from the books, with accompanying descriptive glosses arranged in chronological order. The first two cases consist of a papyrus certificate from the third century ad and a leaf from a papyrus codex which contains the earliest known copy of the Epistles of St Paul. The third case displays a Byzantine illuminated manuscript on vellum and the fourth contains a page from the Tyndale New Testament (1536). The last three cases show the texts and illustrations from the Coverdale Bible (1535), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Great Bible (1541), and the King James (1611). The final page in the exhibit is an advertisement for a CD‐ROM, Evolution of the English Bible, based on the exhibit. The CD version contains more images and additional commentary on the history of the Bible in manuscript and print.
The online exhibit unfortunately does not have a link back to the University of Michigan’s Papyrus Collection home page <http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/>. The Papyrus Collection pages include additional digitized images of papyrus fragments from 1000 bc to ad 800 and detailed bibliographies and discussions of papyrology (along with a link to the other online exhibit the collection is sponsoring on tracts of magic in late antiquity). These pages give a more extensive survey of manuscript production from antiquity to the Middle Ages and can supplement the historical component of the Bible exhibit. From Papyrus to King James is nevertheless a valuable resource for lower‐level students in religious studies and for those seeking a basic online guide to the history of scribal and print cultures.
