The Bible Triggered Two Communications Revolutions: The Codex and the Printing Press

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For Christians, the Bible is a book inspired by God. But it has been received by different cultures and language groups in (sometimes) radically different ways. Following Jesus’s departing instruction to go out into the world, the Bible has been a book in motion from its very beginnings, and every community it has encountered has read, heard, and seen the Bible through its own language and culture. It was spread by merchants, missionaries, and colonizers Asia, Africa, and to the Americas. Local communities adapted the "alien" book through a blend of cultural integration and reinterpretation. For instance, 20th-century Chinese theologians described similarities between Confucianism and biblical texts, while Native Americans placed themselves directly into biblical narratives—a group of 18th-century Mohican converts renamed themselves Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, proclaiming themselves "patriarchs of a new nation of believers."

Today’s guest is Bruce Gordon, author of “The Bible: A Global History.” We discuss the story of the Bible’s journey around the globe and across more than two thousand years, showing how it has shaped and been shaped by changing beliefs and believers’ different needs. The people who received it interpreted it in radically different ways, from desert monasteries and Chinese house churches, Byzantine cathedrals and Guatemalan villages.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Scott here with another episode of the History Unplugged Podcast.
0:08.0	Nobook has been printed and reprinted more than the Bible.
0:11.8	Over the last 2,000 years, billions of copies have been produced in thousands of different
0:15.6	languages.
0:16.6	And when it went to different places, it also triggered a communications revolution.
0:20.5	In the early centuries of its production, it was in a codex or a large book instead of sheets of paper or a scroll
0:26.4	Meaning that monks could scribble in the margins and communicate with the text and part of why the printing revolution was so successful is because a Bible became much cheaper,
0:34.0	and it was no longer only owned by monasteries or a few wealthy churches, but could move into private households.
0:39.6	One aspect of the Bible that hasn't been considered is that when it moved into a new community, it was received differently. The
0:45.0	aspect of the Bible that hasn't been considered is that when it moves into a new community,
0:44.0	it was received differently through that community's language and culture.
0:47.0	The Puritans would focus on Moses
0:50.0	when they arrived in the new world,
0:51.0	being inspired by the story of a group of people going into a new land to establish a new nation.
0:56.7	Native Americans centered themselves in biblical stories, such as a group of 18th century Mohican converts,
1:01.8	who renamed themselves Abraham Isaac and Jacob
1:04.1	declaring themselves patriarchs of a new nation of believers for 20th century Africans who
1:08.6	rejected what they call the God of the missionaries but revered Christ. To talk
1:12.4	about the multifaceted cultural influence of the Bible
1:15.2	across the last 2,000 years, we're joined by Bruce Gordon, Yale Divinity School Professor,
1:20.0	and author of The Bible, a global history.
1:22.6	Hope you enjoyed this discussion.
	...

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