Something Shiny

For most of my life, I've owned NIV translations of the Bible. I never really thought about it, it was just the most commonly used version in modern churches and therefore the most convenient. Like most people, I also assumed that the King James Version was the "original" English Bible. Then, a few years ago, I discovered that wasn't the case at all! Prior to the KJV was the Bible of the Protestant Reformation and the Pilgrims - the Geneva Bible. My curiousity was instantly piqued, but I was due to be disappointed. Completely out of print and available only in unwieldy, hard-to-read and prohibitively expensive copies of the original. So I tucked the idea away in my head and moved on.

Fast forward to this year. As I perused a Christian book catalog, I flipped randomly through the pages of Bibles and was astonished to find a fresh printing of the 1560 Geneva Bible!

Being a new printing, it was in the same cost range as regular Bibles, and I splurged. It is beautiful!

Scrolly letters like you see in really old documents ("s" and "f" especially), the ornate first letters like fairy tale collections, and the ancient versions of words and names vastly changed by interpretation to NIV verbiage.

Reading through this will be definitely be a slow process, but I am fascinated and enthralled. What will I learn? What will challenge me, or change how I look at verses I thought I knew? The original commentary and notes of the brilliant minds who first translated and compiled this edition from the original languages are printed in the margins. How humbling is it to know that these words are the same ones that inspired and encouraged the brave souls who founded our great nation?

Maybe that all sounds overly dramatic, but I am excited. So I share my excitement with you, and hope that in this busy, cluttered holiday season you find a few moments of peace and quiet with something unique to refresh and excite you. -Hugs-