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LIBRARIES IN MEMORIAL BIBLE HOUSE, CANBERRA - page 2

A catalogue to this collection was published in 1967 to mark the 150th anniversary of the meeting under Governor Macquarie’s direction that began the Bible Society movement in Australia.  The introduction to the catalogue notes that there were at that time over 3000 volumes in the library, a third of them from Europe and the Near East; the rest are mainly from the Middle East and Asia, Africa and Oceania (including Australia), in that order, as well as some items from the Americas.  This collection has now expanded to over 5000 Bibles, New or Old Testaments, single books and other biblical materials in more than 700 languages, published over six centuries.  It contains both traditional translations and other items such as New Reader materials, particularly in Aboriginal languages and in some of the languages of Papua New Guinea.

The oldest volume in this collection is a Latin Bible printed in Basel by Johann Froben in 1495.  Other historic editions include a Tyndale New Testament from 1551, a fourth edition of a Greek New Testament published in 1545 with a preface by Philip Melanchthon, and a polyglot edition of 1602 in Hebrew, Greek, Latin and German.  Other European languages represented include Albanian (the library’s earliest edition was published in 1827), Basque (1871), Breton (1886), French (1565), Hungaro-Slovenian (1848), Romansch (1812) and Wend (1821), and several languages of the British Isles including Manx, Sussex and Braid Scots; there is also a volume in Pitman Shorthand.

One particular treasure is a second printing of the first edition of the 1611 "Authorised Version" in English [pictured]. Unlike many modern editions of this landmark volume, this and subsequent editions of the AV up until the late 18th or early 19th centuries included all the so-called "deuterocanonical" ("second rule") or "apocryphal" ("hidden") materials---the books and chapters which were found in the Greek text of the Septuagint, but not in the Hebrew or Aramaic parts of the Old Testament now extant.  

Among the more notable of our materials in the languages of Asia is the second volume of a Bengali Old Testament published in 1809 (one of our seven first editions published in Serampore by William Carey and his colleagues); we also have a first edition (1884) of the Gospel of Mark in Korean, translated by John Ross of the Presbyterian Mission at Mukden.  The collection is not limited to items from the 19th century and earlier.  It includes, for example, a special 1937 presentation copy of the Gospel of John in Sakata, a West African language which was the “thousandth tongue” in which the Scriptures had been published.

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