Stepped in to borders books the other day to pick up a book on Adobe's "Audition" software for sound recording, and found a book on the clearance rack for $9 dollars, a paperback version of the Pennyroyal Caxton Edition of the Bible! I first heard of this Bible back in early December when I went into Manhattan to pick up our visas for India. We had a few hours to wait till we could pick them up, so on a whim I called the American Bible Society offices which are located on 61st and Broadway right off Columbus Circle, to see if we could get a tour of their rare books collection, and low and behold they said yes! Pastor Nash and myself were given a personal tour of the second largest historic Bible collection in the world, second only to the collection held at Cambridge. And one of the Bibles that caught my was the Pennyroyal Caxton, illustrated and designed by the artist Berry Moser. This was a recent publication, the newest in their collection of rare Bibles, and the price tag of the copy they showed us was a $30,000 edition one of fifty copies, on handmade paper with original drawings a book that took over four years to create, done in the same tradition of those who created the illuminated Bible's in the middle ages, with true craftsmanship and artistry. And what artistry there is in Moser's work. Catharine Madsen described it in her article in Crosscurents entitled A Terrible Beauty by saying:"No artist since Rembrandt has handled biblical subjects with such intimate confidence and such trust in the unbeautified human face; no illustrated Bible has so rooted itself in the modern sensibility." And I would whole heartedly agree. I've often hoped for an illustrated bible to share with my children, that would awaken their imagination to the wonders of the text, and away from the cheap plasticization of disney like sensibilities. Something that will stir their souls, even haunt them, anything but trivialize. Moser has taken the risk and through his illustration made the Bible both utterly strange and more strangely familiar. And I found my large paperback (10x17in) on clearance for $9.00 bucks! Something very disturbing about that which I wont get into now. You can purchase a Trade Edition of the Caxton edition for $250.(first edition) or a second edition Trade for $120 here or individual prints. or keep your eyes on the clearance racks, you never know what you'll find.
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