Public Domain Image: Vision des heiligen Clemens (1730-1735), title translated as ‘Vision of St. Clement’, oil on canvas painting by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770), dimensions 69 cm x 55 cm, located at the National Gallery, Trafalgar Square, London.
PD Image 1: The Chair of Saint Peter (bottom center), designed and executed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome.
PD Image 2: The Cathedra Petri and the interiors of Peter's Basilica, Rome
The Chair of Saint Peter (Cathedra Petri in Latin) is a wooden chair conserved in St. Peter's Basilica, Rome, enclosed in a gilt bronze casing designed and executed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1647-53 AD. The cathedra in Saint Peter's Basilica was once used by the popes, and hence often said to have been used by Saint Peter himself, but it was a gift from Charles the Bald to the Pope in 875 AD.
PD Photo: Binding of the copy of the Gutenberg Bible located at the University of Texas at Austin
PD Photo: First page of the first volume of the Gutenberg Bible: The Epistle of St. Jerome from the University of Texas, Austin. The page has 40 lines.
PD Photo: Another Gutenberg Bible with open pages
PD Photo: Another page of the Gutenberg Bible, showing page decoration/ illustration
The Gutenberg Bible, also known as the 42-line Bible, the Mazarin Bible or the B42, was the first major book printed with a movable type printing press. It is an edition of the Vulgate, printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany, in 1455. Gutenberg invented the printing press and he was the first European to print with the movable type.
Unlike many people believe, the Bible was not Gutenberg's first printing work, as his printing press was in operation by 1450, and a German poem had been printed, possibly the first item to be printed, followed by other texts. For the Bible project, Gutenberg borrowed 800 guilders from a moneylender, and work for printing the Bible commenced in 1452. In 1455 Gutenberg published 180 copies of the 42-line Bible, 135 on paper and 45 on vellum. Only 47 or 48 copies of the 42-line Bibles are known to exist now, and of these only 21 are complete.
Many Gutenberg Bibles have been rebound over the years, and now only 9 copies retain the fifteenth-century bindings. A complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible has 1,272 pages, with a folio size of 307 mm x 445 mm. The handmade paper used by Gutenberg was of fine quality and was imported from Italy.
Gutenberg had to develop a new oil-based ink so that it would stick better to the metal types. His ink was based on carbon with high metallic contents, including copper, lead and titanium.
The Gutenberg Bible seems to have been sold out immediately on printing, to buyers as far as England. It is assumed that most Gutenberg Bibles were sold to monasteries, universities and wealthy individuals, as people of ordinary incomes were unable to afford them, though Gutenberg Bibles were significantly cheaper than manuscript Bibles.
The institutions which display Gutenberg Bibles to the public include the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, the British Library and the Library of Congress, USA. Only a few copies are owned by religious institutions, with most copies owned by universities and other scholarly institutions. The first Gutenberg Bible reached North America in 1847, and it is now in the New York Public Library.
In the 1920s a New York book dealer, Gabriel Wells, bought a damaged copy of the Gutenberg Bible, dismantled it and sold sections and leaves to collectors and libraries. These leaves, according to reports, now sell for $20,000 to $100,000, depending upon their condition.
The only copy held in a non-western country is the first volume of a Gutenberg Bible (Hubay 45) at Keio University, located in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. The copy was originally purchased on 22 October 1987 by Eiichi Kobayashi, a director at the Maruzen Company, for $5.4 million. Currently, the price of a complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible is estimated at $25-35 million.
Printing of the Gutenberg Bible played an important role in the development of the Renaissance and Reformation movements and the Scientific Revolution and laid the foundation for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the common masses.
PD Photo: a handwritten Latin Bible on display in Malmesbury Abbey, Wiltshire, England
The Latin handwritten Bible (seen above) was transcribed in Belgium in 1407 for reading aloud in a monastery. The original texts of the Tanakh were mostly in Hebrew and some portions were in Aramaic. There are several different ancient versions of the Tanakh in Hebrew, and the traditional Jewish version is based on the version known as Aleppo Codex.
The primary biblical text for early Christians was the Septuagint (LXX), and subsequently translations of the Hebrew Bible were made into several other languages, including Latin. The Latin translations were the most important for the Church in the West, while the Greek-speaking East continued to use the Septuagint translations of the Old Testament and had no need to translate the New Testament.
In AD 382, Pope Damasus I assembled the first list of books of the Bible at the Council of Rome, and commissioned Saint Jerome to produce a reliable text by translating the original Greek and Hebrew texts into Latin, which became known as the Latin Vulgate Bible, which was declared by the Church, in 1546 at the Council of Trent, as the only authentic and official Bible in the Latin Rite.
Since the Protestant Reformation, the Bible has been translated in to many more languages, and the Bible has a large number of English language translations.
Photo: St. Theresa School in Coral Gables, Florida. It is one of over 125,000 Catholic grade schools all over the world offering Catholic religious education to both private and public school students.
During the Passover festival Jesus Christ came with his followers to Jerusalem where a large crowd came to meet him. Jesus cleansed the Herod's Temple by overturning the tables of the moneychangers who set up shop there. Following this, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal, the last meal Jesus shared with his disciples before his death. It is an event that was later known as The Last Supper, in which he prophesied that he would be betrayed by one of his disciples and he would then be executed. In this ritual supper, Jesus took bread and wine in hand saying, ‘This is my body which is given for you’ and ‘this cup which is poured out for you is the New Covenant in my blood’, and instructed them to ‘do this in remembrance of me’ (Luke 22:7-20).
In The Last Supper, Jesus washes his disciples' feet and gives his farewell discourses, discussing the persecution of his followers, the coming of the Holy Spirit, etc. He says a long final prayer with his disciples before heading to a garden where he knows Judas will show up.
According to the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus institutes a new covenant of his blood and body, the wine and bread. Some Christians describe this as the ‘Institution of the Eucharist’. Others view the Last Supper as later derived from first century Eucharistic practice.
The vessel which was used to serve the wine is sometimes called the Holy Chalice, and has been one of the supposed subjects of Holy Grail literature in Christian mythology. Also The Last Supper has been the subject of many literary works and paintings, of which the painting, The Last Supper, by Leonardo da Vinci is perhaps the best known.
Image: Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple (1626), oil painting on oak panel by Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669), dimensions 43.1 cm x 32 cm, currently located at Pushkin Museum, Moscow.
The incident of ‘Cleansing of the Temple’ occurs in all four Gospels in the New Testament. It occurs near the end of the Synoptic Gospels (Mark 11:15-19, 11:27-33; Matthew 21:12-17, 21:23-27; Luke 19:45-48, 20:1-8; and John 2:13-16). Jesus visited the Temple in Jerusalem, Herod's Temple, where the courtyard was filled with livestock and the tables of the moneychangers, who changed the Greek and Roman money for Jewish and Tyrian money, which were the only coinage used in Temple ceremonies. Creating a whip from some cords, ‘he drove them all out of the temple, with the sheep and the oxen, and poured out the changers' money and overturned the tables. But he said to those who sold doves, ‘Get these out of here! Do not make My Father's house a house of merchandise!’ (John 2:13-16).
“And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves” - Matthew 21:12-13
Image: John the Baptist baptizing Christ (1723), painting by Italian painter Francesco Trevisani (1656-1746)
According to Gospels the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist marked the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. Jesus came to the Jordan River where John the Baptist had been preaching and baptizing people. After Jesus was baptized, Mark states, “Jesus saw the heavens parting and the Spirit descending upon Him like a dove. Then a voice came from heaven saying, ‘You are My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased’” (Mk. 1:10-11).
Matthew describes John as initially hesitant to comply with Jesus' request for John to baptize him, stating that it was Jesus who should baptize him. Jesus persisted, "It is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness" (Mt. 3:15). In Matthew, God's public dedication informs the reader that Jesus has become God's anointed (‘Christ’).
Image: Infant Jesus offering a drink of water to John the Baptist, a painting of 1600's by Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682).
Image: Adoration of the shepherds (of newborn Jesus), details from a painting of 1600's by Guido Reni (1575-1642), an Italian painter, draughtsman and etcher of high-Baroque style.
According to the gospels of Matthew and Luke, Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea to Mary, a virgin, by a miracle of the Holy Spirit. The angel Gabriel visits Mary to tell her that she was chosen to bear the Son of God (Luke 1:26-38). An order of Caesar Augustus forced Mary and Joseph to leave their home in Nazareth and come to the house of David, the home of Joseph's ancestors, for the Census of Quirinius (Luke 2:1-5). After Jesus' birth, Mary and Joseph were forced to use a manger in place of a crib because of shortage of accommodation (Luke 2:1-7). In the meanwhile, an angel had announced Jesus' birth to shepherds who left their flocks to see the newborn Jesus. The shepherds went back and publicized what they had witnessed throughout the area (Luke 2:8-18).
According to Matthew, the ‘Wise Men’ or ‘Magi’ brought gifts to the nascent Jesus after following a star, which they believed, was a sign that the ‘King of the Jews’ was born (Mt. 2:1-12). Subsequently, King Herod heard of Jesus' birth from the Wise Men and tried to kill Jesus by massacring all the male children in Bethlehem under the age of two (Mt. 2:16-17). Joseph and Mary, along with the infant Jesus, fled to Egypt and remained there until Herod's death, whereupon they returned to Nazareth to avoid living under the authority of Herod's son and successor Archelaus (Mt. 2:19-23).
Painting: The Penitent Mary Magdalene by Francesco Hayez (1791-1882), Italian painter and leading artist of Romanticism in mid-19th-century Milan, renowned for his grand historical paintings, political allegories and exceptionally fine portraits. Details: Year - 1825; Technique - oil on canvas; Dimensions - 118 x 150 cm (46.46 x 59.06 in); Current location - Civica Galleria d'Arte Moderna; Source - The Yorck Project: 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei.
A few modern writers have claimed that Mary Magdalene was married Jesus, quoting Gnostic writings to support their arguments. Extra-biblical sources like the apocryphal Gospel of Philip depict Mary Magdalene as being closer to Jesus than any other disciples.
Mary Magdalene is mentioned as one of the three Mary’s ‘who always walked with the Lord’ and as his companion (Philip 59.6-11). Gospel of Philip also says that the Lord loved her more than all other disciples, and used to kiss her often (63.34-36). But Kripal writes ‘the historical sources are simply too contradictory and simultaneously too silent’ to make absolute declarations regarding Jesus' sexuality. On the other hand, the historian John Dickson argues that it was a common custom ‘in early Christianity to kiss a fellow believer by way of greeting, and as such kissing would have no romantic connotations’.
The theory that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus Christ was propagated by books such as The Jesus Scroll (1972), Holy Blood, Holy Grail (1982), The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), The Woman with the Alabaster Jar (1993), Bloodline of the Holy Grail: The Hidden Lineage of Jesus Revealed (1996), The Da Vinci Code (2003), and Jesus the Man (2006).
Painting: ‘A Christian Dirce’ by Henryk Siemiradzki - a Christian woman is martyred in this re-enactment of the myth of Dirce. Siemiradzki (1843-1902) was a Polish Academic painter, known for depictions of scenes from the ancient Greco-Roman world and the New Testament.
Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (15 December AD 37-9 June AD 68), generally known as Nero, was the fifth and last Roman Emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Christian tradition and other historical sources hold Nero as the first major state sponsor of Christian persecution. The non-Christian historian Tacitus describes Nero as extensively torturing and executing Christians after the Fire of Rome in AD 64. Suetonius also mentions Nero persecuting Christians in the Roman Empire. The Christian writer Tertullian (155-230) was the first to call Nero as the first persecutor of Christians, when he wrote, "Examine your records. There you will find that Nero was the first that persecuted this doctrine".
Nero is also accused as the killer of Apostles Peter and Paul. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea (275-339) was the first to write that Apostle Paul was beheaded in Rome during the reign of Nero. He states that Nero's persecution led to Peter and Paul's deaths, but that Nero did not give any specific orders. However, some other accounts have Paul surviving his two years in Rome and traveling to Hispania. By the 4th century, a number of writers were stating that Nero killed Peter and Paul.
Photo: the Dead Sea Scrolls were found in this cave in Qumran in the West Bank near Dead Sea in Israel.
According to Wikipedia ‘the Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of about 900 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1956 in eleven caves in and around the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea in Israel.’
These include the oldest known surviving copies of Biblical and other documents of great religious and historical significance, written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek on parchment and papyrus. These manuscripts date between 150 BC and 70 AD. The scrolls are identified with the ancient Jewish sect Essenes, though some recent interpretations have challenged this association and some scholars argue that the scrolls were written by priests, Zadokites, or other unknown Jewish groups. Click on the photo to enlarge it. You can use it as a wallpaper (size: 1600x1200 pixels) on your computer or post it in your blog! Read more on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Photo: the Church of the Beatitudes on the northern coast of the Sea of Galilee in Israel, the spot where Jesus gave the Sermon on the Mount.
The Church of the Beatitudes, near Tabgha in Israel, is a Roman Catholic Church built on the traditional site of the Sermon on the Mount. The current church was built in 1938 near the site of a fourth-century Byzantine church. The floor plan of the church is octagonal, representing the eight Beatitudes (meaning ‘blessed’ or ‘happy’), which are blessings from Jesus recorded in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke.
Photo: Sermon on the Mount by Danish painter Carl Heinrich Bloch (May 23, 1834 - February 22, 1890).
Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount (Mount Zion) is a compilation of Jesus' moral teaching in the Gospel of St. Matthew. Jesus of Nazareth gave this sermon, around AD 30, to his disciples and a large crowd (chapters 5-7). The best portions of the sermon constitute the Beatitudes, the Lord's Prayer and the injunctions to ‘resist not evil’ (5:39), and ‘turn the other cheek’ as a version of the Golden Rule. Often quoted other lines are the references to ‘salt of the earth’, ‘light of the world’ and ‘judge not, lest ye be judged.’
Some Christian scholars believe that the Sermon on the Mount is a commentary on the Ten Commandments, portraying Christ as the true interpreter of the ‘Mosaic Law’. Many others consider the Sermon on the Mount as the central tenets of Christian discipleship. Also it is considered as such by many religious and moral thinkers and writers such as Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr.
Photo: The sixth-century mosaic of Jesus at Basilica of Sant' Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, Italy. Though depictions of Jesus are culturally important, no undisputed record of what Jesus looked like is known to exist. The basilica church was erected by the Ostrogoth King Theodoric as his palace chapel, during the first quarter of the 6th century, and this Arian church was originally dedicated to Christ the Redeemer.
The construction of the first basilica was begun by Saint Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine I, in AD 327 and was completed in Ad 333. That structure was burnt down in the Samaritan Revolt of AD 529. The current basilica was rebuilt in Ad 565 by the Emperor Justinian I. When the Persians invaded in AD 614, they did not destroy the structure, because, according to legends, their commander Shahrbaraz was moved by the depiction inside the church of the Three Magi wearing Persian clothing. So he ordered that the building be spared. The Crusaders made repairs and additions to the building during the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem with permission and help given by the Byzantine Emperor. Over the years, the compound has been expanded. Currently it covers about 12,000 square meters. Now the church is administered jointly by Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic authorities, all of them maintaining monastic communities on the site.
The church was one of the direct causes for French involvement in the Crimean War against Russia.
Photo: This Silver Star, beneath the altar in the Grotto of the Nativity, marks the spot believed to be the Birthplace of Jesus Christ.
The antiquity of this tradition is attested by the Christian apologist Justin Martyr (AD 100-165), who noted in his Dialogue with Trypho that the Holy Family had taken refuge in a cave outside of town: “Joseph took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia found Him (Chapter LXXVIII).
Photo: The Silver Star marks the place where Jesus Christ was born according to Christian tradition. The site is located in Bethlehem, precisely in the cave under the Church of the Nativity.
The Church of the Nativity is one of the oldest continuously operating churches in the world. The structure is built over the cave that tradition marks as the birthplace of Jesus of Nazareth, and it is considered sacred by followers of both Christianity and Islam.
Wikipedia states about Jesus in Islam, "In Islam, Jesus is considered a Messenger of God who had been sent to guide the People of Israel with a new scripture. The Quran, believed by Muslims to be God's final revelation, mentions Jesus 25 times. It states that Jesus was born to Mary (Maryam) as the result of virginal conception, a miraculous event which occurred by the decree of God (Allah). To aid him in his quest, Jesus was given the ability to perform miracles, all by the permission of God. According to Islamic texts, Jesus was neither killed nor crucified, but rather he was raised alive up to heaven. Islamic traditions (but not Quran) narrate that he will return to Earth near the Day of Judgment to restore justice and defeat "the false messiah", also known as the Antichrist. Like all prophets in Islam, Jesus is considered to have been a Muslim, as he preached for people to adopt the straight path in submission to God's will. Islam rejects that Jesus was God incarnate or the son of God, stating that he was a mortal man who, like other prophets, had been divinely chosen to spread God's message. Islamic texts forbid the association of partners with God, emphasizing the notion of God's divine oneness. Numerous titles are given to Jesus in the Quran, such as al-Massif (the messiah; the anointed one), although it does not correspond with the meaning accrued in Christian belief. Jesus is seen in Islam as a precursor to Muhammad, and is believed by Muslims to have foretold the latter's coming".
