I’ve written about paper before, but it’s such an important part of  the physical characteristics of any book, including the  Bible, it’s worth another scribble. Ironic of course that this blog is not set down on the white stuff at all, and comes to you digitally. A sign of things to come, surely?

I was in the Oxford home of well-known Christian author Stephen Lawhead this week, poring over the advance copy of his new book The Skin Map,  and we were admiring the uncut pages of the fore-edge, but more especially we examined the book’s paper.  How it flowed.

Did you know paper flows? It has a feel and a direction which determines how it lies and moves and works in a bound book.  A  Bible which is printed long-grain  – with the direction of the paper lying top to bottom - may show slight ripples at the trimmed and gilded head and tail. A book which is printed cross- or short-grain has the paper direction lying across the page. This may result in rippling at the fore-edge of the pages and the book may feel a little stiffer.

Try it out on your favourite Bible. Whether the book is printed long- or short- grain, the paper is alive in one sense. It really does flow.  Both ways of printing are fine, but it’s something watching out for.

One other thing about grain. British Bible translators tend to have Jesus in the cornfields, while US translators will set it down as grainfields. ‘Grain’ is one of the very few words in the Bible which separates our American brethren and their British cousins, who use the word ‘corn’ to cover all grains, and not just maize.

Which is correct? It’s a bit like the grain of the paper.  That’s the short and the long of it!

Nicholas

A recent significant birthday ( you’re how old?) brought the magnificent, newly published two-volume Oxford Companion to the Book. This is a veritable cornucopia for bibliophiles. I was delighted to discover in its pages a reference to my publishing grandfather John Gray in an article, coupled with his brother Cecil.

Except that he had no brother. Shock, horror! This authoritative book on The Book is not error-free. It is corrupt. 

Reminds me that this is sometimes how we treat the Bible. Unless we understand the human element in the transmission of God’s word to us, we may treat it as a magical tome. The intention of the editors of the Oxford Companion is surely be to try to be as accurate as possible and thankfully I will have the opportunity to tell them that great uncle Cecil Gray should be expunged from the pure Oxford text.

Similarly, Bible translators are on a quest to make God’s word true to the intention of the original authors. It is an on-going, prayerful journey of scholarly discovery and is not fixed in stone or type. Otherwise ‘Cecil’ may take on a life of his own and the text will become truer than the reality.

Nicholas

The English Channel island of Guernsey, just off the coast of France, is  British but actually not part of the United Kingdom. It’s a bridge to the continent of Europe, if an island can be called a bridge. Guernsey makes for an ideal  vacation spot and I was there last week, basking in the hot summer sunshine on offer.

On holiday you can browse through second hand shops to your heart’s content, and so I did. I chanced upon a Bible I had published way back in 1982. It was in good condition and a snip at just one pound. The Revised Authorised Version was the first British text edition of what most of us know now as the New King James Version, and I released it under the venerable Samuel Bagster imprint.

How we struggled to find a good title for the NKJV which British readers would accept! We never called the King James Bible anything but The Authorised Version. The RAV was not a success as a name or indeed as a British text version and it took over ten years for the now re-named NKJV to make any headway in the UK.

To me,  the great appeal of the NKJV is that it is a ‘bridge’ version. It sounds and reads like the KJV, but is more contemporary. Ironically, the translators made it more olden by setting the pronouns and possessive related to Deity ( Him, His) in capitals, something which the 1611 KJV never did, and is quite out of fashion today.

Guernsey is a small island paradise for British and French visitors – with the best of both cultures. The NKJV has that richness too, a sense of majesty in a modern setting, a bridge between the old and the new. No wonder it is such a popular Bible choice for many readers.

Nicholas

How to celebrate 400 years of the King James Bible? Why not a special Allan Bible to mark this special anniversary?

I’m thinking of something patriotic since the Queen holds the copyright to the Authorized Version of the Bible. And something to appeal across the wide ocean of Bible lovers. So we’ve settled on the KJV Longprimer setting  - Allan’s best - to be bound in Atlantic blue calfskin with full leather linings, embellished with white head and tail bands, blue under gold page edges, and cardinal red ribbon markers.

The Longprimer Blue, with red and white thrown in for good measure.

That should be a bit special. Watch out for full details as we approach the quadcentennial year of 2011.

Nicholas

Whither for the Bible?

I see that Amazon are preparing a new version of their Kindle e-book format to compete with Apple’s iPad and Sony’s Book Reader. Keeping up with the new ways to read is exhausting – and expensive. The new Kindle even has ‘electronic ink’ to make it look closer to the real thing.  It’s got traditional book publishers worried.

The Bible has transitioned from oral to parchment to printed paper and now to the electronic medium. Paper, print and leather may not be sacrosanct, but they do feel good! There’s something comforting and re-assuring about a well-made Bible.

You don’t need to plug it in, you can flick through the pages back and forth, and you can easily mark it if you are so inclined. It won’t go out of date and will last for decades in regular use. It can become an old friend.

What do you think?  Should we at Allan’s be concerned?  Will tomorrow’s Bibles be screen-driven or leather ‘n paper?  Answers on  a postcard to….

….or an e-mail will do!

Nicholas

When the thermometer hits 80 degrees in Scotland, everyone cheers. It’s so rare. But this week we’ve been on a high… and a low. It has plunged back down to 55 degrees today. No wonder I treasure our garden conservatory. It is our cedarwood summer house which allows us to live inside outside all year round, despite the vagaries of the  Scottish weather.

A few summers ago I was editing the British text of the New Living Translation for Tyndale House. I came across the story in Jeremiah where King  Jehoiakim was in his ‘winterized‘ apartment, cutting up the the scripture scrolls with his penknife and throwing them in the fire. 

‘Winterized’ was new to me. I had not come across this American colloquial expression before. So I substituted  ‘winter palace’ in the British text edition of the NLT.  Since then I’ve come across ‘winterized’ everywhere!  Incidentally, I made 3000 changes in the British edition text of the NLT.

So I’m now summerizing our conservatory with a new coat of green paint.  And thinking how good a contemporary translation like the NLT is at making the old stories live for today, and at the same time enlarging my vocabulary.

Nicholas

You’ll be hard pressed to find the work ‘yapp’ in a dictionary. Yapped is the past tense of how a small dog barks when it is agitated. But when a Bible is ‘yapped’, that is something quite different.

I understand that the word yapp is a 6th century old English word meaning ‘wide’ or ‘open’, and it later came to mean ‘bent’ or ‘curved’. Most often the word  is used as a surname . Apparently the phone book reveals that there are plenty of Yapps in Shropshire, England.  At any rate, there was a Mr Yapp who was a 19th century bookbinder in London and perhaps the binding  style derived from him. 

In Bible production, a volume which has a yapp or is yapped means that the leather covers overlap some way beyond the page edges, and so provide protection for the gilded pages from sun and rain. Semi-yapp extends just a short way, but a full yapp binding will extend more and curve over the pages so that the yapped edges meet or almost do so when bent over the two leather covers.

The finest bound Allan Bibles  – those with leather linings – have a full yapp finish. This adds an extra touch of luxury but it  has a practical purpose as well - to extend the beauty and life of your Bible.

Do you have an old yapp Bible in you home somewhere?  I expect it may be a bit dog-eared too.

Back to dogs and yapping again!

Nicholas

Ever wondered what folks read before the good old King James Bible came along in 1611?

I’ve been finding out as I help organize an  exhibition here in Glasgow of early Bibles, to be called ‘Divine Write’. Our University has the best UK collection, including a pre-Reformation illuminated Latin Vulgate of 1490, a Wycliffe New Testment of the late 1300’s, through Coverdale of 1535, The Great Bible of 1539, the first (Geneva) Bible printed here in Scotland in 1579, and on to the Bishops’ Bible of 1568, to the majestic King James Version of 1611 and beyond.

I can’t wait to see these important translations all in one place. But for the exhibition to make a lasting impression we have also to show how the Bible stands today in this great tradition, expanded to electronic, or screen-based, or audio or whatever platform is current. The Bible of course is a living book, not a dusty tome from a bygone age.

Print isn’t sacrosanct. We are after all the beneficiaries of an oral tradition reaching back thousands of years. The Word was spoken long before it ever became written or typeset.

May it still speak to us today.

Nicholas

“Might Allan produce a Greek New Testament in a fine leather binding?”  a customer asked last week.  That would be a shift for us, wouldn’t it?  Worth pondering at any rate.

I was reminded of Miss McClung ( wonderful name) who policed the Bibles department in my father’s Christian bookstore when I was a boy.  She allowed customers to inspect the Bibles displayed in her glass cabinet only once they’d first donned a pair of white gloves to protect the stock.

A customer asked to see a Greek New Testament and, after a thorough and fruitless search of her inventory, Miss McClung declared that since it hadn’t yet been translated, she regretted that she couldn’t supply one!

At Allan we revere the King James Version but we’re very aware that it is a translation from the orginal Biblical languages. Muslims accept the Koran as scripture only in the Arabic language and translations into other languages are not  for them  ’the real thing’.

Thank the Lord for Godly translators who make the Bible, as orginally given in the ancient translations, alive for us now in a language we can understand and act upon.

God’s Word need not remain ‘all Greek to me!’  And God bless Miss McClung.

Nicholas

Having missed my last weekly blog spot I am full of remorse and feel like sitting in sackcloth and ashes.  I’m also remorseful for calling ( in my last blog) Alexander Cruden by his father’s name, William.  Shame on me.

Last week I was stranded in Mallorca, that vacation (vulcation?) paradise in the Mediterranean Sea, when the Icelandic volcano erupted.  The resultant ash grounded all flights over Europe and with North America and so we trekked three days by slow boat and bus across Spain, France and England home to Scotland.

You will remember that intrepid prophet Jonah also travelled three days –  across Nineveh – and the result was that the King donned sackcloth and sat in ashes, seeking God’s forgiveness. Despite predictions to the contrary, God acted and the city was saved.

Commentators called the recent volcano disruptions  ’an act of God’. A strange expression for this natural occurrence. Folks troubled by the ash will probably not blame God for their inconvenience, but they may become aware that  life cannot be taken for granted.  As the final words in the Book of Jonah say: “The Kingdom shall be the Lord’s”.

Nicholas