One Thing Never Changes
If words are important to us, we carry them with us.
The King James Bible was first printed for everyday readers in 1611, and history says that a majority of those setting sail for a new life in America in the days and years immediately following, carried with them at least one book: The King James Bible.
As the fledgling nation grew, and then expanded, Prairie Schooners rolled westward across a continent, taking families who would populate the land. Though they could only bring the most essential of belongings, historians tell us that in most of those wagons, there was one prized possession: The family copy of the King James Bible.
When my father was deployed to the European front in World War II, he carried with him an Army issue copy of the King James Bible, complete with a brass cover. That Bible was printed in much the same manner as the ones that pilgrims and pioneers had carried, and, when I began my career as a high school journalism teacher in the early 1970’s, the printing process was still virtually the same. I kept the red King James Bible that my parents had given me for my sixteenth birthday on my night table, and, true to my upbringing, carried it with me to church.
But, after over 350 years, printing began to change. In a matter of only a few years, moveable metal type not too different from what Gutenberg had used quickly gave way to the new “cold” type, which was actually a photographic
process from which the term “paste up” was coined.
Now, printers could easily use all kinds of fonts, in varying sizes, and insert photos and illustrations into the text with ease. Suddenly, purchasing a Bible involved lots of choices: the one in a cool, hip font that made the words seem more up to date for the young crowd; the traditional look, in two columns of 10 point Times Roman; or the large print version for the more “mature” pair of eyes. And the dimensions of the pages could easily change, as well. I remember being thrilled to purchase a tiny “purse sized” copy of the King James Bible, perfect for carrying with me, not just on Sunday, but all the time.
Then came the years, through the 90’s, when technology was exploding, and the world wide web became the repository for all information. My students began using the computer instead of the library for research, and I bookmarked Bible Gateway for quick reference on my computer at home.
Today, over a decade into the new millennium, the school darkroom is just a storage closet, and my students publish the school newspaper online, and upload yearbook pages to the printer’s website. We could actually run the entire journalism department without a single piece of paper.
This girl who grew up with sword drills in Sunday School, and who treasures a Bible tote quilted by my husband’s grandmother,
observed yet another sign of the times in church just a few Sundays ago.
When the pastor announced his sermon text, I noticed the absence of the familiar rustling sound as people thumbed through the tissue thin pages of their Bibles. Instead, there was a stir as the congregation reached for their cell phones, and touched screens until the text was displayed as they accessed their Bible “apps.”
There’s an old hymn that says, “Publish glad tidings, tidings of peace, tidings of Jesus, redemption and release.” And through the centuries since the first King James Bible came off the press and into the hands of people, that is what printers of the Bible have done, keeping up with the changes in process, but never changing the content.
The meduim may have changed, but the words are eternal. Whether on our cell phones, our ipads or our laptops, we still carry them with us.
