Christopher Calderhead

In this glossy coffee-table sized book, Calderhead delves into the story of the St. John’s Bible, the first illuminated manuscript of the Bible in over 500 years. After ink first touched page on the St. John’s Bible in 2000, it took over a decade to get the whole thing done, with a team of calligraphers, illuminators, biblical scholars, art historians, and theologians working together. The original is housed at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota, but there are 299 high quality facsimiles in libraries and churches around the world, and lower-quality facsimiles available on Amazon for $40.

When I worked in archives this summer, I got to see the St. John’s Bible a lot, and there’s a lot of depth in it. Although the project is very traditional, the illuminations are not. They draw on imagery from Native American, Tibetan, Jewish, and Muslim traditions, even including scientific imagery and prehistoric cave paintings. One of the illuminators, Aidan Hart, is actually an anomaly for being a very traditional Orthodox icon painter.

Calderhead does not hesitate to describe the clashes in the creation of the manuscript. Everyone bickered with everyone, in part because everyone was doing something very new. Biblical scholars on the advisory committee had to learn to speak less academically when telling the calligraphers and illuminators what was going on in a parable. Illuminators would propose radical artistic designs that the advisory committee didn’t like. Calligraphers would make mistakes and struggle to fix them.

Donald Jackson, the head calligrapher for the project, describes himself as not being a religious man. But, he points out, if Christians believe that God’s Word is truth and beauty, then why are so many modern editions of the Bible so aesthetically unpleasant? Rather than small text, thin bleed-through pages, numbers and notes every which way, why not a text that reminds us of its beauty at first sight? It’s a convincing argument. People who came to the library to see the St. John’s Bible engaged it differently – not as a collection of doctrinal prooftexts, but as a spiritual encounter. The St. John’s Bible reminds us of the sacramentality of scripture.… (meer)