Gutenberg Bible facts for kids

Page from a copy of the Gutenberg Bible. The text is printed by movable metal type. The type, influenced by a manuscript style, is not easy to read. The decoration surrounding the text is done by hand.

The Gutenberg Bible (also known as the 42-line Bible or the Mazarin Bible) is a printed version of the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible that was printed by Johannes Gutenberg, in Mainz, Germany in the 15th century. Although it is not the first book to be printed by Gutenberg's new movable type system, it is his major work, and of central importance for the start of the "Gutenberg Revolution" and the "Age of the Printed Book". It is a very rare and expensive book. Fewer than 200 were made, and 49 complete or nearly complete ones are known. It has 1286 pages.

The earliest known book with movable type was published 78 years before in Korea and is known as the Jikji.

Related pages

• Printing.

• A complete list of digitized copies at German Wikipedia

Images for kids

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  Gutenberg Bible of the New York Public Library. Bought by James Lenox in 1847, it was the first copy to be acquired by a United States citizen.

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  Gutenberg Bible in the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University.

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  Spine of the Lenox copy

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  A vellum copy of the Gutenberg Bible owned by the U.S. Library of Congress

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  First page of the first volume: the epistle of St Jerome to Paulinus from the University of Texas copy. The page has 40 lines.

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  Detail showing both rubrication and illumination.

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  Locations of known complete Gutenberg Bibles.

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  Binding of the copy at the University of Texas at Austin

See also

In Spanish: Biblia de Gutenberg para niños