A few weeks back, a colleague at Logos informed me that he had a really old Bible. I mean really old. Then he proceeded to loan it to me for a few weeks. This is, in all likelihood, the oldest book I will ever personally handle.
The Bible (New Testament, actually) is H. Hammond's A Paraphrase and Annotations Upon all the Books of the New Testament, Briefly Explaining the Difficult Places thereof. And it is in beautiful shape for something that is 330 years old. Check it out (apologies, the images in this post are a little large):
That's right. It's in what I'm guessing is the original binding and everything. The binding is weak, but functional. Let's open this baby up and check out the title page. All of these pictures are clickable. And I've got a few more online on my photo page.
This is the only spot that has an engraving of any sort, though a few different folks along the way have left their mark. You can see that this is the fourth edition of Hammond's work. The first edition was published in the 1640's ... during the England's Civil War(s). Charles I got his noggin' lopped off in 1649. Cromwell was Lord Protector from 1653-1658. This book was published after Charles II re-ascended the throne.
How's that for historical context?
Let's check out First Timothy. Here's the title page to the epistle. It has a lengthy introduction. Also, don't miss the notes in the margin. It's a little different, but for all intents and purposes, much of the same sort of thing we'd find in a "study Bible" today.
That's all well and good, but let's get into it, shall we? Below is a two-page spread (I told you that binding was still functional) displaying the first chapter of First Timothy. Take a good look at it, we'll go into some detail on the structure next.
To start the detailed look, let's poke around in 1Ti 1.1-2. Note the red boxes on the below image:
You should really click the above image and view it in a seperate window or tab. There are three parts to the page. The primary translation (and I don't know which translation the English is, if you do please let me know) is in the middle, with the box around it. You can see the verse numbers. Inside the middle box, after the words "Apostle of Jesus Christ", you'll see an asterisk. This points the reader to the margin, which notes the reading "according to the appointment" instead of the text "by the commandment".
In addition, see the right square bracket ']' ending the verse? This tells the reader that the entire verse is paraphrased in the other margin. Here the "paraphrase" says:
1. I Paul that (Act 13.7) was sent out and constituted an Apostle of Jesus Christ, according to the designation of him, who being God incarnate is both our Saviour and Lord to rescue us from the power of sin, and to rule and reign in our hearts, even he on whom all our trust and expectation and hope of good is founded and built;
2. To my dearly beloved Timothy whom I first converted and so begat to Christianity. I send my heartiest wish of all good from God our careful and loving father, and Christ Jesus to whom he hath committed all power in his church unto the worlds end.
Pretty cool huh?
But that's not all. Scroll down in the two-page image to get a peek at verse 4. You'll note a letter 'a' by the word "genealogies" along with a larger "a" out in the left margin. This refers the reader to further notes at the end of the chapter. I've reproduced the note below:
To get an idea of how longer passages work, I've provided an image of 1Ti 2.4-7 below. Keep an eye out for asterisks and daggers, and also check out the paraphrase along the way. Note that because this passage is on the opposite page, the paraphrase is on the right (outer) margin, the notes are on the left (inner) margin. You'll need to click the image to get the larver version, but the larger version should be readable.
The extended notes in this edition are really cool. Below, a note dealing with 1Ti 2.1 on "types" of prayer goes through the Greek words and even makes a reference to Pirke Aboth 3.2, providing both the Hebrew (with wide final mem!) and a translation of the Mishnah quotation. If you look at the bottom of the image (right column) you'll see he says "see Josephus", but he doesn't really give any help in finding the particular citation.
But still ... that is very cool. How'd we fall away from including this sort of stuff in our "study" Bibles?
Outside of this, there are a few indexes in the back, none of them very extensive. All in all, a very cool book. And it makes us, with our computers and word processors, look very weak indeed when it comes to researching, typesetting and publishing Bibles. Sure, it's not perfect. But almost every verse has the "paraphrase"; almost every chapter has several of the extended notes. There are a lot of good ideas in here (structure and feature-wise) that folks in Bible publishing today (print and electronic) would do well to examine and consider.