Historic Bibles

The Gutenberg Bible

In the mid-fifteenth century Johannes Gutenberg invented a way of mechanising the production of printing type. The Bible was the first book printed. As of 2003, the number of known extant Gutenberg 42-line Bibles includes eleven complete copies on vellum, one copy of the New Testament only on vellum, and 48 substantially complete integral copies on paper, with another divided copy on paper. The country with the most copies is Germany, which has twelve.

The "Eliot Bible" was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1663. The Eliot Bible appeared some 120 years before the first complete English edition of the Bible was published in what is now the United States.