Rare handwritten St. John’s Bible to be displayed in Spokane

A high-quality reproduction of a hand-written Bible – the first one commissioned by a Benedictine monastery in over 500 years – is coming for a visit.

The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Spokane is hosting Volume VI of the St. John’s Bible Heritage Edition, for about four months starting in September.

The programming and details surrounding the Bible’s visit are still being worked out, Karen Byrne said. She is the Cathedral’s liason for the visit and a lay leader on the church’s board.

Heritage editions bring the Bible to the world

“What we’re really looking forward to is featuring this Bible as a focus of our worship, and as an art experience,” Byrne said. “I think it’s a real opportunity for St. John’s Cathedral to open our world to people who are interested in seeing this incredible piece of art.”

The book is meant to be a Bible that people of varying levels of faith, or no faith, can engage in.

“People of great faith love it,” St. John’s Bible Curator Tim Ternes said. “But there are also invitation points for people who aren’t of great faith – people who like great art, or lettering.”

“It’s one of the few works of a religious nature that really crosses a lot of divides,” he added.

Heritage edition Volume VI, which St. John’s Cathedral is hosting, contains five books: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and Acts.

The handwritten St. John’s Bible was commissioned by St. John’s Abbey in 1998 and finished in 2011, according to Ternes.

The multi-million dollar project took 23 artists and 12 theologians around 15 years of work, Ternes said. The project was funded by over 1,400 people, he added.

The 500-year story behind the St. John’s Bible

“It took 500 years for a community to commission a book like this, and we now know why,” Ternes joked. “We’ll never do it again.”

The St. John’s Bible and its reproductions, the Heritage editions, contain 1,100 handwritten pages and 160 individual artistic illustrations, with decorative headings done in raised gold.

If the numbers don’t impress you, the sheer size of the Bible might. The seven volumes containing the 73 books of the Bible weigh 150 pounds when stacked together, according to Brad Neary, director of the Saint John’s Bible Heritage Program.

When open, the books are about 2 feet tall by 3 feet across.

“It’s a lot of Bible,” Neary said.

When the original St. John’s Bible was commissioned in 1998, Ternes said the Benedictine values were at the forefront of people’s minds.

“The Bible, by its very nature, is communal,” Ternes said. “It’s meant to be shared.”

The St. John’s Bible also aims to unite people – an uncommon aim in a world where the Bible is often used as a tool of division, according to Ternes. The artwork is designed to draw people in for shared conversion in a sort of “visual, spiritual meditation.”

It also invites people to ask questions, thus “reinforcing the communal nature of the work,” Ternes said.

The St. John’s Bible is currently being bound into seven books, which together make up a full edition of the Catholic New Revised Standard Version, which include the deuterocanonicals, seven books not usually included in Protestant Bibles.

The NRSV was chosen because it is one of the few English translations that is approved for use by almost every major Christian church, according to Ternes.

“It’s bringing people together, as opposed to dividing,” he said.

When the St. John’s Bible was commissioned, the goal was “to ignite the spiritual imagination of people around the world,” according to Neary.

At first, portions of the unbound St. John’s Bible went on tour worldwide. Now, it is on display at the Saint John’s Bible Gallery in Collegeville, Minnesota.

Realizing it was unrealistic to expect people to travel to Minnesota to see the Bible, 229 reproductions – the Heritage editions – were commissioned to expand on the mission of the St. John’s Bible, according to Neary.

If you can’t come to Minnesota, Ternes said the Heritage Edition is “the closest you’re ever going to get” to seeing the original.

Volumes of the Heritage Edition can be rented out for about $1,200 per month, funds which cover the training and presentations needed to host the Bible, according to Neary.

The end goal is to find a permanent resting place for each of the editions, he added. Currently, around 170 of the Heritage Editions have found permanent residences.

These permanent residences include the Library of Congress, The Morgan Library & Museum, the Vatican and private collections, according to Ternes.

Gonzaga University in Spokane also owns one of those editions. It was gifted to the university in 2012, according to the university’s website.

The impact

Accessing a Bible in today’s world is an easy task, Ternes said – anyone can go to a hotel room and find a copy waiting in the end table drawer.

But there’s something unique about the St. John’s Bible, something that draws people in, he added.

“These handwritten letters started in a scribe’s tome and came out his or her fingers,” Ternes said. The handwritten aspect adds emotion to the page, he added.

“The writing is joyful,” he said. “These are happy letters.”

The small variations between pages, capturing the individuality of each of the six scribes, creates an immediate human connection to the passages, Ternes said.

The Heritage Editions retain that personality, he added.

“This will be so much more than you expect,” he said. “There’s something very different about this, so if it’s in your area, don’t miss the opportunity to engage with it.”

This story was written in partnership with FāVS News, a nonprofit newsroom covering faith and values in the Inland Northwest.