British Library

Well, I am all settled in at Chez Gulliver, and having such a nice visit. Today we went into London and visited the British Library, which currently has an exhibit of sacred Christian, Jewish, and Islamic texts. The exhibition was wonderful and fascinating, and I would like to go into more detail about it when I get a chance. They had two of the three earliest New Testaments, along with texts as early as the 3rd and 4th and from places as diverse as Iran, Ethiopia, Malaysia, Spain, China, Portugal, Egypt, Iraq, Spain, and, of course, England. Among the highlights were a copy of the Torah from 7th century China (who knew there were Jews in China?); a copy of the Qu'ran from the year 650; a copy of Revelation written on the back of pages from the book of Exodus from Egypt in the 3rd century, presumably by an early convert writing on the back of his Hebrew Bible; an original 1611 King James Bible; and a polyglot New Testament in 7 or 8 different languages. We also took a look at the permanent exhibit, which included a manuscript of Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Marble Faun, an early printing of Leaves of Grass, The Emancipation Proclamation, and the last letter that Sir Thomas More wrote to Henry VIII before he was beheaded. I also ran into my good friend Steffi Dellner, who is working on her masters and just happened to come in the door to go up and study as we were buying our tickets. Steffi went to York with me, and I visited her family in Brussels over our Christmas break, and it was so good to see her and our encounter confirmed by theory that London is actually a small town.

So, that's all the news!