the st. john's bible part 1

Last updated on Oct 20, 2021

I won't have much to say in this post. I'll simply show you the pictures I took and some interesting things I learned while viewing the St. John's Bible at St. John's University.

the university

The first thing you see when you enter the university is the imposing, brutalism-inspired architecture by Marcel Breuer. You can read all about it here:

Breuer Buildings on the Campus of St. John’s University

College of Saint Benedict & Saint John's University

And here's his very impressive Wikipedia page:

This is the abbey church. The honeycomb you see is actually supporting an entire wall of stained glass! There was a funeral going on during the time I was there, so I wasn't able to photograph the inside.

This is the abbey church from a different angle.

And here's what the residence halls look like. I was extremely impressed with the architecture.

the bible itself

Just as you walk in, you're greeted with a reprint of this introduction page to Ecclesiastes:

Donald Jackson is the official calligrapher to the Crown Office of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He was also the artistic director for the entire St. John's Bible project. There's not much about him online, but he seems to be a really big deal in the calligraphy world:

The first thing that struck me about the Bible was its scale. It's huge! Three feet by two feet when it's opened. But it's actually always opened at this point because of the next surprising thing: the St. John's Bible isn't bound! It's all loose 2'x3' sheets of vellum. Here's a picture of the docent standing next to some pages for scale:

The displays in the museum generally had two pages, gently folded in half so that you could see facing pages like here:

Caption from the museum: **Suffering Servant**, Donald Jackson: "The prophets describe a coming Messiah who will restore peace and justice to Israel, yet he will be despised by the wicked and bear their sins quietly. Thus, he is called the Suffering Servant. In Jackson's image, an emaciated prisoner stands above the head of a lamb, referencing the text in which the Messiah endures his tormenters with grace, 'like a lamb that is led to the slaughter.' The shadow of a modern chain link fence surrounds the Servant drawing a parallel between the Messiah's suffering and that of victims of suffering in today's world. But just as the figure stands alone in Jackson's image, so the Suffering Servant will one day be singled out by God to reign in Zion."

It's interesting to note that the vellum is slightly translucent (you can see the text on the other side of the page showing through). Since the vellum is made from calfskin, you can also see imperfections in the sheets on some of the page corners. There are also some of the artists' notes in pencil in nearly every top and bottom margin!

**After the Fire** (Elijah's Theophany), Donald Jackson: "The passage illuminated here is one of the most beautiful accounts in the Old Testament of an encounter with God. Elijah, God's prophet, has escaped Jezebel and has been fleeing and hiding for forty days. As he is resting overnight in a cave on Mount Horeb (also known as Sinai), a voice tells him to go outside the cave because God will be passing by. We are told that there was a great wind, an earthquake and a fire, and God was not found in any of them. Finally, there was a sound of sheer silence where God was found in the calm and quiet. Elijah depicted in green, the color of the prophets used in *The Saint John's Bible*, goes out to meet the Lord in silence. The silver bars depicting the silence are subtle and one must be still and attentive to witness them."

You'll notice a lot of shimmering silver and gold on the pages of this Bible. Rest assured, it is real gold and platinum leaf that will not tarnish over the next 1500 years that this Bible is meant to last.