Students from Seminary of the Southwest made a visit to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin on October 3, 2025. On what has become an annual field trip arranged by Southwest professor Dr. Steve Bishop, Associate Professor of Old Testament, seminarians accompanied by Dr. Bishop and Dr. Jeehei Park, Assistant Professor of New Testament, enjoyed an informative tour of early Bibles and related manuscripts by Aaron T. Pratt. Dr. Pratt is the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Ransom Center.
The history of bibliology – early bookmaking — was one focus of the program, and students learned about the materials and processes used to create early books from Europe, Africa, and Asia. Resources presented included manuscripts, Christian or Jewish scriptures printed before the invention of moveable type, early prayerbooks, significant early printed Bibles, and two bon mots: a manuscript commentary of a psalm by Isaac Newton and a 1692 copy of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Among the several important editions of the Bible examined were a sample page from the Gutenberg Bible (1455), a copy of the first printed full English translation of the Bible by Miles Coverdale (1535-1537), the first complete Spanish Bible (La Biblia Reina-Valera 1569), a copy of the “Great He” edition of the 1611 Authorized Version (King James), an Ethiopian Bible in a unique Ge’ez typeface, a Douay-Reims Catholic New Testament (1582), and a Biblia sacra polyglottal (The Plantin Polyglot Bible). Students were also fascinated by an early wood block printed Chinese Bible.
The Ransom Center’s large collection of religious texts, particularly those related to Christianity and Judaism, offer a wealth of resources to the seminary’s students, and the Bible faculty of the Episcopal Seminary of the Southwest have been offering this extracurricular event annually for many years. The experience of seeing such materials firsthand expands upon class readings and discussions on the history of both translations of religious texts and the perspectives of different Judeo-Christian communities over many centuries.
By Kay Brizzolara, Master of Divinity student from the Diocese of Northwest Texas
