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AT one time it was deemed illegal and indeed heretical to even translate the bible into
English. We've just come off the 400th anniversary of the first printing of the King James Bible
and we've devoted our entire gallery space to telling the history of this particular
translation. And then as the exhibition broadens to examine its cultural influence and then
broadens even more to understand biblical influence in our art and literature generally./
And one of the first things you see as you walk into the exhibition is a first edition
of the King James translation printed in 1611. It's a really exiting book to see because
in some ways it's really familiar but in others it looks quite different. You see the s's
that look like f's that make reading a little challenging for modern readers. Printers and
writers and artists and translators have seen the bible as this kind of ultimate challenge
to their craft because it's held a fairly important place in western society for all
of this time. It's really interesting to have master book crafts people addressing the same
text and then being able to see the manifestations are so completely different. You have different
illustrators working in different mediums choosing relief printing, intaglio printing,
planographic printing; but it just so happens that many of these are very famous within
the book arts and well known women and bibles on their own. A lot of the writers and artists
represented in the exhibition didn't come to the text from a faith perspective, necessarily,
but as artists who revered it as a work of art and who sought to understand it. You begin
to see the way that even someone very unfamiliar with the Bible will be very familiar with
some of the things that have spun off or been inspired by the translation, and really begin
to understand influence of the King James translation on literature, on the world around
us. It's a source of inspiration to the Austin community and perhaps it will enrich their
lives in some way.