The Bible 

Printing and the Bible

Printing, however, being yet unknown, copies of the Bible could be produced only by the slow, laborious, and expensive process of handwriting. This necessarily greatly limited its circulation. Worse still, its illuminating and saving truths were largely hidden for centuries by the errors, superstitions, and apostasy of the dark ages. During this time the common people knew little of its contents.

But with the invention of the art of printing about the middle of the fifteenth century, and with the dawn of the great Reformation in the century following, the Bible entered upon a new era, preparatory to the final proclamation of the gospel throughout the world. Not a little significant is the fact that the first book printed from movable type was the Bible in Latin, which came from the press of John Gutenberg, at Mentz, Germany, in 1456, a copy of which, in 1911, was sold in New York City for fifty thousand dollars, the highest price ever paid for a single book.