Different Ways Bibles Have Been Hidden
Throughout history religious individuals sometimes have found it necessary to hide their Bibles. Persecutions of various denominations and sects drove members to place their Bibles in hiding for safekeeping. Other people hid their Bibles for reasons that remain mysteries. Hidden Bibles can provide historians with valuable information about the specific Bible, its owners and the historial period of its origin. Individuals may also gather spiritual strength from their hidden Bibles.
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Bible in the Closet
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A 1615 King James Bible surfaced San Antonion in 2010 in a walled-up closet. The Bible, found together with Civil War photos, was hidden in the closet of the building which once housed the Hertzberg Circus Museum and subsequently the Carnegie Library. Historians believe that the library once exhibited the Bible but don't know why someone wanted to hide it in the closed-off closet. The Central Library's Texana collection acquired the Bible, together with other items discovered.
Bibles in Communist Asia
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Chinese Christians suffer persecution because of their faith. The Chinese government limits the printing and distribution of Bibles and imposes penalties on people who teach Christianity without official sanction. During the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, the Chinese government burned Bibles, and Chinese Christians hid their Bibles. North Korea encourages neighbors to spy on people in their community and even finds ways to encourage children to report that their parents possess hidden Bibles in their homes. The North Korean regime sends anyone caught with a hidden Bible to prison.
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Bibles in England
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John Wyclyffe translated the Bible in the 1300s with the objective of allowing the common man to read the Bible in vernacular English. This was contrary to the will of the Catholic Church, which, after the 1408 Convocation at Oxford, forbade translation of Scripture into English and confiscated and destroyed many of Wyclyffe's Bibles. A successor, William Tyndale, translated his own version into English while living in exile in Europe. Tyndale smuggled his newly translated Bibles into England, hidden in different packages among merchandise on a ship. Church authorities continued to search for Tyndale and they eventually found him in Belgium and executed him for his translation work.
Torah Scroll
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Over the centuries, persecutions of Jewish communities resulted in Torah burnings. The Torah, which contains the first five books of the Old Testament, is a prized object in the Jewish community and one of Judaism's most important ritual objects. During World War II a Dutch rabbi smuggled a miniature Torah scroll, measuring just 4 1/2 inches tall, into the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. The rabbi presented the miniature Torah to a young boy who celebrated his Bar Mitzvah in the barracks and the boy continued to keep the Torah hidden until the war's end. Sixty years later the boy, now a scientist in Israel, allowed Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon to take the scroll into space with him on the Challenger shuttle. Ramon displayed the scroll as a testament of Jewish survival. The scroll disintegrated when the Challenger exploded.
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References
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