Biblia Sacra (Gutenberg Bible)

which everyone claims as their own. We write, the unlearned and learned alike, poems everywhere. A garrulous old woman, a delirious old man, a verbose sophist, and all these people presume to teach and tear them apart before they have learned them. Others, with lifted eyebrows, ruminate on grand words and philosophize about the holy scriptures among little women. Others learn—oh, the shame—from women what they ought to teach men; and if this is not enough, with a certain facility of words—or rather, audacity—they explain to others what they do not understand themselves. I am silent about those of my own kind who, if by chance they have come to the holy scriptures after secular studies and have soothed the ears of the people with polished speech, believe that whatever they have said is the law of God. They do not deign to know what the prophets or apostles meant, but they adapt unsuitable testimonies to their own sense, as if it were a great thing—and not a most vicious kind of speaking—to distort meanings and drag the sacred scripture to their own will, even when it resists. As if we did not read centos a literary work made up of quotations from other authors from Virgilius Virgil and the like; and as if it were not permitted to speak as a Christian from Maro Virgil without Christ, because he wrote, "Now the Virgin returns, the Saturnian kingdoms return; now a new offspring is sent down from high heaven." And Priamus Priam speaking to his son: "My son, my strength, my great power alone." And after the life of the Savior on the cross: "He performed such things, remembering, and remained firm." These things are childish and resemble the games of peddlers: to teach what you do not know—or, to speak with indignation, not even to know that you are ignorant.

A large ornamental initial 'V' in red and black ink. The main body of the letter is red with delicate flourishes extending into the margin and surrounding text.

Specifically, it is most manifest from Genesis, in which is written the creation of the world, the beginning of the human race, the division of the earth, the confusion of tongues, and the generations of the Hebrews up to Egypt. Exodus is clear with its ten plagues, the decalogue, and the mystical and divine precepts. The book of Leviticus is ready at hand

in which individual sacrifices, or rather individual syllables, the garments of Aaron, and the entire Levitical order breathe celestial sacraments. Do not the Numeri Numbers contain the mysteries of all arithmetic, the prophecies of Balaam, and the forty-two encampments through the desert? Is not Deuteronomium Deuteronomy a second law and a prefiguration of the evangelical law, containing things that are so new that they are all from the old? Thus far Moyses Moses, thus far the Pentateuchus Pentateuch, with which the apostle glories in wanting to speak five words in the church. Job, that exemplar of patience, who does not embrace mysteries in his speech, begins in prose, slips into usage, and ends in pedestrian speech, and defines all the laws of dialectic: proposition, assumption, confirmation, and conclusion. Every word in it is full of meaning, and—to be silent about the rest—it prophesies the resurrection of the bodies so clearly that no one has written more manifest and cautious words concerning it. "I know," he says, "that my redeemer lives, and on the last day I shall rise from the earth, and I shall again be surrounded by my skin, and in my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall see, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. This hope of mine is stored in my bosom." I shall come to Iesus Nave Joshua, who presents the type of the Lord not only in his deeds but also in his name. He crosses the Iordanem Jordan, subverts the kingdoms of the enemies, divides the land to the victorious people, and through individual cities, villages, mountains, rivers, torrents, and borders, he has described the spiritual kingdoms of the church and the heavenly Ierusalem Jerusalem. In the book of Iudicum Judges, the princes of the people are as many figures. Ruth the Moabitidis Moabite fulfills the prophecy of Isaias Isaiah saying: "Send forth the lamb, O Lord, the ruler of the earth, from the rock of the desert to the mountain of the daughter of Sion." In the death of Hely Eli and the slaughter of Saul, Samuel shows the old law abolished; furthermore, in Sadoch Zadok and David