A curious college student in Portland, Ore., has discovered a 1599 Geneva Bible — the Bible of Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare — in the basement of his school’s library, CBC writes.
“It’s quite rare,” said Hannah Crummé, the archivist at Lewis & Clark College.
According to the source, this edition of the Bible made the scriptures accessible through many elaborate woodcut illustrations. One, titled “The Situation of the Garden of Eden,” is a map of the ancient Middle East, showing “The Great Armenia,” “Mesopotamie,” “Babylone” and “The Golphe of the Persian Sea.”
Crummé has traced its ownership to Francis Fry, a 19th-century Bible collector in England.
According to the Oregonian, the 1599 Geneva Bible is the second-oldest book in the school’s collection, as they have one book that is about 500 years old.
