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Christopher de Hamel: The Book. A History of the Bible (2001)
Review by Rae West 2022
Phaidon has about a century of publishing history. Its own website puts it date of establishment as 1923, in Vienna, clearly a Jewish outfit. It seems to have specialised in technically advanced books, as far as I can tell including colour printing. it was well-known for publishing The Story of Art (1950) by Ernst Gombrich, and biographies of visual artists (approved by Jews) in uniform style. Their website does not stress the links there must have been with commerce, auctions, promotions, valuations, and the 'art industry' generally. After the Jewish victory in 1945, there were of course innumerable thefts and forgeries. In 1990 Phaidon seems to have had an entrepreneur-led takeover.
Christopher de Hamel seems to have joined this world after about 1990, the book's blurb saying Phaidon published his History of Illuminated Manuscripts (2nd edition 1994).
Born in 1950, according to Wikipedia 'At the age of four he moved with his parents to New Zealand, where he was educated at King's High School, Dunedin, and graduated with an honours degree in history from the University of Otago.' (This University is notable in New Zealand. Chris Caskie went there—rather more recently).
Wiki continues: 'He was subsequently awarded a Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) degree by Oxford University for his research on 12th-century Bible commentaries. His thesis [ahem; dissertation] was titled "The production and circulation of glossed books of the Bible in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries"'.
The blurb for The Book states: [He] is the Fellow Librarian of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. For 25 years he was responsible for all sales of medieval and illuminated manuscripts as Sotheby's in London. ...' I'm uncertain if he counts himself as Jewish: de Hamel sounds like du Hamel, suggesting cosmopolitanism. But his book hasn't much on Jews; it doesn't include the Talmud, for example.
Inputs for this book therefore seem to be two: (1) the emotional/ artistic/ historical/ spiritual interpretations of the Bible, and the 2000-year date; and also (2) the skills and knowledge of a man accustomed to the physical aspects of manuscripts (and the later printed Bibles).
But I'm left with the impression that there was lack of sympathy between the two parties. The jacket design is odd and null, suggesting that designer(s) left. And de Hamel's outlook, which sounds excellent to me, may not have been what Phaidon wanted. He seems to have liked and taken delight in the physical aspects of manuscripts, their composition, their inks, their bindings when they existed. David Irving has explained how German archives smelt, looked, were typed, were initialled by secretaries whom he recognised. My guess, which may be wrong, is that de Hamel was (and is) a similar type of person. Eustace Mullins described Jewish collectors of diaries and personal papers. As weeders-out of material, they were keen to suppress facts about Jews. De Hamel doesn't sound as though he'd be inclined in the slightest to do that.
Thus, for example, this book has no mention anywhere of the 'Scofield Bible', edited and promoted for Jewish/Zionist reasons. The hotel Bibles distributed by the 'Gideons' since, they claim, 1908, are unmentioned. I could find no mention of USA Masonic Bibles, prefaced with symbolic compasses and other illustrative matter.
The fact that de Hamel's The Bible had only one edition (as far as I could find) suggests that it was not very successful, in the ordinary money sense. (My copy was slightly damp and musty, found in a books-for-pennies place).
Physical Description and Indexes This is about 8" x 9½", the main text occupying a bit more than 200 pages. Each page has a left-hand margin, unlike the old Bibles with their wide central margins, to accommodate the hefty bindings. Many pages have colour reproductions of books, manuscripts, and parts of books. There are a few reproductions of other materials—a portrait of Luther, a library.
There are I suppose four indexes: the first (in small face) is endnotes for each of the 12 chapters, the bibliography, mostly of course modern books, since even if antiquarian surveys existed, there could not be many. The Cambridge History of the Bible (in three volumes) emerges in pole position.
The three other indexes are of: Manuscripts (mostly listed by European towns), General Index (longest; 30 columns, 4 columns per page, largely proper names in a sort of miscellany of once-significant Biblical items), and Photographic Acknowledgements, in addition to those in the body of the text. (As far as I could see, all the illustrations were supplied by the owners, museums etc, and not made by Phaidon).
Introduction In only about five pages, de Hamel lays out his entire scheme in elegantly abbreviated form. He writes 'its actual text has hardly changed at all in thousands of years, except for the occasional disputed phrases here and there, or a delicate realignment of emphasis.' (page viii). His chapter layout is more or less as follows; but note chapters do not have a table of contents, so the book is presented as chapters each needing continuous reading, not split by subtitles:
1 Latin Bibles: Jerome to Charlemagne. Begins in 400AD (pages ix and x) ['Bethlehem to Jarrow, to Naples and Spain']
2 Hebrew and Greek Bible looking back ['Eastern Mediterranean']
3 Giant Bibles of early Middle Ages ['Mostly Italy and Central Europe']
4 Commentaries on the Bible ['Around Europe, especially France']
5 Portable Bibles (13th century) ['Centred in Paris, then the largest city in Europe']
6 Bible Picture Books ['Around Europe, especially France']
7 English Wycliffite Bibles ['Set in England'}
8 Gutenberg Bible ['Mostly events started in Germany']
9 Protestant Reformation Bibles ['Mostly events started in Germany']
10 English-language Bible industry [Much in North America]
11 Missionary Bibles ['Includes the Far East, south Pacific, and Africa']
12 The Modern Search for Origins ['Mainly at Egypt and the Near East']
The square bracketed suffix material is taken from page x in the Introduction. It occurs to me that Portugal especially, and Spain, are under-represented. So perhaps are versions of paper and other bookbinding materials; what did they use in antiquarian Chinese documents, for example? However, generally, de Hamel provides a convincing and not over-rigid framework.
The final paragraph of the introduction nods to Alfred Reed, in New Zealand, when de Hamel was aged 13. And dedicates this book to him. Reed opened the world of artefacts 'of Western civilization' to de Hamel. This attitude perhaps disbarred de Hamel from deep attacks on the violent absurdities of the Bible.
How Useful is this Book for Research? I'll try to give examples of more-or-less interesting topics, and how far I could get with burrowing into them. I'm choosing widely-differing interests.
- If you take the view that most of the time and effort put into this book was a waste of time and dealt in nonsense, what can you find from this book?
The index seems to have no entries for nonsense, irrationality, reason, science, practicality, and similar words and phrases. Unsurprisingly, this is not a priority of this book. On the question of using-up time, even if not usefully, the index yielded nothing much; 'Monasteries' for example have only 8 entries, abbey is not indexed, and Aquinas isn't indexed, I suppose not being part of the Bible production process. It's quite an effort to locate such rubrics as 'Dominican' and 'Carthusian' and 'Franciscan'.
An interesting and neglected aspect of churches and Jews is the careers and moneys offered to the practitioners, probably the genuine reason for the persistence through time of Biblical studies, at least in times when they are encouraged. But there's nothing on tithes or pay, or the status aspects of religion and its convocations, at least that I could find.
- Is there much to be found on the social situations around Bibles? De Hamel has considerable interest in real-life people, and includes quite a bit of picturesque detail. But such passages aren't easy to find. As examples, I looked at the 'Torah' and evidence of the Kahal system of Jewish aggression; then at the pictures—surely the slaughters and battles and rapes of the Bible should have been depicted; then at the political event, of the Amsterdam Jews financing the invasion of England; and finally questions on missionary Bibles.
I found rather little on these things. The actual attitudes of Jews in their 'sacred books' are given little attention. Rather like a lavishly-illustrated book on weapons, without much mention of what they do. The Hebrew Bible—presumably the Old Testament—and Book of Isaiah are indexed, but the entire engine-room aspect is missing. I would guess that de Hamel is either a Jew, or identifies with them, but keeps this aspect secret. His 'picture books' chapter compares the illustrations to stained glass images; in both cases there is a disconnection with all horrific scenes, but fanciful images with angels, people like Moses in toga-like garments, scenes such as the 'annunciation'. And thousands more. In their way they are as absurd as Hollywood films.
- Note on Chapter 7 Wycliffite Bibles I was disappointed to find the fullish reasons for the intense-sounding, but practically not very violent, reasons for suppression were not very detailed. Was it fear of people without Latin developing their own ideas? Competition with vicars over congregations? Propaganda fears, in a similar way to BBC television taking steps to cut out pirate TV?
- Amsterdam Jews paying for the military invasion of England as just one example of Jewish applied policies. We have to look at Chapter 9, on the Protestant Reformation, mostly on Luther and fuelled by the new printing press. (The chapter and verse numbering system dates from this time). All this is standard stuff, which omits vital parts, including the symbiosis between Jews and their banks and Christians, who both benefitted financially from the old arrangements, and stood to benefit more. The battle between Roman Catholicism and Lutherans was probably stoked by crypto-Jews. (See for example Miles Mathis's occult.pdf including the Medici, Luther as possible crypto-Jew, Cromwell etc).
Chapter 10 on English-language Bibles includes Henry VIII, who died young and whose children all had suspicious deaths. The 'authorized version' followed and the right to print it (and incidentally portable and also tiny Biblical books). But there's nothing on the invasion of Britain and such events as the Great Fire. But there's none of this in de Hamel's book. Which indeed pre-dated Internet and probably was considerably handicapped because of that fact.
- Missionary Bibles are regarded by de Hamel as artefacts translated into very many languages, some of which had to be invented for the purpose. This process started in north America—de Hamel seems not to consider south America—and the Indian subcontinent came later. There must have been political implications; think of Africa since about 1850, for example—but, again, de Hamel's concern with the Bible, but not its consequences, takes complete precedence.
- Chapter 12 On the Modern Search for Origins — surveys the work of archaeologists and others, following the discovery of the Moabite stone, cuneiform baked clay writing in Iraq/Mesopotamia, which was Babylon, and general loosening-up of travel in the eastern Mediterranean. De Hamel emphasizes that Darwin presented a new theory of the evolution (but not origin) of life, a complete disruption from the 6-day creation story.
Translations showed a much earlier cuneiform version of 'Noah's Ark': this was 'treated with exultation, as if archaeology had supplied 'proof' of the Bible.' De Hamel discusses other things, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls. Interesting material, if not exactly Biblical.
- Something like 50% of north Americans believe in the literal truth of the Bible a terrifying statistic quoted by Richard Dawkins, who however is dishonest about Jews. Most USA rationalists are paid by Jews, and dare not discuss this issue.
After examining de Hamel's book, I fear I could not find great value in it. Except to collectors and people who love illustrations and impressive calligraphy and artistic embellishments, even if the latter are often rather simple repetitive detail and curlicues. The mystery of how such rubbish made such an impression over such a long time remains unsolved.
Rae West 21 March 2022
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