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BOWYER BIBLE PRINTS ILLUSTRATING SACRED EVENTS NARRATED BY LUKE PART 7 (THE BOOK OF ACTS)This image collection (the seventh of seven parts) contains prints illustrating various scenes from the life of the apostles taken from the Book of Acts in the Bowyer Bible. Robert Bowyer (1758-1834) spent a fortune on his own copy of the Macklin Bible which he expanded to 45 volumes after acquiring and inserting over 6200 different prints of Biblical events. He had a custom designed bookcase built just to house his collection; The Bowyer Bible is now housed in Bolton Museums and Archives who acquired it in 1948. The expansion of the Macklin Bible through careful "grangerisation" within the Bowyer Bible's framework indicates a practice of enhancing existing texts with additional illustrative material, often sourced from multiple publications. This method was popular among collectors and scholars in the 18th century, allowing for the creation of unique, personalized compendia. Naomi Billingsley writes: "Bowyer’s curation of biblical visual material evidences both his professional interests as a connoisseur of prints and his personal interests in the visual culture of the Bible that reflect his own piety as well as contemporaneous developments in the study of the scriptures." See this article for an exhaustive account of the facts surrounding this Bible as a phenomenon: "‘The Great Bowyer Bible’: Robert Bowyer and the Macklin Bible" by Naomi Billingsley in the Journal of Illustration, Volume 8, Issue: "The Unique Copy: (Extra-)Illustration, Word and Image, Book History, and Print Culture", Aug 2021, p. 51 - 80. Published online: 01 Aug 2021. https://doi.org/10.1386/jill_00038_1However, what is remarkable about the Bowyer Bible collection is the fact that, given that he wished to promulgate the Word of God through these images, it represents a great act of faith on the part of Bowyer in view of of the absence of any method in his time that would allow this to be done. He was trusting to providence that somehow the images firmly pasted into his Bible would be scattered abroad like the seed in the parable. He had no way of anticipating the miracle of the internet some 200 years later. Given the expense to him in terms of both time and money, that was a great act of faith. We owe it to Bowyer to put these images “out there”; this is only going to happen through a Christian commitment that echoes Bowyer’s; otherwise the set of volumes locked in their case will remain a curiosity that may attract the passing attention of a scholar or antiquarian. This has what has happened prior to this current project of opening them up and getting them into social media. Such is the endeavour of Phillip Medhurst.The chapter and verse reference in Acts is also included for those who may need to re-acquaint themselves with the scripture illustrated. Otherwise, the prints in the order of this flip-book are as initially numbered as follows:-

Chủ đề: Bowyer Bible, Acts of the Apostles, Book of Acts, Acts, Paul the Apostle, Apostle Paul, Saint Paul, Elymas, Barnabas, Lystrian, stoning, divination, Silas, prison, Agabus, Agrippa, shipwreck, viper, Malta, unknown god, Phillip Medhurst, Bible illustration, print, engraving

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