JOHANNES GOOSEFLESH (GUTENBERG) AND THE MOVEABLE TYPE PRINTING PRESS
Chapter 2
Page 22
Between the death of Wycliffe and the birth of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, God granted the wisdom for man to invent what Luther called, "the last and best gift of Providence, the moveable type printing press. This wonderful invention gave to the Reformers a tool that would be used to saturate Europe with the Word of god. For the first time in the history of the world, Bibles could be mass produced and disseminated to the hungry multitudes.
Johannes Gooseflesh (later changed to Gutenberg) was born around AD 1400. Not much is known about Gutenberg's life, other than that he was a humble stone cutter and mirror polisher by trade.
In 1450 he convinced Johannes Faust, a wealthy goldsmith, to finance the research necessary to produce his dream--a moveable type printing press. Faust became his financial partner, but Gutenberg's project progressed too slowly to suit him, and he later sued to recover his investment. Undaunted, Gutenberg perserved with the aid of Peter Schoeffer, and in 1456 his dream was finally realized.
The Gutenberg Bible was the world's first printed Book. It was a copy of the Latin Vulgate that took six months to typeset. But once the tedious task of setup was complete, the Word of God could be rapidly produced for the first time in the history of the world. Gutenberg said of his invention,
"It is a press from which shall flow in inexhaustible steams the most abundant and most marvelous water that has ever flowed to relieve the thirst of men. God suffers in...
Gutenberg printed only the black type in his Bible, leaving spaces int he text for the chapter headings. Purchasers of the costly Bibles then hired artists to decorate them. The Gutenberg Bible is undoubtedly the most beautiful Bible ever produced, with rich, multi-colored art work in the chapter headings and embossed in the center of the pages between the columns.
Only two hundred Gutenberg Bibles were ever printed, of which forty-six are known to exist today. A complete copy of an original Gutenberg was sold at auction in 1989 for more than four million dollars. One page is vallued at over $65,000.00.
As we mentioned earlier in this chapter, Martin Luther lauded Gutenberg's accomplishment, calling the printing press, "the last and best gift of Providence," while the Catholic priests lamented, "We must root out printing, or printing will root us out."
