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For more than two centuries, publishers and critics have tried to design an English Bible that would be easy to hold and a delight to read. This essay tracks various attempts to design such a bible, beginning with early nineteenth-century printings that sought to declutter the bible page and to break the thick book into multiple volumes, before turning to early calls to revise the Authorized Version (a.k.a. the King James Version) so that it would be easier for modern audiences to comprehend. The latter half of the essay examines two recent efforts to reform the English Bible physically and textually, Adam Lewis Greene's Bibliotheca (2016) and Robert Alter's The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary (2018), arguing that each makes important strides toward producing the long-awaited "readable Bible." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers John Ruskin's "reading" of the stonework of fifteenth-century Venice for its lesson in virtues and then adapts his technique for reflection on scenes of St. Jerome in his study. The authors argue that these artifacts have more than art historical interest. They have spiritual interest. By looking backward to previous generations' ways of imagining scholarship, we can gain a fresh view of our own scenes of reading and writing, not just for the objects strewn about within in them but also for their animating spirits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]