Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Our tour is of the tiny but exciting area to the left. It's variously called “The Sir John
Ritblat Gallery,” “Treasures of the British Library,” or just “The Treasures.” This priceless
literary and historical collection is held in one large, carefully designed, dimly lit room.
Enter and let your eyes adjust. The room has display cases grouped according to
themes: maps, sacred texts, music, and so on. Focus on the big picture, and don't be too
worried about locating every specific exhibit in this tour.
Maps
The historic maps show how humans' perspective of the world expanded over the cen-
turies. These pieces of paper, encoded with information gleaned from travelers, could be
passed along to future generations—each building upon the knowledge of the last.
The collection changes year to year, but you may see maps similar to these: A crude
13th-century map of Britain put medieval man in an unusual position—looking down on
his homeland from 50 miles in the air. A few centuries later, maps of Britain were of such
high quality they could still be used today to plan a trip. And only a few generations after
Columbus' first journey, the entire globe was fairly well-mapped, except for the mysteri-
ous expanse of unknown land that lay beyond America's east coast—“Terra Incognita.”
• Move into the area dedicated to sacred texts from several cultures—the Hebrew Torah,
Muslim Quran, Buddhist sutras, and Hindu Upanishads. Start by browsing the different
versions of the sacred text of Christians, the Bible.
Early Bibles
My favorite excuse for not learning a foreign language is “If English was good enough for
Jesus Christ, it's good enough for me!” I don't know what that has to do with anything, but
obviously Jesus didn't speak English—nor did Moses or Isaiah or Paul or any other Bible
author or character. As a result, our present-day English Bible came not directly from the
mouths and pens of these religious figures, but is instead the fitful product of centuries of
evolution and translation.
The Bible is not a single book; it's an anthology of books by many authors from dif-
ferent historical periods writing in various languages (usually Hebrew or Greek). So there
are three things that editors must do in compiling the most accurate Bible: 1) decide which
books actually belong, 2) find the oldest and most accurate version of each book, and 3)
translate it accurately.
