Curious Hieroglyphick Bible: or, Select Passages in the Old and New Testaments, Represented with Emblematical Figures, for the Amusement of Youth. or, ... Youth. or, Select Passages

by Isaiah Thomas

A touchstone of eighteenth-century American book illustration, this ""curious"" children's Bible contains nearly five hundred woodcuts made by American artists. The most ambitious woodcut book produced in America up to that time, it is one of the sixty-five children's book titles produced by the pioneer publisher of children's literature and preeminent early American printer Isaiah Thomas (1749-1831), who had learned the art of engraving while apprenticed in his youth to the Boston printer Zechariah Fowle. Only four copies of this remarkable piece of early Americana exist today. A hieroglyphic Bible replaces some of the words of the text with pictures in an attempt to tell a story in a direct, simple, and interesting way. Such Bibles became very popular in the late eighteenth century as an easy means of teaching the Scripture to the young. In his preface to this volume, Thomas offers this first American hieroglyphic Bible, more extensively illustrated than its English prototype, as not only a pleasing method of teaching Bible lessons to children, but as ""an easy Way of leading them on in Reading."" Printed in Worcester, Massachusetts, the book was inscribed by its first owner, ""Enoch Brooks' Book, Princeton, March 13th, 1789."" It is now in the Library's Early American Imprint Collection. English precursors and nineteenth-century American editions are found in the Bible Collection, a representative sampling of nearly fifteen hundred early editions and rare issues of Bibles in numerous languages. --Library of Congress

144 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2005

About the author

1749-1831

Reviews

[Shane Malcomson · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great little facsimile of an early book from 1788 by author, Isaiah Thomas, a well known children's author.

This book in one of the many books I learned from in my youth and I still use it today. The book, as explained in the title is select passages or verses from the Holy Bible starting from Creation to redemption of man, dotted with a few ethical verses from Psalms and Proverbs here and there.

Each verse has a few woodcut images replacing certain words from the verse to make the child guess what the word is for better attainment of the verse and for amusement as well. The crude woodcut images make it a challenge sometimes and more rewarding when you guess it correctly (I still giggle to myself reading it). You can see if you guessed correctly by the verse written on the bottom of the page.

At the end, there is a poem, short biographies of the 4 evangelists, a hymn, a prayer, and a catechism.

All in all, it is good honest fun, and you really do learn and memorize the verses easily after a few times and children will definitely learn and have fun. Thank you.