A Rare Moment

So I decided to take a visit to Yale's famous Beinecke Rare Book Library the other day to check out some of the books / manuscripts in their collection.

As you can see, Beinecke is a rather odd looking building, at least from the outside. This is particularly true in light of the surrounding architecture, which is mostly neo-Gothic.


Beinecke has over 500,000 rare books, and millions of manuscripts that Yale students can just walk in and read, study, etc. It is a pretty unbelievable experience.

Inside Beinecke houses all of their
books in a massive glass enclosure.
Word has it that at the very slightest spark, they can evacuate and suck all of the air out of the chamber, therefore saving the books and manuscripts.

Beinecke also has books on display in glass cases around the outside of the glass chamber. Of the many books here on display, I think I was most impressed by their copies of the original Gutenberg Bible.

But as you can imagine, I didn't show up to Beinecke just for a good time - although, that might not be a bad idea in the future.


I was here to read some of Jonathan Edwards original handwritten sermons.


I was able to find some pictures online of what these look like. These are 10cm by 10cm I believe - which is unbelievable when you look at how small he was able to write and the fact that he was preaching off of these in the pulpit. As my friend who took me there said, it is hard to believe he didn't just hold these 2 inches from his face.





The other reason I wanted to show you these is because of the now-famous handwriting of Jonathan Edwards. I honestly was not able to make it 6 words without stumbling over a word that looked as though he slipped into Aramaic. It is a testimony to the Jonathan Edwards Center that they have done such a good job of transcribing these for public use. Their transcribers honestly have to "learn" Edwards - by starting with his earliest handwriting and "progressing" with him. Progressing being in quotes because his handwriting was not a progression of anything!

Take a look a the pictures and see if you can read - these are actually clear ones!