The first printed multi-column, multi-language Bible was the crown of Spanish scholarship in the 16th century.
The text of Genesis 1:1 in the Complutensian Polyglot. Image source
Mainz, Germany, 1455. Soncino, Italy, 1488. Basel, Switzerland, 1516. These cities and dates mark pivotal moments in the history of biblical philology—the study of Scripture’s linguistic and textual history. Specifically, they mark the first printing or publication of the Latin Bible, the Hebrew Bible, and the Greek New Testament.
Bible ‘firsts’
In Mainz, Johannes Gutenberg, with financial backing by Johannes Fust, produced the first complete printed Bible using moveable type. He used the Latin translation by Jerome whose work had become the standard biblical text of the Roman Catholic Church. The printing of biblical texts in their original languages was only a matter of time.
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