Did you ever wonder what was the biggest book in the world? How about a book so big that it takes two strong men to lift it. If you said that this must be the biggest book, you would be correct. The book is known as the devil's bible and it contains both the old and new testaments written in the pre Vulgate Latin. There is more to this book, it also contains Isidore of Seville's Etymolgiae, Josephus' History of the Jews in Latin, the Chronicle of Bohemia and more. The book was constructed in the 13th century at a Benedictine monastery in Podiazice, Bohemia. Why would a book like this be called the devil's bible? Was it inspired by the devil? Does it contain passages that are favorable to the devil, or was it just the fact that it is hell to lift? On a more serious note, the only reason the book is called the devil's bible, is because of a depiction of the devil that people felt was impressive. I bet you thought that I was going to say that the book was evil or something of that nature, didn't you? There is more to this story however, a tale that has been passed down through the centuries. It tells the story of a monk who was punished for some infraction and forced to stay in his cell like room and work on this huge book until it was finished. It goes on to say that he called upon the devil to help him finish and the book was completed in one night.

Just looking at this huge book tells us that this bible like book, must have taken many years to complete, if not the entire lifetime of the monk who worked on it, unless you believe the tale that I just recited. The book is said to be 35 inches by 19 inches and weigh over 165 pounds. It contains 624 pages and is also known by the name, the Codex Gigas. The pages of the book are made from calf skin velum. When the Swedish army conquered the city , the book was brought to Sweden, where it remains today, except for tours and studies. One never knows what strange books or texts might appear, or should I say reappear. An example of this is the Gospel of Judas, yes you heard me correctly, Judas. The copy of the Gospel that has reappeared is from the 4th century, but the text was known about hundreds of years earlier. The text was called a fictitious history by St. Irenaeu, who was at the time, the bishop of an area that is now Lyon in France. He was compiling a book of alternate religious views and the Gospel of Judas was one of the works.

Codex
Photo Source: SXC

What makes this Gospel so unusual, is that it tells a different story about Judas and in it he is not a traitor. It states that he did tell the authorities about Jesus, but only because Jesus asked him to. In later years these types of works were destroyed except for those that were hidden to protect them. This one managed to remain hidden for over 1,700 years. I guess you can say that the person that hid it, did his job exceptionally well.

If we go back further in time and study ancient writings, sometimes they are very hard to understand. I am not talking about the written words that have to be translated, although that can be very hard to do also, I am talking about the meaning of the text. It has been said that modern man is not capable of understanding the wisdom of the ancients. I don't know if I agree with that statement entirely, but I do at least partially. Certain references are made in these ancients works that sometimes completely escapes us. Look at the English language for example and try and imagine someone finding a book, written today, 7 or 8 thousand years in the future. Even if they understand English, will they understand such phrases as "three sheets to the wind" or "he sat on the stoop" ? Probably not and if they don't, they will try and assign meanings to the phrases that they feel most closely represent them. For example that "three sheets to the wind" phrase might make them think that it has something to do with laundry and the "he sat on the stoop" might get assigned a meaning that he sat on a fancy chair. Close but no cigar. Yeah that was another phrase that they might not understand in the future.

Some ancient books are still popular today and copies can be purchased at any large bookstore. I am referring to books like The Art Of War by Sun Tzu, The Book of The Dead from Egypt, The I Ching or Book of Changes, which is the oldest of Chinese classic texts, The Analects by Confucius, Iliad by Homer and Plato's Republic, just to mention a few. I even downloaded The Book Of The Dead one time, it was free and legal.

There is an ancient book, named the Book of Thoth. It is from ancient Egypt. The legend states that when Prince Neferkaptah died, the book was buried with him. Supposedly when you read this book, you would gain the ability to understand the language of the animals and be able to cast great magic spells. Your powers wouldn't end there, since now you would have gained the power to enchant the earth and sky. If anyone read this book, the gods would punish them by killing their relatives until the book was put back into its original place. Today we have Tarot Cards based on the book. As you can see, some of these ancient books were more than books to those that had them, they might have been magical, contained religious secrets or were capable of healing, among other things. They could even contain curses. One of the facts that might have led to very ancient books being thought of this way was the fact that they were extremely rare. No common person in the very ancient times, owned a book.

A lot of these ancient books have landed up in the Vatican Library. There are 40,000,000 pieces in the collection, of which 1.6 million are books. As you can imagine, these precious books have to be watched closely. The Vatican has decided to tag all its books with RFID tags, so that the location of each book will always be known. This, of course, will have another advantage. The library will be able to complete an inventory in less than one day, an incredible feat. In case you don't know what an RFID tag is, basically it is a tracking device, a chip that sends out a signal that can easily be pick up with inexpensive equipment. There is a problem, at the time of this writing, in England. Crooks are going around to churches and stealing ancient bibles. The bibles have quite a value to unscrupulous collectors. RFID tags may have be used by all the churches soon.