Before class
At home, copy Psalm 119:105 by hand onto a card, noting roughly how long it took you. Bring a printed Bible with chapter and verse numbers to set beside it. As you go through pp. 102–105, look closely at the card of the Reformation on p. 104, which puts six moments in the order Adams marks them. Print Stretch 15 from the Big-Print Pack, and find the three yellow books on the strip before class so you can point to them without searching.
Opening · 5 minutes
A handwritten card in one hand, a printed Bible in the other: that is how you stand when the lesson begins. Say: “It took me a few minutes to copy one verse onto this card. Now picture copying the whole Bible this way, every word, with no mistakes. For many years, Adams tells us, the English Bible of John Wickliffe existed only in copies like this one. On the chart there is a man who changed that. He is holding up a sheet with four words from the first chapter of Genesis. Who can find him?” Let them search the strip until someone spots the man in red.
At the chart · 15 minutes
1Chapter and verse. Near the top left of p. 102 lies a small open Bible. Ask someone to read the two names and dates on its pages: chapters by Cardinal Hugo in 1227, verses by Robert Stephens in 1551. Then have everyone find John 3:16 in their own Bibles and point out that the numbers they just used were added to the text much later (p. 104). Read the Watch Out on p. 103 so no one mistakes 1227 and 1551 for the century posts, which are the tall ones marked 12 to 15.
2From hand to press. Slide right to Wickliffe’s Bible, pin 4. Read the note: translated in 1380, it “existed only in M.S. for many years.” Ask the group to find the dates Adams gives for its first printing, 1731 for the New Testament and 1848 for the Old (p. 103), and work out the gap together. Then go to Gutenberg, pin 5, and read his sheet aloud. Finish on the England stream, in Edward IV’s box: “Printing introduced in England 1471” (p. 104). The press has crossed the sea.
3One column, four men. Point to Luther at Worms, pin 7, and follow his red bar down to its end at 1546. Then ask the class to stay in that column, just after pillar 15, and name who else is there: Erasmus, Cardinal Wolsey and Henry VIII. This is Key 6 · Same column, same moment. Read Romans 1:17 aloud as the verse at the heart of Luther’s question. Then look at the crown over Henry’s box, “Head of the Church 1534,” and ask whether Henry broke with Rome for the same reason Luther did.
4Touch the three yellow books. Ask one child to come up and touch the three yellow books from left to right: the open Bible of 1227 and 1551, Wickliffe’s Bible of 1380, and the Bishops’ Bible of 1568 over Elizabeth’s box (pin 9). Gutenberg’s press stands between the second and the third. Tell the class that the book calls this row the Reformation as a Bible reader sees it (p. 105). Close the step by naming the English Bibles that came between, from the note on p. 103: Tyndale, Coverdale, the Great Bible and Geneva.
Talk it over · 15 minutes
The chapter and verse numbers in your Bible came more than a thousand years after its last book was written. How does that change the way you read a single verse quoted on its own?
Listen for: Listen for the idea that a verse belongs to a sentence, a chapter and a whole book. If the class is unsure, read a verse that ends in the middle of a thought and then the one after it, as the note on p. 104 suggests.
For many years Wickliffe’s Bible existed only in handwritten copies. How did most people meet Scripture before 1440, and who could hold the lamp the psalm speaks of?
Listen for: Good answers mention hearing rather than reading, and how few copies there were. Bring it home by asking how many Bibles are in the room right now, and what we do with the access they did not have.
Luther, Erasmus, Wolsey and Henry VIII share one column. Each wanted something from the church. Which of their reasons were about God, and which were about power?
Listen for: Expect Henry’s crown of 1534 to come up quickly. Ask your students to be fair and to stay with what the chart shows, and to notice that the same question can be asked of anyone who wants something from a church today.
To close
“The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple.”Psalm 119:130 · KJV
Thank you, Lord, for the Bible we can hold in our own hands; make us readers who let its light in.
With younger children (6–10)
A rubber stamp races a pencil. Give one child the stamp and an ink pad and another a pencil, and ask both to put the word LIGHT on a sheet as many times as they can in one minute. Count the results together and talk about why Gutenberg’s press mattered so much. Then let them find the ship under 1492 and touch the three yellow books on the Big-Print strip, counting them aloud.