The bottom of Australia has the top priority

Our Book That Changed The World exhibition aroused significant media interest in Tasmania. Firstly view the clip from Hobart evening news on 1st November. Below that a page 3 spread in the Examiner on November 24.

Exhibition Guide now available online

If you're not able to visit our Book That Changed The World exhibition and collect a free guide you no longer need to miss out. Simply click the link below to read the exhibition guide online.

Bruce Almighty

Bruce Kuhn live in concert during his Australian tour

"Immediate impact and emotion" was how Rachel Kohn described Bruce Kuhn's stage-show performance of The Gospel of Luke. In a wide ranging discussion on Radio National's "The Spirit of Things" Bruce and Rachel explore such issues as:

• What liberties an actor can take with scripture
• Acting technique
• Bringing back the oral tradition of the Bible
• Jesus' attitude to women
• The resurrection of Jesus

Throughout the discussion Bruce gives live performances of parts of his show including the persistent friend, the rich fool, Jesus and the leper (in dutch!), the risen Jesus, the prodigal son and the magnificat.

The Legacy of King James and his Bible

Rev Dr John Harris leading a public parade past
Flinders Street Station to place a 1611 KJB
in the Bible Exhibition at Melbourne City Library

This is the text of a lecture given by Rev Dr John Harris at the University of Wollongong in September 2011. It is re-produced here in full due to popular demand.


In 1611 a remarkable committee set up by King James 1st of England produced the King James Version of the Bible, the most influential book in the history of the world, published in uncountable millions and still read 400 years later.

On 22nd March 1603, slumped in her chair and dying, the childless Queen Elizabeth responded at last to the urgent pleas of her courtiers to name her successor. Among others, the name of her cousin, King James VI of Scotland, was spoken. Unable to speak, she managed to cross the fingers of both hands above her head to form a crown. She died the next morning.

In the summer of 1603, when James was journeying south from Scotland to become James I of England, he had no way of knowing he would be most remembered for an English Bible that would forever bear his name.

Hardly had his horses and carriage left Edinburgh when he was met by a delegation of earnest English Puritans. God had appointed him their physician, they said, “to heal the diseases of the church”. James liked their suggestion of a major conference to set the church right, but what he and the Puritans thought was wrong with it were not exactly the same thing.

New York pays homage to the KJB

Detail from the "Wicked Bible", a version of the King James Bible that contained an unfortunate error in the commandment against committing adultery. (Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)

WASHINGTON - The race, we know, is not to the swift. And we are well acquainted with the fate of a kingdom divided against itself. We may tell it not in Gath, and publish it not in the streets of Ashkelon, yet that still, small voice will be clearly heard. We reap far more than a whirlwind from the phrases and rhythms left to us by the King James translation of the Bible, whose 400th anniversary is being commemorated this year.

Pay close attention to the major new exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library here, “Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible,” and you will see not only manuscripts going back to the year 1000, an early translation from the 14th century, Queen Elizabeth I’s copy of the Bible, and imposingly bound versions of the King James; you will also sense the gradual birth of the modern English language and the subtle framing of a culture’s patterns of thought.

In honor of the occasion, the Folger joined forces with the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, which mounted its own exhibition earlier this year before lending the Folger important artifacts, and also published an impressive catalog that chronicles the evolution of early Bible translations. The subject also inspired the National Endowment for the Humanities, which became a major sponsor of the enterprise, including a smaller traveling exhibition mounted on 14 textual panels that will be seen at 40 locations in the United States during the next two years...

[Read the full article in The New York Times "400 Years Old and Ageless" by Edward Rothstein]