Note 259 — XXI
Reading edition
These evidences, which seem to favor the theory of the priority of the Bible of 36 lines, combine many features of probability, but they are not free from objections. Too little is known about the book to warrant a positive statement as to its age. In nearly all the popular treatises on printing, the Bible of 42 lines is specified as the first book of Gutenberg, but it is the belief of many of the most learned bibliographers, from Zapf to Didot and Madden, that the Bible of 36 lines is the older edition. The theory that it must have been printed by Gutenberg between 1457 and 1459, and the proposition that it may have been printed by Albert Pfister of Bamberg at or soon after that time, will be examined on an advanced page.