Library
According to Dr. Niels Henry Sonne, "The Library of The General Theological Seminary is a magnificent treasury of books, manuscripts, records and source materials for the study of the life and thought of Christianity." The Library's first donation was by John Pintard, in 1820, and within a year the library had grown to over 2,500 volumes. The Rev. J. H. Feltus was the first librarian, and in 1834 the Friends of the Library association was formed, and their endowment is still productive today. Under the direction of Rev. Eugene Augustus Hoffman, who became Dean in 1879, the library was classified and catalogued using modern systems, and Hobart Hall was built to house the collection. Hoffman also bought the Walter A. Copinger collection of Latin Bibles and made other significant purchases.
The Library has a collection of Ancient Bibles and English Bibles. The Ancient Bible Collection includes a Hebrew Bible from 1264, in which the comment was so written as to form decorative pictures. It also includes three tenth-century Gospels, one beautifully decorated with colored miniatures, and a complete Latin Bible from about 1250. The Library once had a Gutenberg Bible. "The General Theological Seminary copy was acquired in 1898 when the Offenburg-Syston Park-Makellar copy came up for auction." One of the pages of this copy was found to have been forged, and was replaced with another page from another incomplete Gutenberg Bible, making this the first incomplete Gutenberg Bible to be made whole again. In 1978, this copy was sold for $2.2 million to the Württembergische Landesbibliothek in Stuttgart, Germany.
The Library of the General Theological Seminary has been known as the St. Mark’s Library since the 1960s. In 2011, the Library moved into a beautiful new facility on the east side of the Close, on the site of the former Sherrill Hall. In October 2011, the building was dedicated as the Christoph Keller, Jr. Library, to honor the Rt. Rev. Christoph Keller, Jr. who served as the tenth Bishop of Arkansas from 1970 to 1981.
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