Description of the attraction
The Ernest Gluck Bible Museum is located in the picturesque town of Aluksne. They say that this museum is the only one in Europe, and sometimes they say that it is the only one in the world.
The Bible Museum is housed in a small historic house built at the beginning of the 20th century. The building was handed over to the parish of the Lutheran Church after Latvia regained its independence. The house was restored with donations from parishioners.
The exposition of the museum tells about the important activities of the German pastor Ernest Gluck (years of life: 1654-1705) for the benefit of the city of Aluksne and the whole of Latvia. Gluck was originally from Saxony. He received a theological education at the Wittenberg and Leipzig Universities. In 1680 he became a pastor. In Marienburg (as the city of Aluksne was called earlier) Gluck began to live in 1683. It was here that from 1685 to 1689 he translated the Bible from Hebrew and Greek into Latvian. This Bible weighs 4 kilograms and is 4874 pages long.
When the pastor began working on the translation, he planted an oak tree near his home. Four years later, after finishing work, he planted a second oak tree. Both historical giant trees have survived to this day. They are called Gluck's oaks. Not far from them, a memorial stone was erected - a monument to the pastor.
There is a version according to which the first oak appeared in honor of the completion of the translation of the Old Testament, and the second - on the day of the completion of the translation of the New Testament. It probably is. Most likely, the pastor would not have been able to translate both the Old and New Testaments into Latvian in 4 years.
Also Ernest Gluck is the compiler of several textbooks on Russian grammar and geography.
Interestingly, the girl Martha Skavronskaya was brought up by Gluck. She was an orphan and lived with the pastor's own children. In the future, she became the wife of Peter I and the first Russian empress Catherine I.
The pastor was buried in an old German cemetery located not far from Maryina Roshcha.
Until the 20th century, the Bible translated by Gluck was the largest printed work published in Latvia. It was printed in Riga by Johann Georg Vilken's printing house. But the original manuscript of the translation of the Bible into Latvian is kept in the capital of Sweden - Stockholm. The view of this holy book for Christian Latvians is depicted on the coat of arms of the city of Aluksne.
Also in the museum, visitors can get acquainted with many different editions of the Bible, from the first translated to the modern computer. The collection of the museum is very rich and varied. It consists of over 220 Bibles. There are also 170 editions of the New Testament, 210 Psalms, 40 books of sermons and more than 210 other Christian books, such as the Old Testament, the Gospels, textbooks in Latvian and other languages (more than 35 languages of the world).
Recently, the Japanese Nakagawa Susumu donated a Bible in Japanese to the Ernest Gluck Museum. For the first time, having visited Aluksne, Susumu visited the Bible Museum, which made an indelible impression on him. And then he decided to find the Holy Scriptures in Japan, translated into Japanese, and then personally deliver it to Latvia.
In the museum you can buy a Bible in Latvian and Russian, published in our time, other Christian literature, souvenirs and postcards.
