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Today's Christian, July/August 2000
Truman's Handwritten Bible
He can't read, but that didn't stop him
by Randy Bishop
Truman Meredith can't read, but he knows his letters and he can "do some figurin'." And that's all he needed to know to neatly copy the entire King James version of the Bible onto 1,724 sheets of loose-leaf paper filling 14 one-inch thick notebooks. Truman even used red ink for Jesus' words.
He finished the feat in February 2000 at his home in Henderson, Kentucky, after about a year of work. One side of each page took him about an hour and 15 minutes to write out.
"I've got knots all over my fingers," he says. "I got half-way through and I felt like quitting my fingers hurt so bad." But Truman didn't quit, and after a while the meticulous printing began to calm his spirit.
The copying exercise helped Truman, 64, pass away the days made lonely by the death, five years ago, of his wife of 39 years. Bonnie Jean would read him the Bible each night before they went to bed. In the early '90s, the two had conversion experiences—"I got right with God," Truman says—after each of them had serious health problems.
He claims his story has inspired some local preachers to use him as a sermon illustration: if someone like Truman can write it all out, their parishioners shouldn't be so lazy that they don't even read it, the pastors say.
"I really enjoyed doing it. God gave me the knowledge to print that Bible and I couldn't have done it if it weren't for him," says Truman, who has three children and seven grandchildren. "I feel like I'm 10-feet tall." One day soon, possibly with the help of a tutor, he hopes to read what he's written.
A Christian Reader original article.
Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today International/Today's Christian magazine (formerly Christian Reader).
Click here for reprint information.
July/August 2000, Vol. 38, No. 4, Page 46
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