photo by: Elvyn Jones

Nick Pumphrey, assistant professor of religious studies at Baker University, leans on a table displaying some of the artifacts, manuscripts and Bibles from the school's Quayle Bible Collection he curates. Pumphrey put together the show More

After two years on the job, Nick Pumphrey is starting to feel at home with a resource entrusted to him.

Pumphrey, who teaches religious studies at Baker University, brings a little playfulness to his job that has him offering a course this semester on religion and monsters. It is appropriate, then, that his position at the university comes with an academic playground.

Pumphrey is the curator of the school’s Quayle Bible Collection, housed in the Spencer Wing of the university’s Collins Library on the Baldwin City campus.

When Pumphrey started his position at the school, he knew of the collection that early Baker president Bishop William Quayle bequeathed to Baker on his death in 1925. But Pumphrey confesses he didn’t know the extent of the still-growing collection that was seeded with the 250 Bibles, manuscripts and artifacts Quayle pulled together through his international connections. The collection includes a number of rare and now valuable texts, including a 13th century illuminated manuscript, a 1539 Bible made for England’s King Henry VIII, a 1560 Geneva Bible and a Genoa Psalter in which Arabic characters first appeared in print.

“I figured with Baker being a religious school, there would be a few Bibles,” Pumphrey said. “I had no idea.”

After two years of spending as many as 10 hours a week in the Spencer Wing, Pumphrey has become much more familiar with what the collection holds, although he is still turning up a few surprises.

“I’m still finding little gems,” Pumphrey said. “I found a 1661 (John) Eliot’s Bible. It’s one sheet, not the whole Bible. It’s the first Bible printed in the English Colonies. It was written in Algonquin.”

The collection’s two-page leaf of the Eliot Bible is now displayed on a table in a recreated 17th century drawing room with one of the university’s two first-edition 1611 King James Bibles, a small slice of papyrus with Egyptian hieroglyphs, Sumerian cuneiforms and a Koran.

In the adjoining room are 10 display cases containing Bibles, Korans and a Torah culled from the collection for the show “Women of Genesis: More Than Just Matriarchs.” On one of the room’s walls are banners on the wives of Noah and Lot and the daughters of Lot. They are, Pumphrey explained, women whose mention in the Bible are limited to whom they married or whom they begot. Perhaps it is that limited role that has led people to try to fill their stories through the centuries. Pumphrey said there was a Medieval tradition that Noah’s wife was reluctant to board the Ark.

The show, which opened three weeks ago, is the latest in annual 11-month exhibits put together to showcase the Quayle Collection.

Pumphrey doubled up the job of organizing the exhibit with his teaching duties. The show grew from a class with the same name Pumphrey taught last spring. The students were asked to do projects on women of Genesis and responded with reports included in the display cases on Eve, Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Dinah, Tamar and Potiphar’s wife, as well as the two pairs of Leah and Rachel and Bilhah and Zilpah. Pumphrey said there is also a display case devoted to Lilith, who doesn’t appear in Genesis, although she does have a single mention in the Book of Isaiah.

Lilith, a source of fascination from ancient times to the present day, earns her place in the current show from her standing in Jewish tradition as the first wife of Adam, Pumphrey said.

The longstanding fascination in Lilith is rare among Genesis women, Pumphrey said. More often there was interest during a particular period or religious movement. Different or changing views are not evident in the text of Bibles displayed with the show, but can be found in the work of illustrators with more creative license, he said.

“You have figures like Eve and Sarah who are always popular, and then you are going to have different figures get popular at different times,” he said. “The illustrators are telling stories from their point of view, just like the students.”

Different artistic perspectives are evident in the Bible illustrations displayed with a student’s Rebekah projects. Two of the illustrations are interesting but straightforward, while a third shows her with a finger near her lips and a sly look as she plots to have her favorite son Jacob receive the birthright from her husband, Isaac, that was rightfully that of the elder brother Esau.

“She’s classically depicted as a trickster figure,” Pumphrey said. “The student decided to study if she was depicted as a trickster or not.”

Another display case in the show contains two Korans and a Bible. Pumphrey said it was the project of a Saudi student who chose as his project the story of Ishmael and Hagar to illustrate it is the same in the Judeo, Christian and Islamic traditions.

Pumphrey got the idea for the class and the show from Tammi Schneider, a faculty member at Claremont Graduate University, where Pumphrey earned his doctorate. Schneider is also the author of “Women of Promise: Women in the Book of Genesis,” and will visit Baker next spring for a speaking engagement.

Pumphrey said he helped the students find the right Bibles or texts to enhance their stories. It was an effort aided by his growing familiarity with the Quayle Collection, he said.

The students’ projects give a hint at the research and academic asset the Quayle Collection can be. Pumphrey knows of one University of Kansas professor who made a research visit to the collection, but the fact the collection wasn’t cataloged in the past limited its research potential, he said.

That deficiency was largely addressed by his predecessor, said Ray Walling, Baker University director of library services. As one of her last projects before she retired last spring, former Baker library director Kay Bradt cataloged all the major Bibles and manuscripts in the collection. That list of 471 texts and their distinctive contents can be found at the Collins Library website and links to WorldCat.org, an international online database of library holdings, Walling said.

Additionally, a list and description of past Quayle Collection shows since 2008 can be found at http://www.bakeru.edu/quayle-bible-collection, Walling said. The library has photos from those shows that eventually will be posted to serve as an online tour of past exhibits, he said.

The Quayle Collection and the current show are accessible to visitors. It is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday or by appointment by calling 785-594-8393 or emailing quayle@www.bakeru.edu. Plans are already in place for an active Maple Leaf Festival weekend, Pumphrey said.

“We probably had 100 visitors last year,” he said.