The Four Holy Gospels

This app is the perfect companion for a visit to Fujimura’s Four Holy Gospels installation at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, DC. Users can explore the art and read about the story behind the project.

The Four Holy Gospels is an exquisitely designed and produced edition of the four canonical Gospels in the English Standard Version, which included hundreds of original paintings by Makoto Fujimura.

The original illuminated bible was published by Crossway in commemoration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Version (KJV) Bible in 1611. It was the first manuscript of this type to feature abstract contemporary art in lieu of traditional representational illustrations.

It was this unprecedented marriage of a modern, usually secular art form with ancient scripture that most interested Fujimura, who aimed to depict “the greater reality that the Bible speaks of… for the pure sake of integrating faith and art in our current pluralistic, multicultural world.”