World’s Tiniest Bible On Display At Israel Museum: Nano Bible Is Smaller Than Size Of A Pinhead

According to The Jerusalem Post, the world’s tiniest Bible will be on display at Israel Museum for the museum’s 50th anniversary.

A celebration for the museum will be going on for an entire year. During that time, the Nano Bible will be displayed at the Jerusalem-based Israel Museum. The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex will also be at the museum.

Nanotechnology Now reported in 2007 that creating the Nano Bible was not an attempt to make the holy book more portable. Instead, it was an exercise meant to arouse public interest in nanotechnology. It was part of an educational program developed at the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute at Haifa’s Technion-Israel Institute of Technology aimed especially at young people.

The idea to inscribe the whole biblical text was that of Professor Uri Sivan, director of the Technion’s Russell Berrie Institute. Dr. Ohad Zohar of the institute developed the idea. Engineers Sara and Moshe Zisapel were responsible for the manufacturing of the chip and the development of the software that allowed the engraving of the letters.

The Nano Bible is not your typical leather-bound book. Rather, the Nano Bible is a gold-coated silicon chip smaller than a pinhead. It is 0.04 square millimeters, and 0.00002 millimeters (20 nanometers) deep. No parts of the Hebrew Bible were omitted. All 1.2 million letters of the Hebrew Bible were written using a focused ion beam generator that shot gallium ions onto a gold surface covering a base layer of silicon.

People might think that since the Nano Bible is so small, some texts might have been left out. However, the Nano Bible includes every book, chapter, verse, word, and letter of the Old Testament that are in bigger Bibles most people read. Visitors at the museum will be able to see for themselves by reading texts from the Nano Bible under a microscope. Texts will be magnified 10,000 times.

Israel Hayom reports that the Nano Bible exhibition in Israel Museum is just one of numerous special 50th anniversary displays to highlight Israel Museum’s progress over the years. Along with the Nano Bible, the Israel Museum will have an exhibit showing how the Bible was designed.

It is worth mentioning that the Nano Bible is the Hebrew Bible that includes 39 books. The Nano Bible does not include the New Testament that has 27 books. However, that does not diminish the amazing fact that the Nano Bible is the tiniest Bible ever created.

[Image via Israel Hayom]