Few books have determined the course of the world like the Bible, setting politics and social order for centuries. Unadorned or exquisitely detailed translations have permeated the planet. In the 18th century, Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken published the first Bible in English in the U.S., a congressionally authorized printing, after Britain, which forbid the printing of Bibles in the U.S., cut off its imports.

Today, the Aitken Bible would set you back about $150,000, but getting a glimpse of one is free of charge at Bauman Rare Books during its exhibit, In the Beginning was the Word: The Bible Through the Ages. The collection includes other firsts—a first edition of the first Hebrew Bible published in the U.S. and the first Rheims New Testament—along with an ornate Macklin Bible and a fragment of microform containing 50 pages of the King James Bible taken to the moon on Apollo 14.