Dubai Malayali family crafts world’s largest handwritten Bible

Our Correspondent

A Dubai family who crafted the world’s largest handwritten Bible will enter The Guinness Book of World Records.

A report in The National daily mentioned that they are now preparing to write another one in their mother tongue Malayalam.

The record holders are Manoj Varghese, Susan Samuel and their two teenaged children who spent up to 15 hours a day on the giant leather-bound book, which is more than 1,500 pages long and contains 800,000 words. They were monitored on two cameras installed in their home by Guinness World Records adjudicators.

About 60 pens were used to write the religious text which they completed in about five months. They used A1 paper, which is eight times bigger than A4.

It was Susan’s idea to write as she wanted to give something to their children to keep. But the family later decided to donate the book to their parish, the Jebel Ali Mar Thoma Church, to mark its 50th anniversary in 2019.

Manoj said it took around three months to get the green signal from Guinness. Since they had to choose an international language, they went for English for the record attempt.

Susan did most of the work, while the other three members of the family pitched in.

Susan has now started work on the Malayalam version in A2 paper.