"This text is just one way to show the history of the Bible," she says of her six-year quest to earmark memorial donations of $20 and more to purchase the 1536-page facsimile publication of Bibliorum Sacrorum Graecorum Codex Vaticanus B, one of 450 numbered copies of the oldest complete compilation of the Christian scriptures.

"It's very well bound and it's beautiful, with those Vatican (library) markings, the wrinkles in the page, the markings," she says of the heavy book, whose pages simulate the weight and feel of parchment.

"I think if we didn't make it a special project it would never happen," she says, holding the white parchment-bound volume, measuring 12.5 cm thick. "It would never come out of operating funds. We would never have $7,000 to spend on a single volume."