Funeral service for discarded family Bibles
100’s of Bibles have been buried in an unusual religious ceremony after being donated to a charity shop. An estimated 500 old Bibles, the majority of them tattered and worn and unsuitable for resale, have been handed in.
Staff at the Ness Charity Shop on Lewis become overwhelmed by the numbers of Bibles, mostly written in Gaelic, which had been donated by people across the island who did not wish to simply throw them away.
The staff came up with the idea of respectfully disposing of them at a religious ceremony, following an ancient Jewish tradition of burying sacred scrolls. The Bibles were placed in boxes before being buried at a cemetery.
More than 40 villagers attended the short burial service at Swainbost cemetery, which was conducted in English and Gaelic by the Rev Kenneth Ferguson, the local Free Church of Scotland minister. Mr Ferguson said it had been a unique event in the history of the island community.
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