I googled myself into this, and had to say my bit even though this thread’s a couple of years old. I was, of course, going to suggest printing on 1200 babies; but that one was taken. After reading all previous replies, I think it’s really a matter of doing things the “right” way vs. doing it the “efficient” way.
There are several factors which remain unconsidered here. For one thing, as the Gutenburg Bible was printed, each leaf contained four sheets with 42 vertical lines of text on each page, so they must have been folded in the binding. This would be way too thick with any skin, even puny 2-3mm-thick human baby skin. The end result would be approximately 100-180 cm thick. Also, when printing, unless the edges of each page are going to be very uneven, each page will have to be made larger than the end book and then the whole thing will have to be trimmed after it is bound. Also, are we counting scalp skin, carbuncles, genitals, and skin with moles, warts, or lesions (diaper rash) on it, and if not, are we using multiple parts of the body on each page? I say we assume that one could print on both sides of human skin, and avoid tattoos unless they fit into the scheme of two consecutive pages, because they would be visible on both sides. Also, we should assume that one could stitch parts together Army of Darkness-style and that one can print on the inside of a bellybutton. It might be more practical, actually, to separate the books or testaments of the bible into separately-bound volumes. I’d like to also suggest that one might use a variety of skin tones, because it’s more humanitarian to include a racial variety in a religious text composed of human skin. One would make every page with Jesus quotes out of ginger skin so the red-letter effect is achieved.
If we use maximum efficiency – as opposed to newborns which could instead be raised as slaves, fattened, and used for the second edition – this is much more simple and realistic. The obvious answer is 42 people for one copy of the book. The reason, of course, is that “how many fat goths does it take to make a copy of the Gutenburg Bible” is the ultimate question to life, The Universe, and everything. I also suggest that the ideal form of text is tap-and-die indented leatherworking painstakingly performed by innocent child printer’s devils and crested with freshly strip-mined gold so that it would show on any body type.
Thanks for playing.
