Family in Dubai who penned world's largest handwritten Bible take on new challenge

Manoj S Varghese, Susan K Samuel and their two teenage children spent five months writing the giant book

Rev Jinu Eapen Kurian with Manoj Varghese, his wife Susan Samuel and their children Karun Mannoj Varghese and Krupa Sara Manoj with the world's largest handwritten Bible, now taking pride of place at Dubai Mar Thoma Church, Jebel Ali. All pictures by Leslie Pableo for The National

The giant Bible is kept in an imitation of the Ark of the Covenant at the church

The record-setting text runs to more than 1,500 pages

From left to right: Manoj Varghese, Susan Samuel, Karun Manoj Varghese and Krupa Sara Manoj with the worlds biggest handwritten Bible

Dubai, United Arab Emirates - Manoj Varghese measuring the thickness of the impressive religious text

Manoj Varghese views the record-breaking results of his family's endeavours

A dedicated Dubai family who crafted the world's largest handwritten Bible are getting to work on a new super-sized version of the religious text.

Manoj Varghese, Susan Samuel and their two teenage children spent up to 15 hours a day on the giant leather-bound book, which is more than 1,500 page-long and contains 800,000 words.

About 60 pens were used to write the Bible, that is made out of A1 paper, which is eight times bigger than A4.

The feat took them about five months to complete, during which time they were monitored on two cameras installed in their home by Guinness World Records adjudicators.

The idea was originally Ms Samuel’s, who wanted to give something to their children to keep.

But the family later decided together to donate the book to their church, Mar Thoma Parish in Jebel Ali to mark its 50th anniversary in 2019.

“Every day when I came home from the office, she was writing. Every day she was spending more time on this,” said Mr Varghese.

“I thought if she was spending so much time on this, why didn’t she go for something a little bigger?

I checked on Google for the Guinness World Record for the largest handwritten Bible and after that I registered with them but it took around three months to get the green signal from Guinness. They said okay go ahead, you can try.”

After installing the cameras, which were a condition of the record attempt, they got started.

Ms Samuel did most of the work, he said. But all four members of the family pitched in.

“We are from India, from Kerala. Our language is Malayalam. But we cannot write that as we had to choose an international language, so we went for English for the record attempt,” said Mr Varghese.

But with the English language version of the Bible now completed, Ms Samuel has started work on a Malayalam version in A2 paper.