Ancient & modern: rare Bibles created in the United States - one produced in a 17th-century Puritan colony, and another that went into orbit during the space race - have gone under the hammer in the past week. One of the 11 surviving copies of the first book printed in the US, The Whole Booke of Psalmes (above), known as the Bay Psalm Book, was sold on Tuesday for $14.2 million at Sotheby's, in New York - the highest sum ever paid at auction for a printed book.

The Lawrence McGlynn Lunar Flown Bible Collection was sold for $130,053 at RR Auction, in New Hampshire, last Friday. The collection contains microfilm Bibles (below) carried on Apollos 12, 13, and 14. The campaign to land a Bible on the moon was led by the Revd John Stout, after the death of all three Apollo 1 crew members in a cabin fire in 1967