28th February 2011

http://www.greatsite.com/ancient-rare-bibles-books/bibles/kf1017.htm
There are many versions of the King James Bible that were printed with errors.  One of these is the so-called Vinegar Bible, available at the website listed for $28,500.  This particular Bible, printed by John Baskett in 1717, is full of errors, including the title of the parable in Luke 20  “The Parable of the Vinegar”, instead of Vineyard, giving this particular Bible its name. 

Other errors in printing include the ‘Wicked Bible’ of 1631. The word ‘not’ is omitted from the seventh commandment in Exodus 20:14, so that it reads: ‘Thou Shalt commit adultery’. It is estimated that 11 copies remain, although most were destroyed and the printers fined £300.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_Bible

21st February 2011

Advice about childrearing and discipline can be found throughout the Bible and many of the Proverbs, as presented in the King James Bible, provide familiar instructions for parents. While 21^st century parents may have largely departed from these approaches, they are so much a part of our thinking about the nature of childhood, that it difficult to ignore such exhortations as:

Train up a child in the way he should go: when he is old he will not depart from it. Proverbs 22.6, or correct thy son and he will give thee rest; yea, he shall give delight unto thy soul. Proverbs 29.17

14th February 2011

Come, let us take our fill of LOVE until the morning, let us solace ourselves with LOVEs. Proverbs 7:18

Happy Valentines Day!

7th February 2011

Babel: The English language and globalisation, Genesis, 11:1-9
Linguist David Crystal suggests that an overly simplistic reading of Babel has led to the popular belief that global English would bring universal communication, unity and peace and that the loss of the world’s other languages is desirable in achieving these goals. He counters this globalisation discourse:

‘It is, in short, a total myth that the sharing of a single language brings peace...It is difficult to see how...a global lingua franca could eliminate the pride that leads to ambition and conflict – any more than it did in the supposed unilingual pre-Babelian era’ (Crystal, 2000:27-8).

Reference
Genesis, 11:1-9
David Crystal (2000) Language Death. Cambridge:CUP.

31st January 2011

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

1 Corinthians 13

Do we think about childhood as something we must grow out of, or something that we must try to retain.  The Bible offers many familiar tenets about the nature of childhood, but we rarely consider how contradictory these can be. What does it mean the think as a child? George MacDonald, the visionary author of fairy tales and fantasies for children and adults, suggests that ‘Then to receive a child in the name of Jesus is to receive Jesus; to receive Jesus is to receive God; therefore to receive the child is to receive God himself.’  From ‘The Child in the Mist’, Unspoken Sermons, 1885.

26th January 2011

"I will arise and go to my father, and will say unto him, Father, I have sinned against Heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son: make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him." (Luke 15:18-20).

Here is a tale of the unexpected. The son’s best hope is that his father will take him on as a servant, but the father receives him with joy before a word of remorse can pass the boy’s lips. The absolute restoration to his position as a son contrasts with the boy’s former wilful disregard, the extravagance of the acceptance with the profligacy of the departure. It is beyond measure, yet utterly convincing.

17th January 2011

For Martin Luther King Day

In his famous speech, ‘I Have A Dream’, Martin Luther King used the language and cadences of the King James Bible: "No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." (August 28, 1963) Here he alludes to Amos 5:24. ‘But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.’