29th November 2011

Matthew 13:45-6 (King James Version)
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls:
Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had, and bought it.

Matthew 13:45-6 is a passage of great beauty and eloquence, which illustrates perfectly the concept of worth, and describes with powerful simplicity what it means to love and to treasure. The passage also tells us that such love comes at a ‘great price’ after much searching. When eventually you find that ‘one pearl’, it is so precious that you are compelled to give away all that you possess, in order to obtain the ‘kingdom of heaven’. Its true beauty lies in the fact that it is by sharing this with others, that the value of this ‘kingdom’ becomes manifest.

21st November 2011

Gen. 31: 19. ‘Meanwhile Laban had gone to shear his sheep, and Rachel stole her father’s household idols.’ (Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New Jewish Publication Society Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text).

Reading this biblical verse as a Jewish woman, I recall its traditional rabbinic interpretation, which is that Rachel stole the idols to keep her father Laban from the sin of idolatry. And yet it seems more plausible that, about to leave her father’s home and travel with Jacob to an unknown land, Rachel would have wanted to take the doll-like teraphim with her, hidden under her skirts, because it was these that she still half-believes had kept her safe since she was a child. If she were trying to preserve her father’s religious virtue the narrative’s tragic irony would be lost. For Jacob, not knowing that Rachel had stolen the figurines, makes an oath to her father that whoever is found with them will not remain alive (Gen. 31:32). By the end of Genesis 35, Rachel has died giving birth to Benjamin and is buried by the road to Ephrath (Gen, 35:16-20).

14th November 2011

‘The spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak’ (Matthew 26.41) This admission, in a call to resist temptation, recognizes the difficulty of living up to high moral standards. According to Clarke’s commentary, ‘Your inclinations are good - ye are truly sincere; but your good purposes will be overpowered by your timidity. Ye wish to continue steadfast in your adherence to your Master; but your fears will lead you to desert him.’ http://bible.cc/matthew/26-41.htm

7th November 2011

While the Authorized Version was meant to replace the Bishops' Bible as the official version for readings in the Church of England, it was apparently (unlike the Great Bible) never specifically "authorized", although it is commonly known as the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom. However, the King's Printer issued no further editions of the Bishops' Bible; so necessarily the Authorized Version supplanted it as the standard lectern Bible in parish church use in England. In the Book of Common Prayer (1662), the text of the Authorized Version replaced the text of the Great Bible — for Epistle and Gospel readings — and as such was "authorized" by Act of Parliament. The phrase "King James version" first appeared in print in 1884.’

31st October 2011

“Very many of the treasures which have enriched the lives and language of English speakers since the 1530s were made by Tyndale: a long list of common phrases like ‘the powers that be’ or ‘let there be light’ or ‘the spirit is willing’; the haunting phrasing in parables like the Prodigal Son, ‘this thy brother was dead and is alive again, was lost and is found’; the gospel stories of Christmas (‘there were shepherds abiding in the field’) […] came as something new to the men and women of Tyndale’s time in the 1520s and 1530s. That was because Tyndale translated them for the first time, from their original texts in Greek and Hebrew, into English […]”
from David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, 2000.

25th October 2011

“William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. The sages assembled by King James to prepare the Authorised Version of 1611 […] took over Tyndale’s work. Nine-tenths of the Authorised Version’s New Testament is Tyndale’s. The same is true of the first half of the Old Testament, which is as far as he was able to get before he was executed outside Brussels in 1536.” from David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography, 2000.

18th October 2011

In his preface to the Pentateuch, William Tyndale, called for a vernacular translation of the Bible. ‘ I had perceived by experience, how that it was impossible to stablish the lay people in any truth, except the scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text’. As quoted in Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, when tried for heresy, he said: ‘I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou doest.’ Theodore Roosevelt was among those for whom this aspect of the translation is important. He claimed that: “the King James Bible is a Magna Carta for the poor and oppressed: the most democratic book in the world.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/nov/21/king-james-bible-english-language