A religion of Jesus or a religion about Jesus…As Jonathan Swift once said, “We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another.”
”among the sayings and discourses imputed to him (jesus) by his biographers, i find many passages of fine imagination, correct morality, and of the most lovely benevolence; and others, again, of so much ignorance, so much absurdity, so much untruth, charlatanism and imposture, as to pronounce it impossible that such contradictions should have proceeded from the same being. i separate, therefore, the gold from the dross; restore to him (jesus) the former, and leave the latter to the stupidity of some, and roguery of others of his disciples. of this band of dupes and impostors, paul was the great coryphaeus, and first corruptor of the doctrines of jesus. these palpable interpolations and falsifications of his doctrines, led me to try to sift them apart. i found the work obvious and easy, and that his past composed the most beautiful morsel of morality which has been given to us by man.” – thomas jefferson, letter to william short, april 13, 1820.( from Martin Buber Institute )
Image: http://susanledoux.net/?attachment_id=249 Read More: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-the-mighty-has-fallen-the-king-james-bible-turns-400/article1896037/ ---It is the only literary masterpiece produced by a committee. It was printed at the moment in history when English was said to have reached “its brief perfection.” No other writing has penetrated idiomatic speech more deeply or for so long. By one linguist's estimate, three times as many of its words and phrases have entered common usage as have those of Shakespeare. It gave the language “no man can serve two masters,” “how are the mighty fallen” and “out of the mouths of babes.” It gave “fly in the ointment” and “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” It gave – who knew? – “kick against the pricks.” Still, scholars such as historical theologian Ephraim Radner of the University of Toronto's Anglican Wycliffe College speak of the 400th anniversary as something of a funeral notation for biblical literary culture – a culture that only four decades ago shaped the soaring oratory and cadences of Martin Luther King Jr. but now is passing rapidly from the collective memory of an English-speaking world with no knowledge of the bonds of its rhetoric, metaphors and sublime rhythms.---
Valpy:Made for a reason The King James Version (KJV) – its other name is the Authorized Version (AV) – is the product of royal and religious politics, linguistic nationalism, church bureaucracy and accident.
It was commissioned in 1604, a year after James was crowned, at a conference he convened “for hearing and for the determining of things pretended to be amiss in the Church.”
Indeed, much was amiss in England’s strife-riven Anglican Church, a mere 70 years after Henry VIII hived it off from Roman Catholicism: His son, Edward VI, made it Protestant; his older daughter, Mary I, restored it to Catholicism and then younger daughter, Elizabeth I, made it a big-tent monopoly edgily embracing both Protestant Puritans and Anglo-Catholics.
The son of Mary Queen of Scots, who was executed by Elizabeth for treason, James was already ruler of Scotland when he succeeded Elizabeth upon her death in 1603. But before he could get south to London, he received a petition signed by 1,000 ministers belonging to the Church of England’s Puritan wing complaining about practices – the wearing of robes, bowing at the name of Jesus and so forth – of their priestly colleagues in the Anglo-Catholic wing….
Read More: http://www.johnfoxe.org/index.php?realm=more&gototype=modern&type=image&book=8 ---Tyndale occupies a pivotal position in Foxe's story and the picture of his martyrdom perhaps reflects this in aiming to represent the difference of a continental execution. The scene at Vilvorde shows the great castle wall rearing up behind the condemned man, and the crowd is composed mainly of officials and clergy (including friars) and armed guards, holding no potential sympathisers (or women) like those depicted at English burnings. The scaffold itself is a different feature, and appears in a comparable image, the woodcut representing the burning of John Hooper, in Foxe's 1559 Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum, in which it and the martyr are being engulfed by flames. But though Tyndale (like Hooper) is shown chained to the stake standing on this platform, as if in preparation for burning alive, his death, by strangulation, was more merciful. His body was burned thereafter -- and the two bundles of faggots indicate its preparation -- but this followed on after an interval. It is the words in the bandarole that resonate for readers of the book: that famous prayer for England's salvation: 'Lord open the king of Englands eies'. Like other such celebrated last utterances, this sentence was reset, by changes in the drop-in typsettings in the different editions -- itself an act of faith ? a technical necessity? or perfectionism on the part of the printer? ---
…His response was to convene the conference, which was a failure except for the suggestion that a new Bible be prepared to correct known errors and bridge doctrinal differences.
James welcomed the idea. He saw it as a means to replace the popular Geneva Bible – the Bible of Shakespeare and, for the most part, of Milton – which he declared the worst in English because it was Puritan and counter to the divine right of kings. Read More:http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-the-mighty-has-fallen-the-king-james-bible-turns-400/article1896037/ a
James Gillray. Read More:http://clioweb.canalblog.com/archives/2011/11/28/22807847.html
Read More:http://dialogicalecology.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html
Read More: http://people.hofstra.edu/daniel_m_varisco/huhcrag1.html ---Title: "The Zenith of French Glory; – The Pinnacle of Liberty. Religion, Justice, Loyalty & all the Bugbears of Unenlightened Minds, Farewell!" Published by Hannah Humphrey: February 12, 1793. Etching with engraving, hand-colored "Louis XVI was guillotined on January 21, 1793, and Gillray “for the public good” offers his own imaginary “eye-witness” account. A bony sans-culotte (the nickname for revolutionary workers, who did not wear the knee-breeches favored by the aristocracy), two daggers dripping with blood tucked in his belt, fiddles like Nero from atop a lamppost. In the background a church dome burns, as the guillotine blade descends on the King’s neck. The bodies of a bishop, two monks, and a judge hang from lamp brackets, as the enthusiastic mob of bonnets rouges (referring to the red caps worn by the revolutionaries) cheer the regicide and, by implication, the destruction of legal and spiritual authority. "---
COMMENTS