Tuesday Trivia.

The devil can quote Scriptures and so can his ministers and they can quote them in perfect King James English. –Gary Amirault

I own one; I read one; I own several different translations...


Wycliff did the first English translation of the bible from the Latin Vulgate ~ & all his works were condemned at the council of Constance in 14 15. Wycliffe himself was exhumed, burnt & his ashes scattered. The Catholics were taking no chances with a declared heretic!

Wycliffe translated from the Vulgate used by the Catholic church of the time. It wasn't until 1970, with the Jerusalem bible, that anyone got around to translating the bible into English from the original languages! You'd think it would have occurred to someone before then.

The bible was originally written in 3 main languages: Hebrew, Aramaic & Greek. Translating from a Latin version strikes me as more than a little odd under the circumstances.

Authors included adopted Egyptian nobility [Moses], a Babylonian official [Daniel], a tax collector [Matthew], a fisherman [Peter], a rabid rabbi [Paul] & a gentile [Luke]. Despite being a book about God two books never mention Him: Esther & Song of Songs.

I don't know about your bible but mine has the books divided into verses with little numbers denoting which verse. Robert Stephens added them to the new Testament in 1551.

Not surprisingly Jesus is the most mentioned person in the New Testament. Then comes Paul, Peter & John the Baptiste. The fifth most mentioned person is a bit of a shock ~ Pontious Pilate is mentioned 50 times!

Don't believe God loves His creation? There are 1 260 promises in the bible! Written down. Recorded. Not that I think God would forget but I find them handy to remind Him of every so often ~ though He tends to remind me that quite a few of them are conditional & I need to make sure I do my part.

Then there are all the prophecies! All 8 000 of them! 3 140 are still awaiting fulfillment but
3 268 have already been fulfilled. Just the same it's the science stuff I find fascinating. When people were still gabbling about the world being flat or perched on the back of giant turtles or something Job declared the earth was suspended in space [26:7] & Isiah declared the world round [40:22.] Just for starters. Job also talks about light travelling [38:19] & sound waves from stars [38:7] Actually Job is full of interesting science & a good deal of the science God nails Job with Scientists still can't give adequate answers to. God might have suspended the earth on nothing & we might call that nothing gravity but no~one can give a reasonable [& understandable] answer as to what gravity actually is.

Interestingly, whether people believe or not, most educated people have read at least a little of the bible. The King James version, which was put together by a committee, is generally considered to be a literary masterpiece in & of itself & as such read for its own sake alone. I use a revised version of this simply because the poetical format makes memorisation easier for me, though I am fully aware it is not the most accurate translation. If I am studying I rely on more than one text anyway & then I want one where I'm not going to be distracted by the beauty of the language or caught up in a love letter written by over 50 different authors, 2 continents, & 1 500 years, give or take a year or two .