Passages from the Authorized Version
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Passages from the Authorized Version’
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Passages from the Authorized Version’
A young man abandons the family farm and goes looking for happiness in the pleasures of the city.
Many Jews in first-century Judaea compromised with Roman ways, and even collaborated with the invading power. Those who came to regret their choices found in Jesus a firm yet gentle mentor, but others grumbled at the welcome he gave. “There is joy in the presence of the angels of God” Jesus reminded them “over one sinner that repenteth”, and he told them this tale.
While the owner is away, the men he has hired to tend his vineyard conspire to seize it for themselves.
In the Old Testament, Israel is frequently represented as a vineyard, a vineyard so mismanaged by God’s hired tenants that the grapes are small and sour: the shrivelled, acid fruit of corruption and injustice among Israel’s kings and high priests. God sent prophets to warn them; now he has sent his own son. What, Jesus asked his rapt audience, will the owner do when his tenants kill his son, too?
A Jewish man is left for dead by bandits, but help comes from a most unexpected quarter.
‘Love thy neighbour as thyself’ is a commandment of the Law of Moses; but one lawyer wanted to know whom Jesus thought his neighbour was? Jesus, as was his wont, answered with a question of his own. When a man was left for dead in a notorious crime blackspot between Jerusalem and Jericho, which of three men proved to be his neighbour? Which of them did as he himself would be done by?
In a translation from the Authorized Version of the Bible, published in 1611, St Mark recounts the discovery of Christ’s empty tomb.
This translation of St Mark’s breathless account of the resurrection of Jesus was made in the reign of King James VI and I, and published in 1611. The language was deliberately archaic, even for William Shakespeare’s time, and translated the traditional ‘Byzantine’ text of the New Testament rather than the academic reconstructions preferred since the 19th century.
Five young women cared enough about a man’s wedding-day to make the smallest of sacrifices, and received the best of rewards.
The Parable of the Ten Virgins was told as a caution to those who think that conscientious preparation for the Hereafter is unnecessary. Five young women hired as lamp-bearers for a Jewish wedding assumed they could beg, borrow or buy oil when the time came.