
Bible Sunday 28 October 2012 Cottesbrooke
It's Bible Sunday: so a word about the Bible
The Globe and the reading of the KJV.  A book to be heard. 
Old Testament gives the state of the Jews between 900 and 100 BC. Edited in their present form by scholars defending their culture against the Greek a people equally clever and cultured   Jews ruled by foreigners 680 BC to 12948 from the Assyrians to the British  The Jews outlived so many empires that the Norwegian writer Ibsen calls them the aristocrats of world history, for they can survive without land or government
Behind the High Table at the College of my student days there hangs among the portraits of past Heads of House resplendent in their academic robes that of a bearded man in sober Tudor dress, a picture protected by glass from the danger posed by the flying bread rolls of student revelries. It's not a very striking portrait, and so far as I know is by an unknown artist  -  not striking that is when compared, say, to Holbein's Henry VIII    
That man is William Tyndale, martyred in 1536 for translating and publishing the Bible in English  Tyndale did not marry six times, destroy monasteries nor build a Hampton Court, yet I would argue he had and has even today, more influence on our national life  -  directly and indirectly  -  than the vast majority of Kings & Queens & Prime Ministers.  It is his achievement that we celebrate today in putting the Book of Books within the reach of everyman.  
He laboured under great difficulty.  In the Netherlands constantly harassed by the man Catholic Church  His books burned by an ancestor of mine ( alleged) who was Bishop of London and burned as many as he could lay his hands on. 
"If God spare my life", said Tyndale to a critic, "ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the scripture than thou dost. 
"Let there be light"   & "In the beginning was the Word"   _ the 2 most memorable phrases in the Bible?? - He put things clearly and succinctly 
"We shall be obliged for your attention in providing our nutritional needs and for so organising the distribution that our daily intake of cereal filler be not in short supply. "   Satirical Civil Service waffle of the 1940s. 
" Give us this day our daily bread".
Since 1526 in the UK and USA alone 900 fresh translations and in 3000 new editions of the Bible 
By 1537 the year after Tyndale's death, Thomas Swynnerton writing The Handbook of Rhetoric described how everyman had a testament in his hand.  Not one bought because Henry VIII ordered it , nor as a way of unifying the country, but because many people loved the Bible and wanted to read it. For it told them about God's love for them in Christ Jesus.    True there are no statistics showing how many people actually read Tyndale's Bible in English But conversion to Bible reading is not the point. It is the scale of the Tyndale Bible.s influence at that time and subsequently 
 In the beginning was the Word.  The word had in effect disappeared for many people who did not classical languages or Hebrew; and now they wanted it back. 
What a fascinating Book it is!   Death Valley & Gielgud
Genesis:   Doubt if Creationists here.  Chapters 1 -11 Eden to the Tower of Babel Legendary looking back   Then from 12 onwards we move into the realms of history Ur. Abraham/Isaac and Jacob.  The emotional lives of the Patriarchs   Abraham and Hagar and Sarai;  Sacrifice of Isaac and the Eid al Ahha  Esau & Jacob. 
Patriarch looks to the future  - nation building. 
Psalms.  Not really David  The most urgently personally present of all the books of the Bible.   Part of the Jewish and Christian liturgy  We turn to them for comfort and encouragement in moment of crisis or despair. 
Psalms of Canaanite origin: David not much associated. 
Job : A mysterious book Theologically a radical challenge to the idea that there are rewards for the righteous and punishment for the wicked.
Proverbs/ Ecclesiastes
 Micah who starts by denouncing those Jews God has let Assyria enslave them for disobeying him.  Micah foretells a disastrous but not hopeless future because after much warfare the whole world will find peace by accepting the one true God a Jewish ruler from the little town of Bethlehem.
Or Take Nahum 80 years later, probably a Jewish slave who had seen the destruction of Nineveh. The only grand truth in his book is that nations that keep living by armaments will perish by them. 
The New Testament.
The Bible is worth reading, dipping into and enjoying.  It has inspired so many people:
William Wilberforce Mary Wollstonecraft feminist "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" in 1792; 
William Booth, 
While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight-I'll fight to the very end!
    Topics: Perseverance
George Williams.
Let's resolve to read more of the Bible to guide us through life. 





