For a time I would torture Mrs. I by calling the show "Downtown Abbey." As a result, we may call our makeover of the garage Downtown Abbey. Following the Michigander's suggestion, we are removing all the things we never unpacked - and creating some overflow room for Team Jackson grilling events.
The story-line of the show is a soap opera in costume at a castle, but I enjoy all the English connections with history, literature, and the great authors of the past. I realized as I thought about those authors that the Moline school system gave me most of my background in English literature. We had classes covering Dickens, Melville, Shakespeare, and Thomas Hardy, Shakespeare again - and a review of all English literature in my senior year.
Tolkien was a late hobby, beginning when LI was very young, and that spread to our grandchildren, who have middle names of Tinuviel and Eowyn. No Gandalf? In a nod to Greek history and culture, we have an Alexander, certainly the model for many heroic stories. I read the famous Alexander the Great bio twice. By establishing the Greek language and culture across the world in 300 BC, he made the Greek New Testament possible as a universal version that all could hear or read. Literate people and merchants knew Greek - now the clergy hardly know this foundational language.
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| Paul Holmer, professor of philosophical theology, Yale, posed with Martin during our trip to the New Haven campus. Martin also posed with Roland Bainton, Henri Nouwen, and others. |
Paul Holmer, my favorite professor at Yale, was very interested in C. S. Lewis, an author I found when the school library babysat me during teachers' meetings. My mother could take me anywhere if books were abundant. Downtown Moline shopping? The downstairs part made up the children's library, and I devoured Freddy the Pig, the Babar series, Heinlein, and more. Although Lewis has gaping holes in his religious views, I enjoyed his Narnia tales early and late, and we took our granddaughters to see the first big Lewis movie.
All of us at Augustana College were assigned Perelandra, by Lewis, for our freshman English class. Mrs. Ichabod knew Lewis well, since she worked in the South Bend library system.
Children's literature is literature, so I still like to read E. Nesbit's hilarious tales and The Wind and the Willows. For a time I taught literate in the classrooms at the U. of Phoenix, which fueled my reading and re-reading of many classics. Teaching a new topic is great for motivation. I often read one book a day, but my eyes decided to take an early retirement. I could not read at that pace and grade papers. Old teachers never die, they just lose their pupils.
I am not going to neglect one of the greatest works of English literature - the King James Bible. That translation, largely the work of Tyndale, shares with Oxford (aka Shakespeare) the honor of forming the English language. Tyndale, most importantly, enrolled at Wittenberg and studied under Luther and Melanchthon in order to improve his translating skills.
What do the new KJV alterations remove when "improving them"? The Sacraments. How was it that the bread and wine of 1 Corinthians were "communion" in the KJV and yet participation in the NIV? Although the King James commission was not Lutheran, they did not introduce the Calvinistic errors we find in the NIV. Perhaps they were far more interested in precision than a "dynamic equivalence" paraphrase for surfer dudes.
So in the KJV we have the English version of Luther's German Bible. But American Lutherans have let that go - because they can advance their agenda better with the NIV and other abominations.
Just as England executed Tyndale for translating the Scriptures into English, so WELS executed pastors who said they preferred the KJV to their fabulous NIV. Oh wait, the old NIV was not fabulous for long, because a completely worse paraphrase had to be provided and the old one eliminated from print and the Internet.
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| When England needed one Bible translation to unite them, King James assembled a clergy crew that relied on Tyndale's version. |
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| From Tyndale to Lizard Hands Murdoch - proof our culture is apostate. |