| Topic: |
Religions > Bible |
| User: |
"Rowland Croucher" |
| Date: |
30 Sep 2005 02:28:00 AM |
| Object: |
378-word Bible |
After Britain's 100-minute Bible...
try this 378-word Bible
John Crace offers a summary of the main events of the Bible which may be of
help to those even more pushed for time.
Thursday September 22, 2005
The Guardian
God created heaven and earth in six days. He then made Adam, quickly
followed by Eve when he saw that Adam was bored. Their descendants proved a
real disappointment, so he flooded the world and started again. But God
continued to have a lot of problems. Abraham was OK, but Jacob cheated on
his brother and Joseph was such a prima donna that his brothers sold him
into slavery. Moses tried to lay down the law but it took an almighty strop
for anyone to notice. Joshua killed a lot of people; so did Gideon; in fact
most of the judges and kings were lying psychopaths. Understandably the
Jewish people needed to relax, so they sang psalms to the tune of Kumbaya.
Back in the action and it was still looking grim. A few grumpy prophets
apart, it was bloodletting on a grand scale all the way. Things improved
when an angel got Mary pregnant in 1BC. Joseph was very understanding about
this and nine months later Jesus was born. Various shepherds and wise men
paid their respects before Jesus was whisked out of town to escape Herod. He
spent the next 30 years chilling out before beginning his ministry when John
the Baptist was arrested. Jesus tried to avoid publicity but it was hard to
keep a low profile when he was pulling off stunts like raising the dead. So
it wasn't long before he collected some disciples, and from these he chose
his main crew, the apostles.
Much of Jesus's teaching was captured when he spoke about the meaning of
humility during the Sermon on the Mount. Apart from forgiving sins, he also
said that anyone who divorces and remarries commits adultery. These views
made him extremely unpopular, but calling himself the Messiah was the last
straw. When he rode into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday he knew his days were
numbered. On the Thursday night he was betrayed by Judas and taken before
Pontius Pilate, who offered the Jews a chance to reprieve him. They refused
and he was crucified and buried.
He rose from the dead on Easter Sunday. Jesus reassured his followers he was
for real and over the next 40 days he made a number of other appearances
before going up to heaven.
--
*
Shalom! Rowland Croucher
* *
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ *
(15800+ articles, 3450 clean jokes/stories)
*
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| User: "Rowland Croucher" |
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| Title: Re: 378-word Bible |
01 Oct 2005 05:45:04 PM |
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"Rowland Croucher" <rccroucher@removethispleaseoptusnet.com.au>
wrote in news:433ce8ff$0$15567$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au:
Their descendants proved a real disappointment,
so he flooded the world and started again.
No, you idiot, He did that in response to complaints from the fish He
created on dry land.
--
Rowland Butter (neé Croucher)
Croucher Rs-lickin GmbH (Zürich)
http://rowlandcroucher.chelmsfordbaptist.com/
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| User: "• Ninure Saunders" |
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| Title: Re: 378-word Bible |
01 Oct 2005 06:05:23 PM |
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In article <Xns96E2F0698395RolandCroucher@127.0.0.1>, "Rowland Croucher"
<rccroucher@optusnet.com.fu.au> wrote:
-"Rowland Croucher" <rccroucher@removethispleaseoptusnet.com.au>
-wrote in news:433ce8ff$0$15567$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au:
-
-> Their descendants proved a real disappointment,
-> so he flooded the world and started again.
-
-No, you idiot, He did that in response to complaints from the fish He
-created on dry land.
-
This message above, supposedly made by Rowland Croucher, is a forgery.
Rowland Croucher¹s real Website
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(15800+ articles, 3450 clean jokes/stories)
--
Pax Christi,
• Ninure Saunders aka Rainbow Christian
Jesus is my Shepherd and He knows I'm Gay
http://Ninure-Saunders.tk
My Yahoo Group
http://Ninure.tk
Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches
http://www.MCCchurch.org
The Bible Site - help provide free scripture
http://www.thebiblesite.org
To send e-mail, remove nohate from address
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| User: "Barry OGrady" |
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| Title: Re: 378-word Bible |
01 Oct 2005 06:44:34 PM |
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This post is a forgery.
On Sat, 01 Oct 2005 23:05:23 GMT, (• Ninure Saunders)
wrote:
In article <Xns96E2F0698395RolandCroucher@127.0.0.1>, "Rowland Croucher"
<rccroucher@optusnet.com.fu.au> wrote:
-"Rowland Croucher" <rccroucher@removethispleaseoptusnet.com.au>
-wrote in news:433ce8ff$0$15567$afc38c87@news.optusnet.com.au:
-
-> Their descendants proved a real disappointment,
-> so he flooded the world and started again.
-
-No, you idiot, He did that in response to complaints from the fish He
-created on dry land.
-
This message above, supposedly made by Rowland Croucher, is a forgery.
Rowland Croucher¹s real Website
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/
(15800+ articles, 3450 clean jokes/stories)
--
Pax Christi,
• Ninure Saunders aka Rainbow Christian
Jesus is my Shepherd and He knows I'm Gay
http://Ninure-Saunders.tk
My Yahoo Group
http://Ninure.tk
Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches
http://www.MCCchurch.org
The Bible Site - help provide free scripture
http://www.thebiblesite.org
To send e-mail, remove nohate from address
Barry
=====
Home page
http://members.iinet.net.au/~barry.og
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| User: "Rowland Croucher" |
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| Title: Re: 378-word Bible |
30 Sep 2005 02:31:03 AM |
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And also this:
Christianity in a nutshell: Britain's '100-Minute Bible'
By Mark Rice-Oxley | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
LONDON – It may be the word of God, but that hasn't spared it from regular
man-made tinkering. From 15th-century printers to 20th-century modernists,
every age has sought to adapt the Bible. So now, for the era of restless
consumers and fickle attention spans, a British publication distills the
original into a form you could read at one sitting. Instead of 780,000 words
and 1,200 chapters, there are just 20,000 words in fewer than 60 pages.
Not surprisingly, the "100-Minute Bible" is generating robust debate in
Britain, where even Shakespeare is no longer immune to a culture of
abbreviation.
Proponents say it is a gateway to the classic, a crash course in
Christianity that will provide a useful tool to reach out to the curious,
the lapsed, and the ignorant.
But opponents fulminate against such pithiness, muttering about the callous
disregard for Biblical virtues such as perseverance, dedication, and
deferred gratification. There is, after all, no beatitude that reads:
"Blessed are the editors, for they shall make stuff shorter to read."
One contributor to a BBC discussion website grumbled: "What's next?
Downloading sermons from iTunes?"
For those behind the project, such criticism misses the point. Publisher Len
Budd says that he is struck by how little the average Briton knows about the
Christian culture that has underpinned society for centuries. Barely 10
percent of the 40-odd million Britons who cite their faith as Christian
regularly attend church. Of those who do, he says, many will have but a hazy
sense of biblical chronology.
He devised the project two years ago, and enlisted the help of a retired
Anglican priest and headmaster, the Rev. Michael Hinton.
The idea was to reproduce the 66 books into 50 400-word chunks, each taking
about two minutes to read. The thin tome, shaped like an envelope and not
much heavier than one, should take less than two hours to skip through.
"It's for the man in the street," says Budd. "If he's able to answer a pub
quiz question about the Bible afterwards, then good. If he goes on to read
the whole thing, even better. And if someone comes to faith as a result of
it, even better still."
Mr. Hinton says he used all the modern English versions and his knowledge of
ancient Greek to revise the scripture around the central figure of Christ.
"We started by doing the Gospels, and that took up half the space
available," he says. "Then I went back to the Old Testament and summarized
it in terms of the chronology and prophetic teachings that provided a
context for Jesus. And then I did the Acts and Epistles and Revelation to
show how they followed on from Jesus."
He admits the work is not exhaustive. There is no book of Ruth, nor much of
a reflection on the character of St. Paul. And he says it "sacrifices poetry
for clarity."
"We thought it would be good for the fringe inquirer and for active
Christians who know their Bible well but don't have a picture of the whole,"
he says. "Then there are young people in secondary schools, and finally, we
thought that it's the ideal read for plane or train."
The response to the "100-Minute Bible" has been overwhelming. Budd says he
sold 4,000 copies the morning after its Sept. 21 launch. "I thought it would
be a little cottage industry, but we have been totally overwhelmed," he
says.
Adapting the Bible for a modern readership is not new, though this may be
the most succinct effort yet. Several notable versions have sought to
reproduce the book or parts of it in a reader-friendly form, such as Eugene
Peterson's "The Message" and the "Reader's Digest Bible." There has even
been a "Bible in Cockney," while another British project to be published
next month renders the entire scripture in 700 limerick verses.
Peter Wallis, an ordained priest behind the limerick Bible, rejects
criticism that these modern treatments are frivolous.
'100-Minute Bible' In the beginning God created heaven and earth over a
period of six days. First he created light and darkness; then the vault of
the heavens, separating the water above from the water below; then the dry
land and all that grows in it. On the fourth day God created the sun, the
moon and the stars; on the fifth the creatures of the sea and sky; and on
the sixth those of the land, including humankind. On the seventh day God
rested.
God made the first man, Adam, from the dust, and breathed life into him. He
placed him in the beautiful and fertile garden of Eden, forbidding him to
eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil which grew there. Because he
thought man should not be alone, he created the first woman from Adam's rib;
Adam named her Eve. Eve was tempted by the serpent, the most cunning of
creatures; she took fruit from the forbidden tree, ate some herself and gave
some to her husband. As a punishment, God expelled them both from the
garden; he condemned men to arduous toil, and women to pain in childbearing
and to submission to their husbands.
"An awful lot of people have got a Bible and it sits unopened by their
bedside for years on end," he says. "Some of the Bibles around are
paraphrases anyway, and unless you are a scholar in ancient Hebrew or Greek,
I don't see the difference between this version ... and the others out
there."
But Simon Barrow, codirector of Ekklesia, a London-based theological think
tank, says that while new versions may find new markets, there is no
substitute for time spent with the original.
He says one problem with the "100-Minute Bible," for example, is that it
"flattens out the literary variety" of the Bible - its poetry, prophecy,
history, law, parables, polemics, and letters - into, simply, prose.
"An example of where it can go wrong is in saying, 'God created the world in
six days,' as if the whole story of Genesis was some literal statement," he
says. "This could merely feed those who see the Bible as an oracle and don't
see the poetry and parable there."
"If it gets people to read and think, that's good," he adds, "but we also
need to say 'if you are going to understand this thing, you'll have to spend
some time with it.' "
http://csmonitor.com/2005/0927/p01s04-woeu.html
~~
Published by The 100-Minute Press, The 100 Minute Bible is a new way of
looking at the Bible. It is published with the hope that it will enable
people who are not familiar with the Bible to understand something of the
book that is the basis of the Christian faith. The 100 Minute Bible picks
out the principle stories of the life and ministry of its central character,
Jesus Christ. The social and theological context of these stories is
provided by outlining the ups and downs of the history of his nation, the
Jews. It then proceeds to record the story of the growth of Christianity
during the first century; firstly amongst the Jews themselves; then amongst
the other peoples living in Israel and then throughout the eastern
Mediterranean, even as far as Rome. The 100 Minute Bible is primarily
intended for people who have an interest in Christianity but not the time
(nor tenacity!) to read the whole Bible. As the title indicates most people
will only take 100 minutes to read it, making it ideal for an upcoming rail
or aeroplane journey.
Sample: Matthew 5-7 The Sermon on the Mount
Much of Jesus’ teaching was brought together when, seated on a hillside, he
spoke to his disciples about life in the kingdom of God. He taught that true
happiness comes from having the right attitudes. Those who are humble,
concerned about the world’s sinfulness, gentle, devoted to goodness,
merciful, single-minded in God’s service, and peace-lovers will be blessed
by God. Those of his followers who are persecuted in this world should
rejoice, because they will have a rich reward in the next.
Jesus emphasised that he had not come to destroy the moral demands of the
Jewish Law but to fulfil them. He taught that it is not enough not to commit
murder; the anger which can lead to murder must be set aside too. It is not
enough not to commit adultery; lustful thoughts must be set aside too. It is
not enough to keep only our solemn promises; we should always mean what we
say.
The Jewish Law taught that retaliation should be proportionate to the harm
done - an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth - but Jesus taught that we
should love our enemies and that we should return good for evil, turning the
other cheek when others attack us.
He went on to say that ostentatious piety and charitable giving are wrong;
both piety and giving should be between ourselves and God. No-one can serve
two masters; it is impossible to serve both God and money. God knows what
people’s needs are and will supply them, in the same way as he provides food
for birds and glorious clothing for flowers; we should not be anxious but
should trust him. We should not judge others; for we shall be judged to the
degree we judge. It is difficult to find the way to the kingdom of heaven
and there will be those who will try to mislead us. We should assess others
by the moral and spiritual quality of their lives.
He summarised the whole moral teaching of the Old Testament in the command
to treat others as you would like them to treat you.
Jesus said that anyone who acts on his words is like a wise man who built
his house on a rock. When storms came the house stood firm. But anyone who
does not act on his words is like a man who built his house on sand. When
storms came the house fell, and the ensuing devastation was great.
Matthew 5 - 7
--
*
Shalom! Rowland Croucher
* *
http://jmm.aaa.net.au/ *
(15800+ articles, 3450 clean jokes/stories)
*
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