Sorry I've been missing in action for the last few days. The weekend was...well, the weekend. And Monday was my day off and I had better things to do (no offense). Yesterday...I had nothin'. I'm trying to sort out another writing project (that has been laying dormant for far too long) in my head and get it from outline form into something resembling a proposal, so my mind was elsewhere.
Interesting article yesterday on Yahoo. Historian: First English Bible Fueled First Fundamentalists. James Simpson, a professor of English at Harvard University believes that once the bible was translated into colloquial English by William Tyndale in 1525, newly literate Englishmen were terrified by the frightening moral code and began following it "to the letter" in order to avoid misinterpreting it.
If you fail to read it properly, then you begin your just damnation. If you are unresponsive … God will scourge you, and everything will fail you until you are at utter defiance with your flesh."
DEN dan dah (dramatic music) BWAAAHAHAHAHA! (menacing, maniacal laughter).
Sounds like a real gotta-read-it-from-cover-to-cover page turner doesn't it? Can you see the publishing industry using that approach with today's popular fiction? Warning! If you fail to read this book "PROPERLY" you will be covered with festering boils and wracked with agonizing pain before spontaneously bursting into flame. Be sure to watch for the sequel due out in July '08!
Simpson, author of "Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents", said (and I love this quote) "Reading became a tightrope of terror across an abyss of predestination. It was destructive for [Protestants], because it did not invite freedom but rather fear of misinterpretation and damnation".
He adds that it is a phenomenon of "newly literate people claiming that the sacred text speaks for itself, and legitimates violence and repression." Interesting Mr. Simpson, but where is the relevance to today's world? Hmmm?