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- Uncategorised (30)
- 22/02/2012: Please tick the box that applies to you...
- 28/01/2012: What’s Our Business?
- 21/11/2011: Giving Gifts to Strangers
- 26/10/2011: Remember, Remember...
- 25/09/2011: Growing Up
- 23/06/2011: It was Jeremy that did it
- 29/04/2011: Resurrection, Then and Now by Revd. Trevor Jamison
- 25/03/2011: God of the Tsunami? By Revd. Trevor Jamison
- 26/02/2011: It's never to late for Lent by Revd. Trevor Jamison
- 23/01/2011: Daydream Believer by Trevor Jamison
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It was Jeremy that did it
I’ve just being reading about Jeremy in the Bible. This was a surprise to me as I had forgotten that he was in there. I knew that I had read the New Testament verse where he appeared several times before but still he had slipped my mind. Not only that, I was reading the Bible aloud in public when Jeremy popped up again. Jeremy, we were reminded, was an Old Testament prophet whose words get quoted in a prominent position in the New Testament. In theory, many of us who have read Matthew’s Gospel ought to remember Jeremy: “Thus was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet …”
I was reading from the King James Version of the Bible, the translation whose four hundredth anniversary of publication we celebrate this year. I was starting off a public reading of the KJV translation of the Gospels, taking place in Ingatestone Parish Church. This public reading is only one of many readings of the KJV that have taken place or are due to take place around the country during 2011. There has already been one at St Thomas’s Church in Brentwood and there is one planned for later in the year by Churches Together in Billericay.
Heroically (or foolishly) I had volunteered to be the first to read, meaning that I had to negotiate the family tree of Jesus, with its host of tongue-twisting names, before moving on to the story of his birth, the visit of the Magi (wise men) and King Herod’s massacre of children in an attempt to kill off what he took to be a rival for his crown. It is in commenting upon this awful act that Matthew writes, “Thus was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet … [‘Jeremiah’, in the translations we use in Church these days] … In Rama there was a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Matthew 2: 17, 18 – KJV)
I don’t think I have ever experienced this reading or the hearing of these words with such force before. I have never felt so deeply concerning either the bereaved mothers of Rama, of Bethlehem in New Testament times, or for their contemporary equivalents. I think it was ‘Jeremy’ that did this to me. Previously, familiarity with the text had dulled my sensitivities but the variation in the name caught my attention, just in time to receive the message about Rachel and the desolate women. Since the motivation for the King James Version was that the people would hear the scriptures with a new clarity I think the translators would be quietly satisfied to know that their work can still have such an impact four hundred years later.
I do hope we all get opportunities to hear the Bible, not only in the ‘usual ways’ but also in new ways, new settings, new translations, or though different means of presentation; that we too really get to hear or hear anew the message God speaks to us today.
Trevor
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