Jane and the chip

The subsequent inquiry blamed a slight power surge which confused our supercomputer. Jane saw the panel during that temporary monitoring failure.

         Anyway, our sensors show that on the fateful morning, Jane was sitting in prayer by her window. Looking down suddenly, she noticed a small area of her inner forearm that looked different from the rest. Most of the flesh had a translucent quality (as its designed to appear) with the veins looking blue and mottled purple. An area appeared matt and showed a lesser opacity. The surface will also have felt harder and gave no sensation when touched. Its size reminded her of the credit cards we’ve all seen in the history section in the old section of the worship-dome.

         The faith-cam footage shows Jane moving her fringe arise with a nudge, presumably to improve her vision, before taking long and a searching look. How could she have missed it before, she seems to say, her face a masterclass in confusion and wonder. A single sharp prod from her finger caused the casing to spring open, revealing a cavity within her forearm. She gently slid the cover to remove it, and discovered a shallow trough containing computer chips, much like a fuse box, with each chip mounted on a great many gold wires. They looked like nine small caterpillars, or a pattern of three-by-three dancing centipedes. She could just discern tiny white letters beneath each chip printed directly onto the metal of the cavity interior, but her eyes could not decipher such minute characters.

         Jane looked closer, peering through her fringe from every angle possible. The footage shows her moving her forearm this way then that, trying to optimise the lighting. She even appeared to smell the chips. Next, she picked at them, but their tiny size made them too small to allow a simple grip. She found a small pair of tweezers, the sort we allow for shaping an eyebrow, and suddenly yanked at the central chip, which readily came away from its socket. It looked like a dead fly, it’s immobile legs rising to God-home. 

         Straightaway she knew she had done wrong. Until that instant she never knew feelings of wrong but now thoughts flew unbidden through her mind. They scared her for she had never previously experienced thoughts like these. Indeed, she realised that she had never experienced a conscious thought before.

         Looking around, she saw her reflection in a window. She saw self and recognised the image. She looked at her body as if for the first time while pondering the capabilities of its various parts. She willed her foot to move and saw her knee move also. She spoke aloud, telling her hand to rise, and held it before her face. Was this ‘delight’ she felt while pondering its form and potentialities? She noted the timbre of her voice, which had at first confused her for it lacked familiarity.

         With a shock, she realised her words had not conveyed any God-praise. Worse, she realised she could no longer feel the God-ness that fed her times of prayer-mode. All sense of God-ness was gone  — all of it. She tried to re-enter the prayer-mode to convince herself of its possibility, but could feel no sense of God-ness. She also noted the lack of peace in her (what to call it?) faith-file. She needed to regain the feeling of intimacy and God-ness that entering the prayer-mode always gave her.

         She tried to restore the tiny chip to the socket in her forearm with the tweezers but dropped it. She searched, found it, and saw the damage on its tiny wires, and knew deep-down that she could no longer restore it. She stopped everything and sat still, which required an effort of will. Her breath sounded shallow. She almost tasted the way her heart fluttered.

         She felt strange as an alien curiosity entered her mind. Why had she never seen before the cavity and its polymer cover? Could she find other similar cavities or, indeed, different-looking ones? To whom should she share this secret, or perhaps others already knew? And if they did know, why had they kept the secret from her? What did the other chips in her arm control? She tried to analyse her feelings—the first time such a thought had consciously occurred to her. She removed her robes and wondered at her previously-unappreciated shape, and felt wonderment.

         She tugged at a second chip with the tweezers, and dimly felt it yield. Its wires fractures and the chip broke free leaving a second void. She slumped unconscious.

         And that’s how we found her. The faith-tranet had alerted us when she failed to respond, because the chip appeared to have malfunctioned. We later found the correct faith-cam footage and deleted all of it. Clearly, we cannot allow any evidence of a person failing to experience God-ness, which is a terrible, terrible sin.

The real thing

Bible manuscripts

In Europe, easy printing with moveable metal type was invented in the 1440s. Before then, all books were written by hand. Most books were written on parchment, which was made by carefully taking the skin of an animal, scraping off the hair, boiling in alkali to remove the fat, and smoothing the surface to prepare it to take ink. The best parchment was made the skin from young calves, called ‘vellum’.

    Producing a complete Bible required the skins of hundreds of animals because it’s such a big book. It also required a great many highly-trained scribes, so making a whole Bible was a big undertaking and horribly expensive. The faith inherent in the pages of a Bible made it doubly precious.

    For all these reasons, books and especially Bibles were treasured. A significant fraction of all the books even written by scribes were of the Bible or of portions of it.

    The oldest complete Bible is the Codex Sinaiticus (above), and was written in the fourth century ad. It takes its name from the Mount Sinai in Israel, because it was discovered in St Catherine’s Monastery which is located on the higher slopes of that mountain. We know of other, older Bibles but they’re incomplete — for example they contain only the New Testament — or are badly damaged through their extreme old age.

Asking for chapter and verse ...

No original Bible manuscripts contain chapter or verse divisions, so when were they first introduced?

     In antiquity, Hebrew texts were divided into paragraphs. These paragraphs were identified by two letters of the Hebrew alphabet that acted much as a book end: one indicated a paragraph was ‘opened’ — it began on a new line — while another character indicated the paragraph was ‘closed’, and began on the same line after a small space. The Hebrew Bible was also divided into some larger sections. Neither system corresponds with modern chapter divisions.

   Chapter divisions (with titles) first appeared in a ninth-century manuscript, the so-called Bible of Rorigo, but it’s very unusual.

     The first systematic division of the Bible was first attemepted adopted in the early thirteenth century. The idea came from the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton and a colleague, Cardinal Hugo de Sancto Caro. We retain their divisions to this day.

     The first person to divide New Testament chapters into verses was a Dominican scholar, the Italian Santi Pagnini (1470–1541), although his system was never widely adopted. Perhaps people thought his verse divisions were too long; they were certainly much longer than those known today, so there was little point in his approach. The verses needed to be shorter.

     Robert Estienne devised an alternate numbering system in his 1551 edition of the Greek New Testament, which he reproduced in his 1553 French edition of the Bible. Estienne’s divisions were widely adopted, so we duplicate his system in most modern Bibles today Estienne’s verse numbers appeared in the margin of his Bibles. His 1555 edition of the Latin Vulgate Bible was the first to actually include the verse numbers integrated into the text.

     The first English New Testament to use Estienne’s verse divisions was a 1557 translation by William Whittingham (c. 1524–1579). The first Bible in English to use both chapters and verses was the so-called Geneva Bible published soon afterwards in 1560. These verse divisions were accepted as a standard way in which to notate verses, and have since been used in nearly all English Bibles and the vast majority of those in other languages.

Benedict for all

Benedict was born the son of a Roman noble in Nursia in central Italy, around the year 480. A late tradition says he had a twin sister named Scholastica.

     We know very little about Benedict’s life. As a young man he was sent to study in Rome, but was soon appalled by the corruption in society and withdrew to live as a hermit for three years at Subiaco, though he was accompanied by his old nurse who acted as a servant. When a local abbot died, its community begged him to come and help them. He agreed. His holiness and simplicity soon attracted a wider circle of disciples, and he began to establish small monasteries in the neighbourhood.

      Around the year 525, a disaffected faction tried to poison him. Legend says that Benedict blessed the cup and thereby foiled the plan. In fact, numerous other miracles were attributed to him during his lifetime. Benedict then moved to Monte Cassino with a band of loyal monks and, in all, founded 13 monasteries.

      Benedict spent the remainder of his life creating a plan or ‘rule’ for an ideal monastery. This deceptively simple document became known as the ‘Rule of Saint Benedict’. It continues to be a driving force behind religious life today, and even for some principled corpor ations and businesses.

      The Rule of St Benedict was based on his own experience of fallible people striving to live out the gospel. In fact, he never intended to found an order but his Rule was so good that it was disseminated and widely followed, becoming the model for virtually all contemplative forms of western monasticism until the twentieth century. For that reason among many others, he is regarded as the patron saint of Europe.

      By the start of the Middle Ages, the rule of St Benedict had inspired the largest order of monks and nuns—the Benedictines. A great many other orders were inspired by them, such as the Cistercians and Trappists. The majority of all religious houses today follow a form of Benedict’s rule.

      Benedict died at Monte Cassino in about the year 550. 

Eternal God,
who made Benedict a wise master
in the school of your service
and a guide to many called into community
 to follow the rule of Christ:
grant that we may put your love before all else
and seek with joy the way of your commandments;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

When I say, "I am a Christian" by Carol Wimmer

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I’m not shouting, “I’ve been saved!”
I’m whispering, “I get lost!
That’s why I chose this way”.

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I don’t speak with human pride
I’m confessing that I stumble -
Needing God to be my guide

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I’m not trying to be strong
I’m professing that I’m weak
And pray for strength to carry on.

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I’m not bragging of success
I’m admitting that I’ve failed
And cannot ever pay the debt.

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I don’t think I know it all
I submit to my confusion
Asking humbly to be taught.

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I’m not claiming to be perfect
My flaws are all too visible
But God believes I’m worth it.

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I still feel the sting of pain
I have my share of heartache,
Which is why I seek His name.

When I say, “I am a Christian”

I do not wish to judge
I have no authority...
I only know I’m loved

There's something fishy here

Have you noticed how some cars have a fish symbol on their boot? It’s usually a stylised double arc. Sometimes it contains letters. Either way, it’s an ancient, secret way of identifying oneself as a Christian.

   

    The Christian Church suffered dreadful persecution during its earliest years, particularly from the Roman authorities but also from synagogues and local warlords. When persecuted, Christian believers would need to demonstrate their faith in ways that were subtle yet unmistakeable. So they developed a simple code.

      An acrostic is a word made up of letters that stand for a message or slogan. For example, ‘gay’ is a modern acrostic, the letters of which originally stood for ‘Good as you’. Early Christians devised an acrostic using a Greek word rather than English. The Greek word ‘Ichthus’ means ‘Fish’, but the component letters spell out a message, as ΙΧΘΥΣ, which is an acrostic for Ἰησοῦς Χριστός, Θεοῦ Υἱός, Σωτήρ", (Iēsous Christos, Theou Yios, Sōtēr), which translates into English as "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour."

     Ancient accounts tell us know that early believers waiting, say,in a market queue would for example draw one arc of the simple fish outline in the dust. If the stranger drew the second arc, then both believers knew they were in good company. The ‘the sign of the fish’ as it became known, was therefore an indirect way of asking if the adjacent people were also Christians. A more direct verbal approach could cause a death sentence.

     The first appearances of the Ichthus symbol in Christian art and literature date to the second century AD. The symbol’s use among Christians became more popular by the late second century, and its use spread widely during the third and fourth centuries. (Other Christians drew a dove instead of a fish, to represent the Holy Spirit.)

      The association between Christians and a fish was probably encouraged because at least half of Jesus’ twelve disciples had been fishermen before following Jesus. Those who pursued this trade for a living included James and John (who were brothers), Peter and Andrew (also brothers), Thomas and Nathanael (see Matthew 4:21– 22, John 21:1–3, etc.). Indeed, five out of the first six disciples called to be special witnesses of our Lord’s ministry were fishermen. Also, it was Jesus Himself who told Peter and Andrew that instead of catching fish (‘Ichthus’) He would train them to ‘catch’ men (which alludes to the preaching of the gospel and the conversions it would bring, see Matthew 4:19, 13:47–48, Mark 1:17).

      Within a century after Jesus’ Ascension, simple fish symbols were used throughout the Roman Empire. Indeed, a Christian was far more likely to use a fish symbol than a cross to advertise their Christianity.

     The symbol was also used to mark a tomb or house. It also indicated a place used for clandestine worship: the early Christians met in each others’ homes for  their services but in secret. In an emergency, a fish drawn in the dust outside the door could be wiped away very fast.  

     Anyway, when you see a fish on a car, you know you are in safe company.