At the peak of their presence on Earth the Anunnaki numbered six hundred, and the texts named quite a number of them - as often as not indicating their rôles or functions... Towering above them all was always a circle of twelve Great Gods, the forerunner of the Twelve Olympians of the Greek pantheon. Beginning with the Olden Gods, then changing with the times and the generations, the composition of the Circle of Twelve varied - but always remained twelve; as someone dropped off, another was added instead; as somebody had to be elevated in rank, someone else had to be demoted...¹³

The ranking in the original Sumerian pantheon began with 60 (the base number in Sumerian mathematics) for Anu, and continued with 50 for the legal successor Enlil, 40 for Enki, 30 for Nannar/Sin, 20 for Utu/Shamash, and 10 for Iskhur/Adad. The female component was given the ranks 55, 45, 35, and 25 for the spouses Antu, Ninlil, Ninki, and Ningal, then 15 for the unmarried Ninmah and 5 for the single Inanna/Ishtar; reflecting the generational changes, the latter in time attained the rank ‘15’ and Ninmah dropped to 5.”¹⁴

As Sitchin understands the available surviving material evidence from ancient Sumerian and other Mesopotamian sources, while planet Earth orbits our Sun once every year, it takes 3,600 Earth-years for planet Nibiru to complete one orbit. This explains why extraterrestrials such as Enlil and Enki appear to humans to be so incredibly long-lived; because their biorhythms are naturally linked to that of their own planet of origin, after 3,600 Earth-years these gods have only aged by 1 sar (as their own year is called. Compare Maltese: "xahar", pronounced "shar", which means "month").

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13 Since nothing is merely coincidental, it seems reasonable to suspect that the history of the Christian Church established by Jesus of Nazareth when he "called" his 12 Apostles some 1963 or so Earth-years ago might have been very different, had subsequent Church hierarchs not signally failed to respect the Founder's observance of the ancient rule of 12.

14 The Cosmic Code, pp.42-43, 45-46.

Hence, although 13,000 years ago seems a very long time after 445,000 years ago, from a Nibiruan point of view it is no more than 120 years. This fact probably explains Yahweh's otherwise puzzling pronouncement, "My spirit cannot be indefinitely responsible for human beings, who are only flesh; let the time allowed each be a hundred and twenty years."¹⁵ As usually translated this statement cannot be other than baffling, since Noah is 600 years old before the Flood and doesn't die until he has attained the ripe old age of 950!¹⁶ Yahweh was not announcing how many human years he thenceforth proposed to allocate to Earthlings, but simply noting how many [120 × 3,600 = 432,000] Nibiruan years had by then elapsed since Project Earth's initial inauguration.

The Universal Deluge did not take any of the gods then resident on Earth by surprise, and a meeting was called to discuss the situation. "Enlil put his plan before the Council of the Gods. A great calamity, he said, is about to happen. On its next passage Nibiru will cause a huge tidal wave that will engulf the Earth. Let us not warn Mankind - let all flesh perish! The gods agreed and swore to secrecy. So did Enki; but he found a way to warn his faithful worshipper Ziusudra ('Noah' in the Bible) and instructed him to build the Ark [actually a submarine the displacement-volume, not the actual dimensions of which corresponded to the length-, height- and width-values specified in the Bible] to save his family and friends, as well as to preserve the 'seed'¹⁷ of living animals...

On the eve of the deluge, the Anunnaki took to their craft to escape the calamity, watching the havoc and total destruction from Earth's skies. Not only Mankind perished. All that the Anunnaki had built in the past 432,000 years was wiped off the face of the Earth or buried under miles-thick layers of mud; and that included the spaceport they had in the E.DIN.

As soon as the tidal wave began to recede, they could bring their Earth-orbiting craft down on the Near East's highest peaks. As more of the dry land appeared, they could use the Landing Place - a vast stone platform that had been erected before the Flood [at Baalbek] in the Cedar Mountains of what is now Lebanon. But to resume the space operations they needed a spaceport; and the decision was made to erect it in the Sinai Peninsula…"¹⁸

With so much work needing to be done, Enlil realized that there might be advantages in still being able to delegate some of this labour to Earthlings, and he decided not to undermine the results of Enki's schemings in favour of Noah and his associates. "With Enlil's consent, the Anunnaki began to advance Mankind culturally and technologically, in intervals that lasted 3,600 years (matching the orbital period of Nibiru). The culmination of the process was the great Sumerian civilization,"¹⁹ but that is another story.

So, whose account are we to prefer - Alexander Winslow's, Zecharia Sitchin's or Andrew Collins'? And just how extensive was Noah's Flood?

Joseph Ellul has recently suggested in conversation that the existence of the present-day Dead Sea results from the gradual evaporation over time of a huge mass of water that, at the time of the Deluge, entirely filled the surrounding Galilean & Judæan depression, in other words, the Palestinian portion of the long rift-valley between Mozambique & Lake Victoria in the south and Mount Ararat and its neighbouring elevations in the north. Richard E. Leakey, who was born in Kenya, has written extensively about his parents and his own archæological field-studies in the East-African part of this corridor, concentrating his attention in particular on what they were able to learn at Olduvai Gorge on the Serengeti Plains. Plastercast copies of some of the finds they made there are currently on display at Malta's Natural History Museum in Mdina.²⁰

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15 Genesis 6:3. 16 Genesis 9:29. 17 Male and female genes, etc., not a huge zoo!

18 The Cosmic Code, pp.53-54. 19 Op.cit., p.54.

20 For an accessible and well illustrated overview of their work, cf R. E. Leakey, Human Origins (Hamish Hamilton 1982).

Archæological work of this sort is, of course, in several ways dependent on specialist geological surveys and, at Olduvai Gorge, these were principally the responsibility of Doctor J. D. Solomon.²¹ Right until his death in 1998, Solomon remained very firmly of the opinion that nothing can be known with certainty about the precise nature of even the most major Earth-changes in our remote past. Prior to undertaking his work with the Leakeys in Kenya, Tanzania & Uganda, he had anticipated unearthing evidence to show that present-day Europe and Africa share a common geological past; what he was instead driven to conclude was that not even Uganda and its near-neighbour Nigeria can meaningfully be said to have one and the same remote history!²² Solomon, moreover, very much disliked the apparently still prevalent attachment of geologists and archaeologists each to their own pet-theories as to how and when this or that occurred. Asked to choose between a theory and an opposing fact, most researchers quite naturally seem to prefer theory - and yet most of them (and Joseph S. Ellul is in this respect no exception) also adamantly persist in denying that this is what they are, in fact, doing! A major portion of Solomon's writings were written with a view to correcting this widespread misapprehension.

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21 Cf J. D. Solomon, "The Pleistocene Succession in Uganda", in T. P. O'Brien, The Prehistory of Uganda Protectorate (Cambridge University Press 1939), pp.15-50.

22 I have no reason to believe Richard E. Leakey subscribes to this opinion, but some of the photographs and sketches he and his mother have published to illustrate geological and social-anthropological features observed on or near the eastern shore of Lake Turkana (cf Human Origins, pp.16-17), even if explicable in the way Leakey suggests, are undoubtedly problematic, and a final judgment as to what event or series of events actually caused these and similar phenomena cannot yet responsibly be pronounced.

In the absence of clear proof to the contrary, however, it appears to me that the most reasonable provisional conclusion to adopt is that the Universal Deluge was, indeed, as Alexander Winslow, Andrew Collins and Zecharia Sitchin have very plausibly although also very differently argued, a truly world-wide event. As to the great Rift-Valley and, in particular, the Nile Valley, there are many indications that suggest the overall layout of this part of the world is not simply (as geologists are inclined to assume) the result of the normal operation of merely natural forces; in several important respects it seems rather the outcome of carefully thought out and skilfully executed major engineering works beyond the capacity-range of present-day human achievement. The Ancient Egyptians named Geb as a master-worker, and if Joseph Ellul's quasi-pan-European and Western-Asiatic Flood wasn't just a relatively local manifestation of the much more widespread and large-scale event that, according to the best available interpretation of the relevant biblical texts occurred about 13,000 years ago but, according to Plato, rather more recently, there is an outside chance that the post-Diluvial erection of some sort of near-Gibraltar dam across to Morocco and the subsequent desalination of the Mediterranean waters in order to breed fresh-water fish of every species again with the help of the gene-pool Noah had saved in the Ark was one of Geb's and Enki's works at that time (and I see no reason to doubt that what Adolf Hitler very fortunately for us only dreamed of accomplishing, Geb and Enki were fully able to achieve) - only to be ruined again much more recently, as and when Ellul has detailed and described.

Ellul calls both the recently discovered submarine features off the Maltese coast and those still remaining to be explored about another mile out in the same direction "the Temple under the sea", because wrought stones and circular buildings are never simply the result of undirected natural forces. He also notes that such under-the-sea locations cannot be satisfactorily explained by any supposed melting of the polar ice-cap and a related subsidence of the Maltese land-mass.

As previously noticed with regard to Malta's prehistoric temples on land, so also as regards these new under-the-sea discoveries we find that blocks of stone, each weighing several tons, have not just fallen down from their original place but have been thrown more than 10 metres away - and always towards the East. Shaun Arrigo who has now seen some of these stones for himself on two quite separate occasions (July 1999 and May 2001) is a witness to this undeniable fact, and the abundant sea-grass luxuriating on and near the stones suggests that as much as 3 feet of silt may have been deposited around them by whichever flood threw the stones about.

At Ħaġar Qim the huge blocks of the western wall 0.8 by 0.6 and 3.5 metres long were thrown 10 metres towards the east inside the temple, getting piled on top of each other. These blocks have petrified mortar attached to them and attaching the stones to each other. If the stones had fallen under dry conditions, the mortar would have long ago crumbled to dust. Since it has stuck again and has afterwards petrified itself, it is clear that, when the temple walls fell down, they did so under water. If the remaining mortar was examined scientifically, marine micro-organisms would undoubtedly be found to be present within it.

The Ħaġar Qim temples are on the opposite side of Malta to that closest to the submarine sites visited by Shaun Arrigo and, thanks to the protection against the onrushing waters that the more inland heights will have afforded, it is highly probable that a considerable proportion of the walls of the submerged "temples" between Malta and Gozo are still standing. Indeed, even some of the original roofing may have survived. Until the luxuriant overlay of sea-grass and other vegetation has been appropriately removed, many details elude us.

According to Ellul the Strait of Gibraltar was about 5000-6000 years ago, as previously mentioned, closed by a high-towering land-ridge between Tangier and Gibraltar, both high locations. The basin of the Mediterranean was then almost empty of water with only three or four deep lakes watered by rivers flowing into them. But all of a sudden a rift valley opened up, extending from Gibraltar all along the coast of Algeria and as far as Tunis, where it forked out, one branch going north-east, north of Sicily, and the other branch running south-east towards Malta. The resulting subsidence is clearly registered in the depths of the sea throughout this region. In Malta, for instance, the south coast from il-Qammieh to Delimara Point consists of cliffs standing more than 200 feet high with a further 100 feet or more below sea-level.

Just imagine the force of a mass of water 9 miles wide and several hundred feet deep rushing into a basin that is some 6000 feet lower. No wonder that archaeologists say that lots of people disappeared all of a sudden without our knowing the cause. A melting ice-cap is no explanation, since ice takes time to melt and melting-ice doesn't make waves. The Bible provides a convincing answer (for those who believe) - "Broken were all the fountains of the Great Deep." Waters which had been previously seeping through fissures in the Gibraltar high-ridge and giving rise to fresh-water springs now burst wide open, so that the salt-waters of the Atlantic itself broke through directly.

Incidentally, although Joseph S. Ellul believes that the sunken Atlantis over which such a flood of ink has already been spilled is nothing else than the bottom of the once dry Mediterranean, in The Other Atlantis (Neville Spearman 1977) Robert Scrutton suggests instead that Atlantis was destroyed only in 2193 B.C., and that its remains are now somewhere in the Arctic Circle. Like Andrew Collins, I agree with Plato that the chief city of Atlantis was situated outside the Pillars of Hercules, but though its rule extended to places in America and to neighbouring ones now at the bottom of the sea, e.g., those near Cuba, I suspect that the Pillars of Hercules may actually have been in what is now Carnac in Brittany, since the balance of available evidence suggests to me that the Atlantean capital was at what is now Sens in central France - and that, of course, certainly does not mean that today's Maltese islands were not then also subject to Atlantean influence, even if not, perhaps, actually subjected to its rule. (Joseph Ellul remains convinced that the Pillars of Hercules were and, in fact, still are on the Libyan shore of the Mediterranean; not only is their position marked on an old map, but one of his friends, who claimed to have seen them personally, told him there are actually three pillars. Ellul believes they originally were in a narrow strait of sea between Libya and the large Central Mediterranean island of Atlantis…)

The Story of Christmas - Some Wrong Ideas

© Joseph S. Ellul, 14 December 1986

It is very interesting to read some information about the story of Christmas especially during Christmastide. But sometimes, interwoven with the very interesting information, there are hints which do not correspond to facts.

The trend is gaining ground that the narrative given by the evangelists is not at all correct. St. Luke was a Greek, the most advanced nation in learning in those days, and he, besides, was a doctor of medicine. So, certainly, this gentleman knew what he was writing about. Also, he got his information, first hand, even from Mary herself. In fact, all the Gospel-writers narrated what was happening in their days and at the time of their writing.

Now, after 2,000 years, it is being claimed that the census mentioned by Luke did not take place, but that there were other enrollings carried out once every fourteen years. Yet because of this census, Joseph had to travel with his spouse, Mary, from Nazareth, where they lived, to Bethlehem, as their place of racial origin. If this census never took place, then Jesus would have had no reason to be born in Bethlehem instead of in Nazareth.

Let's see what the writers and historians of those days say about this. In his Gospel (2:2) St. Luke states that "This enrolling was first made by Quirinus." So this census was the first one, and there had been no other before it. This is corroborated by another very learned man of those days, the famous Gamaliel of Sanhedrin fame. In a speech of his reported in Acts (5:37) he says: "After this man rose up Judas the Galilean, in the days of the enrolling."

This old man Gamaliel, who remembered well the events of his own days, affirms that there had been only one enrolling, and that it had happened thirty-four years ago. In referring to this enrolling with a definite article, "the", which means "the only one" - and, in that context, "the only one in the course of thirty-four years". Yet now, two millennia later, it is being suggested that such enrollings were held "every fourteen years", despite the fact that Gamaliel, who actually lived in the period under discussion, refers to one and the same census as having taken place thirty-four years previously, and as having been "the first" of its kind!

Whom are we to believe, the "wise" men of today, 2,000 years removed from the actual events, or the people of those days, who had witnessed the actual events taking place, and who were not by any means ignorant?

Clearly this idea of several enrollings having occurred in the days of Christ is no more than a modern hoax, intended to discredit the Gospel of St. Luke who, as every Bible reader knows, obtained his information about the birth of Jesus from Jesus's Mother, Mary, who was certainly not a liar.

If, as certain "wise" men are now attempting to prove, the census mentioned by St. Luke "didn't take place", why was it that Joseph made that 70-mile journey, quite an uncomfortable experience in itself, and that at a time when Mary's pregnancy was nearing its term? If there truly was no census, then the whole story of Jesus Christ is just one great hoax.

When Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem, Joseph went to the only inn available to try and find a lodging but, because lot of other people had also gone to Bethlehem to be enrolled in the census, the inn was already full. Although Joseph himself wouldn't have minded sleeping out in the open, huddled in his kaboush, along with the camel-drivers sleeping on the ground in the courtyard, he needed to find a more sheltered and secluded place where Mary could give birth. The inn-keeper appreciated Mary's situation, and he allowed Joseph and his wife to share a stable-cave he owned close by with the milk-cow(s) and any other animals he had there.

There was no such thing as tinned or pasteurised milk in bottles in those days. Fresh milk from cows was what they used and, because of the extreme temperatures they experienced in the Holy Land then (just as they still do today), they had to keep their cows in caves they dug out of some neighbouring rocky hill for the purpose. (Similar caves are still dug out in Malta in order to breed pigs in them, since otherwise the pigs, and especially the piglets, would die because of the heat.)

Clearly, then, our traditional Christmas dcrib is no fairy-story or pure mythological invention. St Francis of Assisi may, indeed, have been the first Christian to design a crib, but the scene it represents corresponds to real events, as Scripture tells us and good Christians have always known.

Then there is the story of the Magi, the Wise Men from the East. This story of the Magi is no fiction. It is entwined within the history of Herod the Great - that massacre of the Innocents that was followed by his own terrible death, an event that made his successor Herod Antipas tremble with fear. According to Matthew (Ch.2) the Magi went to Herod when he as yet knew nothing of "the born king of the Jews". Herod, after having been advised that this king would have been born in Bethlehem, sent them there - but they never actually went there...

As soon as the Magi had left Herod: "The star that they had seen in the East went before them, until it came and stood over the place where the child was, and when they entered the house..."

Verse 11 isn't telling us that the Magi had travelled to Bethlehem, no - the Magi didn't find Jesus in Bethlehem, but in a house in Nazareth, and that according to the very words of St. Luke's Gospel.

^{Editor's note:} In his The Star of Bethlehem Mystery (Corgi Books 1981), an otherwise excellent and multi-facetted discussion that focuses astronomical theory rather than scriptural exegesis, David Hughes completely fails to notice (1) that the Magi went to Nazareth instead of going to Bethlehem, and (2) that Gamaliel's reported words justify our believing there was only one census, even if its completion took quite some time. The U.K. 2001 census also took longer than had been anticipated.

The Magi went to Herod at least a year after Jesus' birth; that is why Herod ordered the massacre of male babies up to two years old. According to Luke (2:22): Joseph and Mary "took him [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord." So, after no more than forty days had elapsed, the Holy Family had already departed from Bethlehem and had arrived in Jerusalem in order to carry out the rites that the Law prescribed. After that, as Luke says in verse 39, "when they had fulfilled all things prescribed in the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, into their own town of Nazareth," the place where Mary, the mother of Jesus, had been living when the Angel Gabriel had first made the great Announcement to her.

It is difficult to understand why so many pretend that the Magi went to Bethlehem, simply because that's where Herod told them to go, since Herod knew nothing about the details of Jesus's birth.

One writer, in an attempt to prove that the Magi did go to Bethlehem, quotes the Book of James (whatever that is) as stating that "they found Him in a cave", and then St. Luke's Gospel as specifying "in a stable or shelter attached to an inn" - a quotation, however, which doesn't appear anywhere in St. Luke, although Luke (2:16) does, in reference not to the Magi (whom St. Luke nowhere as much as mentions) but to the Shepherds, say that they "found Mary and Joseph, and the infant lying in a manger."

Some are now pretending that the Star of Bethlehem was simply some natural object, such as Halley's Comet or a notable conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn. But how could either a comet or a conjunction of two of the solar-system's largest planets do the things mentioned in Matthew (2:9), coming down along the roads and streets of Palestine, and guiding the Magi - "until it [the Star] came and stood over the place where the child was"?

^{Editor's note:} This question requires an answer and, many may feel, that which Bullinger provided in 1893 is entirely satisfactory. As Kenneth C. Fleming wrote in God's Voice in the Stars - Zodiac Signs and Bible Truth (Neptune, New Jersey: Loizeaux Brothers, 1981, pp. 35, 38-39, 115, 118-119): "The earliest prophecies of the gospel were visually preserved by associating them with star patterns called signs or constellations (Gen 1:14). The belt-like area around the middle of the starry panorama was called the zodiac, meaning The Way. In the zodiac were twelve constellations of stars known as the signs of the zodiac. To each of these basic sign-constellations belonged three other constellations, either above or below the belt area of the zodiac, which were called decans, meaning A Part. A prophetic meaning was associated with the twelve basic signs and was amplified in the decans belonging to each of the signs. The whole sky had forty-eight constellations and formed a pictorial revelation of the promises of God to early man. (These forty-eight constellations did not include all visible stars, which demonstrates that their purpose was in their meaning and not in mapping the sky.)...

The first constellation of Virgo is Coma… In antiquity the constellation Coma was a picture of a woman with her child. The name Coma in Hebrew means The Desired or Longed For. In ancient Egypt the name was Shes-nu (The Desired Son). The Egyptian temple of Denderah shows Coma as a seated woman and her child, dating back to two thousand years before Christ… 'The desire of all nations shall come' (Haggai 2:7)…

The constellation of Gemini shows up very well against its background of the Milky Way… The name of the ill-fated ship that the Apostle Paul travelled on was Castor and Pollux (Acts 28:111)… Canis Major, or the Great Dog, has almost lost its meaning in the course of history… The three stars in Orion's belt point to the so-called Dog Star, whose proper name is Sirius; it sparkles brilliantly all winter in the northern hemisphere. Sirius is worthy of particular attention because it is by far the brightest star in the whole sky. It is only nine light years away, making it one of Earth's nearer neighbours among the millions of stars… Gemini showed Christ in the dual role of both Prince and Saviour… In the attending constellation of Canis Major we have the first of these reiterated: Christ the coming Prince of Glory… Sirius is the name of the most glorious star in the sky and means The Prince. The ancient root was Sur, which became Sar in Hebrew, as used by the Prophet Isaiah when speaking of Messiah as the 'Prince of Peace' (Isaiah 9:6). The same name in its feminine form is Sarah, Princess, as Abraham's wife…" Clearly not Sirius, some hypothesise that our Christmas Star is some otherwise unknown additional star in Virgo.

This Star cannot have been any ordinary comet or planet, but must have been something like what the Isrælites during their journey through the Sinai desert experienced as being God's direct guidance.

Those who refuse to believe in the power of God are dreaming up a variety of ridiculous ideas. Even some 'believers' nowadays say that the story of the Magi is just an allegory based on important Old Testament influences, and add that such influences "make it difficult to judge the historicity of the story". They appear to forget that Almighty God is perfectly capable of making history repeat itself as, in fact, it often does - and the Bible is full of instances of this.

I don't know why we keep on referring to Elizabeth as Mary's 'cousin'. We are in no position to specify the nature of their relationship, and protestant versions of the Bible employ the term "kinswoman". In the traditional Catholic recitation of the Rosary in Semitic Maltese Elizabeth was always referred to as "il-qariba", a 'relative', so that it isn't easy to comprehend how this idea of 'cousin' has crept in.

As regards the heavenly host singing: "Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth peace, good-will towards men," that was always the protestant version, but the Catholic version concludes instead: "and on Earth peace to men of good will." Being infinitely Just, Almighty God cannot give peace to men of ill-will. For this reason, the wording "good-will towards (all) men" is incorrect.

It may be objected that all these ideas may now be found in Catholic books, such as, for example, the New American Bible, published by the Catholic Educational Guild (Washington). This 'Catholic' Bible, however, has even introduced changes into the Bible's actual text! Thus, in Genesis (1:11-25), where older Catholic translations had the words "according to its kind" ("kind" in this context meaning 'species', in Maltese: 'gens'), one finds instead a reference to "every kind of" plants, animals, etc. The aim behind this change in the wording of the Genesis account of Creation is to imply that biblical revelation is not opposed to the currently popular, fictional theory of vertical or total evolution. This same distortion also disfigures The Living Bible, an illustrated Catholic edition published in the U.S.A., but already well known to Maltese readers of Holy Writ.

The concluding paragraph of the New Testament Apocalypse or Book of Revelation warns against adding to or subtracting from the original text of the Bible. Please note!

Colin's Letter to Joseph Ellul: Tuesday, 16 August 2005

Dear Joe,

My recent email quoted a Benedictine prayer-book's: "Father, pour out your Spirit upon your people, and grant us a new vision of your glory, a new experience of your power, a new faithfulness to your Word, and a new consecration to your service, that your love may grow among us, and your kingdom come. Through Christ our Lord. Amen."

There our petition to the "Father" is rightly combined with its mediation "through Christ our Lord". In the Holy Trinity only the Divine Word is Son of the Father; the Father generates only the Son; the Holy Spirit proceeds ex Patre Filioque or, as the Eastern Church has it, "from the Father through the Son" - not as from two, but from one only Spirating Principle: "the-Father-and-I are One", "he who has seen me, has seen the Father").

Quoting, as it happens, not from today's Missal but from Pope John's 1961 revision, the last to include both the Last Gospel and the following prayers at the end of Mass, I noted briefly that while John 14: 23-31 (in that Missal the Gospel for Whit Sunday) quotes Jesus as promising after his Ascension to ask the Father to send the Spirit, the Latin Preface for that very same Mass begins: "Vere dignum et justum est, aequum et salutare, nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere, Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus, per Christum Dominum nostrum, qui ascendens super omnes caelos, sedensque ad dexteram tuam, promissum Spiritum Sanctum hodierna die in filios adoptionis effudit... [It is indeed fitting and right, our duty and our salvation, that we should praise and glorify you at all times, Lord, holy Father, almighty and eternal G-d, through Christ our Lord who, going up above the heavens to his place at your right hand, on this day sent forth the Holy Spirit on his adopted children as he had promissed...]"

Perhaps I should have mentioned that since Vatican II that Preface is often, if not always, replaced by one beginning: "Father, all-powerful and ever-living G-d, we do well always and everywhere to give you thanks. Today you sent the Holy Spirit on those marked out to be your children by sharing the life of your only Son, and so brought the paschal mystery to its completion. Today we celebrate the great beginning of your Church when the Holy Spirit made known to all peoples the one true G-d, and created from the many languages of man one voice to profess one faith. The joy of the resurrection renews the whole world..."

Continuing, I hope helpfully, with our, I think, important discussion, today I want first of all to remind you of just a tiny hint my last email also contained. You had reminded me that you couldn't find anywhere in the Gospels an instance of the words: "Come, Holy Spirit!" Without disagreeing with you, I suggested that the prayer: "You kingdom come!" includes as part of its meaning: "May your reign be established deep within our hearts" - and also that such a prayer, in effect, means: "May your Holy Spirit live within us; may the Holy Spirit be the Heart of our hearts..."

"Veni, Sancte Spiritus, et emitte coelitus, lucis tuae radium. Veni, pater pauperum, veni, dator munerum, veni, lumen cordium. Consolator optime, dulcis hospes animae, dulce refrigerium. In labore requies, in aestu temperies, in fletu solatium. O lux beatissima, reple cordis intima tuorum fidelium. Sine tuo numine, nihil est in homine, nihil est innoxium. Lava quod est sordidum, riga quod est aridum, sana quod est saucium. Flecte quod est rigidum, fove quod est frigidum, rege quod est devium. Da tuis fidelibus in te confidentibus sacrum septenarium. Da virtutis meritum, da salutis exitum, da perenne gaudium. Amen. Alleluia." According to the 19 July 1992 version of Olaf Jan Schmidt's webpage it was Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury (c. 1160-1228) who first composed that Latin hymn:

"Come, Holy Spirit, send down from heaven beams of your light. Come, Father of the poor, come, giver of gifts, come, light of the world. Perfect comforter, sweet guest of the soul, sweet coolness: you are like rest in work, like refreshment in the heat, like comfort in tears. O best light, fill the innermost hearts of your faithful. Without you, humans would be worthless and empty, nothing would be harmless. Clean what is dirty, water what has dried out, and heal what is hurt. Soften what is hard, heat what is cold, lead what got lost. Give to your faithful, who trust in you, the holy sevenfold gift. Give merit for our virtue, give a healthy end, give eternal joy. Amen. Alleluia."

St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians (12:8-10;28) had mentioned as gifts of the Spirit: the office to be an apostle, prophetic speaking, the speaking of wisdom, the speaking of knowledge, faith, healing, doing wonders, speaking in tongues, interpreting what is spoken in tongues, helping... Greek and Roman philosophers had already discussed the four Cardinal Virtues: prudentia (Prudence, Wisdom), temperantia (self-control), fortitudo (strength, courage) and iustitia (justice). Christian theologians of the early Middle Ages added fides (faith), caritas (love) and spes (hope).

And according to what I've just read on an August 1997 St. Peter's Church of England, Nottingham, parish-magazine webpage, the other well known Latin hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus, mentes tuorum visita can be traced back to a 10th century manuscript, the original being attributed to either Emperor Charles the Fat, the grandson of Charlemagne, to Pope Gregory the Great, to St Ambrose of Milan, or to Rhabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz (c. 776 - c. 856). It was being used as an office hymn for Terce or Vespers at Whitsuntide by the 10th century, Terce being the hour when the Spirit of G-d descended upon the disciples according to the account in Acts. At these services it would be accompanied by much ceremonial: ringing of bells, lighting of candles, and use of incense. From the 11th century it was used in ordinations, and from 1307 (the date of the coronation of Edward II) at coronations in England.

This hymn in English was included in the 1549 Anglican Prayer Book in a now-defunct common-metre translation of sixteen verses. John Cosin (1594-1672) made another translation for his Collection of Private Devotions in the Practice of the Ancient Church (1627). He was subsequently exiled to France by the Puritans during the Long Parliament of the Commonwealth. Upon his return at the Reformation, Cosin became Bishop of Durham, and was responsible for the 1662 Prayer Book, in which he included this hymn. It is unique in being the only hymn specifically prescribed by the Book of Common Prayer. Scriptural references begin with Acts 2:3. The seven-fold gifts (verse 1, line 4) of the Holy Spirit are Wisdom, Understanding, Counsel, Fortitude, Knowledge, Piety and Fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:2) (see also Revelation 4 and 5). Seven was a sacred number among the Jews, and indicated perfection or completion.

Today's plainsong music for Veni Creator is from the Vesperale Romanum cum cantu emendato (1848). This collection of tunes, published in Mechlin (Malines), Belgium, was designed to bring the plainsong idiom back into the Roman Catholic Churches at a time when plainsong had long been neglected. This plainsong melody in its original form is older than the hymn itself. It was first associated with the Ambrosian Easter hymn Hic est dies verus Dei but became established as the proper melody for the words of Veni, Creator Spiritus right from the time of their first use in Church services.

According to Romans 8:27, "The pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God." A 2004 Catholic webpage quotes from paragraph 1742 of The Catechism of the Catholic Church: "The Holy Spirit educates us in spiritual freedom in order to make us free collaborators in his work in the Church and in the world." Then, after this slightly altered version of a well known prayer: "Come, Holy Spirit, come, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and we shall renew the face of the earth. Amen," it gives two more recent prayers by unknown authors, taken from a leaflet produced by Reconcilation through Reparation: (1) "O Holy Spirit, soul of my soul, I adore you. Enlighten, guide, strengthen and console me. Tell me what I ought to do and command me to do it. I promise to submit to everything that You ask of me, and to accept all that You allow to happen to me. Just show me what is Your will." (2) "Almighty and all-loving God, through the fire of your Spirit you have drawn the hearts of our being; by the power of the same Spirit infuse our lives with your presence, so that, as your beloved Son was transfigured in prayer, we too may be transformed, and our lives become a flame of self-giving love. Amen" Page 67 of Angela Ashwin's The Book of a Thousand Prayers is also quoted: "I open my eyes, O God, to the glory and sunshine in your creation, and I open my heart to receive the full impact of your love. May your radiant fire burn away all that is rotten within me. Let me breathe in the fresh air of life on which I depend in the miracle of existence. May the winds of your Spirit blow through me and clear away the cobwebs and the rubbish. I surrender my whole being to the wind and the sun of your love. Amen."

Be patient with me, Joe, if I appear to be wandering from the main point of our discussion, but since sending you that email I have, as well as thinking over various points, been reading quite an interesting book by D. C. Parker, published by Cambridge University Press in 1997, called The living text of the Gospels. As you know, I am not an expert on Holy Scripture, but I had some very good teachers, and so I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book (which is still in print, and can be ordered from www.amazon.co.uk easily enough) taught me several things I hadn't known before - including one directly relevant to your main question about "Come, Holy Spirit"... But things may be clearer, if I mention a few fairly well known facts first.

No printed copies of the Bible, the New Testament or the Four Gospels existed before the invention of printing. We are used to having lots of copies of one and the same identical text of the Bible, the New Testament or the Gospels, but no two copies of Holy Scripture predating the invention of printing contained or contain precisely and exactly one and the same text. This doesn't, of course, mean that a person isn't entitled to complain about the way in which the text of one of today's Gospels disagrees with that of another modern edition of the same Gospel, but it does mean that today's situation is very different from that which existed for about the first fifteen Christian centuries.

Of surviving manuscripts of Holy Scripture (almost all of them prior to the invention of printing) 2,386 are known which contain at least part of one of the Four Gospels in Greek. 45 of these are papyri, the latest dating from the 7th, the earliest from the 2nd century. One papyrus from the late 2nd or early 3rd century contains part of each Gospel, another contains most of John, a third has large parts of both Luke and John. Until these various papyri were discovered during 20th-century excavations, mainly in Egypt, no Gospel manuscript older than the second quarter of the 4th century was known.

196 majuscule manuscripts written on parchment and containing at least part of at least one Gospel have also survived at least in part - about fifty of them are either complete or very extensive; the remainder seldom amount to twelve leaves, and 116 only to one or two, but some of these latter are of earlier date than any of the complete or extensive majuscules. Some majuscules were found by excavation, some by searching through libraries, others had at one stage been used as binding for books and came to light when the binding came off; those known as palimpsests are majuscule manuscripts which were later defaced by writing something else on top of them - for instance, the Syrian Saints Ephraem and John Climacus both wrote on top of Greek Gospel manuscripts in this way. All printed editions of the Gospels nowadays principally depend on majuscules for their text.

Increasing demand for books in the Byzantine empire during the 10th century resulted in minuscules replacing majuscules in the production of New Testament texts. The skins of 50 or 60 sheep would have been needed to write out a complete copy of all four Gospels in majuscule; minuscule writing was much more compact and economical. 2,145 surviving minuscules contain at least part of one of the four Gospels in Greek. A small number of these are of more recent date than the printing in 1516 of the first printed Greek New Testament.

2,403 lectionaries pre-dating the invention of printing have also at least in part survived, and most of these contain Gospel material. No surviving lectionary is older than the 8th century. Gospel texts in lectionaries differ from that found in Byzantine minuscules; their study is also less advanced.

Other ancient witnesses include versions of the Gospels in Syriac, Latin (pre-Vulgate Old Latin or Vulgate Latin) or a dialect of Coptic (Sahidic, Bohairic, Fayyumic, Achmimic, Sub-Achmimic or Middle Egyptian), or else, somewhat more recently, in Armenian, Ethiopic, Georgian, Gothic or Old Slavonic.

Finally, Gospel quotations featured in the writings of the Fathers of the Church and other early Christian authors - those writing in Greek, Latin or Syriac (also called Western Aramaic) being the most important.

It is nowadays generally agreed, as a result of intensive and detailed study of this material, that the text of the Greek New Testament produced in Basel by Erasmus at the time of the Reformation is, in fact, inferior to the Vulgate of St Jerome, which was based on his careful comparison of several older manuscripts available to him - in his hurry to be in print before a rival researcher, Erasmus only compared those manuscripts locally available to him, and although for many years non-Catholics regarded his edition as better than Jerome's, which wasn't even in Greek, the latter really did his best at the time.

All New Testament texts produced before the year 300 are papyrus codices, except for 2 papyrus rolls and 4 parchment rolls. During the same period most Jewish Scriptures were written on either parchment or leather rolls. It has been suggested that the Christians preferred this flimsier notebook format partly for ease of reference (a roll can only be open in one place at once), and partly because they regarded any written Gospel as mainly a memory-aide to the oral tradition. This might explain why, so far as the surviving evidence allows us to judge, far more and greater differences existed between 1st and 2nd century manuscripts than originated at any later date. Clearly, this great variety among the manuscripts doesn't mean the copyists were incapable of accuracy, but that they weren't greatly concerned about literal precision in a written Gospel - very different from Jewish copyists producing the Hebrew Masoretic text (if any page contained more than 3 differences from that being copied, it had to be discarded and destroyed). Moreover, until the 2nd half of the 2nd century no instance is known of a papyrus containing more than 1 Gospel but, by working back from later surviving manuscripts, some now argue that in Syria, by A.D. 120, an instance of some sort of locally agreed and integrated text of all 4 might have come into existence.

Be that as it may, the appearance within one or other of the Gospels in manuscripts dating from the late 2nd century onwards of texts nowhere earlier attested need not oblige us to conclude that forgery was taking place. As time elapsed, and the likelihood of Christ's proximate Second Coming diminished in the minds of believers, the felt need for a written record will have increased, and various parts of what had previously only been in the oral Gospel tradition may, therefore, have been inserted into one or other of the Four Gospels at whichever points they seemed best to fit - and, of course, what one copyist chose to insert into, say, Luke, another may have put somewhere else.

Although much more might be added, I come now to what Bishop St Gregory of Nyssa in central Asia Minor wrote c. 371 in his treatise on the Lord's Prayer: "Luke... when he desires the Kingdom to come, implores help of the Holy Spirit. For so he says in his Gospel; instead of Thy Kingdom come it reads 'May Thy Holy Spirit come upon us and purify us'." This reading, which was also quoted in the 7th century by Maximus Confessor, likewise appears in a minuscule text copied in 1153, and some evidence suggests that it was known to Tertullian writing in Latin in Africa at the end of the 2nd century - if that is so, the witness in its favour would be more ancient than that for any other reading of Luke!

Being no expert about such matters, I simply suggest one shouldn't too easily suppose that direct prayer to the Holy Spirit is "heretical"...

If you would like to look at some 15 November 1998 last updated discussion of bible manuscripts, visit Nicholas Beale's website. Extract:

"Where is the cut-off point to determine which manuscripts are reliable and which are not? The earliest manuscript of John's Gospel is p52 and it has a different wording to later manuscripts. Luke 22:43-44 is missing from the earliest manuscripts p66 and p75. These are also missing from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (mid 4th century). The story of the woman taken in adultery is missing until Codex Bezae (5th century). Mark 16:9-20 is missing until Alexandrinus (say 5th century). The 4th century manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus add to Matthew 27:49 the detail that Jesus was pierced by a sword, and blood and water came out, before he died. So is 400 AD a good cut-off point for manuscripts? Can we say that manuscripts after 400 AD are reliable, while manuscripts before AD 400 are not reliable? Or would 600 AD be a better cut-off point? Perhaps it took that length of time to iron the bugs out of the manuscripts to produce reliable manuscripts. Are there any manuscripts before AD 400 which are as reliable as a medieval copy of the Gospels? It's obviously not that simple. The issue is essentially a question of image reconstruction and conceptually an information-theoretic one. Each scribe uses the sources available to him and writes what they think is the 'best' text. How do you reconstruct the original text?..."

Comment: Given the relationship between oral and written tradition, to believe that any text of the Gospel ever was "the original" is very likely a mistake. Research into New Testament Letters is, of course, something else again. Nevertheless, this website contains some useful information.

You might also enjoy visiting www.ucc.ac.uk/theology/html/MoyiseJesusin history.htm

Best wishes!

Postscript: Tuesday Afternoon, 16 August 2005

I forgot to mention what The living text of the Gospels has to say in connection with our discussion of Luke 6:1 - and, in particular, with that priest-teacher friend of yours suggestion of "second primary". Although his proposed translation makes excellent sense in the context of devotions like the Five First Saturdays and the Nine First Fridays, and your pointing out to me that all the weeks between Easter Sunday and Whit Sunday may fairly be described as made up of fifty primary days, none of this is mentioned or noticed by either Doctor Parker or any of the ancient sources he considers in his book.

In D'ostervald's French translation of La Sainte Bible (Paris, 1924), the verse reads: "Il arriva, au jour du sabbat appelé second-premier, que Jésus passant par des blés, ses disciples arrachaient des épis, et les froissant entre leurs mains, ils en mangeaient."

You showed me that not all editions of the New Testament in your possession include "second first" as part of their translation of this verse and, if I remember rightly, you supposed these translators had missed it out - either because they didn't know what the Greek word meant, or because it doesn't appear in either Matthew 12:1 or Mark 2:23 which apparently refer to the same incident. Saydon seems to omit the word (he begins: "Darba nhar ta'Sibt kien...").

My copy of the New Jerusalem Bible has: "It happened that one Sabbath he was walking..." Heinz W. Cassirer's God's New Covenant - A New Testament Translation reads: "One Sabbath day it happened that Jesus was making his way..." The New English Bible gives: "One Sabbath he was going through the cornfields..." However, the Authorized King James version's committee of translators have bequeathed to us: "And it came to pass on the second sabbath after the first, that he went through the corn fields" - which sounds like a very roundabout way of saying "on the third sabbath"!

Before going any further, we may remind ourselves that Saydon's, Cassirer's and various other translators so called omissions may not be omissions at all - they may have been basing this part of their version on a manuscript in which the word translated as "second-premier" ("second first") by D'ostervald and others simply didn't exist.

In the Codex Vaticanus, one of only four ancient surviving Greek manuscripts of the entire Bible (it dates from the middle of the 4th century, and has been in the Vatican Library since 1475) Luke 6:1 translates literally into English as: "Now it came to pass on a sabbath, that he was going through cornfields..."

In the Codex Bezae, a bilingual Greek and pre-Jerome Latin manuscript produced, probably in Beirut, in about 400, and still containing, as well as the Gospels, the Johannine epistles, parts of the Acts of the Apostles, and which may originally have also included the Apocalypse, has, in Greek: "And it came to pass on a second-first sabbath that he was going through the cornfields..."

The 6th century Codex Dionysiou from Mount Athos, an early example of what has become known as the standard Byzantine text of the New Testament in Greek would fairly similarly translate: "Now it came to pass on the second-first sabbath that he was going through the cornfields..."

As Parker points out, whoever made the first copy (which very likely nowhere now exists) of what became this, for several hundred years, "standard" Byzantine text, chose to copy not from just one earlier manuscript, but to combine into one his preferred choice from at least two different ones. "Now" agrees wtih Vaticanus; "second-first" comes from some manuscript in agreement with Dionysiou...

After the Peace of Constantine (313) the copying of Christian manuscripts became much more common than it had previously been, but although it was also urgent, very many previously existing manuscripts having been confiscated and burned during Diocletian's persecution (which began in 303), scribes and copyists now found it much harder to find texts to copy from.

Thanks to 20th-century excavations we know that Jerome's Vulgate Latin translation of the Gospels is more faithful to early tradition than is the Greek of Erasmus whose main sources were based on the objectively inferior standard Byzantine text - but when this standard was first achieved, it appears to have been the very best there and then obtainable.

So, what about "second-first" in the Codex Dionysiou? In 1911 F. C. Burkitt suggested that some earlier scribe had, by mistake, written sabbatobato instead of sabbato, and that because, in Greek, alpha is "1" and beta is "2", the copyist had, deliberately but mistakenly, expanded the additional bato as beta-alpha-to, to being an abbreviation for proto meaning "first"...

St Jerome, who knew at least one copy of Luke which included sabbaton deuteroproton, mentions in section 8 of his 52nd "Letter" (to Nepotian) that his teacher, St Gregory of Nazianzus, playfully answered him, when asked to explain "the second-first sabbath": "I will tell you about it in church, and there, when all the people applaud me, you will be forced against your will to know what you do not know at all. For, if you alone remain silent, every one will put you down for a fool."

This suggests both that this isn't a recent problem and that your priest-teacher's wise explanation may not correspond to anything in the mind of whoever first (deliberately or by mistake) wrote this into the text. You also mention that in a 1934 Burns Oates and Washbourne edition of Luke that you have, a footnote to Luke 6:1's "second first" reads: "The best guess is that of the Paschal Chronicle, viz., that it is the first of the Seven Sabbaths numbered from the second day after the Pasch, which preceded Pentecost."

In a 1914 Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd. (London) edition of The Holy Bible translated from the Latin Vulgate and diligently compared with other editions in divers languages (Douay, A.D. 1609; Rheims, A.D. 1582) published as revised and annotated by authority, with a Preface by the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster that contains "Bishop Challoner's notes, newly compiled indices, tables, and verified references, also Pope Leo XIII's Encyclical on the study of the Holy Scriptures, and a new series of maps," Luke 6:1 reads: "And it came to pass on the second first sabbath that, as he went through the corn fields..." Bishop Challoner's footnote reads: "The second first sabbath. Some understand this of the sabbath of Pentecost, which was the second in course among the great feasts; others, of a sabbath day that immediately followed any solemn feast."

By the way, I see from this week's Universe that a full digitized facsimile of the British Library's Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest complete copy of the Greek New Testament, is now being prepared for publication on the Internet. The Internet is likely to make at least as much difference to our knowledge of the Bible as did the invention of printing.

Again, best wishes!

Colin's Letter to Joseph Ellul: 19 August 2005

Dear Joe,

Several times during our conversations about currently available translations of the Bible into Maltese you have explained that Sant's version is best understood as a very considerably modified reworking of Monsinjur Professur P. P.Saydon's Il-Bibbja - Maqluba għall-Malti mill-ilsna oriġinali rather than as a new translation in its own right. Although editions of Saydon's work remain in print (my copy carries Archbishop Joseph Mercieca's imprimatur and was printed in Scotland in 1995 by Charles Letts Ltd. for the Librerija Preca, Societas Doctrinae Christianae, M.U.S.E.U.M., Blata l-Bajda, who hold the copyright), none of these have been printed with your Uncle Peter's (1895 - 1971) original maps. The map of the route of the Exodus from Egypt across the Red Sea through the wilderness and into the Promised Land in my copy of Saydon may, indeed, better agree with today's majority academic interpretation of the biblical account, but the significantly different map in that copy of the original edition you showed me is irreplaceable as historical evidence of Saydon's own attempt to resolve a number of problems that are still without any final solution.

Several years before the Saxon artist Lucas Cranach agreed to stand as godfather to the first son of Martin Luther (1483 - 1546), he made the woodcut from which the first ever wall-map of the Holy Land was printed. The Zürich publisher Christopher Froschauer re-cut this on a reduced-scale to print a smaller equivalent map for insertion into a Lutheran edition of the entire Bible in German ("I have constantly tried, in translating, to produce a pure and clear German, and it has often happened that for two or three or four weeks we have searched and inquired for a single word and sometimes not found it even then." - Selected Writings of Martin Luther, Fortress, Philadelphia, 1967, vol. 4, p. 180.). A few months after a copy of this reached Antwerp in 1525, Jacob van Liesvelt's Dutch edition of the Lutheran Bible was printed there in 1526, its similarly reduced version of Cranach's Holy Land map showing Die groote zee instead of Das gros meer. By 1537 Gerard Mercator (1512 - 1594), who had certainly seen this, was probably also acquainted with the much better annotated reduced-scale version of Cranach's original that Miles Coverdale (1488 - 1568) had had bound in 1535 into the first complete printed Bible in English. Hans Holbein designed Coverdale's title-page and may have been the draughtsman for this map in which, although the locations of many more holy places are indicated (less than 30 named places had featured in Liesvelt's woodcut), the lettering is very difficult to read: "Where Cranach's Exodus road had blundered doggedly through Sinai, Holbein's track twisted uncertainly, interrupted by exquisite little vignettes: the Israelites bunched like a market throng between the sheer walls of the Red Sea's parted water; the intersecting lances of Hebrew and Amalekite; tented camps and the Brazen Serpent slung from its T-pole. Blank areas of sea and desert were exuberantly decorated with scrolls, windheads and a magnificent aquatic cartouche eyed by a fanged sea-serpent." (Nicholas Crane, Mercator - The man who mapped the planet, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2002, p. 83.) Illustrated maps of this sort might lack the spiritual impact of miracle-plays, mystery-plays and mediaeval stained-glass windows, but their immediate popularity undoubtedly stimulated the rapid rise to prominence of geography and map-making as a recognized profession.

In the 14th century a Greek copy of Ptolemy's Geography, written in Alexandria in the 2nd century A.D., arrived in Florence from Constantinople and was translated into Latin; in the 15th century Latin editions were printed in Vicenza, Bologna, Rome and Florence, and a German edition was published in Ulm in 1482. In 1532 Jacob Ziegler, a German humanist forty years older than Mercator who had long hoped to produce not only new editions of Ptolemy's, Strabo's and Pliny's classical geographical and astronomical works, but also maps of all the most recent discoveries around the globe based on adequate surveys, successfully completed his 300-page Quae Intus Continentur with seven maps of unprecedented accuracy and detailed descriptions of Paltestine and Arabia based on "the entire Holy Scriptures, from Moses to the Maccabees, Saint Hieronymus, together with others, who have described the places populated by the Hebrews: Josefus, Strabo, Plinius, Ptolemaeus and Antonius." No place featured on any of Ziegler's maps unless attested to by at least two authors but, although his revised 2nd edition also referred to such then recent authorities as Bernard von Breitenbach and Burchard of Mt Sion, most of his data remained, geographically speaking, more than a thousand years out of date - Ptolemy's Mediterranean is spread across 62 degrees of longitude (almost half as much again than it occupies on today's maps) and although Ziegler, instead of attempting to plot the supposed actual route of the Exodus, had simply listed the latitudes and longitudes of many places associated with it in the Bible, his figures were not always accurate.

For his first 1537 Holy Land 434 × 984 mm wall-map Mercator drew on all the foregoing geographical information and much more besides, skilfully coordinating his data within a modified Ptolemaic grid showing the Nile on the left, the Mediterranean in the north-west along the top and the mountains of Lebanon on the right - and this in such a way as to locate more than 400 places and clearly identify the different territories of the twelve tribes of Israel: "Having created a best-fit geography, Mercator now attempted to plot the map's central narrative, the Exodus route. Here - as elsewhere - Ziegler had marked locations that were distant from the coordinates which he had so methodically listed in the text a few pages earlier. Paran, Chaseroth and Sepher formed three random examples on the early part of the Exodus route. Ziegler's map placed them close to the longitude of 64 degrees. Yet the text listed all three a whisker from 63 degrees of longitude - just one degree, but far enough west to have been guiding the Hebrews down the Nile into the Mediterranean. Although Ziegler's description of the Exodus route occupied thirteen pages of text, his bibliographic excavations had not produced locations for all forty-two Hebrew camps listed in the Book of Numbers. Indeed, the only parts of the route which Mercator could plot with some element of certainty were the beginning and the end. Of the eleven camps between Hazeroth and Hashmonah in the central part of the route, Ziegler had provided coordinates for just one. Each side of the camp below Mount Shapher, was a set of five camps which could not be fixed. That left a bewildering number of route permutations. On their smaller-scale maps, Cranach and Holbein had been able to avoid the issue because they made no attempt to mark all the camps. Cranach had depicted the route taking a rather arbitrary zig-zag through the Arabian mountains; Holbein had shown the route crossing itself in a loop. Either way was possible. Mercator went for the loop. Eager that there should be no cloud veiling his method, he made no attempt to provide locations for the unknown camps. Listing them beside his route in two blocks of five names, he added notes that the locations of these camps were 'uncertain' or 'unknown'. It was a warning which could be applied to the entire map." (N. Crane, op. cit., p. 87.) If the few other recent books I have that also discuss the Exodus and its route are anything to go by, certainty about this latter still eludes us. Is the biblical Mount Sinai near St. Catherine's monastery in the southern tip of the Sinai peninsula? Or is it Jabal al Lawz across the Gulf of Aqaba north-east of Al Bad in the north-western corner of Saudi Arabia? (James Pritchard's May 1997 edition of the HarperCollins Concise Atlas of the Bible equally acknowledges both possibilities.) Or is it Jebel Madhbah near Petra in Jordan where a long flight of ancient carved steps still leads up to a High Place? (Cf Graham Phillips, The Moses Legacy - the evidence of history, Sidgwick & Jackson, 2002. This author also believes that an ancient black-painted staff found there and today on display in the Egyptian gallery of the Birmingham Museum is probably Aaron's original rod.)

I've already mentioned the German and Dutch Lutheran Bibles of 1525 and 1528, and Miles Coverdale's English Bible of 1535. Luther based his German New Testament translation on Erasmus' Greek edition which very largely relied on so called for several centuries "standard" Byzantine manuscripts of the Gospels now known to be less reliable guides than St. Jerome's Latin Vulgate. Acknowledging that then in use copies of St. Jerome's Bible had been considerably corrupted across the centuries, the Fathers of the Council of Trent (1545 - 1563) wisely arranged for the preparation and publication of a corrected edition. Meanwhile, Latin still being a language familiar to such European scholars as Henry VIII and St. Thomas More, Erasmus published a Latin translation of his own Greek edition of the New Testament.

Calvinists, Lutherans and Catholics at this time all agreed that the "inspired" Bible wasn't any translation, but G-d's original "word" penned by the sacred scribe under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. No scholar imagined the Latin Vulgate was that original. Moreover, in translating parts of his Old Testament from the Septuagint Greek, St. Jerome had specifically stated that its translators were "no prophets". Granted, then, that even such a venerable translation was not inspired, those using the new Greek edition of Erasmus may readily be forgiven for imagining this text was, in very truth, G-d's word... Of course, even then not everyone agreed. Motives for disagreement might be religious, scholarly, political or unashamedly economic. This was a time when everything was in the melting-pot. (Bartolomeu Diaz discovered the Cape of Good Hope, 1487; Christopher Columbus discovered the West Indies, 1492; Vasco da Gama discovered the Passage to India, 1497; Pedro Alvarez Cabral discovered Brazil, 1500; Leonardo da Vinci painted The Mona Lisa, 1504; Balboa discovered the Pacific Ocean, 1509; Henry VIII ruled, 1509 - 1547; Charles I ruled Spain, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 1516 - 1556; Diet of Worms excommunicated Martin Luther, 1521; Francisco Pizarro began to explore Peru, 1526; Henry VIII established the Church of England, 1534; Edward VI ruled England and Wales, 1547 - 1553; Henry II ruled France, 1547 - 1559; Iceland, ruled by Denmark since 1397, became officially Protestant, 1551; Mary Tudor ruled England and Wales, 1554 - 1558; Philip II ruled Spain and Portugal, 1556 - 1598; Ferdinand I ruled Bohemia, Germany and the Holy Roman Empire, 1556 - 1564; Elizabeth I ruled England and Wales, 1558 - 1603; Charles IX ruled France, 1560 - 1574; William Shakespeare lived, 23 April 1564 - 1616; Maximilian II ruled Germany, Hungary and the Holy Roman Empire, 1564 - 1576; Great Siege of Malta, 1565.)

When in the 7th century the monk Caedmon composed Anglo-Saxon metrical paraphrases of several parts of the Bible, he hadn't intended them to replace study, devotional reading and service-use of any scriptures locally available. When in the 14th century the hermit Richard Rolle of Hampole (d. 1349) composed a Psalter in which each verse of the Psalms penned in Latin was followed both by his own literal translation of it into English and a devotional commentary or gloss translated for the most part from earlier works known and accepted by Church authorities, he was simply attempting to enable anybody affluent enough to acquire and use a copy better to understand what the Latin itself was saying.

Although the first translation of the Bible into English is associated with the name of the Lollard leader John Wycliff (c. 1330 - 1380), he appears to have had very little to do with either of its two known versions produced over a 20-year period beginning in the 1370's, the first a very literal word-by-word crib enabling its reader to work out what the Latin said, the second an attempt by remaining literally accurate but modifying both word order and some grammatical constructions to produce an English equivalent that could be read by itself. The last of the 15 chapters comprising the Prologue to this second version claims that "although covetous clerks... despise and stop holy write as much as they can, yet the common people cry after holy writ to know it and keep it with great cost and peril of their life." Bibles, commentaries and glosses were collected and collated in order to get the best Latin text possible from which to translate, the text itself was carefully studied, and older theologians and grammarians were consulted about difficult words and sentences. (Cf. Anne Hudson, Selections from English Wycliffite Writings, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 67.)

The Wycliff Bible having been very largely suppressed, William Tyndale (?1494 - martyred 1536) had no possible alternative save that of inventing his own new sort of English in order to open the scriptures to readers of that language, with the result that, as St Thomas More complained, "All England list now to go to school with Tyndale to learn English." (The Complete Works of St. Thomas More, Yale University Press, vol. 8, p. 187.) In fact, we owe to Tyndale a larger proportion of our English than we do to any other writer, before or since. He translated the entire New Testament and the whole of the Old Testament as far as the end of 2 Chronicles together with the book of Jonah. Because English more closely resembles Hebrew than does Latin, Tyndale was convinced that it is (even if inferior to Maltese) a far more suitable vehicle for Old Testament translation. Nevertheless, St. Thomas More felt that several of Tyndale's choices of vocabulary were linguistically uncalled for and increased heretical tendencies - e.g., his use of "love", "senior" and "congregation" instead of "charity", "priest" and "Church". Tyndale, who wasn't deaf, changed "senior" to "elder". Although "elder" is familiar now, at the time More remarked that Tyndale has "done a great act, now that he hath at last found out 'elder'. He hath all likelihood ridden many miles to find out that. For that word 'elder' is ye wot well so strange and so little known it is more than marvel how that ever he could find it out." (Ibid., vol. 8, p. 182.) Perhaps in three hundred years' time Sant's preferred alternative Maltese word for Saydon's translation of "grain measure" or "bushel" may also be a household word! What any good translator needs to aim for is, I think, dynamic equivalence in context.

When in 1526 Bishop Cuthbert Tunstal attempted to suppress Tyndale's New Testament because it profaned "the majesty of Scripture" (David Daniell, William Tyndale - A Biography, Yale University Press, 1905, p. 190), he wasn't complaining that this translation was inaccurate, but that its language lacked the Latin's holy beauty, comfortable familiarity and mystical fascination. Although similar complaints were later voiced in connection with the Authorised King James version of 1611, today this remains for many a perfect blend of beauty, familiarity and sacred splendour...

Sir John Cheke (1514 - 1557), first Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University, objected to the use of words of Latin origin in an English Bible, and accordingly made his own English translation of Matthew and the beginning of Mark - but this was not published until 1843. When English Bibles first became available, many of their "English" words were unavoidably ones entirely new to a large number and, indeed, probably to a majority of their readers or hearers.

Miles Coverdale's already mentioned Bible of 1535 had been a revision and completion, which was far less dependent on the Latin Vulgate, of Tyndale's ground-breaking achievement. In 1538 he published two editions of his own English translation of the Vulgate New Testament printed in twin columns - one for the Latin, the other for his English translation. His further revisions resulted in both the Great Bible (1st edition: 1539) and his still much loved Psalter, included in the Book of Common Prayer. Coverdale, who was also involved in the making of the Geneva Bible (1560), did not believe there was only one true text of the Bible, but that the Holy Ghost is "the author of his Scripture as well in the Hebrew, Greek, French, Dutch and in English, as in Latin" (from the Preface to his New Testament translation).

Many disagreed with Coverdale. Henry VIII's proclamation of 1541 warned lay-readers not to "presume to take upon them any common disputation, argument or exposition of the myseries therein contained", and in 1542 a parliamentary committee agreed with Archbishop Thomas Cranmer (1489 - 1556) of Canterbury's view that the English Great Bible "could not be retained until first duly purged and examined side by side with the [Latin] Bible commonly read in the English Church." The Bishops' Bible of 1568 was presented to the public as the much needed result of this purge and examination but, according to Gerald Hammond, it is for the most part "either a lazy and ill-informed collation of what had gone before, or, in its original parts, the work of third-rate scholars and second-rate writers." (The Making of the English Bible, Manchester: Carcanet, 1982, p. 143.) Need we again discuss Mgr. Carmel Sant and his team of experts? Be that as it may, it was on the text of the Bishops' Bible that the King James Bible translators were instructed to base their own work, revising it only where "it varieth manifestly from the Hebrew or Greek original".

While Archbishop Cranmer had encouraged private study of the Bible, Archbishop Matthew Parker (1504 - 1575) desired that the clergy should study it closely in order to teach the people better. Like Coverdale, Parker favoured the availability of several different translations. He also advised any "learned" reader to "correct" any "word or sentence which may dislike him", replacing it with a "better" for the purpose of "finding out of the truth... that Christ may ever have the praise." (from his Address preceding the Psalms.) "Most scholarly users of the Bible until, roughly, the middle of the seventeenth century did indeed treat the English text as unfixed and were not much concerned to cite a particular version accurately. For them biblical truth did not lie in any particular form of English words. Unless the scholars were translators or were critics of theological and ecclesiastical tendencies that they disliked, they had little interest in the precise language of the English Bible... On the other hand, unscholarly people were becoming closely familiar with the English of the Bible: for them it could be an imitable, admirable standard." (David Norton, A History of the English Bible as Literature, Cambridge University Press, 2000, p. 38.)

Protestants living in exile in Geneva, probably under the leadership of William Whittingham (c. 1524 - 1579), and with some help from Miles Coverdale prepared the Geneva Bible of 1560 or, to give it its full title: The Bible and Holy Scriptures contained in the Old and New Testament. Translated according to the Hebrew and Greek, and conferred with the best translations in divers languages. With most profitable annotations upon all the hard places, and other things of great importance as may appear in the Epistle to the Reader. Although never sanctioned by the Church of England, it was used by Shakespeare, soon became the most popular English Bible, and for a long time even rivalled the more expensive King James Version of 1611, whose translators had quoted from it in their Preface.

Roman Catholic scholars remained reluctant to use any Bible in English, but their need to counteract the influence of Protestant heretical versions eventually resulted in the publication of the Roman Catholic Oxford Hebraist, Gregory Martin's (died 1582) Rheims-Douai Bible - New Testament, 1582; Genesis to Job, 1609; Psalms to Esdras IV, 1610. The wording of the Rheims-Douai New Testament had a real influence on the translators of the King James Version, being a major source of their own choice of vocabulary, and although the late (for financial reasons) appearance of its Old Testament counterpart meant that it made no real contribution in that direction, its text "was the primary element in the most important debate of this, the key period of English translation, on the way the Bible should be translated. Although the controversy between the Catholics and the Protestants was a bitter, if not a desperate one (not just souls but institutions were at stake)... there are important respects in which there is no real difference between the two sides... Because both sides insisted on true understanding, the charge of corruption for literary reasons was one each side brought against the other but strenuously sought to avoid. The result was a re-emphasis on the need for literal translation that, ironically, helped to produce the particular literary qualities of the King James Version." (David Norton, op. cit., p. 41-2.)

As well as his still highly regarded Bible translation Martin contributed to this fruitful polemic his 1582 A Discovery of the Manifold Corruptions of the Holy Scriptures by the Heretics of our Days, specially the English Sectaries, and of their foul dealing herein, by partial and false translations to the advantage of their heresies, in their English Bibles used and authorised since the time of schism. In London in 1583 William Fulke (1538 - 1589) replied with his A Defence of the Sincere and True Translations of the Holy Scriptures into the English Tongue against the manifold cavils, frivolous quarrels and impudent slanders of GREGORY MARTIN. Thomas Cartwright (1535 - 1603), a leading Puritan who had been associated with Fulke at college, in 1583 also began his A Confutation of the Rhemists' Translation, Glosses and Annotations on the New Testament, so far as they contain manifest impieties, heresies, idolatries, superstitions, profaneness, treasons, slanders, absurdities, falsehoods and other evils. By occasions whereof the true sense, scope and doctrine of the Scriptures, and human authors, by them abused, is not given - but as it ran to 760 pages and wasn't published until 1618, it had far less influence than Fulke's Defence, new editions of which appeared in both 1617 and 1633. Another interesting and useful contribution of Fulke's was his 1589 New Testament in which he combined his own notes and arguments with the complete texts, in two parallel columns, of both the Bishops' Bible and the Rheims-Douai version - this work also went through three subsequent editions.

Although never as such a translator of the Bible, the English Hebrew scholar Hugh Broughton (1549 - 1612) needs now to be mentioned, because of his energetic insistence both on the divinely inspired infallibility and on the literary perfection of both Old and New Testaments (although not of the Apocrypha, found in the Septuagint, which Roman Catholic Bibles also include). Whether or not justified, Broughton's praise of what he called the "sweet oratoriousness" of Sacred Scripture forcibly reminded the King James team of translators that accuracy of meaning alone is not all that a good translation requires; it is, therefore, entirely appropriate that he lived to see the first publication of the fruit of their labours in 1611.

With best wishes!

Colin's Letter to Joseph Ellul: Feast of Mary our Queen, 22 August 2005.

Dear Joe,

This declaration by Pope Urban VIII (1623 - 1644) is often quoted: "In cases which concern private revelations, it is better to believe than not to believe, for, if you believe, and it is proven true, you will be happy that you have believed, because our Holy Mother asked it. If you believe, and it should be proven false, you will receive all blessings as if it had been true, because you believed it to be true."

"U qaliha l-anġlu 'La tibżax, Marija, għax sibt grazzja għand Alla...Mitliet Elisabet bl-Ispirtu s-Santu, u għajet b'leħen għoli u qalet: 'Imbierka inti fost in-nisa, u mbierek il-frott ta' ġufek!... U mbierka dik li emmnet li jseħħ dak li qaliha l-Mulej'." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - Peter P. Saydon's translation.)

"And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with G-d... Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spoke out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb... And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - King James Bible: the Authorised Version of 1611.)

"And the angel said to her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found grace with G-d... Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she cried out with a loud voice and said: Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb... And blessed art thou that hast believed, because those things shall be accomplished that were spoken to the by the Lord." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - Rheims-Douai Bible.)

"By the middle of the 19th century, the development of Biblical studies and the discovery of many manuscripts more ancient than those upon which the King James Version was based, made it manifest that these defects are so many and so serious as to call for revision of the English translation" - the resulting Revised Version of 1881, based on B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort's 1881 The New Testament in the Original Greek, agreed in substance with the Rheims-Douai Bible of 1582-1610. The American Standard Version of 1901 is an authorised revision of this Revised Version, and was in 1952 succeeded by the Revised Standard Version - see below. See also K. & B. Aland, The Text of the New Testament - An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism, 2nd edition, Grand Rapids and Leiden, 1989; B. M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament - Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 3rd edition, New York and Oxford, 1992.

"And the angel said to her, 'Have no fear, Mary, for you have God's approval'... Elisabeth was full of the Holy Spirit, and she said with a loud voice: 'May blessing be on you among women, and a blessing on the child of your body... Happy will she be who had faith that the things which the Lord has said to her will be done'." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - The New Testament in Basic English, Cambridge University Press, 1941.)

As the note on pp. v-vi of The New Testament in Basic English explains: "The form in which the New Testament is given here is not simply another example of the Bible story put into present-day English. The language used (the language of this note) is Basic English. By the addition of 50 Special Bible words and the use of 100 words listed as giving most help in the reading of English verse, Basic English, produced by Mr C. K. Ogden of the Orthological Institute, as a simple form of the English language with 850 words, has been increased to 1000 for the purpose of putting the Bible into Basic... Frequently, the narrow limits of the word-list make it hard to keep the Basic completely parallel with the Greek; but great trouble has been taken with every verse and every line to make certain that there are no errors of sense and no loose wording. It is only natural that, from time to time, some of the more delicate shades of sense have not been covered; on the other hand, it is well to keep in mind that in the Authorised Version the power and music of the language sometimes take so much of the reader's attention that these more delicate shades are overlooked. In fact, the Basic expert is forced, because of the limited material with which he is working, to give special care to the sense of the words before him. There is no question of the Basic work taking the place of the Authorised Version or of coming into competition with it; but it may be said of this new English Bible that it is in a marked degree straightforward and simple and that these qualities give it an independent value."

"Then the angel said to her, Mary, do not be afraid; thou hast found favour in the sight of G-d... Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Ghost; so that she cried out with a loud voice, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb... Blessed art thou for thy believing; the message that was brought to thee from the Lord shall have fulfilment." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - Ronald Knox, The New Testament in English, 1945; a translation from the Latin Vulgate made in the light of the Greek.)

"And the angel said unto her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary: for you have found favour with G-d'... Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, 'Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!... And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord'." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - Revised Standard Version, 1952.) For the Old Testament this revision "is based on the consonantal Hebrew and Aramaic text as found early in the Christian era and revised by Jewish scholars, the Masoretes, of the 6th to 9th centuries. The vowel signs, which were added by the Masoretes, are accepted also in the main, but where a more probable and convincing reading can be obtained by assuming different vowels, this has been done... Departures from the consonantal text of the best manuscripts have been made only where it seems clear that errors in copying have been made before the text was standardized. Most of the corrections adopted are based on the ancient versions, translations into Greek, Aramaic, Syriac, and Latin, which were made before the time of the Masoretic revision and therefore reflect earlier forms of the text... Sometimes it is evident that the text has suffered in transmission, but none of the versions provides a satisfactory restoration. Here we can only follow the best judgment of competent scholars as to the most probable reconstruction of the original text..."

Although most biblical scholars would agree with this opinion the editors of the Revised Standard Version expressed in their Preface, and which amounts to a rejection of Erasmus in favour of St. Jerome, "there continue to be those who believe that the Byzantine text most accurately represents the original text, essentially on the grounds that G-d would not have allowed the original text to perish, and that it is preserved in the majority of manuscripts - which are Byzantine." (D. C. Parker, The living text of the Gospels, p. 53.) "17th-century scholarship began... to see that the Byzantine text differed from early materials. The De Re Diplomatica of Jean Mabillon (1681) and the Palaeographia Graeca of Bernard Montfaucon (1708) laid the foundations of Latin and Greek palaeography respectively. With these aids, it began to be possible to date manuscripts scientifically. Discovering and studying ever-increasing amounts of evidence, 18th- and 19th-century scholarship found manuscripts of that 4th-century Greek text which Jerome had used for his Vulgate, and decided that it was superior to the Byzantine form... There is perhaps a certain irony in the fact that today's traditionalists favour the text rejected by their predecessors of four hundred years ago." (D. C. Parker, op.cit., pp. 52-53.)

"Then the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for G-d has been gracious to you'... Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and cried aloud, 'G-d's blessing is on you above all women, and his blessing is on the fruit of your womb... How happy is she who has had faith that the Lord's promise would be fulfilled'." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - New English Bible with Apocraypha, 1970; a translation jointly made by scholars from all major Christian bodies in the British Isles, other than Roman Catholics.)

"But the angel said to her, 'Mary, do not be afraid; you have won G-d's favour'... Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. She gave a loud cry and said, 'Of all women you are the most blessed, and blessed is the fruit of your womb... Yes, blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled'." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - New Jerusalem Bible, 1985.) The Roman Catholic Jerusalem Bible of 1966 was criticized for being a more faithful translation of the hugely successful Bible de Jérusalem than it was of "the originals". Although when differing interpretations of the Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic are possible, that adopted by the translators of this New Jerusalem Bible coincides with the one followed in the revised 1973 French translation, further advances in biblical studies since that date have been taken into account, and this revised English translation has been made directly from Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic. "Paraphrase has been avoided more rigorously than in the first edition; care has been taken that in parallel passages (for example in the first three gospels) the similarities and differences should be mirrored exactly in the translation. Key terms in the originals, especially those theological key concepts on which there is a major theological note, have been rendered throughout (with very few exceptions) by the same English word, instead of by the variety of words used in the first edition... The maps have also been completely redesigned." (General Editor's Foreword, op.cit., pp. v-vi.)

"But the angel said to her, 'Cast off all fear, Mary, for you have found favour with G-d... Elizabeth herself, being filled with the Holy Spirit, raised her voice and cried out loudly, 'You have, of all women, a special blessing resting upon you, and the fruit of your womb is likewise specially blessed... Yes, blessedness is indeed in store for her who was ready to believe that the words spoken to her by the Lord would find their fulfilment'." (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - H. W. Cassirer's G-d's New Covenant - A New Testament Translation, 1989.) Heinz W. Cassirer (1903 - 1979) taught philosophy for many years at Glasgow University and at Corpus Christi, Oxford. His encounter later in life with the Greek New Testament led him to embrace Christianity even as he became more profoundly aware of his own Jewish heritage. Cassirer's books include a critically acclaimed study of Aristotle's De Anima, commentaries on two of Kant's critiques, and Grace and Law - St. Paul, Kant, and the Hebrew Prophets. "This New Testament translation was made by a philosopher who had not read a word of the Bible before he had reached the age of 49... When Cassirer came to realize that there was something missing in Kant's nevertheless unsurpassed philosophical efforts to solve the question of moral freedom, he began seriously to ask himself whether this was a matter for the human intellect at all... It was on reading the epistles of St. Paul that Cassirer experienced a collapse, a total inward paralysis... Withdrawing from academic life... he immersed himself in these texts... There is an attentiveness to Jewish sensibilities present in the most subtle of ways in these texts - to take but one example, there is a firm, natural instinct that makes one aware of the continuous construction of the spoken Aramaic, in places where the literal following of the Greek present tense cannot be insisted upon... Cassirer was endlessly absorbed in observing how the English language could be used to reach an understanding of a truth." (Ronald Weitzman, "Introducing the translation and its translator", op.cit., p. xv.)

"But the angel assured her, 'Mary, you have nothing to fear. G-d has a surprise for you... Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and sang out exuberantly, 'You're so blessed among women, and the babe in your womb, also blessed!... Blessed woman, who believed what G-d said, believed every word would come true!' " (Luke 1:30, 41-42, 45 - from Eugene H. Peterson, The Message - The New Testament in Contemporary Language, Colorado Springs: Navpress, 1993.)

According to St. Ignatius of Antioch (died c. 107), "He that honours the Bishop is honoured by G-d; he that does anything without consulting the Bishop, serves the devil." So, was St. Thomas More, a layman, wrong in siding with the Pope against Henry VIII's bishops? Although in his Preface to A Defence of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of our Saviour Christ, with a confutation of sundry errors concerning the same grounded and established upon G-d's Holy Word, and approved by the consent of the most ancient Doctors of the Church, made by the Most Reverend Father in G-d, Thomas, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of all England and Metropolitan (1550), His Grace asked: "What availeth it to take away beads, pardons, pilgrimages, and such other like popery, so long as two chief roots remain unpulled up? whereof, so long as they remain, will spring again all former impediments of the Lord's harvest, and corruption of his flock... The very body of the tree, or rather the root of the weeds, is the popish doctrine of transubstantiation, of the real presence of Christ's flesh and blood in the sacrament of the altar, (as they call it,) and of the sacrifice and oblation of Christ made by the priest for the salvation of the quick and the dead", basically he wasn't just questioning transubstantiation as its manner, but any factual sacred presence in the consecrated elements of bread and wine - "Though we do affirm according to G-d's word, that Christ is in all persons that truly believe in him, in such sort, that with his flesh and blood he doth spiritually nourish them and feed them, and giveth them everlasting life, and doth assure them thereof, as well by the promise of his word, as by the sacramental bread and wine in his holy Supper, which he did institute for the same purpose, yet we do not a little vary from the heinous errors of the papists..." (op.cit., Bk. 3, ch. 2, Lewes and Ramsgate: Focus Christian Ministries Trust and Harrison Trust edition, 1987, pp. 97-98.)

Very differently, according to St. Ignatius of Loyola (1491 - 1556), "In order to think truly, as we ought, in the Church Militant, the following rules should be observed: 1. The first - Laying aside all private judgment, we ought to hold our minds prepared and prompt to obey in all things the true Spouse of Christ our Lord, which is our holy Mother, the hierarchical Church. 2. The second - To praise confession to a priest, and the reception of the Most Holy Sacrament once a year, and much better every month, and much better still every eight days, with the requisite and due conditions... 9. The ninth - To praise in fine all the precepts of the Church, preserving a mind ready to seek reasons for defending her, and in no way impugning her. 10. The tenth - We ought to be more ready to approve and praise the enactments and recommendations, and also the customs of our superiors [than to find fault with them]; because, although somtimes they may not be or may not have been praiseworthy, still to speak against them, whether in public discourse or before the common people, would give rise to murmurs and scandal, rather than edification; and thus the people would be irritated against their superiors, whether temporal or spiritual. Nevertheless, as it does harm to speak ill before the common people of superiors in their absence, so it may be useful to speak of their bad conduct to those who can apply a remedy. 11. The eleventh - To praise theology, positive and scholastic; for as it rather belongs to the positive Doctors, as St. Jerome, St. Augustine, St. Gregory, etc., to move the affections to love and serve G-d our Lord in all things, so it rather belongs to the scholastics, as St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and the Master of the Sentences, etc., to define and explain for our times the things necessary to eternal salvation, and to take the lead in impugning and exposing all errors and fallacies; because the scholastic Doctors, being more modern, are not only able to avail themselves of the true understanding of Holy Scripture, and of the positive and holy Doctors, but also, being themselves illuminated and enlightened by the divine power, they derive assistance from the Councils, Canons, and Constitutions of our holy Mother the Church... 13. The thirteenth - To arrive at the truth in all things, we ought always to be ready to believe that what seems to us white is black, if the hierarchical Church so defines it: believing that between Christ our Lord the Bridegroom and the Church His Bride there is one and the same Spirit, Who governs and directs us for the salvation of our souls; because our holy Mother the Church is ruled and governed by the same Spirit and our Lord Who gave the ten commandments. 14. The fourteenth - Although it is very true that no one can be saved unless he is predestined, and has faith and grace, we must be very careful in our manner of speaking and treating of these subjects. 15. The fifteenth - We ought not habitually to speak much of predestination; but if sometimes mention should be made of it in any way, we must so speak that the common people may not fall into any error, and say, as sometimes they do, 'If I am predestined to be saved or lost, the question is already determined, and whether I do good or ill there cannot be any other result'; and therewith becoming paralysed they neglect good works conducive to their salvation, and to the spiritual profit of their souls. 16. The sixteenth - In the same way we must take heed lest by speaking much and with great earnestness on faith, without any distinction and explanation, occasion be given to become slothful and negligent in good works, whether before faith is formed by charity or after. 17. The seventeenth - In like manner we ought not to speak of grace at such length and so vehemently as to give rise to that poisonous teaching which takes away free-will. Accordingly, we may speak of faith and grace, so far as we can with the help of G-d, for the greater praise of His divine Majesty, but not in such a way, especially in these dangerous times of ours, that works and free-will shall receive any detriment, or come to be accounted for nothing..."(W. H. Longridge, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola translated from the Spanish with a Commentary and a translation of the Directorium in Exercitia, London: Robert Scott, 1919, p. 197-200; In 1548 Pope Paul III approved both the Antique MS and Vulgate Latin translations of these Exercises, and a Spanish edition based on the Saint's original autograph was first published in Rome in 1615. For a more recent English translation of all eighteen Rules here quoted, cfr Thomas Corbishley, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius - A New Translation, Burns & Oates, 1963, pp. 120-24.)

Therefore, as the same Saint wrote as his Third Heading for the guidance of any exercitant using his First Way of making a sound and right decision: "I must ask our Lord G-d of His good pleasure He may influence my will and show me what action of mine in this matter will be more to His honour and renown. I should use my intelligence with strict honesty, and come to my decision in confirmity with the holiness and good pleasure of His will." (T. Corbishley, op.cit., pp. 63-64.) Father Longridge's translation of the same passage requires the exercitant "to beg of G-d our Lord that He may be pleased to move my will, and place in my soul that which I ought to do in regard to the matter proposed, viz., that which may be more to His praise and glory, considering the matter well and faithfully with my understanding, and choosing in conformity with His most holy will and good pleasure." As Father Longridge explains: "Move my will, and place in my soul - Here we have the same twofold grace for which St. Ignatius so frequently bids us pray: 1. the enlightenment of the intellect, place in my soul, i.e., suggest to my mind (the Vulgate reads here, 'mentem instruere'; the Antique MS, 'suggerere animae meae'); and 2. the movement of the will. It is noteworthy, however, that in this place the usual order is reversed and the movement of the will stands first. The reason of this may be that for the purpose of making a good Election, G-d must first put into our hearts good desires, or we shall not be likely to use our intellects seriously and rightly in weighing matters which are often difficult and repugnant to nature." (W. H. Longridge, op.cit., p. 130.)

Although all twenty-two paragraphs of the original manuscript of St. Ignatius's Directorium in Exercitia, mentioned by others in both 1555 and 1626, are now lost, an early copy from the Royal Library in Brussels was published in facsimile with a Latin translation and critical notes in 1917; the longer traditional edition here quoted was, evidently, compiled by Jesuits already well acquainted with their Founder's original - Chapters 22-34, which treat of Election, are especially important: "In the whole of the Exercises there is no subject more difficult, or requiring greater skill and discretion, than the Election. For when engaged upon it the exercitant is exposed to a variety of spiritual movements, and often also to errors, because a man may not only be overcome by evil, but may often also be deceived by what appears to be good and right." (Ch. 22, par. 1, op.cit., p. 316.) "He to whom the Election is given should also himself desire it and ask for it. This is an absolutely necessary condition... He who enters upon the Election should endeavour to be free from every inordinate affection, and absolutely indifferent to all things, desiring this one thing alone, that he may follow the holy will of G-d, whatever he may discover it to be..." (Ch. 23, par. 2-3, op.cit., p. 318.) "An Election in so great a matter as a state of life ought not to rest upon human persuasion or influence, but solely on the will of G-d, else there would be ground to fear that which our Lord has said: Every plant which My heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up [Matthew 15:13]. And since in a procedure of this kind, difficult in itself, and moreover exposed to the envy of the devil, many temptations and difficulties are sure to follow, we cannot look for any help or support from a human guide, unless we lift up our eyes to heaven and can say: The Lord alone was my Guide; since according to the Apostle we ought to hope that He Who has given us to will, will give us also to accomplish, and will confirm it to the end [Cf. Philippians 2:13; 1 Corinthians 1:8.]. From this it may be inferred that he who directs in this Election ought himself for his part to be indifferent if he is faithfully to accomplish the work entrusted to him, and to have no other design or wish save that the will of G-d may be done, adding nothing of his own spirit, for this is to put the sickle into the harvest of G-d [i.e., to trespass on the harvest-field of G-d, to Whom alone it belongs to determine the vocation of each soul]." (Ch. 24, par. 1-2, op.cit., p. 320-21.) "With regard to... the fit and proper time for making the Election. About the first time not much need be said, since in it the will of G-d is so abundantly clear and certain that there can be no manner of doubt about it, as in the case of the vocations of St. Matthew and St. Paul. And although such vocations do not now occur in so miraculous a manner, yet we both read of and see some instances which do in a way so nearly approach them in the great clearness and peace of mind and sure knowledge of the divine will which accompany them that there does not seem to be any possibility of doubt. But a vocation of this sort is very extraordinary and exceptional, and therefore is neither to be asked for nor looked for from G-d... The second time is more ordinary, viz., when the soul is inwardly stirred by such powerful inspirations and movements of grace that with little or no intellectual discourse the will is borne onward to the service of G-d and to perfection. The third is when the intellect, by considering and weighing the reasons on the one side and on the other, sees the truth more clearly, and holds forth as it were a light to the will, so that the will may finally choose that which, all things considered, it deems to be best. Although these two powers of the soul are so intimately conjoined that the one cannot act in making a choice without the other, there is neverthless this difference, that in the first and second times the will takes the lead and the intellect follows, and is drawn by it without any reasoning of its own or hesitation; whereas in the third time the intellect goes before the will, and proposes a multitude of reasons to it, in order to arouse it and impel it to that side which it judges to be the best. And provided, indeed, that the movement in question proceeds immediately from G-d, without doubt the higher and more excellent way is that in which the will, divinely illuminated, takes the lead and draws the intellect after it. For as Aristotle, quoted by St. Thomas, says, it is not expedient to counsel according to human reasoning those who are moved by divine inspiration, because they are moved by a better principle than human reason. But the third way, namely, by reasoning and discussion, is safer and more secure." (Ch. 26, par. 1-3 & Ch. 27, par. 1, op.cit., p. 323-24.) "Love is said to depend more on deeds than on words, and to consist in a certain mutual communication of all good things." (Ch. 36, par. 3, op.cit., p. 340.) "To conclude: the Holy Spirit is our immediate guide in the way of salvation and sanctification, and the best criterion to know that we are truly led by Him is a great readiness to submit in everything to the direction of those who hold on earth the place of our Lord. This rule removes all dangers. As long as we are faithful to it, we can safely walk, run, and, if we choose, even fly to G-d." (Alosius Ambruzzi, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius - with a Commentary, 4th edition, Bangalore: St. Joseph's College, 1955, Appendix 3 - "The Spiritual Exercises and the Direction of Souls", p. 210.) "Against the Quietists who affirm that everything must be left to G-d's action, and against such ascetic writers who unduly overlook man's activity, the Saint insists on the use man must make of his faculties to co-operate with G-d's grace. However, all man can do is praeparare se." (Alosius Ambruzzi, op.cit., p. 9.)

Martin Luther's very different ideas soon reached England and in London, in 1521, in front of St. Paul's a bonfire was made of his books. From 1526 on, Tyndale's notes to his English Bible introduced readers to Zwingli's Calvinist beliefs. Anabaptists, too, were spreading their own subversive teachings. In 1529 German Lutherans drew up the Schwabach Articles and made their acceptance a condition of membership in a reforming League. With Luther's approval Philip Melancthon in 1530 based on them the Confession of Augsburg, 21 articles on matters of faith and 7 disciplinary articles which the Elector of Saxony and others signed as an official statement of Lutheranism and presented to the Holy Roman Emperor. Also in 1530 Zwingli drew up his own Confession and presented it to the Diet of Augsburg - after his death in 1531, his followers issued the Confession of Basel in 1534 and the First Helvetic Confession in 1536. In 1534 Henry VIII had declared the Church of England independent of Rome, and in 1536 Convocation issued the Ten Articles: "To establish Christian quietness and unity among us and to avoid contentious opinions." The entire Bible and the three Creeds established the rule of faith. Anyone failing to accept the teachings of the Four Great Councils was condemned. Three sacraments, Baptism, Penance and the Eucharist were specified; the other four traditionally listed were neither affirmed nor rejected. The Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist was vigorously asserted, but without any mention of transubstantiation. Although specifically Lutheran formulae were avoided, Lutheran ideas of justification by "inward contrition, perfect faith and charity, certain hope and confidence" were clearly affirmed. (Cfr E. J. Bicknell, A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, 2nd edition, revised with additional references by H. J. Carpenter, London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1947, pp. 9-11.)

There followed in 1537 The Institution of a Christian Man, otherwise known as The Bishops' Book, drawn up by a committee headed by Cranmer. The King disliked several theological inaccuracies which had resulted from undue haste in its composition, and in 1543 Convocation, Parliament and the King himself issued a revision: The King's Book or The Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian Man. Anglican-Lutheran discussions had broken down in 1538, Cranmer no longer stood so high in the King's favour, and so this revision, instead of following the Ten Articles, reflected the anti-Protestant Statute of the Six Articles - Transubstantiation was again taught, although without using the word, and it was implied that all seven sacraments were on a level, with obligatory priestly celibacy and a loftier view of Holy Orders.

After Henry's death in 1547 the accession of Edward VI brought rapid changes in Church services, and a letter from Bishop Hooper written in 1549 mentions that all preachers and lecturers in divinity must subscribe to Cranmer's Articles. The reference could be to the never published 13 Articles which Cranmer's Anglican committee had based on the Confession of Augsburg and had hoped to agree with the Lutherans in 1538 and which were found among the Archbishop's papers after his death, but more probably it is to an early draft of the 45 Articles based on them which, after the Bishops had revised them and submitted them in 1552 to the Council, the King and the Royal Chaplains, were reduced by Cranmer to the sometimes deliberately ambiguous (neither Calvinist, Zwinglian nor Lutheran but clearly anti-Anabaptist, anti-Transubstantiation and anti-mediaeval-Catholic) and famous 42 Articles of May 1553, to which all clergy, schoolmasters and members of a university taking a degree were required by royal mandate to subscribe. Convocation had appointed a Commission in 1551 to reform the Canons of the Church but, as its records perished in the Great Fire of London of 1666, we cannot know whether or not it ever approved these articles - a Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum completed by the Commission in 1553 helps one to understand the 42 Articles but was never approved by Parliament. The Roman Catholic Council of Trent, which first met in December 1545, continued, with long breaks, until 1562. Edward VI had died in August 1551, Thomas Cramner was burned at the stake in 1556 and, after the accession of Elizabeth I following the death of Mary Tudor in November 1558, use of the new Prayer Book was enforced by Act of Parliament and Archbishop Parker, pending his and the Bishop of Rochester's pro-Lutheran revision of the 42 Articles, issued Eleven Articles on his own authority. The revised 42 Articles, directly influenced by the Lutheran Confession of Würtemburg officially presented to the Council of Trent in 1552, was, with 4 articles removed and 4 new ones added, presented to Convocation in January 1563. Convocation removed 3 more articles, and the Queen, who also added an opening clause taken from the Confession of Würtemburg to Article 20, not wishing to offend her Roman Catholic subjects, removed the Church of England's present Article 29. The resulting 38 Articles remained in force until their revision 1571, when, a Papal Bull having excommunicated Elizabeth, Article 29 was reinstated - hence, today's 39 Articles, which form part of the text of the Book of Common Prayer. (Cfr E. J. Bicknell, op.cit., pp. 11-19.)

I must mention next the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647. As well as being a basic statement of what Presbyterians believe, it very clearly mirrors widespread attitudes at the time towards Holy Scriptures. In their original Hebrew and Greek these are "immediately inspired by G-d, and therefore authentical." (Philip Schaff, editor, The Creeds of the Evangelical Protestant Churches, London, 1877, p. 604.) Hence, "the heavenliness of the matter, the efficacy of the doctrine, the majesty of the style, the consent of all the parts, the scope of the whole (which is to give all glory to G-d), and the full discovery it makes of the only way of man's salvation." (Ibid., p. 603.) Although, according to the Presbyterian Richard Baxter (1615 - 1691) every word in the Bible is infallibly true, "yet in the manner and method and style" its text partakes "of the various abilities of the writers and consequently of their human imperfections." Among several contemporary positions of excessive reverence for Holy Scriptures which Baxter mentions, some imagine the Bible "instead of all grammars, logic, philosophy and all other arts and sciences" to be "a perfect particular rule for every ruler, lawyer, physician, mariner, archiect, husbandman and tradesman to do his work by." Others believe "that G-d hath so preserved the Scripture as that there are no various readings and doubtful texts thereupon, and that no written or printed copies have been corrupted," even though "Dr Heylyn tells us that the King's Printer printed the seventh commandment, 'thou shalt commit adultery'." (Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory, 1673, in The Practical Works of the Late Reverend and Pious Mr Richard Baxter, 4 volumes, London, 1707, Vol. 1, pp. 710-11.)

I have, I hope, quoted enough - and sufficiently variously, to show that many of today's disagreements about the Bible, about Christianity and about how best to live together as one human family on planet Earth are deeply rooted in a variety of historical circumstances that may not very quickly or very easily be resolved by any to us available purely natural means.

The weather here in Exeter remains warm and good... I enjoyed the ten photographs of old Malta Toni sent me, especially those of the trains and the railway. Yesterday on television I watched a Pinewood Studios' version of The Count of Monte Cristo which had been for the most part filmed in Malta - Filfla was shown, Gozo's Azure Window, and several other features I recognized.

Best wishes!

P. S.: Amazing that Richard Major (The Tablet, 30 April 2005, pp. 18-19) was surprised that growing numbers of schools in the U.S.A. are outlawing the teaching of Darwinian evolutionary theory. Perhaps he still hasn't read John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris's The Genesis Flood - The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications (ISBN 0-87552-338-2: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1961, 44th printing - April 2003). "Many illustrations, charts, and diagrams, along with extensive indices, aid the reader in the quest for a harmonization of the Biblical record and scientific data. Opposing viewpoints are given careful and courteous treatment."

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