Historically, the words of the Scriptures have been translated, interpreted, paraphrased, and redistributed millions of times over. King James oversaw the printing of the Bible during his reign, but the words were copied over, by hand, with feather quills and iron ink on vellum or parchment, from scrolls copied centuries ago. A select council in the third century decided how many and which would go into that printed Bible, and there's more in the Apocrypha which is in another version, and assuredly still more lost to the ages.
Scrolls of stories, battles and kings; boys fighting giants with slingshots and rocks; floods and earthquakes; seers and prophets; lovers and scandal and falls from grace; tribes wandering for decades after centuries of slavery. Scrolls that record encounters with a living God who spoke and sent signs and wonders. Scrolls that foretold in detail, centuries earlier, of the unlikely birth of a Savior to an unwed woman (in a manger of all places) who would save the remnant of the wanderers. Scrolls that carried letters of admonition, encouragement, and teaching to the remnant who encountered the Savior Incarnate.
Today we read those ancient words, the letters that passed from hand to hand in the Roman postal system along the roads of the Empire, the stories enscribed and left in clay pots in a cave in Qumran, the prophesies recorded and copied onto parchment and preserved in temples -- on glowing screens and mass-produced volumes of the approved version from the ancient 3rd century.
Often they are dismissed as ancient religion. Often we read them like we read the contents on a food label, get what we need and not any more than the recommended daily allowance.
The stories are more than that. They are indeed heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation to generation. Lost for a time, such as the Dead Sea scrolls. Incredibly perpetuated, like the letters from Paul and Timothy and Peter.
I have a few heirlooms, of much lesser value, to be sure. On a corner shelf in our living room there rests a little green opaque coffee cup. My great-grandma Mary used it every morning, I'm told. I only met her once, since she was 85 when I was born. We went to visit her in the nursing home and a frail woman with wispy white hair looped in a bun reached out to my three-year-old chubby hands with a gnarled one, and I drew back.
I also have copies of letters she wrote to her family, as a young girl in the 1890's, wondering if she'd ever marry; some as an older person, and some heart-breaking ones from the nursing home missing her only son, bewildered by her depressing surroundings. Those letters have been scanned and copied and sent to family her nephew, by God's design born late in life to her brother -- and so was a cousin to her only child.
Letters preserved. Stories preserved.
Scrolls preserved.
The early church was staffed, if you will, with people only two degrees of separation from Jesus of Nazareth. Cousins, descendants, relatives, neighbors, what have you, of the people who walked and talked and touched Jesus.
I touched my granny's hand but once, but I touched it, and I heard her voice and saw her eyes light up as her son and her granddaughter and her great-grandchildren came to visit. My children have heard that story. They've dusted her coffee cup and seen her pictures.
The Christian faith stems from the same type of family history. I heard it said last night that it is not a philosophy. It's a personal history handed down through the generations, recorded on scrolls, translated and copied and shared. Might be ancient history, but it's as real as that coffee cup on the little shelf.
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What's shakin' y'all! Thanks for musing on my musings.. anything you leave here goes to my e-mail ) Be blessed!