As I prepare for my last class on the Greek New Testament this summer, I am reading Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman's The Text of the New Testament: It’s Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration. Ed. 4 (Oxford University Press: New York) 2005. And I'm completely in awe as I read about all the people who worked so steadfastly to preserve out scriptures before it was so easy to do. I mean, I even cut and pasted the name of the book and have already retypes three words that spell check caught for me. With that said I want to share a thought from a long sleeping saint, Cassiodorus. Because of people like him, we have the scriptures available today.
This also makes me think of our friends all over the world who are laboring (perhaps with a lot more technological help) to create a written text in the over 20,000 languages without the Scripture.
"By reading the divine Scriptures [the scribe] wholesomely instructs his own mind, and by copying the precepts of the Lord he spreads them far and wide.
What happy application,
what praiseworthy industry,
to preach unto people by means of the Hand,
to untie the tongue by means of the fingers,
to bring quiet salvation to mortals,
and to fight the Devil's insidious wiles with pen and ink!
For every word of the Lord written by the scribe is a wound inflicted on Satan. And so, though seated in one spot, the scribe traverses diverse lands through the dissemination of what he has written."
Amen.
