Bishop gives final Cathedral lecture of 2011
Bishop Stephen Conway
The Bishop of Ely, Stephen Conway, last week outlined how huge swathes of scripture revealed a great deal about the Christian tradition of friendship not least through translation and interpretation.
Speaking in Ely Cathedral at the end of last week on the theme The Bible and Friendship, in the final lecture of a series marking the 400th Anniversary of King James Bible, Bishop Conway said: “Choosing the theme of friendship was not entirely arbitrary on my part. Friendship is a regular theme in the popular presentation of philosophy at the moment.”
Bishop Conway had researched his subject to ensure that both Testaments (new and old) and many interpretations (spanning many centuries) were incorporated in his rhetoric.
With regards to 400 years of the King James Bible, Bishop Conway said: “The King James Bible is still the most read version of the Bible in English. Many Christians would be horrified to read any other version of the text. We know it is wonderful, that it is more anchored in the development of English vocabulary even than Shakespeare and Chaucer.”
He said that the link between common language and friendship was clear: “Most important, however, was the desire to provide the best and most reliable translation which God’s people would hear daily, even if they could not read. How could anyone be God’s friend if they could not understand the Bible in their own, contemporary, language?”
On the key theme of friendship, and with biblical teaching and understanding as backdrop, Bishop Conway said: “Although we might love people in spite of their weaknesses because we have a passionate attraction or longing to protect them; we are at our best in mutual friendship where we admire our friends and are drawn to them by the value of their conversation, their commitment to truth.”
He added: “The Bible should communicate to us at every level the whole of our life as human beings created in God’s image to be loved by Him so completely that we long in love for the image of God in each one of us.”
12 December 2011