Monday 20 January 2014

Pride And Prejudice

Yesterday I blogged about the New Living Translation of the Bible which we have just been given. It is not the first copy of this I have owned…Back in 1969, I won a School Prize. The system which East Dereham High School For Girls operated was this; Mr Chambers, the local bookseller, brought in loads of books, which were placed on the big tables in the school library. Prize-winners were allowed to go in a choose a book from the selection [I believe we were allocated particular tables, depending on our age] BUT if there was a specific book, within the given price range, which we wanted, but was not on display, we could ask for that instead. I requested The Living New Testament, which had just been published, in paperback, in the UK.

The Head was thrilled, and said how excellent it was that a girl should want a Bible. Mr Chambers duly ordered a copy. On the morning of Speech Day, I was summoned to her office. I would not be presented with this awful book by our Guest of Honour. the Head had been reading it and deemed it unsuitable for a public presentation. But why? I asked, it is a Bible. Miss Ambrose sniffed, and said she would be telephoning my father to tell him what she thought about this. But he suggested it as a suitable prize, I told her. Later that day, I went up on stage to be given this instead…

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I was SO cross that I put P&P on my bookshelf and never read ANY Jane Austen till I was in my twenties.

After Speech Day, the Head gave my Dad the Bible after all - in a plain brown envelope! She explained to him that she had glanced through the book, and felt it entirely inappropriate that a girl of 14 should be reading things like “The angel told Mary ‘you will become pregnant’” [presumably the Head then had a fit of the vapours, and never got to Mary's response about being a virgin]

13 comments:

  1. Good job it was the New Testament - if she'd read Song of Songs she might have passed out altogether!!!

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  2. This is very telling - like the joke about Sunday School not being able to teach the Old Testament because of all the sex and violence! Thank you for sharing this. WS xxx

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  3. Wow! what a strange Head! I thought it was only now that many don't know the story of Jesus!
    I have a Living Bible and a New Living Translation and find them very different and the latter very easy to read and use it for my daily devotions but I use the New Revised Standard when preparing sermons. I never have liked the NIV but that is the one in our pews! Isn't it good that we are all different!

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  4. Oh my word! What a very repressed lady she must have been.

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  5. It HAD to be a grammar school!
    Miss Ambrose sounds like my school's Miss McClauchlan.
    Jane x

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  6. Very, very funny now but obviously so frustrating at the time especially as it knocked the shine totally off of your school prize. Poor Dad getting the offending article in a plain brown envelope because she wanted rid of the shockingly explicit text!

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  7. All I can do is shake my head in bewilderment! What a stunning reversal that Head made -- it would appear that, before looking at your choice, she'd never read a Bible before. Just so strange!

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  8. Amazing! I remember The Living Bible, all brand new. I loved it.

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  9. It's very like Orwell's 'A Clergyman's Daughter' when she teaches Shakespeare in the Methodist School, isn't it? I was quite shaken when I read that book in my teens because I could see how my own background could have been like that a generation previously. I imagine your head teacher came from just that generation!

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  10. Shocking! Can't believe that!

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  11. Ha! Love it. Bit different these days. At least two girls in my Ellie's class had babies at 15.

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  12. I am guessing it isn't the story but the wording used - but how did she cope with some of the Christmas carols that use the word 'virgin', or as that acceptable as it was the state she presumed all her girls were? We were given copies as The Living Bible as Sunday School awards when we had 6 months attendance. I believe it was because the publishers would give away 'seconds' that were fine for the text but had a scrunch on the covers etc.

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