To kick off this venture, I've decided to share a rather well-known story I often tell in my Bible classes at Unity Institute and Seminary, especially when we discuss textual criticism. Textual criticism is the important and rigorous work of critically comparing and analyzing all ancient manuscripts of a particular text in order to reconstruct the most probable wording of the original document. A very significant task!
So, without further adieu, here's the story about the good Brother Andrew:
Brother Andrew lived in Ireland in the 8th Century and he had studied at what was the equivalent of a seminary back then. And when he got done studying, the president of the seminary sent him on to a monastery where he was to spend the rest of his days as a monk.
Now, Brother Andrew was the sort of guy who was very detail-minded, and he wasn’t given to teamwork or socializing. In other words, he was really anal.
Andrew met the abbot of the monastery who knew of his education, and said, "I have just the job for you, young man. You’re going to be copying out the bylaws of our monastery. We’ll put you in the scriptorium. We’ve got a couple copies. Nobody’s done this work in decades. So you just kind of compare the manuscripts and copy them accurately as you can."
Andrew was excited to go and do this work. He goes to the scriptorium, starts copying out these manuscripts, and then about 45 minutes later… [knocking] The abbot hears a knock on his door.
Brother Andrew opens the door and says, "Holy Father, I think there’s a discrepancy between these documents. Have you got some older ones that I can look at?" The abbot said, "Yes, we do. We haven’t seen these in a long, long time. But we have some that are a couple hundred years older than the ones you’re working with."
The abbot showed him where those manuscripts were, Brother Andrew started copying those out. Again, 45 minutes later… [knocking] Another knock at the door.
"Holy Father, there’s still some discrepancies. Have you got anything older that I could look at?" And the Holy Father sized him up and said, "Man, this guy really is meticulous." And so he said, "I’m going to let you do something that I’ve never let a new monk ever do in the history of this monastery. I’m going to take you into the bowels of the library, down a winding path, to the subterranean archives room where we have the original documents. Nobody has seen these in centuries."
So he took him down there and said, "Go ahead and start copying out the original bylaws of the monastery." And the abbot went back to his office.
About 30 minutes later, all of the sudden, his door was pounded on by many fists. All the rest of the monks were at his door and they said, "Holy Father, this new monk has gone berserk. You’ve got to come see what’s going on."
They all run down into the bowels of the library, and they see Andrew in there shaking his fist, weeping and wailing.
The abbot asked, “What’s the matter young man?”
"They left out the letter ‘r.’"
The abbot thought, "Man, this guy really is particular."
Brother Andrew cried, "The word is supposed to be ‘celebrate.’"
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