Working on my new book, Tell me the stories of Jesus, a Gospel companion that uses RB, I looked up the well known hymn of the same name, only to find there were two hymns for which this is the first line. The one I knew was by William H Parker. But the other was by Fanny Crosby (1820-1915). Whilst Will was British, Fanny was from the USA. She became blind at six weeks of age, and later wrote over 8,000 hymns, under a wide range of pseudonyms. You can read more about her life, including her work as a teacher of blind students, at http://www.nyise.org/fanny/songbird.html .
Four hundread of her hymns are listed here http://www.hymntime.com/tch/bio/c/r/o/crosby_fj.htm
It seems that she used remembered versions of the Bible from an early age. She was said to be able to remember the first four books of both testaments, that must be Genesis to Numbers, and the four Gospels, by the age of 10 years. Although RB is not about rote remembering of the Bible, some folks do show an ability to do this, and like Fanny to an extraordinary degree. At one time rote remembering was a common form of Christian pedagogy.
RB is more about retelling and thus also includes the way in which interpretation has influenced memory. There is plenty of evidence in Fanny's hymns that remembering the Bible influenced her spirituality, theology and hymnody.
1 comment:
Thanks for this - really looking forwards to your new book. by the way you might be interested in this post by David KEr on biblical interpretation. I love teh image of teh kaleidoscope he comes up with as one of the lenses of interpretation.
http://lingamish.com/2009/02/10/the-telescope-the-microscope-and-the-kaleidoscope/#comments
Anyway must off to bed - too much interpretting for today. I think I am at last doing better.
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