Just A Thought ~ NEARER OUR TIME, BUT EVEN SO ...

Compared with the scriptures of the various religions, the writings of Shakespeare are not only much nearer our time, but much better known. Few people are well-versed in the scriptures of the religion they profess to believe.

Here, to demonstrate how it is so easy to misunderstand the written word, is the famous quotation from Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2:

“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?”

This is often taken to mean, “Where are you, Romeo?” but in actual fact, spoken in anguish, it means, “Why do you have to be Romeo? Why can’t you be someone else?”

As an experiment to illustrate the difference between reading and hearing what is written, I have sometimes asked someone in my audience to read out a passage from one of my books, and have then read out the same passage. You can be sure that the two readings are quite different, as the other person could not possibly know how I wrote that, what was in my mind at the time, could not gauge the nuances, the stresses, the pauses; there would not be the same feeling. Likewise, when we read the scriptures, how can we tell how they were written? We would need a brilliant imagination, but in this, there is always room for error. It is a greater error, however, to simply assume that what is written in a book ~ any book ~ must be true. We cannot say a thing is true unless we have experienced it ourselves. Until then, it is only ink on paper!