Wednesday, March 19, 2025

It is the 19th of March 2025. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org; I’m Dan van Voorhis.

My current Bible is a version called the “Lectio” produced with John Mark Comer it has removed chapter and verse designations (except a general guide in the bottom corner of the page). It has been refreshing in that the verse demarcations and headings are gone- it promotes reading straight through- longer devotional reading, etc… and it makes it a whole lot harder to find stuff (although it promotes knowing where things generally are).  

And on this show, we have highlighted the man who gave us those verses- Robert Estienne, in 1545. It was in the early 1200s that the Archbishop of Canterbury- Stephen Langton, first divided the Bible into chapters (saying something like “Romans 8” made no sense before that). But it was the remarkable Hugh of St. Cher- born around 1200 and died on this, the 19th of March in 1263 who, among other things, supervised the making of the first Bible Concordance, finished in 1230.

There is a good chance you’ve seen a concordance before. Here on my desk, I’ve got the Lutheran Study Bible and the New Geneva Bible, which have them in the back. Look up a word, say “faith,” and you will find all the verses with that word. A “concordance” comes from the same root word from whence we get concord and Concordia—it is an agreement, but in this sense, it is more of a “binding together” of words and where to find them.

St. Cher supervised some 500 Dominicans as they put together the concordance working out of the convent of St. Jacque, such that the Concordance goes by the name of the St Jacques I- this to distinguish from a later concordance that added the context of the word used in the verse. But without verses, how could he lead you to the right part of the chapter? He had each chapter divided into 7 sections that corresponded to the first seven letters of the alphabet, and the concordance gave you a chapter and then the letter to give you a sense of where to look in that chapter.

This alone would qualify Hugh of St. Cher for recognition but he also put together one of the first full commentaries of the Scriptures that included not only the church Fathers but his own thoughts as well.

And that’s not all… Hugh published the Correctorium, which was a collection of the various mistranslations or misprints that made their way into the Latin Bible (The Vulgate) over the past centuries. And just as his commentaries used the church fathers, but not slavishly, he too would correct Jerome’s Vulgate when he could look at original texts in Greek and Hebrew. The explosion of textual criticism that took off with the invention of the printing press in the 15th century and the Reformation in the 16th owe a good deal to St. Cher and his work in the 13th century.

There is another interesting historical tidbit about Hugh of St. Cher- he is perhaps the first person to be depicted in a painting wearing eyeglasses. But if you do the math- St. Cher died in 1263, but eyeglasses weren’t invented until 1285 in Northern Italy. The depiction of Hugh of St. Cher wearing them was made a century after his death, and they were intended to depict a scholar- and we might think that with all of that, he wrote and edited… glasses make sense.

Hugh was a diplomat and a Cardinal as well as a Dominican friar, but he is best remembered for his work- initially in the service of preachers who needed to find verses for preaching (the Dominicans are known as the “Order of preachers”) and Hugh of St. Cher’s work was indispensable then and spawned the concordance- which, before the search button on your bible app was a necessary tool. We remember Hugh on the anniversary of his death on this day in 1263- 762 years ago.

The Last word for today comes from Luke 19:

18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’

21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.

22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”

26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”

27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 19th of March 2025 brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man who told me he prefers St. Sonny- he is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man humming “If I Could Turn Back Time” the whole time I was writing this… I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be ok.