This week the Beaker Folk will be focusing on the Week of Prayer for People Doing the Acts 2 Reading for Pentecost.
We have a theme for each day:
Monday - meditations on Psalm 45: "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer"
Tuesday - meditations on Psalm 13: "How long, O Lord?"
Wednesday - "Spare them, Lord"
Thursday - Meditations on Psalm 90: "O God Our Help in Ages Past"
Friday - How to pronounce "Pamphylia"
Saturday - All-day practice
Last year we tested 10 people doing the reading in real-world conditions, ie a load of people watching them through Zoom going "Fridge-ie? Is that where fridges come from?" And we mapped out the panic levels of the readers against different place names. And we found that, early on, people are quite happy - "Parthians" isn't too bad - but there's that sudden acceleration from Medes through Elamites to Mesapotamia. After that there's an undulating but high level of panic. But as people go down the gears through Egypt and Libya, knowing there's the easy ground of Jews and Arabs (at least in linguistic terms) to come - getting side-swiped through by "Cyrene" is all too easy. These tests were run with the NIV, but we did a limited comparison with the King James, and "proselytes" is the real killer. Is it "prose-lites"? Or "prossel-ie-tees?"
So spare a prayer for the people reading Acts 2 this week. It's gonna be a tough one.
One of the most evocative passages in the entire New Testament. I learned the pronunciations many years ago at Winchester Cathedral hearing this read annually, and beautifully, by the Dean, Gordon Selwyn.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most evocative passages in the entire New Testament. I learned the pronunciations many years ago at Winchester Cathedral hearing this read annually, and beautifully, by the Dean, Gordon Selwyn.
ReplyDeleteOne reason I got ordained was so I never had to read that passage out loud again. No-one warned me about preaching on Trinity Sunday, though...
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