Friday, September 26, 2008

PERSONAL: Jesus was right...

Man can't live on bread and water alone.

Coffee, peanut butter sandwiches, and cigarettes, however...

That's ok.
Posted by Barry Floore at 9/26/2008 11:58:00 AM
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3 comments:

The Seeker said...

I've still yet to visit either dining hall, which means I've been living on Mt. Dew, KrispKremes, Chef Boyardee's, water, and a bit of Bagel Brothers & Arby's so far... Oh well...
-Cody

9/26/2008 01:31:00 PM
Cincy Diva said...

Don't forget the chocolate.

9/27/2008 12:55:00 AM
Michael Chanak Jr said...

Hon, not water, just bread:

Man Does Not Live by Bread Alone

And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee, and to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, or no.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord doth man live.
-- Deuteronomy 8: 2-3 (KJV)
Moses is rehearsing for the Hebrews their history of hardships during the exodus from Egypt. According to him, the main purpose of their trials was to humble them and test their commitment to the covenant struck on Mount Sinai [see The Ten Commandments].

And what's a little hunger, Moses goes on, when the Lord offers relief in the form of manna from heaven that is much better than anything the Israelites could have produced on their own? On bread alone they would have starved, and no human skill could have saved them. Extrapolating a lesson, Moses concludes that earthly sustenance and man's own knowledge is not enough to survive on without God's help, advice, and laws (his "words"). What's more, if you disobey those, you will die (8: 14).

The phrase "Man doth not live by bread only" is one of many from the Torah that Jesus quotes in the New Testament, though he changes "does" to "shall" and "only" to "alone" (Matthew 4: 4 and Luke 4: 4). Thus the familiar "man does not live by bread alone" is a hybrid of two versions; the equally familiar "man cannot live" is simply a corruption. But the phrase hardly ever escapes violence in quotation. George Macaulay Trevelyan said of the book market in the early eighteenth century that "the reading public was still so small that authors could not live by their sales alone" (England under Queen Anne, 1930–1934). G. B. Harrison likewise punned, re: Shakespeare, that "poetry does not live by sound alone" (Introducing Shakespeare, 1939). Hardly words that passed out of the mouth of the Lord.

9/27/2008 09:50:00 AM

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