At 02:26 PM 8/4/99 +0100, Helen Conrad-O'Briain wrote: >It seems from the response that the sortes have dies out - or are people to >shy to discuss their present day use?
The following story may be apocryphal; as I recall, it was recounted by my sixth-grade teacher as an admonition AGAINST using the Bible in this way. A certain man was seeking divine guidance. Opening his Bible to a random page, he let his finger find a random verse, and committed himself to doing whatever that verse should indicate. As providence had it, his finger fell on Matthew 27.5, which records of Judas that "throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple...he went and hanged himself." Sure that there had been some mistake, the man tried another verse. This time his finger found Luke 10.37: "And Jesus said to him, 'Go and do likewise.'" By this time, the man was getting anxious. He decided, therefore, to try one last time, and promised himself that this time he really would follow through on whatever the verse directed him to do. Unfortunately, the next verse was John 13.27: "Jesus said to him, 'What you are going to do, do quickly.'" ----------------------------------------------------------------------- David Wilson-Okamura http://geoffreychaucer.org [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chaucer: an annotated guide to online resources ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- To leave the Mantovano mailing list at any time, do NOT hit reply. Instead, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message "unsubscribe mantovano" in the body (omitting the quotation marks). You can also unsubscribe at http://virgil.org/mantovano/mantovano.htm#unsub
