Resource Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan 2014-01-08

melbo submitted a new resource:

Pilgrim's Progress - John Bunyan - Bunyan's allegory uses the everyday world of common experience as a metaphor for the spiritual journ

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Me too. It's been too long.

 

Just an interesting side note on the Pilgrims Progress. I blew my pastors mind recently. I have always been an outdoorsman. And where I grew up we hand fished for large catfish. We call it "noodlin" but it goes by other names in other areas. The popularity has grown considerably in the last several years with contests and documentaries and even reality TV shows like "hillbilly handfishin".
My pastor, who is more friend and buddy than pastor, is very interested in the sport and has watched a couple of documentaries I have on it and looked at my pictures of past catches. One day I asked him if he was familiar with PP and he said of course that it was required reading in seminary. I asked him if he read the part about "noodlin" in it. He was baffled so I got my copy out and showed him. In the very front of the book in his "apology" Bunyan writes;

THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY
For his Book pg. 3

You see the ways the fisherman doth take
To catch the fish; what engines doth he make?
Behold how he engageth all his wits;
Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks, and nets;
Yet fish there be, that neither hook, nor line.
Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine:
They must be groped for, and be tickled too,
Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do.


Needless to say he was flabbergasted. Here in a text from the 1600's was an account of hand fishing. And he had read over it many times and never realized that was what was being spoken about!