On this day:
1535
The first complete English-language Bible (the Coverdale Bible) is printed, with translations by William Tyndale and Miles Coverdale.
1582
Pope Gregory XIII implements the Gregorian Calendar. In Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, October 4 of this year is followed directly by October 15.
1795
Napoleon Bonaparte first rises to national prominence with a “Whiff of Grapeshot”, using cannon to suppress armed counter-revolutionary rioters threatening the French Legislature (National Convention).
1853
Crimean War: The Ottoman Empire declares war on Russia.
1957
Sputnik 1 is launched by the Soviet Union.
2001
NATO confirms invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
2004
SpaceShipOne wins Ansari X Prize for private spaceflight by being the first private craft to fly into space.
***
“I'm a liberal in the real sense of the word. The word comes from the Latin which means a free person, as—and this was very much in the minds of Romans when they used the word—contrasted with a slave. And one very simple way of describing true liberalism is to say that everyone has the right to say no.”--mccloskey
***
In 2015, Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen observed, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy.”
Likewise, the former Swedish Social Democratic Minister of Finance Kjell‐Olof Feldt said, “That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didn’t work.”
***
The woman the state of Tennessee tried to execute is on a ventilator.
***
Today is the second of the vineyard parables. Here the landlord sends emissaries to collect the debts from his tenants. The tenants kill the first two. Then the landlord sends his son. They kill him, too. Then the landlord destroys the tenants.
According to most biblical authorities, this is the first major allusion Christ makes to being the Son of God, and this parable is responsible for the rage of the Jewish infrastructure that leads to His crucifixion.
In an interesting part of the parable, the sharecroppers finally explain their violence towards the king's men and, eventually, his son. They say they want to take the son's inheritance. What could all this mean?
First, the king is beyond patient; he is optimistic about the sharecroppers almost to the point of naivety. They kill two groups of ambassadors, yet he still sends his son to negotiate. Second, the sharecroppers have a motive, strange but a motive. If they kill the heir, they will get his inheritance. Thus it is a revolt, a revolution, but on the face of it, there is no chance this will be successful; the logistics will not allow it. It is as if they are trying to create an alternative universe. How will killing the son get them anything other than destruction? The sharecroppers are farmers trying to change a system written in stone. There is no chance they will succeed against the king. Their revolt is a symbolic and egocentric act doomed to fail. Their acts are monstrous, yet tiny in the eyes of the king, who can--and will--bring a terrible, vengeful justice upon them. Not only is the behavior of the tenants reprehensible, it is also stupid. It defies the way of the world. It defies how things are.
Like walking naked in a snowstorm, it mocks freedom. It is the rebellion of Adam and Eve. It is an attempt to replace the certainty of God with the uncertain ambitions of men.
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