The Importance of Proper Citations

In college, my friend Nathan told me an apocryphal story involving weddings that became relevant yesterday. It used to be a common tradition in the 1800s that if you couldn’t attend a wedding, you would send a Bible verse to express your feelings to the happy couple. The story goes that in one such situation, the uncle of the bride was sending a verse via telegram. Part of the verse in question, from the First Epistle of John, was read at Diana and Adam’s wedding yesterday:

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Herein is our love made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment: because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love; but perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment. He that feareth is not made perfect in love.

Because the uncle in question was cheap and you had to pay by the letter for telegrams, instead of sending the whole verse, he just sent the citation: 1 John 7-8, 16-18. When the telegram arrived at the wedding, someone pulled out a Bible to read the verse. They made a slight mistake however and read from the Gospel of John (John 7-8, 16-18) instead, whose text is slightly different:

There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water: Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink. (For his disciples were gone away unto the city to buy meat.) Jesus saith unto her, Go, call thy husband, and come hither. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said, I have no husband: For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly.

Oops.

Update

Fitness: Rest day
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 302 words, 398 seven-day average, 281 average, 48566 total, 1934 to go for the week; 13-day streak