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Voices and influences

Bede

He wrote England's first history from inside a Northumbrian monastery, and taught the world to count years from the birth of Christ.

Summary

This site quotes Bede 510 times across 28 books, and lists 0 works.

  • Lived died 735.
  • Quoted here most in Mark: 118 of 510.
Bede. Painted by Michael Wolgemut workshop. The file is marked public domain. This site's record does not give the artist's death year, which is what settles the painting's own rights. The file record

Bede

Lived
died 735
Tradition
Patristic

5 of 510 quotations

Own words

Quoted at 50 words or fewer, because Bede's works are in copyright.

Clothed in flesh, [Christ] descended into the water as "an angel of great counsel," that is, as a herald of the Father's will to Jewish people. By his deeds and his teaching he moved sinners, so that he would be killed—he who, by his bodily …

Homilies on the Gospels 1:23, 735

Isaiah 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon His shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. BSB

The windows of the temple are the holy teachers and all the spiritual people in the church to whom when in divine ecstasy it is granted more specially than to the others to see the hidden mysteries of heaven. And when they reveal publicly to …

Of the Temple of Solomon 1.7.1, 735

1 Kings 6:4 He also had narrow windows framed high in the temple. BSB

King Cyrus also brought forth the vessels of the temple of the Lord, etc. Nebuchadnezzar took the vessels of the Lord from Jerusalem, as any unclean spirit, snatching certain of the faithful from the Church, deprives them of the joy of internal peace. Moreover, he …

Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah, 735

Ezra 1:7 King Cyrus also brought out the articles belonging to the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the temple of his gods. BSB

After these things were completed, etc. The guilt of this transgression is also clearly described and reproved by prophetic authority in the prophet Malachi; because evidently those who returned from Babylonian captivity, both princes and priests and Levites, as well as the rest of the …

Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah, 735

Ezra 9:1 After these things had been accomplished, the leaders approached me and said, “The people of Israel, including the priests and Levites, have not kept themselves separate from the surrounding peoples whose abominations are like those of the Canaanites, Hittites, Perizzites, Jebusites, Ammonites, Moabites, Egyptians, and Amorites. BSB

"And poverty will come upon you like a traveler," etc. For poverty and misery are the ultimate punishment, in which the damned deserve nothing of wealth: they will come like a traveler, because unforeseen and sudden; like an armed man, because they cannot be conquered …

Commentary on Proverbs, 735

Proverbs 6:11 and poverty will come upon you like a robber, and need like a bandit. BSB

Influence, on the record

The life, in order

The life told as one accountfrom this site's record

Bede was born about 673 on land belonging to the twin monastery of Wearmouth and Jarrow, in Northumbria. He was handed over to the monks at the age of seven. He never really left. In the last paragraph of his great history he wrote that he had spent his whole life in that monastery, giving his attention to studying the Scriptures, and that amid the observance of the Rule and the daily task of singing in church, it had always been his delight to learn, to teach, or to write. He was ordained deacon at nineteen and priest at thirty. He travelled almost nowhere — a trip to Lindisfarne, a trip to York. The great sweep of his work was done from a library and a scriptorium at the northern edge of the known world. That library was the point. Benedict Biscop, who founded the monastery, had made five journeys to Rome and hauled back books. Bede therefore had access to a collection unlike anything else in northern Europe, and he used every volume of it. He wrote around sixty works. Most of them are biblical commentaries — Genesis, Samuel, Kings, Ezra and Nehemiah, Proverbs, the Song of Songs, Mark, Luke, Acts, the catholic epistles, Revelation — plus homilies, saints' lives, works on grammar, metre, orthography, and the natural world. Two of them changed things permanently. The first is The Reckoning of Time, a technical book about the calendar, the tides, the moon, and the dating of Easter. In it he laid out the anno Domini system — counting years forward from the incarnation — and used it consistently. The idea came from Dionysius Exiguus two centuries earlier, but it was Bede who put it to work in a book everyone read, and that is why the year has the number it has. The second is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, finished in 731. It is the reason we know anything about Anglo-Saxon England: Augustine's landing in Kent, Edwin's conversion and the sparrow flying through the lighted hall, the Synod of Whitby, Caedmon the cowherd who was given a song in the night, Cuthbert on his island. Bede named his sources, distinguished what he had verified from what he had only heard, and wrote a preface asking readers to correct him. That is a historian's conscience, four hundred years before anyone else in Europe was showing one. He died on 25 May 735, dictating the last sentence of a translation of John's Gospel into English. His pupil Cuthbert wrote the account: the boy taking dictation said the sentence was finished, and Bede said, It is well, you have spoken truth — it is finished. Sources: Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English People and The Reckoning of Time; Cuthbert, Letter on the Death of Bede; Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. IV; The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913).

510 quotations across 28 books

Where this voice is quoted

Nehemiah 3:15Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

The Fountain Gate was repaired by Shallun son of Col-hozeh, ruler of the district of Mizpah. He rebuilt it, roofed it, and installed its doors, bolts, and bars.

And the walls of the pool of Siloam in the garden of the king, etc. Therefore, Siloa, which is interpreted as the sent one, where the man born blind and was illuminated, signifies the Lord Savior, who was sent by God the Father for our…

Nehemiah 3:26Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

and the temple servants living on the hill of Ophel made repairs opposite the Water Gate toward the east and the tower that juts out.

The Nathinnei, however, dwelt in Ophel, etc. The Nathinnei are considered to be the Gibeonites, who served the house of the Lord with faithful devotion according to the arrangement of Joshua the son of Nun.

Nehemiah 3:28Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

Above the Horse Gate, each of the priests made repairs in front of his own house.

Upwards to the Horse Gate they built, etc. Jeremiah mentions this gate and designates it to be on the eastern side of the city, writing typically about the holy Church: And the city shall be built for the Lord from the tower of Hananeel (Jer.

Nehemiah 4:21Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

So we continued the work, while half of the men held spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out.

Let each one remain with his child, etc. Note how much effort they had in working, who also continued in labor at night.

Nehemiah 5:14Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

Furthermore, from the day King Artaxerxes appointed me to be their governor in the land of Judah, from his twentieth year until his thirty-second year (twelve years total), neither I…

From the day on which he commanded me to be their leader, etc. Explaining this typologically, the Apostle says: "For the Lord has ordained that those who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel; but I have used none of these things" (I Cor.

Nehemiah 8:4Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

Ezra the scribe stood on a high wooden platform built for this occasion.

Ezra the scribe stood upon a wooden platform, etc. This place seems to be remembered in the Scripture of Chronicles, where it is said: Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord, facing the multitude of Israel, and stretched out his hands.

Nehemiah 8:9Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to all of them, “This day is holy to the LORD your God.

"But all the people wept when they heard the words of the law." For the same holy teachers, who stir the minds of their hearers to tears with sacred readings and devout exhortations, also console those tears by promising them the eternal joys to come.

Nehemiah 10:1Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

Now these were the ones who sealed the document: Nehemiah the governor, son of Hacaliah, and also Zedekiah,

But the signatories were Nehemiah the Tirshatha, etc. Another translation has, Nehemiah, who is the Tirshatha; for Nehemiah had two names.

Nehemiah 11:25Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

As for the villages with their fields, some of the people of Judah lived in Kiriath-arba, Dibon, Jekabzeel, and their villages;

Of the sons of Judah, they dwelled in Kiriath-arba, etc. For Beer-sheba was the boundary of Judah to the south, and the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom to the north next to Jerusalem to the east.

Nehemiah 12:27Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites were sought out from all their homes and brought to Jerusalem to celebrate the joyous dedication with thanksgiving and singing…

At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, etc. The city had already been built for some time, but it was not fitting to dedicate it until inhabitants were gathered, appropriate ministers for the temple were assigned, and guards were appointed for the gates and…

Nehemiah 12:43Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

On that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.

And they sacrificed great victims on that day, etc. On that day of perpetual light (about which Zachariah said: And there shall be one day which is known to the Lord, not day nor night: that is, removed from the experience of passing times) the…

Nehemiah 12:47Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

So in the days of Zerubbabel and Nehemiah, all Israel contributed the daily portions for the singers and gatekeepers.

And they sanctified the Levites, etc. The people sanctified the Levites by giving them tithes, as if to the holy ones of God; and the Levites themselves sanctified the priests by offering them a tenth part, as if giving from their own tithes to those…

Nehemiah 13:7Commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah (735)

to return to Jerusalem. Then I discovered the evil that Eliashib had done on behalf of Tobiah by providing him a room in the courts of the house of God.

And I came to Jerusalem and understood the evil, etc. We read above that Tobiah was an Ammonite servant, an enemy of the people of God; therefore, Eliashib the priest acted very wrongfully; for he made a treasury in the vestibules of the house of…