I was reading Mathews account of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins in chapter 25 it reads "then the kingdom of heaven shall be compared to ten maidens who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom." and in the margin of the A.R.V. it has "and the bride." I am a very inquisitive soul so I checked it out in the K.J.V. and discovered there was no mention at all of the bride in that version, I dug a little deeper to see if I could solve the mystery of the missing bride, why was she not in the K.J.V. of the famous parable and why was she only accorded margin status in the revised text.
I discovered her in the ancient texts right there alongside the bridegroom where she should be according to eastern custom.
Upon further inquiry it transpired that the translaters of the K.J.V. had a problem of exegesis in that they could not see where the bride would fit in.
Let me explain, the bridegroom they understood quite correctly to be an allegory of Christ, the maidens have ever been accepted to be the 5 wise being the church or christians and the 5 foolish the world or the unsaved, that being so where would the bride, always and ever understood to be an allegory [and correctly] for the church fit in? You can see the problem the translaters had, we have all heard of the spare bridegroom at the wedding, here we have the spare bride.
The only solution to the problem is to understand that there are three and not two distinct groups of people mentioned here. Besides the Groom who is the Lord and His bride who is the church there are ten maidens divided into two groups the wise and the foolish.
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• 4/10/2008 - hmm
and the five wise are 'christians'?
I, my self, already have issues with that notion; but I thought I'd toss it out there anyway