h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Godspell: The Musical and the Hymnbook - A87937050
Author: Dmitri Gheorgheni - U1590784

'Godspell' is my personal go-to Easter viewing. I thought it might be interesting to look at the sources for its texts and music.

When I saw the subject, I was expecting a chance to be clever and point out the connection to my home city (Sheffield), but you got it in already.
Both James Montgomery and Ebenezer Elliot were adopted Sheffielders. Montgomery as you say was Scots-born and Elliot came from Rotherham. Both men have substantial statues in Sheffield. Both too were politically radical, and both feature prominently in a favourite book of mine, entitled “Sheffield Troublemakers”.
Not necessarily what you’d expect from hymn-writers, but these gents and many of their peers were very indignant about the inequalities of their times.

...and a good Entry, btw!

Thanks! I was pleased to find the northern connection myself. There seems to be a kinship between those Sheffield troublemakers and a certain troublemaker from the Galilee.

Too right.
I’m now tempted to ask your opinion of America’s Christian Right.
(Unconditional forgiveness notwithstanding, my reading of the liturgy does rather persuade me that they might be on slightly dodgy ground salvation-wise).
But of course such conjecture is entirely out of place when we’re supposed to be reviewing a Guide Entry.

Yes, we should stick to the music, I guess.

I think we're on the same page there. Since we're on the subject of Matthew's gospel, try Matthew 23:13-39 on for size. Of course, that passage makes for a good Stephen Schwartz song, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeBy1Ee8LCg

Interesting Entry.

I enjoyed reading this - Godspell is not something I have seen, but the links are very helpful and the comparisons of the music and lyrics makes for a distinctive Entry

The only suggestion for improvement I have is that you could put paragraph tags inside the LI list tags so as to put space between each bullet point. I like how you use quotes in each bullet point

Ah! Good suggestion! I'll do that.

Thanks for reading!

Interesting read.

I didn't know the source of gospel / godspell. Probably because the Dutch version (and German if I remember correctly) Evangelie are directly derived from the Greek ευαγγελιον (euaggelion).
We do have a good news Bible version here, the purpose of which is to make the Bible more accessible for Christians and non-Christians alike. I think this is in line with what the musical is intending to accomplish (Haven't seen it though). The hard part is to stay true to the original texts, but convey the message in less formal language.

Retranslations of the Bible tend to stir up a lot of emotions. One I remember is where we lost "Vanity of vanities!" in favour of "Air and idleness!" which apparently stays closer to the Original Hebrew texts and considers the meaning of the words in current Dutch language, but is not an alliteration anymore.

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Thanks, guys.

And thanks for the comments, Caiman. I'm familiar with the German version, 'Die gute Nachricht', and have used it in church. All the Dutch Reformed services I've been to used the older Dutch translation, though.

I like 'air and idleness'. It reminds me of my professor for Ivritteitsch, who taught me to read the 'Tzena Orena'. His English rendering of Genesis 1:2 and 'tohuvabohu' was 'wain and woid'. (He had a Cologne accent.)

Congratulations!