Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “shine,” came with the note, “Jesus shows how not to deal with the decline of Christianity.” It’s also a rerun from 2010!
It was a bit puzzling until I found a Wikipedia entry on “Lamp under a bushel”. A bit of it:
The parable of the lamp under a bushel (also known as the lamp under a bowl) is one of the parables of Jesus. It appears in Matthew 5:14–15, Mark 4:21–25 and Luke 8:16–18. In Matthew, the parable is a continuation of the discourse on salt and light in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. The parable also appears in the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas as saying 33.
“And no man, when he hath lighted a lamp, covereth it with a vessel, or putteth it under a bed; but putteth it on a stand, that they that enter in may see the light. For nothing is hid, that shall not be made manifest; nor [anything] secret, that shall not be known and come to light. Take heed therefore how ye hear: for whosoever hath, to him shall be given; and whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he thinketh he hath.”
The Jesus and Mo artist clearly knows scripture! (And so does Mo.)
I’m mesmerized by that parable … I’ll have to thinketh this over carefully… maybe over whiskey…
It took me ages to get this one. But I laughed out loud when I did.
Bushel is, perhaps, a mistranslation and it should be basket.
I’ve always assumed (perhaps mistakenly) that “bushel” was short for “bushel basket” — a common, inexpensive type of container.
I also originally encountered the idiom (and have employed the idiom, on the rare occasion when I’ve employed it at all) as “keeping one’s candle under a bushel,” which would, in a literal sense, I suppose, create something of a fire hazard.
It’s a commonly used idiom in British English. “Hiding one’s light under a bushel” is generally used to mean being reticent about advertising your own strengths and virtues.
I didn’t read the story, but I only knew one meaning of ‘bushel’, and that’s as a volume unit.
It references a kids church song. This Little Light of Mine “hide it under a bushel, NO I’m gonna let it shine”
LOL
Reminds me of a couple of sentences from Hardy’s The Mayor of Casterbridge