Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Before Friendship

So, I had an idea for an essay on friendship—of mutual interest to Ross and I, I should think—but I could not for the life of me find a citation for a phrase that I thought would make a great title. Here's the phrase:
"By their friends shall ye know them"
Since I haven't been able to find a reliable origin in nearly ten minutes of Google searching, I leave it to you, dear reader, to help me out. Upon discovering no immediately obvious origin, I was inclined to believe that this phrase was just a modification of a phrase from Mark, "By their fruits shall ye know them," that has been handed down for some time. But perhaps you'll discover something different. In fact, I hope you will. After all, I'd hate to see a phrase so poignant as this relegated to what I should think is a large pile of mis-translated sentences that simply stuck around.

If you find any of those, I'd enjoy mention of them, as well.

1 comment:

  1. Hrm, I'd not heard the phrase. My first guess, of course, would be that it's a modification of Matthew 7:20. (Not to worry, I confuse my evangelists all the time. Except John; he tends to be rather distinctive.)

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