On Reading The Bible
By ME BISHOP OF PLYMOUTH.
TT is difficult to reconcile the record sale of Bibles 1 during 1932 reported by the British and Foreign Bible Society with the generally accepted view that the habit of Bible reading has steadily declined in recent years. Do people buy more Bibles and read them less ?
There is little doubt that the systematic study of the Bible is less common than it used to be. Whatever the causes may be, the fact is to be regretted, for nothing that modem criticism has done has affected the unique value of the Bible as a guide to spiritual life. As a record of religious -experience its appeal is universal, for the fundamental assumption that holds all its sections to- gether is that God has revealed Himself in human history by a constantly intensified activity that culminated in a personal intervention when the Word became flesh. If we open the Old Testament at random, we overhear some ancient prophet or wise man testifying, in song or story or gnomic saying, to his consciousness of a Divine activity that demands the response of human loyalty.
The main conclusions of reasonable higher criticism are not likely to be disproved by any fresh literary or archaeological discoveries, and as they come to be more clearly understood they will, as Coleridge and Arnold recognized a century ago, restore to the Bible the value and significance that it seemed to have lost when we could no longer regard it as a collection of sacred records authenticated by direct Divine authority. It is not only that the Bible becomes more intelligible when we recog- nize the composite character of the Pentateuch or the book that bears the name of Isaiah, the post-exllie date of the Priestly Code, or the long period of Jewish history covered by the Hebrew Psalter. It is even more that we are able to recognize the gradual unfolding of the revelation of God as He " spake by the prophets." Higher criticism has helped us to see in the Bible the record of the Divine education of humanity, from the early dawn of myth and legend to the clear daylight of the Christian revelation. Christianity only becomes intelligible when we set it against this background of the Old Testament—the only book (probably) that Jesus ever read.
The Gospels are certainly more widely read today than the Epistles of St. Paul, wherein," as the anonymous author of II Peter wisely remarks, " are some things hard to be understood." As Dr. Swete has pointed out, the Fourth Gospel.," while it has always had a singular attrac- tion for the cultivated intellect, is also, above all other books in the New Testament, the chosen guide of the unlearned, the poor and suffering members of the Church." Indeed, it is true of the whole of the Bible that while it furnishes almost unlimited scope to the ,scholar and the philosopher for research and discovery, it offers to simple faith a richintheritance of religious experience. No doubt a bare literalness of interpretation has often misled Christian men and women into strange misunderstandings, but this is far outweighed by the consciousness of God as the Guide and Governor of all human affairs that men learn from the study of the Bible as they learn it in no other way. It is the special glory of the Anglican Church that she has provided for the reading of the Bible twice every day in every parish church in England. To many of us the fact that the lay people habitually disregard the invitation to be present is a matter of keen regret.
Perhaps we ought to distinguish between the reading and the study of the Bible. The aim of the student is to enter as fully as possible into the mind and thought of the writer whose work he is studying, and he may legitimately take account of what later Christian thought has read into the original, for it is characteristic of all great poetry—and most of the Bible is poetical in outlook, even when it is prosaic in form—that it becomes the expression of a wider human experience than is included in the writer's original intention. But the Bible may also be read " like any other book," for the interest of the story that it tells and the beauty of its language and thought—less as a textbook of theology than as a great human document. For intelligent reading, some know- ledge of the date and purpose of the writer is essential. So equipped, the reader will probably gain more by reading each book straight through than by too meti- culous attention to details. In Bible reading, as in many other things, it is possible to miss the wood through looking for the trees : or, in other words, to treat the Bible as a collection of comforting texts embedded in matter of inferior interest. It is worth while to remind ourselves that—excepting two of St. Paul's Epistles, and, to a lesser degree, the Epistle to the Hebrews— none of the books of the Bible are systematic theological treatises. The theology of the Church goes back to the Bible as its source, but the writers of the Bible are expressing their consciousness of God in terms of life rather than of dogma—of emotional apprehension rather than of reasoned conviction.
The primary purpose for which we want to encourage the reading of the Bible is the spiritual edification of the people. But there are other reasons for regretting the decline of the habit of Bible reading. It is almost true to say that the Bible is the foundation of English literature. To a man who has never read the Bible a good deal of that literature must be a sealed book. Again, the English translation of the Bible, and Shakespeare, have fixed the standard of the English language, and provided a common vocabulary for the English-speaking world the loss of which would be a cultural disaster. It must be admitted that the format in which the Authorized Version of the Bible is issued constitutes a heavy handicap to its recog- nition as a literary masterpiece ; and the efforts of various publishers in recent years to supply the public with the Holy Scriptures in a form in wlgeh,they can be read more intelligently deserve a hearty welcome. For devotional and horaileticial purposes, the conventional form is no doubt convenient, though the chapter-headings contain a good deal of very questionable exegesis.
We should not be afraid to encourage people to read the Bible as they would read any other book, for whatever meaning we attach to the idea of inspiration, it must at least mean that. the Bible can vindicate its own authority by its appeal to conscience- and heart. "...The Divine force behind it is one that can be felt—and felt direct without the aid of any external sanction." The more Fully we recognize that " the Bible is really the voice or the Church in -its first and' greatest age," the more we shall claim for every man the right to read, in his own tongue, the wonderful works of God. -
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