Biblical literalism

“ Our poets betray, in the passages which are the favorites of earnest minds, the influence of these Scriptures. From Paradise Lost to In Memoriam, from The Temple to the Christian Year, the poems which the devout delight in are either Biblical paraphrases or Biblical distillations. Our masters of fiction could not have written the scenes which most rouse our moral nature, could not have conceived the characters which most inspire our devotional nature, without the Bible. ”

“ In brief, then, the criticism of the Old Testament seeks to discover what the words written actually meant to the writers, what the events in Hebrew history actually were, what the religion actually was; and hence its aim differs from the dogmatic or homiletic treatments of the Old Testament, which have sought to discover in Scripture a given body of dogma or incentives to a particular type of life or the like.
Biblical criticism, and in some respects more especially Old Testament criticism, is, in all its branches, very largely of modern growth. ”

“ Give them fumes of incense, blare and blaze of sounds and lights, and they may learn to forget that there ever was such a thing as a school of biblical criticism which has turned orthodoxy into a heresy against reason by telling the truth about the Bible. ”

“ But besides the inconvenience of the change so pathetically pleaded, there is the time-honoured Phraseology of the Bible—that phraseology that has earned the suffrages of a whole people, young and old, rich and poor, learned and unlearned, and been associated with our Literary glories—to warn us off the holy ground. ”

“ These writers are primarily literary critics, not dogmatic theologians. Like the older rationalists, they are occupied largely with biblical interpretation; but, perceiving the hollowness of their attempt to explain away moral and spiritual mysteries by reference to material events, they transfer to the Bible the theories used in the contemporary investigations in classical history, and explain the Biblical wonders by the hypothesis of legends or of myths. ”

“ Precisely so we are to be affected by the Biblical authors. There are writings in the Bible by utterly unknown writers. A letter of an obscure author cannot come with the weight of a letter from St. Paul. There are writings of widely different mental force. Biblical authors varied in personal power as much as other authors. Inspiration cannot do away with the limitations of the human individuality. ”

“ They make it possible to study biblical history as an unbroken unit from the days of Moses to the close of the first Christian century, and thus concretely to emphasize the significant but often the forgotten fact that God was revealing himself unceasingly through the life of his people, and that the Bible which records that revelation consists not of two disconnected parts but is one book. ”

“ They are a part of "all Scripture given by inspiration of God," which the apostle affirms to be "profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness." He should spare no effort, therefore, to ascertain their exact sense, and to expound this sense to others with all possible fidelity and clearness.
8. There is a human and a divine side to biblical interpretation—a human side, because the Scriptures address men in human language, and according to human modes of thinking and speaking ”

“ The so-called double sense of Scripture, especially of prophecy, concerning which there has been so much discussion among biblical writers, must be distinguished from the double sense of pure allegory, which all admit. In allegory, the first or literal meaning is only a cover for the higher spiritual sense, which alone is of importance. That we may have a true example of double sense, the obvious literal meaning must have its own proper significance, irrespective of the higher sense belonging to it, and this higher sense must be intended by the Spirit of inspiration. ”

“ No wonder the Bible has been called "the Poem of God," for, as some one has said, "It contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than can be collected from all other books ever written." In Hebrew poetry nature is regarded as the middle ground between God and Man, as the garment of Deity. ”

“ Now, we ask, of what practical value can the Bible be, when there is no certain clew to its meaning, or when any of its readers, on finding a word or text whose literal signification does not suit their religious fancy, can assume the liberty to renounce the dictionary, ignore the common and established acceptation of words, and fabricate a new meaning contrary to, and in direct conflict with, the common signification? ”

“ Our own religion? Assuredly, if by that is meant the one great, universal religion of humanity. But the sundering difference between the Bible and any other book that speaks to mankind about God and Life and Death, sets the Hebrew race apart as supreme in its religious genius, as the Greeks were in philosophical acumen and artistic power, and the Romans in executive skill. Leaving all theories of inspiration out of account, facts are facts, and the Bible has no peer in the literature of mankind. ”

“ A knowledge of Hebrew idiom—the modes of expression usual and possible in that ancient speech—assures us that this statement, so startlingly direct in its unadorned simplicity, was the accepted mode of conveying a meaning which we, in our more complex and artificial idioms, would convey by the use of a multitude of words, in terms far more abstract, in language destitute of all that colour of life and reality which stamps the idiom of the Bible. It is as though the Divine lay farther off from us moderns ”

“ But this religion, as it developed itself, was by no means fully worthy of the intuition out of which it had grown. We have seen how, in its intuition of God,—of that 'not ourselves' of which all mankind form some conception or other,—as the Eternal that makes for righteousness, the Hebrew race found the revelation needed to breathe emotion into the laws of morality, and to make morality religion. This revelation is the capital fact of the Old Testament, and the source of its grandeur and power. ”

“ Whatever the Bible contains of truth, goodness and beauty, we prize as well as its blindest devotees. But this valuable deposit of antiquity would be more useful if cleared of the rubbish of superstition. It is not the good, but the evil parts of the Bible, that are supported by its supernaturalism. Why should civilised Englishmen go walking about in Hebrew Old-Clothes? ”

“ But we still see something of the same spirit in the attempt to maintain a verbal and even literal inspiration of the whole Bible, filling it not with the breath of a Divine Spirit, but with minute details of doctrine and precept often questionable, and, whenever separated from the principles of the eternal law, valueless or even mischievous. God's Word, instead of leading us to Him, is made to stand between and hide His face. ”

“ A God who is so ignorant of human language as to give forth a revelation to the world couched in such unintelligible and ambiguous terms that no two people can understand it alike, it seems to us, should not have attempted it. All will be chaos and confusion and wild guess-work with respect to the meaning of a large portion of the Bible, while its readers are allowed to depart from the established meaning of words as defined by our dictionaries, and fabricate new meanings of their own. ”

“ Thus if our theory of revelation-value were to affirm that any book, to possess it, must have been composed automatically or not by the free caprice of the writer, or that it must exhibit no scientific and historic errors and express no local or personal passions, the Bible would probably fare ill at our hands. ”

“ Viewed simply as a literary work, the Bible is the most interesting in the whole realm of letters. It becomes increasingly interesting, as its great human elements are recognized. Over history, biography, and most serious discourse, play the soft gleams of healthful humor and the lightning-like bolts of sarcasm and wit. The book touches human nature at all points. The more we view it as “literature,” the less as “dogma,” the firmer will become its hold upon the heart of man. ”

“ One rule holds of all human letters. Where there is legend, myth, metaphor, or other clear form of poetic fancy, language is to be read imaginatively. Otherwise, in the Bible, as out of it, the ordinary meaning of words must be followed.
III. It is a wrong use of the Bible to construct a theology out of it, by the mechanical system of proof texts in vogue in the churches.
With a preconceived system of thought in their minds, drawn from the most highly evolved speculations of the New Testament, men have gone through both Testaments ”

“ You cannot inflict greater punishment on some persons than force them daily to read a portion of God’s word. To them it is as a root out of dry ground, having no form or comeliness. Notwithstanding this, we find in the Bible every thing that is attractive and lovely. Viewed as a literary production, aside from its inspiration, there is no work, ancient or modern, which is marked by such variety of style—such beauty of diction—such sublimity of sentiment. ”

“ Conscience bow him to the earth; Affection keep silence when the priest uplifts the Bible. Man is subordinate to the apocryphal, ambiguous, imperfect, and often erroneous Scripture of the Word; the Word itself, as it comes straightway from the fountain of Truth, through Reason, Conscience, Affection, and the Soul, he must not have. It takes the Bible for God's statute-book; combines old Hebrew notions into a code of ethics; takes figures for fact; settles questions in Morals and Religion by texts of Scripture! It can justify anything out of the Bible. ”

“ Of all books, whether rhetoric, logic, vocabulary, poetry, philosophy, history, or whatever be the end, the Bible should be first and most carefully studied, its literary spirit and form should be closely traced and discerned, and its truth should be reverently incorporated into the daily speech, thought and life. ”

“ The professor may now safely pass on to the use of Scripture in matters of theology. On this head it must be observed that, in addition to the usual reasons which make ancient writings more or less difficult to understand, there are some which are peculiar to the Bible. For the language of the Bible is employed to express, under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, many things which are beyond the power and scope of the reason of man—that is to say, divine mysteries and all that is related to them. ”

“ It is the legitimate prerogative of reason to assume that a perfect being could make a perfect revelation or Bible, the language of which should be so absolutely perfect and plain that no person of ordinary understanding could possibly fail to understand every text, every word, and every syllable of it, and no two persons could possibly differ about the meaning of one text in the whole book. ”

“ In speaking of the Bible, we commonly meet with two extreme classes: on the one hand, there are those who hold that every syllable is the Word of God, and therefore outside all criticism; on the other hand, there are those who hold that the Bible is no more the "Word of God" than any other book, and may, therefore, be handled and criticized just like any other book. ”

“ The charm which Scripture quotation adds to writing, let those tell who have read Milton, Bunyan, Burke, Foster, Southey, Croly, Carlyle, Macaulay, yea, and even Byron, all of whom have sown their pages with this ‘orient pearl’ and brought thus an impulse from divine inspiration, to add to the effect of their own. Extracts from the Bible always attest and vindicate their origin. They nerve what else in the sentence in which they occur is pointless; they clear a space for themselves, and cast a wide glory around the page where they are found. ”

“ The third theory, which is a modification of the second, is that of essential inspiration, which distinguishes matters of doctrine and conduct as closely related to God’s purpose in the Scriptures from the remaining contents of the Scripture, and claims for the Bible only such inspiration as was necessary to secure accuracy in regard to these. The theology and the morality of the Bible are inspired, but not its history, science, philosophy. ”

“ I forbear to expatiate on the phenomena or the tokens which shall be the premonitory of the Millennium or of the day of judgment. God has not seen fit, even in Scripture, to withdraw the curtain of obscurity from between us and that supreme future. We may well be content that our apprehensions should be vague, when the language of the Bible is not definite, and when we find rather the sublime and half-luminous gloom with which poetry or painting can invest its delineations, than the sharp and precise outline which the chisel can carve.—Boone. ”

“ I assert, without fear of contradiction, that no English author has ever ventured to put into a book a tenth part of the filth that is to be found passing throughout the Old Testament. In schools where the Bible is read and learnt it is a well-known fact that idle and prurient-minded boys spend a considerable portion of their time in looking up and gloating over all those filthy stories with which the Old Testament teems. ”