THE BIBLE—CHARTER OF LIBERTY

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 272, 16 November 1935, Page 11 (Supplement)

THE BIBLE—CHARTER OF LIBERTY

This Year's Anniversary.

WORLD'S MOST WONDERFUL MISCELLANY.

(By P. W. WILSON.)

rTHE Engli6si- s P eakill S world is about T to celebrate an event which occurred A 40 0 years ago and yet to-day ha* . immediate significance. On October 4 1535, tie first English Bible—com--1 te from Genesis to Revelation—was P ued from the printing press and made available to the people. J rp rt. churches this anniversary is of 1 .rf on religious grounds. No less !lnied with its implications is the C ° n ™mity 83 a whole, ?nd questions con T What is the Bible? How did f and assume its present 1 . TT<ifl the Bible a meaning in this SL «a, and, if it has, what is the nl Xr S word Bible simply signifies n, L» There are 66 of these "books" tound into one volume, and they are of psalms, prophecy or, filed eloquence, romance, biography, ft Hturgy and letters delivered as cormndence. This amazing miscellany, r l,fi over a period of years, only to b counted by the thousand is absolutely miaue. No inscriptions discovered by to archaeologist compare with it in ■ mwliacv of interest and value. No "Trwritings-Chinese, Indian, Moslem ot fve achfeved this influence The i is the literary miracle of all time an d all countries. The Two Testaments. There are two "testaments," as they «idled. Both of them were written !• whv Jews. Not a word was 61 -}L bv any other hand. The Old Testament narrates the history of the Jewish people within the universe asa background. The hopes, the despair the "ood, the evil, the love, the hate of which man is capable, incredible heroism and incredible depravity—all of this is revealed with an unsparing yet tender realism, and enriched by poetic accomTestament, filled with allusions to the Old Testament, contains an account of Jesus, His disciples, His movements and the foundation of the Christian Church. There are the four "crospels" or lives of Christ; there are tetters by Peter, Paul and other apostles; there is the astounding summation of human destiny known as the Aporalypse, with its vision of a New Jerusalem where sorrow and sighing shall be no more.

The Bible is thus the work of many minds. Passages here and there, are of primeval antiquity. Other passages are as modern as the Emperor Nero. The Book, taken as a whole, leaves an impression of variety within unity—which is nowhere else achieved in literature. Outcome of Continuous Tradition. By religionists this great result is attributed to Divine inspiration, associated with human genius. Scholars recognise the method of which the result was achieved. The Bible, they tell us, was moulded by two processes —revision and selection—especially selection. Out of many writings the best was sifted from the second best, and it is the best that we have to-day. The ecclesiastical term for it is "canon." Whatever has been included in the Bible is "canonical." It was the Jews who gradually arrived at the "canon" of the Old Testament —at what date cannot be precisely stated. It was centuries before Christ. Broadly speaking, the Christian Church accepted that canon and added her own canon of the New Testament. The Bible, as we know it to-day, is thus the outcome of a continuous Judaeo-Christian tradition. Best Seller of All Books. For 50 years or more the Bible has been subjected to a scrutiny without precedent in the records of erudition. Scholars and scientists have examined every syllable of the Scriptures, frequently as critics, and have freely discussed the origin of documents, their historicity, their spiritual and ethical value, and their place in literature. It is out of this prolonged ordeal that the Bible, as we know it, has emerged.

The first fact to be faced is simple. The discussion of the Bible, friendly or unfriendly, has not affected the actual physical commerce in the book. Respite the depression, the Bible societies alone are issuing 25,000,000 copies the Scriptures, in whole or in part, every year. To this enormous figure we " av e to add ihe production of Bibles by Private publishers, universities and other a geneies—also an immense output. Two observations may be suggested. lrst . the Bible is, beyond challenge, the roost widely-read and known of all woke, ancient or modern. Second, multitudes grow up without any intimate knowledge of what the volume contains, and there are many Bibles lying around that nobody reads. In money, the Bible is the cheapest books. In time, it is the most expensive. If read at all, it has to be read slowly, carefully and little by little. When books were few and evenings were °®g and villages were lonely, the Bible «njoyed a monopoly of the candlelight, o-day there are counter-attractions. The Bible's Influence. Thus the Bible—despite its distribu--1011 has to be regarded frankly as the ook of the minority. minority to be weighed as well as counted. iandhi in India, Sun Yat Sen in China,

Kagawa in Japan, Woodrow Wilson in the United States, King George in England, King Gustav in Sweden, Masaryk in Czecho-Slovakia —these are among the men of affairs who have nourished their minds, sometimes day by day, on the Bible; nor do the indifferent majority escape the influence of the literature which they ignore. Are they not surrounded by an atmosphere to which the Bible never ceases to contribute? Statesmen and scholars, poets, painters and musicians, historians and those who have experience of affairs seldom depreciate the importance of the Bible. That importance may be illustrated by three perspectives, each of which leads out of the past into the present. .First, we have the Bible as an expression of good will. Second, the Bible has been among the Magna Cliartas of Liberty. Third, the Bible is a vehicle of language. Famous Translations. In Western countries we are familiar with three communities living side by side. According to origin, they are Jews, Catholics and Protestants. Frequently their animosities have been embittered. In accomplishing one task they have been partners. Each in turn lias translated the Bible.

Go back twenty-three centuries to the oreat synagogue of Alexandria. See the scholars, said to have been seventy in number, as they render their Hebrew Bible —it was the Old Testament into vernacular Greek. This was the version, arisin"- out of rabbinical erudition, tliat was used by Jesus and His disciples and also by their Gentile converts. It was called the Septus gint, and throughout the Roman Empire the Septuagint prepared the way for Christendom. Next, it was the turn of the Catholics. Fifteen centuries ago, St. Jerome a student of Hebrew as well as <j reekread a Bible that included the New Testament as well as the Old. He revised and completed a translation ofthatßible into vernacular Latin. The translation was called the Vulgate after the word villous, a crowd. That Bible, like the Septuagint, was read by and read to the people. The Vulgate is m use to this day, and, some years ago, the task of revising it was entrusted to the late Cardinal During the esixteenth century Catholic scholars began to pre pare the English version, known as the Douai version; this was fyushed in IGOB Protestants have particularly zealous as translators of the Bible. There is -some doubt whether John Wycliffe, in the fourteenth century, was wholly responsible for the version that bears his name. But Martin Luther translated the Bible into German, W liam Tyndall translated much of the Bible into English, and it wa.s Miles Coverdale —an eloquent reformer—whose complete Bible appeared just four hun dred years ago. Coverdale was a bishop of the reformed faith, a graduate of Cambridge and an associate of the Ger man Lutherans. Where his B.ble was printed is not known, for the title pa e of those copies which are still in existence does not say, but the belief is that the press was not in England, but at Zurich. , Nor did the work' of translation end there One Bible followed another until the year 1011, when there appeared the Kin" James, or authorised version _a truly splendid achievement, wherein some of Coverdale's phrases are found. A.t later dates numerous translations have been undertaken— in<eluding the revised version, completed m the 1880 s, and renderings into modern Englisn. An Astonishing Situation. As a result, we have an astonishing situation. Here is a book of books of which every syllable from cover to cover, was written and perfected in the first instance by Jewish pens. this book has been made popularly accessible, as a whole or by selections, in every dialect that can be called a languag—about 950 of them—on the face of the globe. t

This is what is meant by the claim that the Bible has been of assistance to good will. Centuries before the League of Nations there was stimulated a league of literature, of art, of music, oi research, of traditional culture. Communities might be advanced or backward. They might be rent by cruel rivalries. But the Bible found its way into the home and became the silent witness of man's common —if neglected — heritage.

Four hundred years ago printing was still the most marvellous of all inventions. It was regarded as to-day we regard television, and there arose a fundamental question: Was there to be freedom of the Press or wasj, the Press to bo controlled by some authority, secu-

It was a translator of the Bible who, 400 years ago, fought that fight to a finish. Amid churches and States William Tyndall stood forth as a free citizen. Ho asserted the citizen's right to owfl a book, to read a book, to discussa book, to translate a book, to distribute a book. In defence of that right he died a martyr's death. The story of his translation is epic in its heroism. We see him a fugitive in Cologne, where Peter Quentcl, a famous printer, struck off the first few pages of Tyndall's New Testament. For 200 years it seemed as if every trace of Quentel's edition had vanished. Happily a bookseller in London found eight of these priceless leaves. They are in the British Museum.

Tyndall's translation had to bo smuggled into England from tlic Continent, often in bales of wool. But it was not long before the liberty for which he paid the price spread overseas. The Pilgrim Fathers carried their Bibles first to Holland and finally to New England. There are words 111 the Constitution of the United States that might have been written by William Tyndall — "Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech or of the Press."

Survey the world to-day and we notice a struggle between dictatorship and democracy. Over wide continents there is waged the everlasting conflict between the State as an organisation of the community and the citizen as an individual. Are we able to discern any relation between a knowledge of the Bible and this turbulent landscape?

The Bible and Freedom. There are two spheres within which, conspicuously, the Bible has been known and honoured by the people. They are the English-speaking and Scandinavian commonwealths. Within these countries, one and all, freedom of speech and of the Press is maintained.

In many oiher countries that freedom of speech and of the Press is abridged or denied and the ca.se of Germany is significant. If ever there was an empire where the individual had the courage to stand alone for the rights of conscience, it was the Fatherland of Luther. Yet the totalitarian State has emerged. Three communities suffer persecution. They are the Lutherans, the Catholics and the Jews.. These are the communities that, by a coincidence, have been associated with the production and translation of the Bible. The English Bible —as we know it in the King James version—was not translated all at once, as we have seen. It required two and a half centuries to produce the final result, nor should we appraise the numerous revisions, with their occasional crudities and oddities, merely as the efforts of successive individuals. The nation itself was stirred to enthusiasm. A noble language, rich and inelomous and accurate, was in process of formation.

The King James version is not free from errors. It is obscured, here and there, by archaisms. But it has become the standard of what—for this reason — is called "the King's English."