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Chapter 5: The Bible
1. The Book
We conclude part one of this manual with a chapter on the Bible, which is the primary standard of the Presbyterian Church, as it is of others. The Book is called the Holy Bible because the name of it in Greek was "ta biblia," which means "the books,” and because its subject is the acts of God, the Holy One. The fact that the old name was in the plural reminds us that though we now print it officially as one volume it is really a collection of books, some long, some short. The writings which form this collection were composed over a long period, extending roughly from about 1000 B.C. to about 100 A.D., according to Biblical scholars. The earliest things in it are a collection of Hebrew national songs and stories about the first leaders, while the latest are some of the New Testament letters.
The Way it was Written
The books of the Bible were not all written by single individuals who began at page one and worked on steadily till they reached the last page. The substance of many of them was spoken before it was put down in writing. The utterances of prophets, for example, were often originally speeches, and their "books" are largely collections of such oracles, as scholars call them. The earlier OId Testament books " have been compiled from traditional stories of the patriarchs and early leaders of Israel. Thus many of the earlier parts of the Old Testament in the form in which we have them are much later as writings than the events of which they tell. It has been shown, for example, that Genesis was put together or "edited" under the influence of writers whose ideas derive from the teaching of the great prophets. Of course, some of the writings, such as the New Testament letters or the book of Jonah, are sustained literary efforts. The Fourth Gospel is the product of one master mind, but the other three, known as the Synoptics, were compiled from stories of what Jesus did, passed on from one to another by word of mouth. It is generally held that the earliest gospel, Mark's, consists mainly of the things which Peter was in the habit of relating as he went about preaching, and that Matthew and Luke contain the substance of Mark's gospel together with other added material. Thus the Bible is a literature, a collection of writings often based on traditions passed on by word of mouth through the years. It is therefore rooted in the experience of people who taught their contemporaries and their children by the spoken word.
Assembling the Collections
When once the treasured stories and utterances and writings were compiled as books they were used and referred to as a recognized body of literature. But the degree of recognition varied. Some parts achieved authority before others. The first recognized New Testament collection was, naturally enough, the letters of St Paul, since they were the first to be written. Later the gospels were added, and still later other New Testament writings. In the gospels themselves the starting point was the narrative of the trial and crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, to which the accounts of what He did and taught were added. The complete Old Testament consists of three parts, the Law, the' Prophets and the Writings, and these correspond to the three stages by which the Old Testament books became "canonical," i.e., received official recognition. First the Law, the five so-called books of Moses, became authoritative; then the Prophets (comprising the former prophets, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, and the later prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve, Hosea to Malachi) , were accorded official status; and finally, quite late, the Writings (comprising the rest) won their place. Books were admitted to "the canon" as they proved themselves in the religious life of the nation. The Bible is therefore a library of books which record for us the dealings of God with His People and their reflections on and interpretations of what happened to them under the mighty hand of God.
Preserving the Collections
The writing down of all this material, however produced in the first place, meant that "documents" came into existence. The question arises, have we any of these to-day? We possess a great number of biblical documents or manuscripts, as a matter of fact, but they date from a period considerably later than the first writing. They are copies of originals which we no longer possess. The Jews considered that the copying of the manuscripts of the Old Testament was so important that it must be done under very strict regulations and conditions, to prevent mistakes in copying. When a copy was made, it was scrutinized for errors, and if correct was certified as a true copy. Thus in point of accuracy old manuscripts were no more valuable than new ones. Therefore they were not carefully preserved; on the contrary they were discarded, with the result that the oldest manuscript of the Old Testament which we possess is no earlier than the ninth century after Christ. It is most interesting to learn of the discovery in a cave at 'Ain Fashka, south of Jericho, of Hebrew manuscripts dating to before 100 B.C. Among these is a complete copy of the prophecy of Isaiah. An article in the Church of Scotland paper Life and Work for October, 1949, declares that by comparing this with the main manuscript of a thousand years later , scholars have concluded that in Isaiah at any rate, the true text has been preserved down through the 1000 years of copying and re-copying.
Not So with New Testament Manuscripts
With the manuscripts of the New Testament the story is not the same. The Christians were not Jewish scribes jealously guarding the ancient treasure. Something new had happened to them; they were beginning a new tradition, and not preserving an old one. Hence the same strict conditions were not imposed for the copying of manuscripts. Copies of a collection of St Paul's letters were made, of course. Copies of gospels were made. Various centres of copying existed, and there were what we might call "families" of copies, those made in a given locality bearing a family resemblance which distinguished them from those made in a different area. These distinguishing marks were the variations from the original which crept into successive copies owing to mistakes in copying. If we had to copy the Epistle to the Romans by hand we should more than likely make some mistakes. Hence, while a late manuscript of the Old Testament may be no better than an early one for accuracy, an early one is better than a late one for the New Testament text. The older a manuscript of the Greek New Testament is, the more likely it is to be faithful to the author's original.
The principal manuscripts of the New Testament, the Sinaiticus (British Museum) and the Vaticanus (Vatican Library, Rome) belong to the fourth century A.D. A considerable part of an earlier MS has been recovered, known as the Chester Beatty Papyri, and this belongs to the third century A.D. The very earliest MS of the New Testament is a tiny fragment of the gospel of St John, chapter 18, verses 31, 33, 37, 38, in a style of writing which belongs to the period 100 to 150 A.D. The existence of this fragment, incidentally, confirms the traditional date of the Fourth Gospel, 90 to 100 A.D. There is a very large number of MS of the New Testament or parts of it, and scholars consider that by comparing them together they can arrive at a text not seriously different from the authors' originals.
Versions
Translations from the Greek and Hebrew MS are called Versions. Thus we have a Greek Version of the Old Testament called the Septuagint (because it was made by a company of 70 scholars). There are Latin Versions of the whole Bible, and Versions in the various national languages. The story of the English translations is a long one, but the most important are the Authorized Version and the Revised Version (1611 and 1885). In our time the urge to make a translation in natural contemporary idiom has asserted itself again, so that we have a number of modern attempts to provide a satisfactory Version for today. It is good to know that the Church of Scotland has taken the lead in the formation of a panel of British scholars to give us an authoritative modern English Version which will be accurate, modern and dignified. 'I'he publication of the New Testament in this version is expected in 1961.
2. The People of the Book
The Bible is the book of a people. It is the book of Israel, and of the New Israel, the Church. It is the book of the People of God. In it we learn of their history, their character, their misfortunes and their hope. It is thus a Jewish book. Its outlook is that of the Hebrew mind, not the Greek. Yet it is not a history in the modern sense, nor is it a chronicle in the ancient sense. It contains two books called Chronicles, but these are only a small part of the whole. It is rather the record of the life of a people controlled by a great purpose. We read in it of the making of a nation under the leadership of a supremely great man, Moses, and of its development to a monarchy, and thence to a nation with a religious mission deepened by the experience of foreign domination and exile. Out of a faithful remnant there emerged a small band who looked for the "consolation of Israel," and were thus able to receive Him who was the true Anointed of God, who came to redeem His people and all mankind. About Him there gathered the new Israel, whose story we read in the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of St Paul.
Although from one point of view the Bible is a collection of books, the fact that it is the book of Israel gives it a unity which no casual selection of volumes could have. For Israel was not just one of the nations of the ancient world; it was the People of God. Through this people more than any other the revelation of God to mankind has come, and so the books are one Book. Israel had a genius for religion, and it is this which stamps the Bible with its essential character, from the human side.
3. The Subject of the Book
There is, however, a divine side as well. The Bible is not merely the national literature of a religiously gifted race. It has one main theme: the way of God with men. It is the book of the Acts of God in human history, and especially in the history of His chosen people Israel. In the Bible we meet at all significant points the action of the God whose supreme purpose is the salvation of men. Thus the subject of the Bible is not the fortunes of Israel, but God. Through His dealings with His people from Abraham to Christ He reveals Himself as the Holy One who is Lord of all, the Creator of the ends of the earth, who abhors sin, who dwells with the humble and contrite, who so loved the world that He gave His only Son that all who believe in Him should have eternal life, and who is the final Judge of all. He reveals Himself as the God who requires perfect righteousness and obedience, and who is anxious to help men to attain it. In the Bible God is for men; He seeks and rewards their trust and obedience. He makes covenants or agreements with them. If they will come to Him and abide with Him, He will be with them. "In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old." (Isaiah 63: 9.) “For thou art our father, though Abraham knoweth us not, and Israel doth not acknowledge us: thou, O Lord, art our father; our redeemer from everlasting is thy name." (Isaiah 63: 16.)
Accordingly we shall not be looking in the Bible for things there is no warrant for expecting to find there. It is not a history as we understand history, it is not a treasury of philosophy, it is not a book of science or folklore, nor is it a text-book of systematic theology. These were not the ends the writers had in view; they wished to record the action of God among men. In it we find a little philosophizing, a certain amount of chronicle, much poetry, some drama, many stories, a great body of law, a considerable collection of prophetic utterance, and a great mass of testimony and religious exhortation, together with dreams and visions. But in all these the interest is not in the poetry for its own sake, or the dreaming as such. It is in God, whose touch on men's lives has been expressed in these many ways.
4. The Inspiration of the Book
The Bible is generally regarded by Christian people as an inspired book. What do we mean by the inspiration of the Bible? Some have thought it meant that every word from cover to cover was guaranteed as literally correct, being written down from dictation, as it were, by the Holy Spirit. It appears that some have even thought that this guarantee applied to the English translation. If that were objected to, then the guarantee was said to apply to the original manuscripts as they came from the pens of the writers. This view of inspiration carried with it the implication that each word, each verse, harmonized with all other verses in the Bible, so that a unified body of doctrine could be distilled from it without any mutual contradiction between the parts. But this rather mechanical idea does not allow for any development in the religious understanding of Israel or the Church. There is indeed an essential unity in the teaching of the Bible, but it does not require this particular theory of inspiration to support it.
Sustained and believing study of the Scriptures has compelled theologians to recognize the human element in the Bible, as regards both the form in which men's religious convictions have been expressed, and the defects in the record. The mistakes of copyists are just one example of this human element. Then what are we to say about certain opinions of St Paul, for example? He had views on the apparel of women which surely have no bearing on the word of salvation. Are the fierce denunciations of Psalm 109 to be placed on the same level as the faith of Psalm 23 or the insight of Hosea?
Yet the basic belief that the Bible is an inspired book remains. To the believing heart this Book speaks with a divine accent. Some other way of stating the conviction, more satisfactory than mechanical dictation, is necessary. To one who has no belief in God at all the Bible will be just a human book, a source-book of Jewish antiquities, if you are interested in that sort of thing. But if we believe in God, if we believe that the Lord of all has acted in the lives of men, we have a foundation for the inspiration of the Scriptures - all the foundation we need. For if Abram knew that God was directing his steps when he left Haran and journeyed "not knowing whither he went," if Moses knew that God led him through the desert and met him at Horeb at a decisive time, if Jermiah knew that it was God who was constraining him to take the line of most resistance, then when these men told the story of what happened to them, God was in the story. It was inspired. We believe the Bible is inspired because as we read it we become aware that we are confronted with something more than the opinions and desires of human beings. The subject of the Bible is God, yet not in the sense that it is a collection of human thoughts about him, but in the sense that it tells of what He has done with men, The attentive reader discovers through the Bible that there is a design in things. God is working His purpose out. The faithful record of the key features of that design is in the Bible, and because it is the authentic witness to the working out of that purpose it has a unique position. By His action in the lives of the men of the Bible, God has revealed who He is, and thus His signature is on the book which witnesses to that action.
5. The Authority of the Book
The Bible is the primary standard of faith in the Presbyterian Church. When we attend one of the services in which the Church acts officially through one of its courts, say, the Presbytery at the ordination of a minister, we hear these words: "The Presbyterian Church of New Zealand acknowledges the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the supreme rule of faith and life." This is an affirmation of the authority of the Bible in the Church. Why is it made?
Luther and Calvin
For the answer to that question we have to go back a long way in the story of the Christian Church. Within our own Reformed tradition it was John Calvin (1509-1564) who gave us our first lessons on this. He in turn learned his lesson principally as a result of the work of Martin Luther (1483- 1546). In his search for the religious truth which would make his soul at peace with God and give him assurance of God's grace, Luther plunged deeper and deeper into the study of the Bible, a thing which was not common with the monks and priests of his time. Later, when his own grip on this truth led him to question some actions of his Church, and he was driven to defend his position and give reasons for his opposition, he found himself turning more and more to the Scriptures as a source of truth to pit against the errors he was questioning. His opponents replied by referring to the traditional practices and enactments of the Church. Thus a rivalry was set up between the Bible and these other standards of faith and practice. As the struggle against the authority of the Pope continued, and largely succeeded, the authority of the Bible was enhanced. Men found it a bulwark against false teaching and church oppression.
Against this background of new respect for and interest in the Bible, Calvin began to instruct the people of Geneva in its contents. A book so important, containing the law of God Himself, ought to be well known and understood by all Christian people. So in a long series of weekday lectures, Calvin explained the books of the Bible one by one regularly every week, and thus initiated a standard and style of biblical exposition whose influence is with us today. The position he gave to the Bible has been maintained ever since by the family of Churches which look to him as father.
The Word of God
Such were the historical circumstances lying behind the official acknowledgment quoted above. It is our tradition to" give the Bible that place. But we should look more closely at the actual wording. "The supreme rule of faith and life," means the final standard or authority for determining disputed questions of theory and practice in Christianity, and for stimulating our faith and guiding our lives. We look to the Bible to settle disputed points of theology and conduct. There is no difficulty about that part. When we look at the rest of the sentence we must go more carefully, however. This supreme rule of faith and life is stated to be "the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments." Here we have a new expression, the "Word of God," which is said to be "contained" in the Scriptures. Apparently a distinction is drawn between the Word of God and the books of the Bible. A careful reading of Calvin reveals that the possibility of this distinction lies under the surface of his thinking, but that circumstances never arose which would have led him to examine the matter more closely. We cannot claim therefore that Calvin has a clearly thought out doctrine of the Word of God as distinct from the Bible. He uses the expression "Word of God" a great deal. Sometimes he is thinking in terms of the communication of God with man, effected through the Holy Spirit; at other times he is thinking of the written Bible.
For reasons of the kind we have already indicated in section 4, we cannot identify the Word of God with the written words of the Bible. It is useful to have the expression "the Word of God which is contained in the Scriptures," since it enables us to draw attention to the distinction. When the Bible is read in church we hear the minister say "Hear the Word of God as it is contained in the Scriptures of...." The writer prefers a form such as this: "Hear the Word of God through the Scriptures of...." because it expresses a little better the idea that the Bible words and stories and thoughts are the instrument which God uses for the utterance of His own Word in the soul. In the Bible we hear God speaking to us, because in the Bible we are brought into the company of men and women, prophets and apostles, whom God chose to be His messengers and servants in critical times and in a unique degree. In particular we hear God speaking to us in the Bible in Jesus Christ His Son. "In many and various ways God spoke of old by the prophets; but in these last days He has spoken to us by a Son." (Hebrews 1: 1-2, R.S.V.) It is therefore through the lives and experiences and thoughts and decisions of people that we hear God speaking. It is in the fellowship, in the communion of the saints, that we hear His Word. The Bible has a supreme place because it brings us directly to the hearth and home of the whole , Christian family, the People of God, especially as they are gathered about Jesus Christ, at the Cross and on Easter morning. It is in this company that we are able to hear God speaking most clearly, and the Bible keeps us in this company.
Thus, to return to the subject of this section, the authority of the Bible is of a double kind. First it has the authority which comes from its function of keeping us rooted in the Great Fellowship, the People of God from Abraham to Paul. Second it has authority as being the instrument which God uses to communicate with the soul. Through the great texts, the parables, the psalms, God speaks in men's hearts, and they know that it is veritably He whom they have heard. The authority of the Bible is the Word of God, and the Word of God is none other than God's self-communication in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Where the words of the Bible are plainly the words of man it is not appropriate to speak of its authority in the religious sense.
6. Reading the Book
The Church has long considered the reading of the Bible to be a Christian duty, as will be understood from the previous section. But when we speak of it as a duty, we are very likely to go the wrong way about emphasizing its importance. To read the Bible doggedly every day, a chapter at a time, may achieve nothing but spiritual drought. On the other hand, merely to skip lightly from one interesting passage to another, when someone else has gone to the trouble of making a selection for us, will mean failure to grasp the importance of the Bible. Right reading, which will mean intelligent and therefore interested reading, depends on having some good signposts. Such signposting is necessary, for on the face of it the Bible is just a tremendous mass of tough reading in small print. Once penetrate beyond the outermost fringe of trees and you are lost in dense bush.
Versions of To-day
The first aid to reading the Bible is a good version. A version is a translation from the original Hebrew or Greek. In our time we have many English versions to choose from. The commonest is the Authorized, but it is not now to be recommended. It is useful to those who already love its beautiful language, but to many others, some of whom have never read the book at all, it is not a good introduction. The music of the Authorized Version is a kind of literary miracle, but though a fine edition has been published "designed to be read as literature" the Bible was not in fact designed to be read as literature; it was designed to speak urgently to the souls of men concerning good and evil, and life and death. It is a literature, but it is not an art product, and intelligibility and simplicity must come a long way before music as desirable qualities in an English version of the Bible. The plain fact is that for all its dignity and literary grace, in far too many of its important passages the A.V. is not intelligible to the ordinary reader of our day. This is not to be wondered at since the idiom of English in which it is written is no longer in common use amongst us. We can have a better Bible than the people of Shakespeare's time because we can not only have it in our own current speech as they did, but also have it with vastly improved means of accurate translation, which they lacked. However much the A.V. has been endeared to us by long association, we should now regard it as a first priority that the Bible is meant to be understood, and accordingly take the necessary steps (even if reluctantly) to see that we encourage versions that are readable to-day. The great test is to set a child to read out aloud from the A.V. and one of the modern versions and see which he manages easily and naturally. Many a test has proved to the present writer that in so far as the subject matter was intelligible to a child at all, the modern versions gripped his mind so that he appreciated what he was reading. With the A.V. that is not always so.
Among the modern versions, three or four choices are readily available to us in New Zealand for the New Testament. These are the Weymouth and Moffatt translations, the American Revised Standard Version (in the making of which Dr Moffatt assisted) and the Knox translation. The Phillips version is more of a paraphrase than a translation, but it does help the beginner to follow the flow of thought in the epistles. But for careful study verse by verse it should be checked with the R.S.V. All of these make use of the best resources of modern scholarship and can be relied on for accuracy. They differ in their aim, however. Dr Moffatt aimed deliberately at modernity, while the American Revised Standard aims at retaining as much of the flavour of the A.V. as possible, consistent with present-day standards of accuracy and readability. Father Ronald Knox offers a translation of the Vulgate based on a study of the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts. His version aims at accuracy like the others, but in particular at giving the corresponding English idiom for every idea in the original. To that extent he is less literal. More than the other two, his version has style. Weymouth aims principally at accuracy and is somewhat more wooden than the others. Till the proposed new British version is published we are dependent mainly on these four. For the understanding of the New Testament as a whole anyone of them is superior to the A.V., in the opinion of the present writer.
For the Old Testament we have Moffatt, Knox and the R.S.V. The whole Bible including the Apocrypha has now appeared as one volume in the R.S.V., and there will be a new concordance to the Bible based on it. There is also a concordance to the Moffatt version of the Bible. Dr Moffatt has translated all the books of the Old Testament, and the whole Bible in his version is now published as one volume. Ronald Knox has now published his translation which includes the Apocrypha. Much assistance in understanding the prophetic books is afforded by the new translations. In the A.V., for example, the beginning of the famous Suffering Servant passage (Isaiah 52: 13ff.) reads: "Behold my servant shall deal prudently, he shall be exalted and extolled, and be very high. As many were astonied at thee; his visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men: so shall he sprinkle many nations; the kings shall shut their mouths at him; for that which had not been told them they shall see; and that which they had not heard shall they consider ." Without the aid of commentaries this passage scarcely yields coherent meaning. Dr Moffatt renders it: "Behold my servant Israel shall yet rise, he shall be raised on high; as many were appalled once at his fate, kings shuddering at his doom, so many a nation shall yet do him homage, with kings in silent awe, for they shall see what they were never told, a sight unheard of." Ronald Knox renders this passage as follows: "See, here is my servant, one who will be prudent in all his dealings. To what height he shall be raised, how exalted, how extolled! The world stands gazing in horror; was ever a human form so mishandled, human beauty ever so defaced? Yet this is he that will purify a multitude of nations; kings shall stand dumb in his presence; seen, now, where men had no tidings of him, made known to such as never heard his name."
Introductions
Another aid to reading the Bible is to know what the particular book is trying to do. We need to know a little about the circumstances in which it was written, the readers it was addressed to, and what its date is in relation to other books of the Bible. Some of these facts need be known only in a simple way, but not to know them at all makes understanding much harder. For the Bible must be understood as a whole, yet not as though it came complete from Genesis to Revelation off the pen of a single author. The books which comprise it must be understood in relation to one another. It is worth knowing, for example, that the important letter to the Galatians was written some time before the earliest gospel (Mark), and that by the time the last gospel was written nearly all the rest of the N.T .had been written. Or again, it helps a great deal to know that the book of Genesis, though it comes first in our Bibles, was compiled under the influence of the teaching of the great prophets like Amos and Isaiah. It is really necessary for the Christian who means business to have some helps to introduce the Bible books to him. The Abingdon Commentary has been found helpful in this connection.
Methods of Reading
A last word is in place concerning the way to read the Bible. There are two ways, each of which needs the other. There is the method of reading a small portion at a time, meditating on it, praying about it, receiving its truth into one's spirit and listening for the divine Word through it. And there is the method of reading long sections, to become familiar with the contents. It is the latter which needs most attention to-day. Take up the modern version of your choice and read, say, Philippians at a sitting. Do it on three successive days or till you have the thread of its thought in your mind and could tell someone else the substance of the message Paul sent to Philippi. This can be done with other epistles, and so the way is prepared for reading St Mark at a sitting. The time will come when we can read the Fourth Gospel right through for the first time and receive the tremendous weight of its testimony in a new way. By this kind of reading we shall learn to find our way about the Bible and be able to lay our hands at once on the great passages. Also we shall be feeding our minds with its substance so that our times of meditation on short passages will be enriched. The devotional reading prevents the other reading from being limited to mere information, while the extensive reading enables our devotion to rest on the fulness of the biblical argument. If the Church is to have the rising sap of new spring growth in it, the members must take to their Bibles again.