I’m reading a book that is in the news and on the radio. Rightly so. John Barton’s ‘A History of the Bible’ deals with issues that Christian belief has to take seriously. I am tempted to write at length but I fear I may bore or daunt my readers. Humpty tells me that once I mount my hobby-horse I become insufferable. So I shall restrict myself to two of the issues that come alive to me as I read.
First is imagination. This is hardly something of consequence as far as the legal provisions we find in the Pentateuch are concerned. But it is of the first importance when we consider, say, the teaching of Jesus. We find a variety of appeals to the imagination in the parables. His teaching was anything but a harangue. It invites a response. The same is true of the prophetic books. Isaiah and others spoke in pictures. They opened eyes and ears. That is not all. It is as though they utilised and developed a bridge-head already existing in inquiring minds. People would have said, ‘That is what I thought but I have never seen it put into words.’ It is this flair for making the imagination an ally that results in distinguished texts. It is a flair that we see in works of genius. It is a flair that has given rise to our English literature.
The other issue is editing. It is not always appreciated that the various documents that make up the Bible were edited. Often the name of the author conceals amendments agreed by writer and editor or alterations following publication. Not only were the biblical documents edited; they were published. We may be unaware of how many hands had a finger in the pie and precisely what was the sequence of events that brought about publication of these documents. That does not alter the fact that documents rarely come into being without editors ancient or modern being involved. All documents go through this process. And we have to remember that there were oral periods when stories etc were circulated before they achieved written form. Such oral periods affected the eventual written form of Israelite history and the Gospels. It is no impediment to an understanding of the Bible as something special. Whether a document was written on slate or on paper with pen and ink; whether it was published by a band of scribes or an unauthorised agency does not authenticate or invalidate the content.
As we should expect, John Barton brings learning and breadth of sympathy to the history of a book the provenance of which necessarily involves a great deal of surmise and speculation. He is appropriately tentative where the absence of evidence – and that is quite often – requires it. A reader is brought up to date on current studies, their achievements and their shortcomings. He reminds us of the presence of ‘…a series of guesses – not, admittedly, a rare thing in biblical studies.’
The Bible has been relentlessly studied, analysed, dissected through many generations. It survives such treatment because readers find in it compelling creative work that outlasts fashion and belittling. Like love, it ‘looks on tempests and is never shaken.’ Hazlitt has a characteristically penetrating comment on Shakespeare which, suitably amended, is apposite to the Bible as much as to the bard: ‘If we wish to see the force of human genius, we should read Shakespeare. If we wish to see the insignificance of human learning, we may study his commentators.’ We need biblical commentators and could not do without them. But at the end of the day what matters is the text. That evokes more than understanding; it evokes obedience.
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