The Mysteries of the Word
Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version. (Nelson, 12s. 6d.)
The Faith of the Bible:By J. E. Fison. (Pelican Books, 3s. 6d.) The Books of the Old Testament. By Robert H. Pfeiffer. (A. and C. Black, 20s.) Holy Pagans of the Old Testament. By Jean Danidlou. (Longmans, 10s. 6d.) A Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. By C. S. C. Williams. (A. and C. Black, 25s.) St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians. Introduction and commentary by William Neil. (S.C.M.
Press, 10s. 6d.)
The Epistle of James. Introduction and Commentary by E. C. Blackman. (S.C.M. Press, 10s. 6d.) Biblical Interpretation. By E. C. Blackman. (Independent Press, 12s. 6d.) Fundamentalism and the Church of God. By Gabriel Hebert, DD. (S.C.M. Press, 15s.) Great Bible Pictures. Selected by Margaret H. Bulley. (Batsford, 25s.) The Life of Christ in Masterpieces of Art and the Words of the New Testament. Edited by
Marvin Ross. (Max Parrish, 55s.)
THE Bible is a strange book or collection of books, full of strange stories and ideas, and strange are the ways in which people read it or listen to other people reading it. There are many Christians who have never read a single book in the Bible straight through from beginning to end. All they have ever read or heard is snippets, select passages or portions such as the lessons that form part of church services. On the other hand, I recently visited an octogenarian who was engaged in reading or re-reading the Authorised Version from Genesis to Revelation without inter- mission or commentary; he would have been mystified if I had told him that he was following Kierkegaard's precept : 'Read the New Testament without a commentary : would a lover dream of reading a letter from his beloved with a commen- tary?' That may be good advice for those who are already lovers, and there are, of course, some people who are said to have become Christians simply as a result of reading the bare text of the Bible. It may also be good advice for theological students who are sometimes so addicted to read- ing books about the Bible that they remain woe- fully ignorant of the Bible itself. The Bible should, however, be regarded as a library, not as a single volume. Those who settled its contents (the `Canon') did not suppose that it would normally be read right through without any commentary or apart from its context in the life and worship of the Church.
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The first question that confronts, or ought to confront, a would-be reader of the Bible is what version he should take in hand. The virtues of the Authorised Version need no advertisement, but its language is often archaic, it is based on a text that since 1611 has been corrected in many minor and a few major respects, and the familiar beauty of its cadences too easily charms the ear without enlightening or disturbing the mind. There is, therefore, almost everything to be said for using a modern translation, of which several excellent ones are available, or the Revised Standard Ver- sion, which is the most up to date and satisfactory revision of the AV. It has at any rate made the Revised Version of 1881 otiose.
The RSV, since it was published in 1952, has sold over 5,000,000 copies. Now that it has come out in a finely produced cheap edition, it is likely to become still more popular for both public and private reading. Its publishers seem to be under the illusion that the permission of 'the Bishops and Convocations' is necessary before it can be read in Anglican Church services, but that is not so. Neither the so-called Authorised Version nor the Revised Version ever received any ecclesiasti- cal authorisation, and incumbents have always been at liberty to read the lessons in any version they deem suitable. The occasional Americanisms of the RSV may startle or disconcert English listeners, but that is a small price to pay for its accuracy and freshness. So long as the Bible remains in an archaic language, it is expected to be largely incompre- hensible. But when the language is made intel- ligible, the mind is stirred to wonder what it purports to affirm. Does the Bible, as a whole and in its various parts, add up to the expression of a faith which men in the twentieth century can begin to understand and make their own, or is it only a monument to the beliefs of the ancients? It is this question that books about the Bible can clarify and bring to a head.
Pride of place and of value for money among recent ones must be given to Mr. Fison's The Faith of the Bible: he succeeds in giving the impression that the whole Bible does have a theme which is of contemporary interest and closely bound up with the developing life of the Church. Dr. Pfeiffer's The Books of the Old Testament, an abridgement of a longer work, supplies a con- cise account of the literary and historical charac- ter of all the books in the Old Testament, as they appear in the light of modern scholarship. It will be useful for reference as well as for consecutive reading.
At first sight, the Old Testament is the story of God's dealings with, and exclusive preference for, the Jews. Father Danitlou's Holy Pagans of the Old Testament makes the surprising and exciting point that many of the heroes of Hebrew litera- ture were non-Jews and that from the beginning the Bible is the story of God's `cosmic covenant' with the whole human race.
The commentary by Mr. Williams on The Acts of the Apostles is an admirable example of how the results of learned investigation can be assembled to show the complexity and variety of the problems set by a single book in the Bible: he also makes it possible to judge how far they have and have not been solved. English Biblical scholarship, mediating its methods and results to the general reader, is here seen at its best. The commentaries by Dr. Neil on Thessalonians and by Mr. Blackman on James are more elementary but, like other volumes in the Torch Series, they give a good idea of what the apostolic writers probably meant.
Mr. Blackman's Biblical Interpretation and Father Hebert's Fundamentalism and the Church of God are both designed to convince the un- convinced that the critical work that has been done on the Bible during the last hundred years, so far from having deprived it of religious value, has actually enchanced its power to arouse faith in individual men and women and to nourish and deepen the corporate life of the Church. They are both somewhat on the defensive against the propaganda of old-fashioned literalists. Father Hebert, even more than Mr. Blackman, leans over backwards in attempting to convince 'funda- mentalists' or 'conservative evangelicals,' as they prefer to be called, that honest and open-minded
scholarship is consistent with a lively faith in the Bible as 'the word of God.'
Let no one suppose, however, that there is noth- ing any longer to be learned about the meaning of the Bible from the comments and commentaries of Christians who lived before the rise of the higher criticism. The ancient liturgies of the Church and the expositions of our old English divines like Matthew Henry can make the labor- ious discussions of modern interpreters seem jejune or tangential. Still more is it the case that the masterpieces of Christian art penetrated to the heart of the Bible, and caught and embodied its central figures and moments luminously. Particularly welcome, therefore, are the two splendid volumes by Miss Bulley and Mr. Ross. They contain reproductions in colour of some of the great Biblical pictures, accompanied by the passages which they illustrate. Either would make a very handsome Christmas present, and one that will be returned to again and again. While transla- tors and professors and commentators must do their best, they can never convey to the imagina- tion the mysteries of the Word made flesh and all the other mysteries as the visual arts have done in
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