08. The Bible as a Book among Books
The Bible as a Book among Books
Chapter 7 The Word of God, notwithstanding its divine origin and authorship is also a human product, and to be studied as literature. It pleased God to use a book as the medium of His Self-Revelation, and human minds, tongues and pens as instruments of conception and expression. All this must qualify and modify the result, and makes needful to fix as far as may be, the reasonable limits within which to subject such joint product of God’s authorship and man’s agency to reverent criticism as a form of literature. A true criticism descends to what is minute, counting nothing trivial, especially where God’s Word is concerned. There are not only two Testaments, but each of these, a compound of many lesser, individual books, each having a purposed character of its own. Of all these scores of books no two cover the same ground; they are like the members of an organism, the least of all having its own definite place, sphere, function and work, and to find the exact end for which each is meant and fitted is to get the key to its contents and to its relations to all the rest.
Then, in each book, there are subdivisions of historic event, prophetic utterance or doctrinal teaching. These must be seen, if the plan is to be perceived, and the unfolding of it traced. What is true on a larger scale of the whole Bible, and each book in it, is on a smaller scale equally true of every section of each book. The historic scene may shift and so change the current of discourse; new events, a new locality, a new personage, or a new and trifling circumstance, may determine important changes in the contents. Transitions in thought are often due to transitions in scene or circumstances and take their form accordingly.
First of all, there are historical questions to settle. There is a law of period or time. The preparation of these more than sixty books occupied from fifteen to forty centuries: the exact time it is not necessary or possible to determine, as even earlier tradition, as well as later written documents, may have contributed to the result. But the exact or approximate time when each book was prepared affects two great questions: first, the form and fullness of revelation; and second the progressive development of revealed truth. If an accurate chronology of the books could be framed, it might throw great light on their logical and theological relations; and especially might it show how some books came to be written,|how some events, of more or less importance became the occasion or suggestion of utterances; as when national crises led prophets to exhort or rebuke, or individual occurrences, as in David’s experience, prompted a psalm. Comp.2 Samuel 21:15 to 2 Samuel 22:51, where the repulse of the Philistines, and the slaughter of four giant foes, formidable like Goliath, led to an outburst of praise to Jehovah, as a Deliverer. How new is the flood of light cast upon that psalm when it is read in the remembrance of the signal triumphs just won!
There is a law of personality.
We must therefore study the human media of revelation. God, at sundry times, in divers manners and portions, and by various human instruments, made known His will. These forty writers were however not mere machines; no violence was done to their native temperaments or natural characteristics. When God used them as His organs of utterance, He fitted their peculiarities to His purpose; their individual traits, and training, their previous associations and surroundings, employments and habits of life, all were a part of His plan in choosing them for this service. Moses’ schooling in the Court of Pharaoh and at the “backside of the desert;” Ezra’s education as a scribe, Luke’s experience as a physician, Paul’s scholarship, gathered at Gamaliel’s feet and in the Greek schools of Cilicia, Peter’s life as a Galilean fisherman, Matthew’s as a publican; the philosophic mind of John, the ethical conscience of James—all these tinge their writings, help to determine why certain things specially impressed them and are made by them prominent. To study these individual characteristics and clearly carry in mind the portrait of each writer with his own marked features, makes what they wrote the more intelligible, and gives to their records verisimilitude and consistency as well as variety.
There is also a Law of Locality or place. Every book was written somewhere: the writer had therefore his local surroundings. To know where he lived and wrote, and amid what scenes, through what experiences he was passing and whom he met; whether he was in palace or prison, at home or in a strange land; all this throws a flood of light upon what he spoke and wrote, explains local references, forms of appeal, modes of illustration and figures of speech; and interprets his teachings. His writings become intelligible, take on new meaning and attraction: his pen often becomes a pencil, and his product a picture, with the lineaments of life and local coloring. Such knowledge helps even to exposition.
What is true of all literature cannot but be true of sacred literature. If we read with new interest and intelligence the oration of Demosthenes’ De Corona when we know his relations to Aeschines; or the address of Lincoln at Gettysburg when we know the story of the war which turned its crisis there, we can understand better the prophets of the Captivity when we know that Daniel was in Babylon, Ezekiel by the River Chebar, Joel in Judea during a twofold plague of drought and locusts; and it helps us to understand Paul’s letter to Corinth when we locate the writer at Ephesus; or, to Philippi, when we imagine him in Rome, a prisoner; or to appreciate the Apocalypse when we know that John was on the isle called Patmos for the sake of his testimony to Christ!
It is believed that our Lord’s discourses are often, perhaps always, suggested by something appropriate at the time. So understood, what new meaning they acquire! A shepherd with his flock suggests His words on Himself as the good shepherd. The artificial vine, about the beautiful Temple gate, led Him to say, “I am the True Vine;” the appeal to divide property between brethren, to the discourse on Covetousness; the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand, to the discourse following on the Bread of Life, etc. To know why He spoke on a theme may show what He meant when He spoke. It may do even more: it may guard us against misconstruction and perversion of His words. This is most conspicuously illustrated in the case of His warning as to the one unforgivable sin—blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which is seen to be attributing His work of love and mercy to the agency of demons (Mark 3:22-30), a sin arguing so hard a heart and perverse a will as to reveal a hopeless state of voluntary alienation from God.
We need also to study historic connection. Facts are often exegetes and expositors—history and biography indirectly explain and interpret doctrine, serving to throw light on truth taught, and becoming the key to occult references. Thus a narrative may serve a threefold end; interpretation, illustration, illumination. Facts and philosophy are wedded and must not be divorced: facts are factors; they are of great value in solving problems, in helping to correct and instructive exposition, in not a few cases opening the way to the heart and meaning of Scripture lessons. A very fine illustration of this may be found in 1 Corinthians 3. This was written after Paul had been to Ephesus, and in fact while there (1 Corinthians 16:8), and should be read with Acts 18-19 in view. Hence his plain references to the famous temple of Diana—to the difficulty of finding a safe “foundation” in the swampy ground, making necessary immense substructions (1 Corinthians 3:10-15); to the immensity, magnitude and magnificence of this wonder of the world with its “gold, silver and precious stones;” to the dwellings of the poor round about, made of “wood, hay, stubble;” to the successful attempt of Erostratus four hundred years before to set it afire, suggesting “the fire that shall try every man’s work,” etc. A building may be destroyed notwithstanding its indestructible foundation.
Psalms 90 inscribed as “a Prayer of Moses,” becomes most luminous if construed as his dying song, when, reviewing his hundred and twenty years of life, and especially the last forty when a whole generation was swept away in the desert like the sand in a storm. The unique circumstances of his career give form to this prayer, determine its language, its laments and its petitions, and control its whole structure. For example, compare its poetic stanzas with such prominent features of that forty years of sorrow and of divine dealing as the following:
1. The perpetual changes of that wandering, in contrast with the unchanging Eternity of Jehovah.
2. The destruction of a whole generation, as contrasted with the ever living One, whose years do not fail.
3. The open iniquities and secret sins of man, and the justice and righteous wrath of a holy God.
4. The transient, temporal, carnal experience of man, and the permanent, eternal, spiritual elements in the Godhead.
5. The beauty of the Lord our God as the crowning adornment of human character.
6. The identity of man’s work and God’s work as the only assurance of its permanent establishment.
There is a subordinate law of historic interval. Narratives are often condensed, only bold outlines being drawn, somewhat as the peaks of far distant and separated mountains may be seen in close proximity on a landscape or the horizon, while vast valleys stretch between. It is unsafe to infer the immediate succession of events from proximate mention of them in Scripture: while their logical connection may be most intimate, their historical separation may be quite as remote.
We shall learn if we search closely that “the Day of the Lord” covers not twenty-four hours, but it may be twenty-four centuries; that His “judgments are a great deep” which, like the ocean, laves many shores and exhibits successive storms; that, because He is Eternal, a thousand years are in His sight like “yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night.” What is to us, with our three score years and ten, as an interminable suspense, is to Him as an instant’s delay. These things the Bible student must learn, and not attempt to map out immensity and measure eternity by the foot measure of time. Everything about the Infinite One is on a grand scale.
There is also a law of perspective. As in nature objects are seen in line and appear nearby or far off, according to the station point or point of sight, which determines the plane of delineation and the perspective lines; so, in the Scripture, much depends upon the supposed position of the observer. He may see events as from the head of a column of soldiery, one behind another; or, from the side of a column, where they will be discerned with the relative distances between rows and ranks. The point of view must be found before the relations of things can be known.
There is also a law of historic objective—that is, the end in view may bring near together events far apart in occurrence, or put far apart what are in close succession. If a principle is to be illustrated or a lesson enforced the sacred narrator may leap over a wide interval to bring some incident into his record at that point where it best serves the purpose: the logical relation may be more important than the actual succession. The Bible student who nearest gets God’s point of vision will most nearly see as He sees, and discern the hidden relations of events and truths.
Beside these historic matters of person, place, time, event, all the purely literary features demand careful examination. Each writer has his own style. Personal traits affect the mode of his utterance, and largely determine what he will make most prominent. There are laws of grammar and logic and rhetoric which control all composition. Words have specific meanings, and are used for a reason. Even a tense of a verb or the number of a noun we shall see hereafter may be of much consequence. We may call this the law of literary construction which will be seen to have many important applications. But our object just at this point is to emphasize the fact that the Scriptures are in a book form, are written by human pens, that God’s messages have flowed through human minds as channels; that all these writings have to do with persons, places, times, events, geographical and historical surroundings, and are framed in human speech and according to the laws of grammar and the usages of language; and all these things must be considered and examined if we are to know the Scriptures and the power of God in them. The brilliance of a diamond depends in part upon the delicate angles into which the many minute faces have been ground and polished by the lapidary.