02.01. WHENCE AND HOW CAME MY ENGLISH BIBLE?

WHENCE AND HOW CAME MY ENGLISH BIBLE? In beginning this series of eight talks on the subject of My Bible, I plan “an apologetic hoping to produce both a series for pulpit employment as occasion may arise, and, at the same time, a textbook for use in our theological schools. The subjects to be discussed are eight in number:

There are two motives that influence this series:

First—The instruction of our young men and women who, in their educational program, will necessarily touch, at some time, skeptical instructors— false teachers! We would equip them with solid facts as a standing ground.

Second—This volume, we also trust, may prove of value to students of our Northwestern Theological and other like schools. To the task then! In this chapter we propose to compass The Origin of the Bible, The Organization of the Books, and The Translations of Scripture. THE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE The Bible, unlike its Author, had “beginning”.

There was a time, lasting from 1500 to 3000 years, when the world was without a Bible; or, if you please, from the creation of Adam until the time of Moses or Job. That is not to say that the world was without Revelation; for reason and Scripture alike insist that a wise God would not leave sinful, stumbling man without direction or warning.

Upon the assurance of Scripture itself, men of that early period enjoyed the inestimable privilege of direct communications from God. For instance: in Genesis 2:8-19 God speaks to Adam and Eve directly concerning their sin and His determined judgment against the same. In Genesis 4:6 f God addresses Cain mi a kindred subject. In Genesis 6:13 God talks to Noah about the bad behaviour of men and affirms His purpose to destroy with a flood. In Genesis 12:1 God speaks to Abraham, calling him out of his country and makes to him promises of blessing almost unthinkable in extent and well-nigh eternal in time.

There are also many other reports of direct communication—to Abimelech in Genesis 20:3; to Isaac in Genesis 26:2; to Jacob in Genesis 28:13, and later to Job 38:1-41 f. But the very multiplication of men upon the face of the earth and their dispersion from one center to varied parts, would create the necessity of a general revelation such as is existent in the Book called “The Bible.” On examination of this volume we discover certain facts and factors of first importance. These we put in order The Bible is the product of many authors. Our text tells us that “prophecy came not in old time by the will of man,” but “holy men of God spake as they were moved (or borne along) by the Holy Ghost.”

It was not written by one man nor created at one man’s option. On the contrary, it eminated from the pen of many, as they were moved by the Divine will.

It is commonly conceded that there were about forty different writers for these sixty-six books. Moses accounts for five of them; Solomon for three or four; Paul for possibly fourteen; Peter for two; John for probably four; and so, while we have fewer authors than books, yet there are many contributors. For the last fifty years uninspired and skeptical men have attacked, in turn, practically every one of these writers and have sought to prove in some instances, that no such man ever lived; and, in others, that probably the author named in the Bible never saw the writings now assigned to him. But, notwithstanding this determined and, at times, concerted attack, these forty authors—as a noted Modernist admits—cry cherrily to each frightened defender of the Sacred Canon, in the language of Paul from the Philippian jail—“Do thyself no harm; for we are all here”! No author has as yet been discredited much less removed, and not one book of the sixty-six has been pried from its place, much less rendered obsolete.

These authors represent different countries and Centuries.

Palestine provided the majority, but not all of them; and something like 1600 years probably swept in between the day when Job laid his inspired pen aside and the hour when John finished the Apocalypse.

These facts will take on increasing importance as we continue this study, for one of the proofs of Divine inspiration is discoverable at this point, namely —the absolute unity of thought running from Genesis to Revelation. That unity can only be explained on the ground of a common authorship in the Person of the Holy Ghost. Forty writers—the most of them not acquainted with their fellow-contributors or even belonging to the same century with them— yet so expressing themselves as to produce an absolute harmony in thought and objective, find no explanation in the words “accident” or “coincidence”. In fact, the very employment of these two words “accident” and “coincidence” reminds me of an illustration, used in my pulpit nearly forty years ago, and lately given place in an attractive and profitable volume by an intimate personal friend, namely the story of Pat who had his doubts about miracles, and whose priest, in order to convince him, engaged in a hypothetical argument, saying:

“Now, Pat, suppose you were working on a ten-story building and you fell off and struck head first, on the pavement below, and picked yourself up and walked away; wouldn’t you call that a miracle?”

“No,” said Pat; “not necessarily! I would call it an accident.”

“Very well; but suppose you fell again the next morning from the same height and hit on your head in the same place and picked yourself up and walked away, wouldn’t you call that a miracle?”

“No,” said Pat, “not necessarily; that would be a coincidence.”

“But,” said the priest, “suppose you fell the third time and hit again in the same place and picked yourself up and walked away, what would you call that?”

“Begorry,” answered Pat, “I’d call it a habit!”

Some of us have come to think that the skeptics and the critics of the Bible are merely experiencing a habit, namely the habit of unbelief.

Forty authors writing independently of one another through a period of 1600 years and yet producing, not only a readable book, but a book that has outlived and transcended all others, is, to say the least, the miracle of the millenniums, and fails to yield to any other explanation.

There is an additional fact which dissipates the fogs for men of Faith, namely this—

These writers uniformly claim Divine inspiration.

Moses, the first of these writers, multiplies that claim so often that it becomes a refrain with him. He records—“And God spake all these words” (Exodus 20:1); as for his own part, he says, “And Moses wrote all the words of the Lord” (Exodus 24:4). In addressing the children of Israel he claims—“These are the words which the Lord hath commanded,” etc. The late Dr. James M. Gray once affirmed, in my presence, what any doubter may test at his own pleasure, namely that in the Book of Leviticus, containing 27 chapters, there were 56 assertions—or more than an average of 2 for every chapter—assigning its authorship to the Lord Himself.

Moses stands not alone in this matter.

David said: “The Spirit of the Lord spake by me and His Word was in my tongue.” Isaiah declared: “Hear, oh heavens, and give ear, oh earth, for the Lord hath spoken.” Jeremiah affirmed: “The word of the Lord came unto me.” Ezekiel assigned his visions to God, and declared—“The word of the Lord came expressly unto Ezekiel.” Daniel claims the same source for his interpretations; and so on to the end; for in the last Book of the Bible John introduces it as—“The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him.” (Revelation 1:1). The superiority of the Bible over all books of all ages finds its explanation in that claim, and that alone; for if God is its Author, perfection is to be expected, and we have a reasonable ground for the statement of that versatile, talented preacher and author, A. T. Pierson, who wrote—“The Bible is the Golden Milestone of the ages. It has been for thousands of years the grand center of all the noblest thought, purest love, and holiest life of the world. From this great book proceeds the inspiration of the best literature, the most unselfish philanthropy, the most faultless morality, which the world has ever known.” In the language of the poet—

“A glory gilds the sacred page, Majestic like the sun;

It gives a light to every age, It gives but borrows none. The hand that gave it still supplies The gracious light and heat; His truths upon the nations rise;

They rise, but never set.” But we proceed to the second point— THE ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK

We have seen that sixteen centuries and forty authors were required for the creation of this library of 66 volumes. Having been written by different authors at different stages of the world’s history, and at points remote one from another, the 66 books that constitute the Bible had to be assembled by someone, at some time; and, the agents thus employed by God are fairly familiar to the students of history.

It is not at all unusual for people who get hold of one book by an author, and finding both pleasure and profit in the same, to begin to search for further eminations from the same mind. The very claim of Divine authorship written into these books would have, especially with the Jewish people, a tendency to bring the books together; and so effective had been this custom that by Ezra’s day they were all known and named, and his was the lighter task of arranging them in the order, which, in about 457 B. C., he accomplished, and to which Nehemiah and Malachi, under the inspiration of the same Spirit, later added their volumes. The New Testament books passed through a kindred experience, to be authenticated by the Council of Carthage A.D. 397. That the Council was Spirit-led in this action seems demonstrated by the circumstance that the intervening centuries, all their critics included, have not been able to change to the extent of one book or one chapter of the Canon, the volume then declared Sacred.

It was after this manner that the Book we call our “Bible” was made up. This Sacred Canon has been carefully conserved.

Other books that certain would have included such as the Apocryphal books, 14 in number—were tested “and found wanting.” They contain some valuable history to which modern writers often refer, but their condemnation and exclusion resulted from known historical errors, wild legends and other internal, but discrediting evidences. All other endeavors to change the Canon by subtracting or adding have equally failed.

Modernism would feign convince us that valuable additions should have been made to this Book had not prejudice and popular opinion kept them from their rightful place between its covers For instance: Horton in lecture pleaded for the great poets, from Homer and Hesiod down to Browning and Walt Whitman, as inspired men. He would also lift to apostolic level, Origen, Irenaeus and Tertullian. He insists that inspiration had not ceased in the days of Athanasius and Augustine; and he seems almost angry that Martin Luther, John Wesley, Frederick Denison Maurice, F. W. Robertson, Macleod Campbell, Thomas Erskine and Horace Bushnell are not recorded as among the prophets. He goes so far as to say—

“Our study of theology, in a sentence, should be, as the term itself implies, a study of the God-word that came in Biblical times, supplemented and completed by the God-word which has been coming ever since.” But alas for the inconsistency and the unScripturalness of such a contention! In the first place these men never claimed to be either spokesmen of God or the amanuenses of His Spirit. In the second place, had they made such claim, Horton himself concedes their inability to make good; for later in the same series of lectures he makes this fatal concession:

“The Bible itself is in so unique and peculiar a sense the Word of God, that, just in proportion as we receive a veritable word from God in other directions, we return to the Bible to find the message there more luminous, more harmonious, more Divine.”

It is a strange freak of un-faith that seeks to glorify the light of a distant star and insist that men should walk therein, and at the same time admit that the sun is still shining in his strength. This new Bible, so-called, of Horton’s, and that of the equally mistaken Wells, when placed beside the Book Divine, would so suffer by comparison as to remind one of the story told of the American girl who was being courted by an Englishman. Her remote cousin was not making the progress that she reckoned desirable, and with her American ingenuity she sought to aid him a bit by saying:

“Mr. Laird, don’t you often have thoughts that you find difficult to express?” To which he answered: “Yes, I do, you know; and awfter I get them expressed I cawn’t help wondering why I went to all that trouble.”

We leave the Modernist to make the application. This conservation of the Canon is extended to the text. The world has never known another book copied so often and with such dogged accuracy as has characterized the multiplications of Scripture—volumes.

We are told that the law of the scribes was, three mistakes, no matter how extensive the parchment, the whole had to be destroyed. We have now in business what we call “check” and “double-check”, and here was a business where even a double-check was only a beginning. Not only every book, every chapter, but every word, yes every letter had to be checked and double-checked, and oftentimes the copy had to be a facsimile of the original. When one makes himself familiar with the Hebrew language and knows how slight the difference between some of its letters—as for instance “R” and “DH”, “W” and “Z”—he faces the painstaking task to which these copyists were subjected; and yet so wonderful was their expert work that the scholarship of the ages has stood astounded at the result; and scholars of no less note than Westcott and Hort have been able to affirm that not one word in a thousand, in the New Testament, was the product of mistake!

“Father of mercies, in Thy Word What endless glory shines!

Forever be Thy name adored For these celestial lines.” THE TRANSLATIONS OF SCRIPTURE

But, we have not yet answered the question How We Got our English Bible? You know, the Bible was not written in the English language, nor was the English spoken at the time of its birth. It came to us by the way of Hebrew. Aramaic and Greek, with a few words only from still older tongues. The Septuagint Version reduced the Old Testament to one tongue. This Version, in the Greek language, involved the work of 70 scholars who, at the order of Ptolemy II, affected this painstaking translation sometime between 285 and 247 B.C. probably about 277. Many were the Jews who, scattered among Greeks, had lost their own language and learned the Hellenistic, and they craved and secured a version of their own Scriptures that they could then read and understand. The Septuagint has been criticized by some as clumsy and inaccurate, but it is doubtless the Version with which Christ Himself was familiar and from which He brought His quotations; and it has been basal for all translations to date. This original translation does not exist, but three world-famed copies—The Vatican, The Sinaitic, and The Alexandrian Manuscripts— are prized possessions. A few years ago the Greek Church was in possession of one, the Roman of another, and the Protestant of the third; but so atheistic did Russia become as to willingly part with her prized possession—The Sinaitic—for the fabulous sum that Protestant believers were willing to pay. When the bloody Bolsheviki reign comes to an end, as it will if the Lord long delay His return, and when Russia—cleansed by the fires of persecution and taught by the practice of “hate” to appreciate the Gospel of “love,”—shall turn to God again, the grief of this loss will be uniform. However, that grief will not be well based since now they have the Bible in far better form, namely in the “tongue wherein every man is born.”

How many and how oft-repeated should be the expressions of gratitude on the part of God’s people over that fact; and how sensible of favor all English speaking people should be, that centuries ago godly men translated the Sacred Scriptures into our, or the English tongue! The King James Version has been a world-benediction.

It is not necessary at this time to go into details of this Version, to trace the endeavors to bring the Bible into the English tongue through the hands of the venerable Bede, the Orders of Alfred the Great, the arduous labors of not less than twenty-two years of John Wycliffe, or the revision of Richard Purvey. Neither need we stop long with William Tyndale who, in the 16th century, faced opposition, poverty and banishment for his translating fervor; nor yet dwell too long upon Coverdale’s transcendent accomplishments. Nor need we expend time on the dire attempts of kings and queens of the Catholic faith to crush its circulation.

If there were time we would like to pay King Edward VI proper compliment for his boyish affection for the Bible, and his favor alike for its multiplication and distribution. But, there is a Version worthy of time and thought, known to us as the King James Version.

Under James I, at the hands of 54 scholars— the best in the land if not in the world—the task was undertaken, and in 1611 the product was published, and even marginal references were adopted. For more than 300 years, therefore, that Version of Scripture, in millions upon millions of books, has gone to every civilized land on earth to carry light to the darkened, hope to the downcast, and life to the spiritually dead! From the standpoint of the English language, there is no book in existence that holds higher place in literature; and from the point of ethics and morals it has known no competitor. Wherever it has gone, clouds of ignorance have lifted and the light of intelligence has shone. Wherever it has been accepted, new men have been the result; and wherever it has been extensively studied, newer and higher civilization has resulted.

“Let everlasting thanks be thine For such a bright display, As makes a world of darkness shine With beams of heavenly day.” But we must not conclude without a word concerning— The Versions of the present.

Like the demons that possessed the man of Gadara, their name is “legion”; and, in the judgment of some of us their multitude is not much less distressing to the souls of men than were the demons to the body of the Gadarene!

Every man and woman in America, who has a fair degree of familiarity with Hebrew and Greek, and who has a flare for possible fame, has seemed to feel the temptation to translate the Bible; and so we have versions out of number.

I shall not take time to pay attention to the Polyglot Bible; it is a buried issue; nor to the Shorter Bible of Kent which is rapidly falling asleep; nor to the Goodspeed translation which never took a far flight; nor the Helen Montgomery edition which will doubtless follow its authoress to the cemetery, nor are we enamored of the Revised Version even, since Modernism utilized it as an opportunity to express at points a new theology which was no theology: and as for the Concordant Version, few people have ever heard of it, and still fewer will ever consent that a word must always mean the same, no matter what the connection employed.

Too many will remember the experience of the Frenchman in America who said:

“Ze language of ze country is so strange; I see a woman on the sidewalk. She have flashy dress, brilliant hat, dog on chain; they call her “fast”. I see a horse; he tied to post. They call him “fast”. I see the train go by the station seexty miles an hour. They call that “fast”. What do you mean by “fast”?

“It is ze same word, but in one case it stands still and in ze other it sweep by.”

Certainly! Only people who are easily duped can ever give consideration to such non-intelligent suggestions as the so-called concordant, but discordant, version. But I strike higher still— The Moffatt Translation makes no particular appeal to me. It may have some virtues; beyond all question it has some vices. Take, for instance, the translation of Luke 23:44-45, where we read—

“By this time it was about twelve o’clock, and darkness covered the whole land till three o’clock, owing to an eclipse of the sun; etc.” Where did he get that phrase—“owing to an eclipse of the sun”? It is nothing else but an attempt to rationalize the miracle; and it is an insult to the scientist who knows that the eclipse of the sun was not due at that time, and to the God, Who darkened the heavens to voice at once His rebuke of the sins of men, His sorrow over His Son’s suffering, and yet to reveal the righteous judgment against sin.

What will be the result of all these multiplied versions—many still in the making? Exactly what Modernism desires — an interrogation as to whether there is any one Book that can be called “The Bible”, a doubt as to whether there can be any Divinity with such a fusilage of puny endeavors.

I do not stand for the King James Version, because I believe that its translators were Divinely inspired but I stand for it because 54 scholarly men—more than 300 years closer to the use of Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic than are the children of this generation, and consequently better equipped by so much to bring the meaning into their own tongue—gave it to us; and I simply cannot imagine the consummate egotism of the present-day individual whose self-conceit is so outstanding as to bring him to believe that his wisdom, at this more remote date outshines the 70!

If I can send you home today to a King James Version of the Bible, whether it be the one from which your fathers and your mothers read, to be made saints—fit for translation, or the newest and latest Oxford output, I am not so much concerned; but I am deeply anxious that you take it from the table, brush the gathering dust from its covers, confess sinfulness in its long neglect, and begin a study that shall never stay until you have gone from Genesis to Revelation!