A literary guide to the Bible: a study of the types of literature present in the Old and New Testaments

Front matter

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'V

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Section II : Characteristics Of Folk- Lore 20

SECTION IIi: FOLK-SONGS. EXAMPLES . 34 SECTION IV : BIBLICAL RIDDLES ... 56 SECTION V: MYTH AND LEGEND . . 62 SECTION VI : MYTH AND LEGEND. EXAM- PLES . , 65

III STORY TELLING 88

SECTION I : THE ART OF STORY TELLING . 88 SECTION II : SHORT STORIES. EXAMPLES . 94 SECTION III: LONGER STORIES ... 97 SECTION IV : FABLES, PARABLES, ALLEGO- RIES, AND PROVERBS 99

SECTION V : FABLES, PARABLES, ALLEGORIES,

AND PROVERBS. EXAMPLES . . . 103

IV HISTORY .109

SECTION I : THE CHARACTER OF HISTORICAL

WRITING 109

SECTION II : EXAMPLES . . . .116

(1) Descriptive History , . , .116

(2) Didactic History 117

(3) Genetic History 118

xi

Xll CHAPTER

CONTENTS

HEBREW POETRY . .

SECTION I : INTRODUCTORY

THE STRUCTURE OF HEBREW

SECTION II

POETRY SECTION III: EXAMPLES (1) Patriotic Poetry .

Early Patriotic Songs; Later Patriotic Songs and Prayers of the People Songs of the Royalty; Dirges, Early and Late.

VI

VII

(2) Nature Lyrics ,

(3) Praise Lyrics

(4) Other Choice Lyrics ^

DRAMATIC LITERATURE .

(1) Dramatic Lyrics .

(2) Dramatic Visions

(3) Dramatic Prophecy

(1) The Book of Job

(2) The Words of Koheleth

(3) Groups of Proverbs

VIII ORATORY

EXAMPLES OF BIBLICAL SPEECHES ESTIMATES OF BIBLICAL SPEECHES SPEECHES WITH WHICH TO COMPARE BIBLICAL MATERIAL ...

IX ESSAY .

EXAMPLES ESTIMATES

BIBLICAL REFERENCES INDEX

THIS

Chapter I INTRODUCTION. THE BIBLE AS LITERATURE

What excuse is there for another text-book upon the Bible and upon the Bible as literature? Have we not been studying the literature of the Bible during all these centuries and, moreover, if we study it simply as literature are we not missing its greatest mission as a book of religion ?

This book proposes definite answers to these questions and the reader and student is invited to consider these answers carefully, not superficially with the assumption that of course we appreciate the literature when we study it as history or when we study it for its religious lessons, nor on the other hand with the assumption that when we consider especially the beauty and art of expression we are leading the student away from the essential meaning intended to be conveyed. There are advocates of "devotional" Bible study who look askance at the literary study as if one were hindered from realizing the sweet fragrance of a rose by admiring the beauty of its structure and the exquisite tints of its petals; likewise there are those who brush aside the importance of an appreciation of the unique art of a race for what they consider the more essential foundations of its history, as if in the total impress of personality upon personality, of race upon race, of God upon man, the skeleton were more important than the features, the history of the evolution of the eye than its engaging fascination in sparkle and humor, in tears and pathos.

Now without any question spiritual realities count most, but it is also unquestionably true that the way human beings awake to spiritual realities, to the clarifying visions which may be seen by each one of us as well as by the first seers, is through the fascination of something attractive, through the manner of expression of eye, of hand, of thought, which is the revelation of unsounded depths beneath. The great personalities of the world have something characteristic, fascinating, and alluring about their expression. Il partakes of the mysterious because it is always leading us farther in and showing us deeper places and broader expanses without exhausting the full reservoir of life. This is equally true of the great races which have impressed the world with something unique and characteristic. Great world masterpieces are simply the expression of such individual or racial genius. The reservoir must be deep to attract and hold the world by the movement upon the waters ; but that movement, that expression, attracts attention and promises a great reward of investigation. If it cannot keep its hold after the first fascination is over, then it must be taken for what it is worth, a mere surface attraction, an expression that is merely temporary, not immortal; for great thought demands great art. Moreover, the converse is likewise true ; where great art is found, great revelations may be expected. It is a false conception that an appreciation of art and beauty detracts from the realization of the fundamental revelation ; on the contrary it is the open door to such revelation. Moreover, the revelation itself cannot be fully appreciated apart from its beautiful expression. Possibly this fact, that the expressions of the Bible are the avenues to great revelations of truth, is more of a proof for the inspiration of Scripture than any dogmatic argument has ever been. Possibly here is to be found for our present day the more natural approach to a belief in the inspired word of God. We are not, therefore, missing the religious import of the Bible by studying its literary expression. On the contrary we are opening our eyes to perceive more truly its real significance.

INTRODUCTION 17

Granting the value then of an appreciation of the literary art of the Bible, is there still an excuse for a text-book upon the Bible as literature? Do we not spoil its beauty and its effect by analysis? The truth is that as our Bible has come down to us through the medium of manuscripts and translations often poor and very much defaced and obscured, the original freshness, vigor, and spontaneity has been so incrusted that modern scholarship has done a very great service in trying to get back to the first form of expression. Results are now available for scholars, and there are many books already at hand for the beginner in the study of the English Bible which help materially in getting hold of the history of the Hebrew race, and of their ideas. But there are very few books which treat primarily of the appreciation of the literature as literature. Even those which adopt the title of literature prove upon examination to be studies of the history of the literature rather than of the appreciation of literary types. There is a need just now for a text-book for the beginner in the study of the English Bible which will help him so to realize the art and beauty of Biblical literature that he can read it along with other world masterpieces and understand its excellencies clearly and intelligently. For with all our pride of culture and education it is a fact that the Bible is losing its place as a classic to be read and understood. It is being regarded by the ordinary young person as the fetich of certain sects, carried under the arm to Sunday School or Church as a religious protection from harm, but as nothing real in every-day life. The present-day youth is so woefully ignorant of the names, phrases, and incidents in the Bible that the meaning of references to them in English literature is quite hidden. If the Bible is ever to take its place as one of the great masterpieces in the world of literature it must be studied in such a way that the high school or college teacher can use it side by side with other literatures, assuming a knowledge of its points of excellence, its art and beauty, compared with other masterpieces.

As we have already seen, there are many kinds of Bible study. It may be studied as history; as a religious guide pure and simple or theologically; it may be studied to discover the sociological truths which come to light in viewing the different stages of society through which the Hebrews passed ; and it may be studied as literature, to discover the art and beauty of expression which was the medium through which the great ideas, the spiritual revelations, of a very unique and gifted race found their way into the world. The last mentioned involves a certain historical background but it is different from a survey of the history of the literature. That traces the development of a literature, studies the influences which brought about such a development and the kind of men and women who produced it; the thorough study of the history of any literature would include a familiarity with what was written and an appreciation of it. But historical surveys very often stop short of that; a study of the preexilic, exilic, and post-exilic periods of Hebrew history often stops short of an appreciation of Isaiah's Vineyard Song or the Thunder-storm Psalm, and a knowledge of the importance of the patriarchal period in Hebrew racial development sometimes leaves the student completely unaware of Hebrew folk-poetry, that there was indeed a "Song of the Sword" or a "Song of the Well."

Now in order to begin to understand any literature from this last standpoint one must take a type such as folk-lore, story, or poetry and stay with it long enough to put oneself as nearly as possible into the feelings and state of mind of that group of authors. One must single out certain illustrations and study them so carefully that their delicate shades of beauty and forceful devices for conveying meaning shall not escape one. One should also compare these illustrations with masterpieces of the same type In other literatures in order to realize the peculiar power of a racial genius.

To furnish a guide for such a study of the Bible in a brief and simple way is the attempt of this book.

Chapter II FOLK-LORE SECTION I : INTRODUCTORY — FOLK-LORE IN THE BIBLE

To those who have been accustomed to view the Bible simply as a book of rehgion it is sometimes a surprise to realize that we have imbedded in these records the remains of a very early literary expression which was no more religious than any songs sung by any primitive people expressing the mere joy of living or the thrill of discovering something new or exultation over a victory in battle. It was all religious in the sense that primitive people lived intimately with their gods and did not self-consciously analyze their thoughts and feelings and then wrap up a certain section of them and label them religious. So with the Hebrews, their God had something to do with all they did, with the sunshine and the crops, with the thunderstorm and the earthquake, with a cloudburst when it helped them to gain a victory over their enemy, and with the gift of a well of water in a parched and weary land.

To the student who is accustomed to view the Bible as a collection of documents recording the development of a race and their growth in religious consciousness and ideals from very primitive beginnings to a very lofty climax, it is a great joy to discover that the art and beauty, the spontaneity and playfulness found in the literatures of other peoples is not lacking here. The Bible is not a book of religious homilies and moral precepts only. It is alive and sparkling ; it is free and untrammded ; one feels its vitality and spring so that even though born in this sophisticated, self-conscious age one can imagine himself back in that youthful time, dancing with the children, singing in the vineyard, or piping to the flocks. Let the reader compare, for example, our Scriptures with the Mohammedan Bible, the Koran, and he soon exclaims that there is no comparison. The intellectually curious, the student of theology and ethics, may enjoy the Koran, but think of the way little children, and restless, adventurous boys, and courageous youths, as well as mature men and women have been held by the charm and spirit of the Bible stories and poetry.

In the early literature of every nation are found harvest songs, hunting songs, and battle songs. The poetic instinct seems born in men, the love of music, the sense of rhythm. They could do everything better to the rhythm of song, their daily work, and their fighting, as well as their play. To its accompaniment they marched in better step, swung their sickles with more spirit, and trod the grapes in the winepress more joyously. The Old Testament offers no exception to this universal tendency in literature. Here we find labor songs, dirges, wedding songs, and marching songs which make it clear that Hebrew literature, like every other great literature, was born from a feeling for the rhythms of life. Human beings are built upon the rhythmic plan and the moment a literature loses that hold and drops into a purely prosaic style, that moment its greatness is gone, for it has ceased to be true to life. Hebrew literature is great literature and one of its most marked characteristics is its rhythmical beauty. As our older versions of the Bible are printed, it is often difficult to perceive the poetic form ; but the more recent scholars are translating the text with greater accuracy and more sympathetic understanding of the original meaning, and printing as poetry the fragments of folk-songs as well as longer poems.

SECTION II : CHARACTERISTICS OF FOLK-LORE

If we are to recognize true folk-lore in Biblical literature we must first understand the marks of folk-lore in any literature. These we can know, for through close attention to a comparative study of all races and languages available scholars have recognized at least a dozen characteristics of this first kind of literary expression.

Although folk-lore is primitive in the sense of being first in the development of any tribal or racial expressions, it is not all ancient, for there still exist primitive tribes hardly developed beyond the first stages among which folk-lore can be observed to-day in its active, living expression ; the songs can be heard, the accompanying dances can be watched, the stories can be traced back as far as possible to their origin. In our own country we have had two races that have yielded us very interesting material, the Negroes and the Indians. Much of the primitive expression of feeling brought over from Africa by the slaves was incorporated into the negro songs of slave days, and many fascinating, imaginative tales of the ancestors of our Indians have been preserved in such a collection as that of the California tribes by Jeremiah Curtin. Yet it must be noted that within the memory of people now living negroes have ceased to put into their folk-songs the same spirit, the same tragic pathos of tone, the same rhythms, even, which they gave voice to in slave days. The present generation, living under different conditions, is more sophisticated, has a different spirit ; imitation can never produce the identical expression of the original. And this is quite apparent also among the Indians. One must hark back to the impressions gained by our first settlers from tribes and chiefs unspoiled by contact with civilization to get the right idea of the inherent nobility, originality, and genius of the native Indian, which civilization has diluted and submerged. To get back to the original as far as possible, to seek out the remote corners of the country, in the case of both Indians and Negroes, in order to find groups which still express the feelings of their ancestors, not from memory but as a part of their own life, this is the work of scholars through which they have discovered in the making the characteristics of the most primitive literature.

Now if we see the difficulty in such a restoration of folklore when we are so near to the living expression of it as in the case of these two peoples mentioned, how much greater is the task when ancient history is involved, when the remnants of such traditions have come down to us only in ancient records which have suffered terribly at the hands of copyists and translators, when even the principles upon which a very ancient national poetry was built were discovered comparatively recently, and when that poetry was for long translated as prose into the foreign English tongue. Some people look up with surprise when they are told that there is folk-lore in the Bible. If so, why have we not known it long ago, for has not the Bible been pored over more than any other printed book? The answer is quite evident; although we owe very much to scholarship past and present, the Bible is a mine with rich veins scarcely tapped even though it has been a sacred book for centuries. There is no better exercise for our imagination than to attempt to put ourselves back some thousands of years in time and feel primitive feelings with an ancient race, and we find as we do it and as we compare those expressions in folk-song and story with the folk-lore of more modern tribes that there is a common element running through it all, that human nature in its development and its essential expressions has not changed very much after all.

Let us see, then, what these, common characteristics are which unmistakably reveal a body of folk-poetry and legend, even though imbedded in a mass of more recent literature.

1, Folk-lore is spontaneous. There is none of the conscious art of the schools about it. For this very reason it is a true revelation of the fundamental characteristics of human nature. In this connection we note with interest that there is "more of the spontaneity of childhood in our Bible stories than in the folk-lore of any other people."^ This naivete involves sympathy and faith. More highly trained people stop to analyze a situation or to "size-up" a person before yielding to the impulse of sympathy or granting full faith. But primitive people do not know how to analyze. They simply observe and feel and then they

1 Houghton, Louise Seymour, Hebrew Life and Thought.

describe. Neither do they beat about the bush in their descriptions in order to save the feeUngs of some one else. They are very direct and pointed in the words they use, quite savage at times. With a perfectly natural exuberance of feeling they express their delight at a new discovery, giving vent to their anger at some obstacle in their way with the same vehemence. They are untamed.

2. Not having learned restraint, early peoples could not therefore learn the art of teaching or restraining others. Consequently the second characteristic of folk-lore is its lack of the didactic or moralizing element. Folk-lore shows no desire to point out motives or to teach others how to appreciate the facts revealed. Although observations are made and discoveries recorded, although lessons may even be apparent under the guise of story, events, not the interpretation of events, stand as the main thing. The one who listens to the song may take it or leave it, that matters not to the singer, for he treats the world as the world treats him : the world is here, that is all, and the singers are simply voicing their delight in being a part of it. Like the birds of the air, they must sing because it is their nature, not because they have a mission to help poor souls to regard the world in a different light. Neither are these singers as yet charmed with the art of charming. They probably do not know that they are charming. They are not trying to do anything, they are simply living. The consciousness of fascination about them and the attempt to imitate this fascination and to teach others to do so comes much later when art for art's sake and poetry for poetry's sake emerge in order to reproduce a charm sophisticated nature is in danger of losing. These primitive singers are quite artless.

3. There is always rhythm in folk-lore. Primitive people are always singers. It is simply the expression of the rhythm in life. Singing may be an art when civilization overtakes us, but In the beginning It is the natural outburst of this fundamental fact of all nature, that it is rh)^hmical. Literary expression was first of all merely the attempt of the awakening soul to bear witness to this fact. A feeling for the rhythms of life is an especial characteristic of Hebrew literature throughout all its periods even down to the more artificial stages. It is really a part of the Hebrew genius, for everywhere is found, in prose as well as in poetry, a certain balance of thought and very decided balances of feeling; pathos gives vividness to joy, heavy-heartedness to light-heartedness, struggle to peace.

4. A fourth characteristic of folk-lore is the fact that it is a communal affair, a group expression. The entire body of the people is swayed by common feelings and gives voice as a whole to those feelings. Folk-lore is "of the people" but not "for the people," because as has been said already, there is not the least attempt to teach or to convert. Because it is thus a communal thing no one knows or probably ever did know the authorship of any particular song. It belongs to the public and is truly a public production.^ In our day and generation we must remember if we are to appreciate that early time, that individualism did not then exist. The tribe was the unit of life, thought, action, and feeling; it moved as one; if there should be any one who was too individualistic to belong to that unit, swift death was meted out, as witness the punishment that befell Achan according to the account that comes down to us in the book of Joshua. The "Song of the Sword" illustrates well the communal origin of a folk-song. The tribe discovered the value of cutting instruments; the tribe broke out, therefore, with a jubilant exultation over the discovery. To-day the same wave of group discovery appears when different inventors stumble upon the same thing simultaneously. And the impulse to a common expression of delight appears in the common thread to be found in the poetry of any particular period. But in primitive times all the conditions were against even temporary individual claims to ownership of ideas or expressions, even though an individual may have been responsible for the initial impulse.

2 This opinion is the one most students of folk-lore maintain. For the opposite view that folk-lore is the product of the imagination of certain indiriduals, see Louise Pound, Poetic Origins and the Ballad.

5. A fifth mark of this early type of literature is that it was doubtless orally transmitted. Long before literary men existed in the sense of adepts at writing, literature was in the making. We ought to have a word that would cover all verbal expressions, written or spoken, for the word literature connotes the knowledge of letters and reproduces at once in our minds the image of books. "Spoken EngHsh" is being revived in our schools simply for the reason that spontaneity and fire of expression is in danger of being altogether lost in our bookishness. Yet "Spoken English" is only the art of reproducing effectively what has been written and does not cover at all what we mean by that original act of composition apart entirely from pen and paper, and the sight of the words. It was sound which was the guide in those early days, not sight ; hence the music and rhythm. The ear was the organ brought into requisition first as prime director of the art. However the eye, too, served well as a handmaid, as is evident in our next point.

6. The dayice almost always accompanies folk-song. This brings out the rhythm, while the refrain, which we shall see was almost always present, lends itself to the dance. Here is where the eye comes in as a most useful complement to the ear. Yet the rhythm of the dance depends pri^ marily upon motion; blind people can dance because they feel the rhythm rather than see it and the era of folk-poetry has had many a blind bard. The sight of a folkdance is a charming thing especially to the observer who is not in the motion but outside it looking on, yet the observer is likewise having his own sense of rhythm stimulated through his ear and his imagination. However, we must remember that in the days of real folk-song all the people took part, joining in together, except the old or the sick; it was a communal affair, a living thing indeed. As we look back upon it now from a distance we catch it in the making, not in a hermit's cell or a writer's retreat but with a crowd of singers and dancers. "Folk-song is song alive."

7. Without doubt folk-lore was also a growth, that is, when the first rendition of a song or stanza was heard, something was added. Soon another couplet or another stanza attached itself to the first. We sometimes imitate this folk-song process when in our games a group is given the task of making up a poem in a few minutes. Some bright mind starts off and soon line after line is added. Probably it is not very good poetry and it is always done with a humorous sense of the impossibility of compressing into a brief moment a process that naturally takes time and thought. But after all it is a revival of an ancient, primitive group instinct in the making of song. The complete folk-song is not to our mind always logically complete, that is, perfect as the schools would have made it. There are likely to be many omissions and there is often a sudden leap in thought and change in style as from narrative to dialogue, the same kind of a leap which one finds that intuitive rather than logical people always make. The process of development of folk-lore may even show, after a while, a point where individual expression comes in, where the form may well be attributed to a single author. Yet that author undoubtedly draws upon the common fund of material in much the same manner as the group did before him. He is still unconscious of his art. He may be a bard but he is of the people and not very different from all the rest.

8. Folk-poetry is objective, not subjective. It is not reflective, neither is it sentimental although full of sentiment. This is quite in accord with what has been said before, that primitive people simply observe and do not teach, that they do not analyze, and that their feelings are perfectly natural and wholesome with no morbid distortions and suppressions, which turn true sentiment into a sickly sentimentality. They express their feelings freely and frankly, but they do not discuss them ; the feelings themselves never become a matter of interest and speculation. Thus their language remains concrete while they leave to later times the invention of those abstract terms that separate the heart from the objects of its affection and turn them into objects of mental apprehension only.

9. The faculties brought especially into play in folk-lore are memory and imagination. The use of memory is shown in the fact that recitative is one of the forms of early folklore. Unquestionably this tends to keep past events in mind ; that is, it is an aid to memory, doubtless unconsciously adopted. We have an example of this in the snatch of a folk-song given in Numbers 21 : 14, 15, regarding which Mrs. Houghton makes the following comment. "It would seem probable that the entire story of the wilderness journey and the conquest of the district east of the Jordan was preserved in a series of ballads of this sort, perhaps for the same reason that the list of the kings of England has been cast into doggerel verse in 'Columbus was a sailor brave'."

Let us compare this device for remembering the tribal history of the Hebrews with our own device in English and we shall see the common element.

And the valleys of Arnon

And the cliffs of the valleys

That descend to the dwellings of Ar,

And lean on the shoulder of Moab.*

Compare

The Story of America in Verse By Peter Parley

Columbus was a sailor brave,

The first that crossed th' Atlantic wave,

In fourteen hundred and ninety-two,

He came far o'er the ocean blue.

Where ne'er a ship had sailed before,

And found a wild and savage shore

Where naked men in forests prowled

And bears and panthers roamed and howled.*

The great difference in these recitatives which strikes us first is that the English verse seems more rhythmical. This is the result of two facts which we shall understand better

3 See translation in Houghton, Louise S., Hebrew Life and Thought.

4 For two more verses of this quaint poem see Clifton Johnson, Old Time Schools and School-hooks, p. 252.

when we come to study Hebrew poetry more in detail. The first is that there is in Hebrew poetry hardly any dependence upon rhyme to produce musical effects and that the meter is the meter of accent rather than of number of syllables. The second reason is the very imperfect rendering of the music of the individual Hebrew words in a translation.

Now not only was recitative a means that early people used for remembering past events, but there was often a device within the song itself to help the memory. This was repetition and repetition in two forms. The first of these is the refrain, in which Biblical poetry abounds, one of the chief devices discovered by primitive people to help the memory as well as to aid in the rhythmical effect. Deborah's Song in Judges 5:2,9, a very ancient war ballad, gives us a good example of this. Psalm 8: 1,9 shows excellently how a later poet built his exquisite nature poem upon this early form. The second way in which repetition very frequently occurs is in the use over and over again of the same word, but so skillfully and rhythmically as to avoid monotony. Here is found one of the differences between early and late Hebrew poetry. In some of the late liturgical psalms, constructed quite artificially, the repetition of lines and words becomes exceedingly monotonous, as in Psalm 136, for example. Compare with this the effective repetition of words in Judges 5: 12 and I Samuel 2:1, or in the mourning song of David over Absalom in II Samuell8:33