What is the Bible?

Front matter

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WHAT IS THE BIBLE?

Preface

A Book which finds a place not only in every church, but in every humble home, and which is more highly and more generally prized than any other book in Christendom, and justly so, because it stands at the fountain head of our religion and of much that is best in our civilization, is certainly a book about which we may suppose that all desire to be intelligent ; — and intelligent, not only in the small and meagre way of knowing by heart a good many texts that it contains, but also in the larger and more worthy way, of understanding the book as a whole — whence it came, how it came, from whom it came, under what circumstances it came, what it is, what relation it bears, if any, to other great Sacred Books of the race.

Upon all of these subjects a great deal of new and very valuable light has been poured by recent scholarship, particularly the scholarship of Germany, Holland and England. But as yet this light is shut up for the most part in numerous large and expensive works, a considerable portion of them in a foreign language, and either not yet translated or else translated but very recently, and in such form as to be accessible only

6 PREFACE.

to scholars. It is exceedingly difficult, if not quite impossible, to find any treatment of these subjects that is at once brief, clear, comprehensive, unvvarped by theological bias, and in any true sense abreast with the learning and best thought of the time.

For those who have access to the larger and more elaborate works, and have leisure and inclination to read them, this little book is not primarily designed. To such its chief value, if it has any value, will be as a sort of review or condensation, of knowledge which they perhaps have already gained by the expenditure of much time and labor. But the present age is one in which there are so many things to be done and so much to be known, that few persons can take time to go to original sources or to wade through exhaustive treatises. The majority must have information brought to them in a concise, sharp form. To take a single step in the direction of supplying such information, concerning a book which men read more and yet really know less about, than they know about almost any other book, is the aim of the following pages. I ought, perhaps, to add a word as to the origin of the present volume, at least in the form it now assumes.

Early in the autumn of 1877, I published a little book, about one-third or one-half as large as the present volume, bearing the title — " The Bible: What is it ? " In less than six weeks the edition (1000 copies) was exhausted ; although it was not

PREFACE. 7

advertised, and was put upon the market only in Chicago and a few small towns outside. Since that time the demand for the book has been constant, not only from the particular localities where it was for a few weeks on sale, but from distant parts of the country where stray copies of it chanced to go. In response to this demand (which I have been unable to supply because the book was not stereotyped) and in deference to requests from many friends in my own city and at a distance, whose judgments I cannot but respect, who have assured me that the book meets a real want of the time, I have prepared this new edition, — re-written, embracing a discussion of many important points not touched in the other, and containing quite copious Notes and References for the benefit of any readers who may desire to know more fully the grounds for statements made and conclusions drawn, or who may wish to pursue further their investigation of subjects or points here treated too briefly.

J. T. S.

Chicago, III., 1878.

Contents

CHAPTER I. — Origin and growth of the various great Sacred Books or Bibles of the world. Sacred Books natural and necessary products of the human mind. Analogies between the historical development of our own and other great Sacred Books. Religion a larger and richer thing than Jew, Christian or Pagan has understood pp. 13- 40

CHAPTER II. — A more particular account of the origin and growth of our own Bible ; the men who wrote it; the time when they wrote it ; how they came to write it ; its relation to the times and the race that produced it ; its progressive character ; the changes that have taken place in it in the various ages ; how it came to be elevated to the rank of sacredness. The Apocryphal and the lost books of the Old Testament ; the Apocryphal books of the New Testament ; the value of these, and their relation to the Bible. The formation and final settlement of the Scripture Canon pp. 43-93

CHAPTER III.— Theory of Infallibility of our Bible ; bearing of the preceding facts upon it ; additional difficulties in the way of the theory ; difficulties seriously increase with the growth of science and scholarship. " Harmonizing " the Bible with Science. Are there contradictions in the Bible ? Does the Bible contain immoral teachings, or representations of God that are degrading ? Views of the Bible that drive men away from religion. Something better for the Bible than the

Chapter I

ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE GREAT SACRED BOOKS OR BIBLES OF THE WORLD.

w Prophets who have been since the world began."

Saint Luke.

" In every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with him."

Saint Peter.

" Our own religion takes a place not distinct from, but among, all religions, past or present. Its relation to them, is not that they are earth born, while it alone is divine, but it is the relation of one member of a family to other members, who * are all brothers, having one work, one hope and one All-Father.' "

Edward Clodd.

" Every race above the savage has its Bible. Each of the great religions of mankind has its Bible. These books contain the highest and deepest thoughts respecting man's relations with the Infinite above him, with his fellows around, and with the mystery of his own inward being. In them are found the purest expressions of faith and hope, the finest aspirations after truth, the sweetest sentiments of confidence and trust, hymns of praise, proverbs of wisdom, readings of the moral law, interpretations of Providence, studies in the workings of destiny, rules for worship, directions for piety, prayers, prophesies, sketches of saintly character, narratives of holy lives, lessons in devoutness, humility, patience and charity."

O. B. Frothingham.

CHAPTER I.

Origin and Growth of the Great Sacred Books or Bibles of the World.

The Bible as a Sacred Book. To the question, What is our Bible ? scholarship makes, among others, this broad answer : It is one of the Sacred Books of the world ; or, in other words, it is one of the six or eight great Bibles of mankind. The verdict is well nigh or quite unanimous that, taken all in all, it is decidedly superior to any of the others. But, however much it may tower above the rest, it is clearly one of a catalogue that includes them as well as it.

What are the other great Bibles of mankind ? They are

i. The Vedas of the Brahmans ;

2. The Tripitaka of the Buddhists ;

3. The Zend Avesta of the Parsees or Persians ;

4. The Chinese Sacred Books of Confucius ;

5. The Chinese Sacred Book of Laou-tsze ;

6. The Mohammedan Koran.

There have been, and are, other Sacred Books in

the world, besides these ; these, however, are probata)

WHA T IS THE BIBLE ?

bly the most important — at least the most important that have come down to our day. Not to speak of the less notable sacred Books at present in existence, it is now known that the ancient Egyptians possessed sacred volumes ; and one of them — the Book of the Dead — has been brought to light, if not entire, at least in considerable part. In Babylon and Assyria, too, important fragments of what may be called a Sacred Literature, have been discovered. The Greeks have not left us anything which we can properly call a sacred book. The poems of Homer are great national epics, but they have never received that " general recognition or sanction, which alone/' as Max Muller says, " can impart a sacred or canonical character." Whatever the Celts, the Germans and the Slaves may have possessed of sacred traditions about their gods and heroes, having been handed down by oral tradition chiefly, has perished beyond all hope of recovery. Some portion of the Eddas alone give us an idea of what the religious and heroic poetry of the Scandinavians may have been. So that I speak with sufficient accuracy, perhaps, when I name as the more important Sacred Books or Bibles of the world — the Brahman Bible, the Buddhist Bible, the Persian or Zoroastrian Bible, the two Chinese Bibles, the Mohammedan Bible ; and, added to these, the Jewish Bible (our Old Testament), and the Christian Bible (our Old and New Testaments).

ORIGIN OF SACRED BOOKS. 15

Sacred Books that arise anonymously, and out of a back-ground of Legend. — Sacred Books or Bibles seem to come into being naturally and inevitably. Almost every people, as soon as they begin to have a literature at all, have a Bible, and it comes about somewhat in this way : In the early times of a people, before they have a literature and before they have writing, there are tales like our nursery tales, and stories and legends about extraordinary persons and events, which in one way or another get into existence. The most notable and striking of these will be told from generation to generation, from family to family, from tribe to tribe, and spreading far and wide will often become in the course of many ages the heritage of a whole nation. As all men are naturally religious, and as almost all in primitive conditions of society are warlike, these tales and legends will assume, quite prominently, either a warlike or a religious character. And as rude instruments of music are invented, and as the people attain to the ability to sing or chant, these legends and tales will assume, more or less, metrical forms. Hence come heroic ballads, war songs and religious hymns.

When at length the people arrive at that condition of civilization in which writing makes its appearance, it is, of course, these heritages of the past, these hymns, ballads, legends, and tales, together with accounts of religious rites, and expressions of religious worship, that naturally are embalmed in writ ing first. These, because they come down from revered ancestors, and have the halo of a shadowy past upon them, are naturally looked upon as peculiarly sacred. The more religious of these become naturally the first germ of the future Bible. As ages go on, other writings come into being of one kind and another, some of which are of necessity religious or semi-religious. By a sort of natural selection the best of these, or such as meet with most popular favor, or are most in harmony with the religious feeling and sentiment of the people, are preserved, and grow in honor ; while the rest sink into obscurity or pass away altogether. These that have thus been preserved and lifted up into honor, as time passes away, grow venerable, and by-and-by are added to the earlier Sacred Literature ; and thus the Bible grows. These additions may be few or many according to circumstances. But at last there comes a time, as a result of national disaster, or the stagnation of intellectual and religious life, or for m some other cause, when a line gets , drawn, and the Sacred Book gets sealed up. Anything written at any point of time on this side the line is not true Bible. Such is in brief the history of the origin of one class of Sacred Books or Bibles.

Sacred Books that originate in a Man. — In the case of another class, the starting-point is a man. A

ORIGIN OF SACRED BOOKS. 17

great religious teacher makes his appearance among a people, makes a profound impression, inaugurates a new religious movement, or, if you please, a new religion. It is entirely natural that a new Bible should come into being as a result. His followers of course desire to preserve an account of his life, and a record of his teachings. If he himself writes a book or a series of books, this or these will constitute the Bible, or at least the leading and most important part of the Bible. If, however, he does not leave behind anything written by himself, then, naturally, followers and admirers of him write out and preserve a record of his deeds and words as best they can, and these will constitute the Bible or the beginning of it. As Bibles that have thus had their origin in a man, we name of course the two Bibles of China, which sprung from Confucius and Laou-tsze ; the Buddhist Bible, which sprung from Sakya-muni, or Buddha ; the Koran, which came from Mahomet ; and the New Testament, which is the outcome of the life of Jesus.

With reference to all the gre.at Bibles of the world, in whichever of these two ways they may have had their origin, several things are to be said.

I. Time brings Sacredness. — All great Sacred Books, so far as we are able to find out, have acquired their peculiar sacredness, for the most part, by age. They might have been much prized at first, or they might not ; but all thought of putting them in a category by themselves, as Sacred Books, was, as a rule, absent at first, and only came in after times and by slow degrees. As they grew old they grew sacred. As men passed on away from the times and circumstances of their origin, they came by degrees to think of that origin as supernatural. The reverence that began to surround them was the halo of antiquity.

The tendency of the human mind is always and everywhere much the same ; the individual thinks of the years of his childhood as golden years ; the nation or race thinks of the age of its childhood as a golden age. Most peoples of the past have either worshipped their ancestors, or at least have thought of their ancestors as in some way more than human. Institutions, or customs, or traditions, or writings, or heritages of any kind that have descended through many generations, have invariably tended to become sacred in the eyes of those to whom they have fallen. Particularly has this always been the case in the more fixed and less progressive civilizations of the East, where originated the great Bibles of the world. Hardly one of these Bibles, indeed hardly *one of the writings or fragments of which any Bible is made up, seems to have been regarded as in any true sense sacred when it first came into existence. What the fathers prized, the children venerated, and the children's children lifted up into the miraculous and the divine,

It would be interesting and instructive to take up,

GROWTH OF SACRED BOOKS.

in turn, several of the great Bibles mentioned, and trace in detail the steps, as modern scholarship has been able to discover them, by which they advanced from the position of merely good and highly prized books to the position of Sacred Books. But this the scope of our essay will not allow us to do with reference to any except our own Bible. Suffice it to say that with some of them this advance was very slow, and took hundreds of years. In the case of the Vedas and and Zend Avesta it appears to have taken many hundreds of years — as is also the case with at least some parts of our own Bible. (See Chapter II.)

In regard to our Old Testament, as is well known, the idea of sacredness attached first to the Pentateuch, or the " Five Books of Moses," or the " Law," as it was called. And the sacredness of even this seems to have been something very shadowy and intangible for a long time. The part of the Old Testament called by the Jews "The Prophets" came next to be regarded as sacred ; while all that part then known as " Hagiogra£>ha," or " Chetubim," and including such books as the Psalms, and Proverbs, and Job, which are generally held to-day in higher esteem than any other of the Old Testament books, did not come to be regarded as really sacred much before the time of Christ. Indeed, at the time of Christ; all this part of the Old Testament was ranked much lower in authority, or sacredness than the rest.

As to the New Testament writings, the Epistles seem to have come to be regarded as sacred, or authoritative, considerably earlier than the Gospels or the Acts. But for a long time — certainly for two centuries — the New Testament writings were none of them looked upon by the Christian church as equally sacred and authoritative with the Old Testament. And at least three or four centuries passed away before it was decided, more than in part, which particular ones, of the large number of writings produced within a century or two after the death of Jesus, should be included in the New Testament canon — that is to say, should be regarded as sacred — and which should be cast aside. But this subject of the formation of our own Scripture canon will come up for more extended notice further on.

2. Fictitious perfection : facing backward. — Another thing that may be said of all the various Sacred Books of the world, is, that just as soon and just in so far as any people have come to regard any book as sacred, they have begun to be blind to its faults, to take it as an ultimatum, and to be unwilling to seek for, or even to receive, anything as by any possibility better than it, in any particular. Religion is always an advancing and growing thing before it produces for itself a Sacred Book, and especially during the years or the centuries in which it is producing for itself a Sacred Book. But that Book once completed, as a

RELIGION PETRIFIED, 2 r

rule religion straightway ceases to advance or grow, Thereafter its eyes are not turned forward but backward. Everything henceforth must be estimated as good or bad according as it does or does not agree with the teaching of the Book.

Curious illustrations of this are abundant. For example : In early times the use of metals was unknown, and consequently the knives which the priests of a certain religion used in connection with certain of their rites, of necessity had to be of stone. Later, when metal had come into use, we should naturally suppose the crude stone knife would give place to a better knife of metal. Not so, however ! The knife originally used was of stone ; nothing else therefore would ever do in any future time but a stone knife. The fact that the Book had grown to be regarded as sacred had petrified the religion it taught — had cut off the possibility of future progress and improvement, — had made sacred every crudeness, every imperfection, every childish rite or ceremony, as well as every false doctrine, which but for the notion of a sacred and faultless Book the people in due time would have outgrown.

Thus it is that in India a single text of the Vedas (probably misinterpreted, at that), has resulted in the immolation of vast numbers of widows on the funeral piles of their husbands. Thus, too, it is, that we see many a religious rite practised, and many an absurd

22 WHA T IS THE BIBLE t

doctrine believed to-day in Christendom, which long ago would have been laid aside but for the notion of a Book that is sacred, and whose every word, therefore, must be accepted, and whose lightest injunction must be carried out to the letter, as long as time lasts. Men can't get away from the stone knife. This seems to be the reason why one of the largest of the Christian sects in this country is so insistent upon performing the rite of Christian baptism in exactly the mode in which they conceive it to have been performed in Judea eighteen hundred years ago. The difference in times, habits of the people, climate, makes no difference ; at the time the Book cry stallized into sacredness, baptism seems to have been practiced generally in a certain form ; and so it must be practiced in the same precise form to-day — even if a hole has to be cut through the ice in a river to make that form possible. It is the stone knife over again.

We have here, too, an explanation of the strange fact, that so many excellent Christian people in this country only a little while ago defended slavery as something good and right. It happened that the people from whom the Old Testament part of our Sacred Book came, held slaves, and, in common with most other nations in that early age of the world, thought it right so to do. The centuries that have passed since that time have carried the world forward to the point where all the leading nations now see plainly that

THE PAST FETTERING THE PRESENT slavery is wrong. But the fact that the Sacred Book sanctioned slavery blinded many eyes. Instead of asking what was right, men and women asked what the Sacred Book taught : which was only equivalent to asking what was supposed to be right by a people of much lower civilization than ours, two or three thousand years ago, at the time the Book crystallized into sacredness. This was a fearful mistake, which resulted in arraying tens of thousands of as conscientious and kind-hearted people as the world ever saw, on the side of as dark and cruel, and in its spirit unchristian, an institution as has disgraced our modern world. Such is a specimen of the evils that necessarily come from going back into the past and taking a book written in an age long gone by, and for an age long gone by, and setting it up as a standard for the present age — as the various peoples of the world have set up their Sacred Books or Bibles as standards for all time.

3. Sacred Books tolerate no Rivals. — Another thing seems to be common with nearly all the great Sacred Books of the world, or rather with the believers in nearly all these books ; and that is, that, just as soon as any one of these books comes to be set up as sacred, or as a Bible, it is from that time forward regarded by its adherents as the only Bible, and all the other Sacred Books of the world are cast out as false. In other words, the process of canonization of a book, if I may so say, or of lifting it up from a merely good

WHAT IS THE BIBLE?

book into a Sacred Book or Bible, seems as a rule to be a process of degradation or condemnation of all other books and religions. And so the Buddhist has ever been the bitter foe of the Brahman, and the Mohammedan of the Buddhist, and the Christian of the Mohammedan. Whereas, the evident truth is, each of the world's Bibles contains a great deal that is good, with more or less that is of no value, if not positively bad. Each religion has divine elements in it, as well as elements that are very undivine, and it is a great pity that the eyes of men should be blinded to this fact. It is not only a great pity that the adherents of other Bibles and religions of the world should be blinded to this fact as regards our Christian Scriptures and religion, but it is also a pity that we should be blinded to the same fact as regards scriptures and religions which are not Christian.

4. Reading Between the Lines. — Another thing common to all of the world's great Sacred Book is, that as time goes on and the people who accept them grow to larger knowledge and better conceptions of truth than were possible in the earlier ages which produced the books, the adherents of these books always develop a marvellous facility for explaining away contradictions and inaccuracies and things which the increase of knowledge has shown not to be true, and for reading into the books in a thousand places all sorts of new meanings and so-called " deeper inter-

FORCED INTERPRETATIONS.

pretations," to make the teachings of the books harmonize with the increase of knowledge. As Viscount Amberley, in his Analysis of Belief, clearly points out, the readers of these books approaching them with the fixed notion that they contain vast treasures of superhuman wisdom, are sure to find there, to a large extent, what they seek. That which really belongs to the mind of the reader is attributed to that of the writer. The natural and simple meaning of the words is set aside. All sorts of forced interpretations are put upon them for the purpose of compelling them to harmonize with that which it is supposed they ought to mean. Statements, doctrines, and allusions are discovered in them which not only have no existence in their pages, but which are absolutely foreign to the epoch at which they were written. This process of false interpretation is greatly favored by distance of time. Says Prof. Benjamin Jowett : " All nations who have ancient writings have endeavored to read in them the riddle of the past. The Brahmin, repeating his Vedic hymns, sees them pervaded by a thousand meanings, which have been handed down by tradition ; the one of which he is ignorant is that which we perceive to be the true one." Says Max Miiller — ''Greater violence is done by successive interpreters to sacred writings than to any other relics of ancient literature. Ideas grow and change, yet each generation tries to find its own ideas reflected in the sacred pages of their early prophets. Passages in the Veda and Zend Avesta which do not bear on religious or philosophical doctrines are generally explained simply and naturally, even by the latest of native commentators. But as soon as any word or sentence can be so turned as to support a [religious] doctrine, however modern, or a [religious] precept, however irrational, the simplest phrases are tortured and mangled till at last they are made to yield their assent to ideas the most foreign to the minds of the authors of the Veda and Zend Avesta." This practice of interpreting into Sacred Books what later ages think ought to be in them, and out of them what later ages think ought not to be in them, is pointed out and illustrated with regard to the Chinese, Brahmanic and Buddhist Sacred Books, by Dr. Legge, Dr. Muir, Burnouf and others.*

Illustrations of the same with regard to our own

* The later Greeks regarded the writings of Homer with the same superstitious veneration, and interpreted into them all sorts of doctrines which could have had no place in the mind of the writer. For example, " they found therein the Neptunian and Vulcanian theory > the sphericity of the earth ; the doctrines of Democritus, Herodotus, and of Socrates and Plato in their turn." Parker's "Discourse of Religion" " When reason, in its manly growth, can no longer be satisfied with the food that sustained its infancy, imagination comes with a vase of ambrosial allegories. In this way, Philo found the poetic system of Plato within the practical and circumstantial laws of Moses, and the Christian fathers found all the inward warfare of their souls in the wanderings and battles of the Israelites." Mrs. Child 's " Progress of Religious Ideas." vol. iii., pp. 442, 443.

SCIENCE AND SCRIPTURE.

Bible are more numerous still. Indeed the whole history of Christianity is full of exhibitions of the most marvellous and unflagging ingenuity, in inventing new interpretations of Scripture, to keep pace with the growth of human thought and the progress of knowledge and science.*

Almost every scientific theory that comes into existence is found to conflict in some point or other with the theological notions which an unscientific past has handed down. But the theologians are ever on the alert ; and war to the knife is at once declared against the scientific intruder. All friends of the Bible are summoned to the holy war. The conflict rages fiercely and shows no sign of abatement until it is seen that the scientists are getting the day, when it begins to be discovered by the theologians that after all the new theory is harmless, indeed there is no discrepancy between it and Scripture. The discrepancy that had been supposed to exist grew out of a wrong Scripture interpretation. In fact, instead of the two being in conflict, the scientific theory is really taught in the Bible *