wedding of great ideas to worthy expression. From one point of view this
early seventeenth century was an opportune time for making such a classic.
Theology was a popular subject. Men's minds had found a new freedom, and
they used it to discuss great themes. They even began to sing. The reign
of Elizabeth had prepared the way. The English scholar Hoare traces this
new liberty to the sailing away of the Armada and the releasing of
England from the perpetual dread of Spanish invasion. He says that the
birds felt the free air, and sang as they had never sung before and as
they have not often sung since. But this was not restricted to the birds
of English _song_. It was a period of remarkable awakening in the whole
intellectual life of England, and that intellectual life was directing
itself among the common people to religion. Another English writer, Eaton,
says a profounder word in tracing the awakening to the reformation, saying
that it "could not fail, from the very nature of it, to tinge the
literature of the Elizabethan era. It gave a logical and disputatious
character to the age and produced men mighty in the Scriptures."[20] A
French visitor went home disgusted because people talked of nothing but
theology in England. Grotius thought all the people of England were
theologians. James's chief pride was his theological learning. It did not
prove difficult to find half a hundred men in small England instantly
recognized as experts in Scripture study. The people were ready to welcome
a book of great ideas. Let us pass by those ideas a moment, remembering
that they are not enough in themselves to give the work literary value,
and turn our minds to the style of the English Bible.
From this point of view the times were not perfectly opportune for a piece
of pure English literature, though it was the time which produced
Shakespeare. A definite movement was on to refine the language by foreign
decorations. Not even Shakespeare avoids it always. No writer of the time
avoids it wholly. The dedication of the King James version shows that
these scholars themselves did not avoid it. In that dedication, and their
preface, they give us fine writing, striving for effect, ornamental
phrases characteristic of the time. Men were feeling that this English
language was rough and barbarous, insufficient, needing enlargement by the
addition of other words constructed in a foreign form. The essays of Lord
Bacon are virtually contemporaneous with this translation. Macaulay says a
rather hard word in calling his style "odious and deformed,"[21] but when
one turns from Bacon to the English Bible there is a sharp contrast in
mere style, and it favors the Bible. The contrast is as great as that
which Carlyle first felt between the ideas of Shakespeare and those of the
Bible when he said that "this world is a catholic kind of place; the
Puritan gospel and Shakespeare's plays: such a pair of facts I have rarely
seen save out of one chimerical generation."[22] And that gives point to
the word already quoted from Hallam that the English of the King James
version is not the English of James I.
Four things helped to determine the simplicity and pure
English--unornamented English--of the King James version, made it, that
is, the English classic. Two of these things have been dealt with already
in other connections. First, that it was a Book for the people, for the
people of the middle level of language; a work by scholars, but not
chiefly for scholars, intended rather for the common use of common people.
Secondly, that the translators were constantly beholden to the work of the
past in this same line. Where Wiclif's words were still in use they used
them. That tended to fix the language by the use which had already become
natural.
The other two determining influences must be spoken of now. The third lies
in the fact that the English language was still plastic. It had not fallen
into such hard forms that its words were narrow or restricted. The truth
is that from the point of view of pure literature the Bible is better in
English than it is in Greek or Hebrew. That is, the English of the King
James version as English is better than the Greek of the New Testament as
Greek. As for the Hebrew there was little development for many
generations; Renan thinks there was none at all. The difference comes from
the point of time in the growth of the tongue when the Book was written.
The Greek was written when the language was old, when it had
differentiated its terms, when it had become corrupted by outside
influence. The English version was written when the language was new and
fresh, when a word could be taken and set in its meaning without being
warped from some earlier usage. The study of the Greek Testament is always
being complicated by the effort to bring into its words the classical
meaning, when so far as the writers of the New Testament were concerned
they had no interest in the classical meaning, but only in the current
meaning of those words. In the English language there was as yet no
classical meaning; it was exactly that meaning that these writers were
giving the words when they brought them into their version.[23] There is
large advantage in the fact that the age was not a scientific one, that
the language had not become complicated. So it becomes interesting to
observe with Professor March that ninety-three per cent. of these words,
counting also repetitions, are native English words. The language was new,
was still plastic. It had not been stiffened by use. It received its set
more definitely from the English Bible than from any other one work--more
than from Shakespeare, whose influence was second.
The fourth fact which helped to determine its English style is the loyalty
of the translators to the original, notably the Hebrew. It is a common
remark of the students of the original tongues that the Hebrew and Greek
languages are peculiarly translatable. That is notable in the Hebrew. It
is not a language of abstract terms. The tendency of language is always to
become vague, since we are lazy in the use of it. We use one word in
various ways, and a pet one for many ideas. Language is always more
concrete in its earlier forms. In this period of the concrete English
language, then, the translation was made from the Hebrew, which was also a
concrete, figurative language itself. The structure of the Hebrew sentence
is very simple. There are no extended paragraphs in it. It is somewhat
different in the New Testament, where these paragraphs are found,
certainly in the Pauline Greek; but even there the extended sentences are
broken into clauses which can be taken as wholes. The English version
shows constantly the marks of the Hebrew influence in the simplicity of
its phrasing. Renan says that the Hebrew "knows how to make propositions,
but not how to link them into paragraphs." So the earlier Bible stories
are like a child's way of talking. They let one sentence follow another,
and their unity is found in the overflowing use of the word "and"--one
fact hung to another to make a story, but not to make an argument. In the
first ten chapters of I Samuel, for example, there are two hundred and
thirty-eight verses; one hundred and sixty of them begin with _and_. There
are only twenty-six of the whole which have no connective word that
thrusts them back upon the preceding verse.
In the Hebrew language, also, most of the emotions are connected either in
the word used or in the words accompanying it with the physical condition
that expresses it. Over and over we are told that "he opened his mouth and
said," or, "he was angry and his countenance fell." Anger is expressed in
words which tell of hard breathing, of heat, of boiling tumult, of
trembling. We would not trouble to say that. The opening of the mouth to
speak or the falling of the countenance in anger, we would take for
granted. The Hebrew does not. Even in the description of God you remember
the terms are those of common life; He is a shepherd when shepherds are
writing; He is a husbandman threshing out the nations, treading the
wine-press until He is reddened with the wine--and so on. That is the
natural method of the Hebrew language--concrete, vivid, never abstract,
simple in its phrasing. The King James translators are exceedingly loyal
to that original.
Professor Cook, of Yale, suggests that four traits make the Bible easy to
translate into any language: universality of interest, so that there are
apt to be words in any language to express what it means, since it
expresses nothing but what men all talk about; then, the concreteness and
picturesqueness of its language, avoiding abstract phrases which might be
difficult to reproduce in another tongue; then, the simplicity of its
structure, so that it can be taken in small bits, and long complicated
sentences are not needed; and, finally, its rhythm, so that part easily
follows part and the words catch a kind of swing which is not difficult to
imitate. That is a very true analysis. The Bible is the most easily
translated book there is, and has become the classic for more languages
than any other one book. It is brought about in part in our English
version by the faithfulness of the translators to the original.
* * * * *
Passing from these general considerations, let us look directly at the
English Bible itself and its literary qualities. The first thing that
attracts attention is its use of words, and since words lie at the root of
all literature it is worth while to stop for them for a moment. Two things
are to be said about the words: first, that they are few; and, secondly,
that they are short. The vocabulary of the English Bible is not an
extensive one. Shakespeare uses from fifteen to twenty thousand words. In
Milton's verse he uses about thirteen thousand. In the Old Testament, in
the Hebrew and Chaldaic tongue, there are fifty-six hundred and forty-two
words. In the New Testament, in the Greek, there are forty-eight hundred.
But in the whole of the King James version there are only about six
thousand different words. The vocabulary is plainly a narrow one for a
book of its size. While, as was said before, the translators avoided using
the same word always for translation of the same original, they yet
managed to recur to the same words often enough so that this comparatively
small list of six thousand words, about one-third Shakespeare's
vocabulary, sufficed for the stating of the truth.
Then, secondly, the words are short, and in general short words are the
strong ones. The average word in the whole Bible, including the long
proper names, is barely over four letters, and if all the proper names are
excluded the average word is just a little under four letters. Of course,
another way of saying that is that the words are generally Anglo-Saxon,
and, while in the original spelling they were much longer, yet in their
sound they were as brief as they are in our present spelling. There is no
merit in Anglo-Saxon words except in the fact that they are concrete,
definite, non-abstract words. They are words that mean the same to
everybody; they are part of common experience. We shall see the power of
such words by comparing a simple statement in Saxon words from the English
Bible with a comment of a learned theologian of our own time on them. The
phrase is a simple one in the Communion service: "This is my body which is
given for you." That is all Saxon. When our theologian comes to comment on
it he says we are to understand that "the validity of the service does not
lie in the quality of external signs and sacramental representation, but
in its essential property and substantial reality." Now there are nine
words abstract in their meaning, Latin in their form. It is in that kind
of words that the Bible could have been translated, and in our own day
might even be translated. Addison speaks of that: "If any one would judge
of the beauties of poetry that are to be met with in the divine writings,
and examine how kindly the Hebrew manners of speech mix and incorporate
with the English language, after having perused the Book of Psalms, let
him read a literal translation of Horace or Pindar. He will find in these
two last such an absurdity and confusion of style with such a comparative
poverty of imagination, as will make him very sensible of what I have been
here advancing."[24]
The fact that the words are short can be quickly illustrated by taking
some familiar sections. In the Ten Commandments there are three hundred
and nineteen words in all; two hundred and fifty-nine of them are words of
one syllable, and only sixty are of two syllables and over. There are
fifty words of two syllables, six of three syllables, of which four are
such composite words that they really amount to two words of one and two
syllables each, with four words of four syllables, and none over that.
Make a comparison just here. There is a paragraph in Professor March's
lectures on the English language where he is urging that its strongest
words are purely English, not derived from Greek or Latin. He uses the
King James version as illustration. If, now, we take three hundred and
nineteen words at the beginning of that paragraph to compare with the
three hundred and nineteen in the Ten Commandments, the result will be
interesting. Where the Ten Commandments have two hundred and fifty-nine
words of one syllable, Professor March has only one hundred and
ninety-four; over against the fifty two-syllable words in the Ten
Commandments, Professor March has sixty-five; over against their six words
of three syllables, he has thirty-five; over against their four words of
four syllables, he uses eighteen; and while the Ten Commandments have no
word longer than four syllables, Professor March needs five words of five
syllables and two words of six syllables to express his ideas.[25]
The same thing appears in the familiar 23d Psalm, where there are one
hundred and nineteen words in all, of which ninety-five are words of one
syllable, and only three of three syllables, with none longer. In the
Sermon on the Mount eighty-two per cent. of the words in our English
version are words of one syllable.
The only point urged now is that this kind of thing makes for strength in
literature. Short words are strong words. They have a snap and a grip to
them that long words have not. Very few men would grow angry over having a
statement called a "prevarication" or "a disingenuous entanglement of
ideas," but there is something about the word "lie" that snaps in a man's
face. "Unjustifiable hypothecation" may be the same as stealing, but it
would never excite one to be called "an unjustifiable hypothecator" as it
does to be called a thief. At the very foundation of the strength of the
literature of the English Bible there lies this tendency to short,
clear-cut words.
Rising now from this basal element in the literature of the version, we
come to the place where its style and its ideas blend in what we may call
its earnestness. That is itself a literary characteristic. There is not a
line of trifling in the book. No man would ever learn trifling from it. It
takes itself with tremendous seriousness. Here are earnest men at work;
to them life is joyous, but it is no joke. That is why the element of
humor in it is such a small one. It is there, to be sure. Many of its
similes are intended to be humorous. A few of its incidents are humorous;
but it has little of that element in it, as indeed little of our
literature has that element markedly in it. We have a few exceptions. But
what George Eliot says in _Adam Bede_ is true, that wit is of a temporary
nature, and does not deal with the deep and more lasting elements in life.
The Bible is not a sad book. There are children at play in it; there are
feasts and buoyant gatherings fully recounted. But it never trifles nor
jests.
So it has given us a language of great dignity. Let Addison speak again:
"How cold and dead does a prayer appear that is composed in the most
elegant and polite forms of speech, which are natural to our tongue, when
it is not heightened by that solemnity of phrase which may be drawn from
the sacred writings. It has been said by some of the ancients that if the
gods were to talk with men, they would certainly speak in Plato's style;
but I think we may say, with justice, that when mortals converse with
their Creator they cannot do it in so proper a style as in that of the
Holy Scriptures."
As that earnestness of the literature of the original precluded any great
amount of humor in the wide range of its literary forms, so in the King
James version it precluded any trifling expressions, any plays on words,
even the duplication of such plays as can be found in the Hebrew or the
Greek. You seldom find any turn of a word in the King James version,
though you do occasionally find it in the Hebrew. One such punning
expression occurs in the story of Samson (Judges xv:16), where our version
reads: "With the jawbone of an ass, heaps upon heaps, with the jawbone of
an ass have I slain a thousand men." In the Hebrew the words translated
"ass" and "heaps" are variants of the same word. It comes near the Hebrew
to say: "With the jawbone of an ass, masses upon masses," and so on. These
translators would not risk reproducing such puns for fear of lowering the
dignity of their results. There is a deadly seriousness about their work
and so they never lose strength as they go on.
That earnestness grows out of a second fact which may be
emphasized--namely, the greatness of the themes of Bible literature. Here
is history, but it is not cast into fiction form. History always becomes
more interesting for a first reading when it is in the form of fiction;
but it always loses greatness in that form. Test it by turning from a
history of the American revolutionary or civil war to an historical novel
that deals with the same period; or from a history of Scotland to the
Waverley novels. In some degree the earnestness of the time is lost; the
same facts are there; but they do not loom so large, nor do they seem so
great. So there is power in the fact that the historical elements of the
version are in stately form and are never sacrificed to the fictional
form.
These great themes save the work from being local. It issues from life,
but from life considered in the large. The themes of great literature are
great enough to make their immediate surroundings forgotten. The English
Bible deals with the great facts and the great problems. It is from the
point of view of those great facts that it handles even commonplace
things, and you forget the commonplaceness of the things in the greatness
of the dealing. Take its attitude toward God. One needs the sense of that
great theme to read it fairly. It quietly overlooks secondary causes, goes
back of them to God. Partly that was because the original writers were
ignorant of some of those secondary causes; partly that they knew them,
but wanted to go farther back. Take the most outstanding instance, that of
the Book of Jonah. All its facts, without exception, can be told without
mention of God, if one cared to do it. But there could not be anything
like so great a story if it is told that way. One of his biographers says
of Lincoln that there is nothing in his whole career which calls for
explanation in other than a purely natural and human way. That is true, if
one does not care to go any farther back than that. But the greatest story
cannot be made out of Lincoln's life on those terms. There is not material
enough; the life must be delocalized. It can be told without that larger
view, so that it will be of interest to America and American children, but
not so that it will be of value to generations of men in all countries and
under all circumstances if it is told on those terms. Part of the
greatness of Scripture, from a literary point of view, is that it has such
a tremendous range of theme, and is saved from a mere narration of local
events by seeing those events in the light of larger considerations.
Let that stand for one of the great facts. Now take one of the great
problems. The thing that makes Job so great a classic is the fact that,
while it is dealing with a character, he is standing for the problem of
undeserved suffering. A man who has that before him, if he has at all the
gift of imagination, is sure to write in a far larger way than when he is
dealing with a man with boils as though he were finally important. One
could deal with Job as a character, and do a small piece of work. But when
you deal with Job as a type, a much larger opportunity offers.
It is these great ideas, as to either facts or problems, that give the
seriousness, the earnestness to the literature of the Bible. Men who
express great ideas in literary form are not dilettante about them. One of
the English writers just now prominent as an essayist is often counted
whimsical, trifling. One of his near friends keenly resents that opinion,
insists instead that he is dead in earnest, serious to the last degree,
purposeful in all his work. What makes that so difficult to believe is
that there is always a tone of chaffing in his essays. He seems always to
be making fun of himself or of other people; and if he is dead in earnest
he has the wrong style to make great literature or literature that will
live long.
It is that earnestness and greatness of theme which puts the tang into the
English of the Bible. Coleridge says that "after reading Isaiah or the
Epistle to the Hebrews, Homer and Virgil are disgustingly tame, Milton
himself barely tolerable." It need not be put quite so strongly as that;
but there is large warrant of fact in that expression.
Go a little farther in thought of the literary characteristics of the
Bible. Notice the variety of the forms involved. Recall Professor
Moulton's four cardinal points in literature, all of it taking one of
these forms: either description, when a scene is given in the words of the
author, as when Milton and Homer describe scenes without pretending to
give the words of the actors throughout; or, secondly, presentation, when
a scene is given in the words of those who took part in it, and the author
does not appear, as, of course, in the plays of Shakespeare, when he never
appears, but where all his sentiments are put in the words of others. As
between those two, the Bible is predominantly a book of description, the
authors for the most part doing the speaking, though there is, of course,
an element of presentation. Professor Moulton goes on with the two other
phases of literary form: prose, moving in the region limited by facts, as
history and philosophy deal only with what actually has existence; and
poetry, which by its Greek origin means creative literature. He reminds us
that, however literature starts, these are the points toward which it
moves, the paths it takes. All four of them appear in the literature of
the English Bible. You have more of prose and less of poetry; but the
poetry is there, not in the sense of rhyme, but in the sense of real
creative literature.
A more natural way of considering the literature has been followed by
Professor Gardiner. He finds four elements in the literature of the Bible:
its narrative, its poetry, its philosophizing, and its prophecy. It is not
necessary for our purpose to go into details about that. We shall have all
we need when we realize that, small as the volume of the book is, it yet
does cover all these types of literature. Its difference from other books
is that it deals with all of its subjects so compactly.