the literature of the Bible. It comes in part from the form which marks
the original Hebrew poetry. It has become familiar to say that it is not
of the rhyming kind. Rather it is marked by the balancing of phrases or of
ideas, so that it runs in couplets or in triplets throughout. In the
Psalms there is always a balance of clauses. They are sometimes
adversative; sometimes they are simply cumulative. Take several instances
from the 119th Psalm, each a complete stanza of Hebrew poetry; (verse 15)
"I will meditate in thy precepts, and have respect unto thy ways"; or
this (verse 23), "Princes also did sit and speak against me: but thy
servant did meditate in thy statutes"; or this (verse 45), "And I will
walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts"; (verse 51), "The proud have had
me greatly in derision: yet have I not inclined from thy law." Each
presents a parallel or a contrast of ideas. That is the characteristic
mark of Hebrew poetry. It results in a kind of rhythm of the English which
makes it very easy to set to music. Some of it can be sung, though for
some of it only the thunder is the right accompaniment. But it is not
simply in the balance of phrases that the musical element appears.
Sometimes it is in a natural but rhythmic consecution of ideas. The 35th
chapter of Isaiah, for example, is not poetic in the Hebrew, yet it is
remarkably musical in the English. Read it aloud from our familiar
version:
"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and
the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom
abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing; the glory of
Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and
Sharon; they shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excellency of
our God. Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble
knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear
not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a
recompense; He will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind
shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then
shall the lame man leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing:
for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the
desert. And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty
land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each
lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And a highway shall be
there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the
unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the
wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein. No lion shall
be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not
be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there: and the ransomed
of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads; they shall obtain joy and
gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
That can be set to music as it stands. You catch the same form in the
familiar 13th chapter of I Corinthians, the chapter on Charity. It could
be almost sung throughout. This musical element is in sharp contrast with
much else in the Scripture, where necessity does not permit that literary
form. For example, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which is argumentative
throughout, there is no part except its quotations which has ever been
set to music for uses in Christian worship. It is rugged and protracted in
its form, and has no musical element about it. The contrast within the
Scripture of the musical and the unmusical is a very marked one.
Add to the thought of the earnestness and variety of the Scripture a word
about the simplicity of its literary expression. There is nothing
meretricious in its style. There is no effort to say a thing finely. The
translators have avoided all temptation to grow dramatic in reproducing
the original. Contrast the actual English Bible with the narratives or
other literary works that have been built up out of it. Read all that the
Bible tells about the loss of Paradise, and then read Milton's "Paradise
Lost." Nearly all of the conceptions of Milton's greatest poem are built
up from brief Scripture references. But Milton becomes subtle in his
analysis of motives; he enlarges greatly on events. Scripture never does
that. It gives us very few analyses of motive from first to last. That is
not the method nor the purpose of Scripture. It tells the story in terms
that move on the middle level of speech and the middle level of
understanding, while Milton labors with it, complicates it, entangling it
with countless details which are to the Scripture unimportant. It goes
straight to the simple and fundamental elements in the account. Take a
more modern illustration. Probably the finest poem of its length in the
English language is Browning's "Saul." It is built out of one incident and
a single expression in the Bible story of Saul and David. The incident is
David's being called from his sheep to play his harp and to sing before
Saul in the fits of gloom which overcome him; the expression is the single
saying that David loved Saul. Taking that incident and that expression,
Browning writes a beautiful poem with many decorative details, with keen
analysis of motive, with long accounts of the way David felt when he
rendered his service, and how his heart leaped or sang. Imagine finding
Browning's familiar phrases in Scripture: "The lilies we twine round the
harp-chords, lest they snap neath the stress of the noontide--those
sunbeams like swords"; "Oh, the wild joy of living!" "Spring's arrowy
summons," going "straight to the aim." That is very well for Browning, but
it is not the Scripture way; it is too complicated. All that the Bible
says can be said anywhere; Browning's "Saul" could not possibly be
reproduced in other languages. It would need a glossary or a commentary to
make it intelligible. It is beautiful English, and great because it has
taken a great idea and clothed it in worthy expression. But the simplicity
of the Bible narrative appears in sharp contrast with it. In my childhood
my father used to tell of a man who preached on the creation, and with
great detail and much elaboration and decoration told the story of
creation as it is suggested in the first chapter of Genesis. When it was
over he asked an old listener what he thought of his effort, and the only
comment was, "You can't beat Moses!" Well, it would be difficult to
surpass these Bible writers in simplicity, in going straight to the point,
and making that plain and leaving it. Where the Bible takes a hundred
words to tell the whole story Browning takes several hundred lines to tell
it.
The simplicity of the Bible is largely because there is so little abstract
reasoning in it. Having few or no abstract ideas, it does not need
abstract words. Rather, it groups its whole movement around characters.
Three eminent literary men were once asked to select the best reviews of a
novel which had just appeared. One of the three statements which they
rated highest said of the book that it "achieves the true purpose of a
novel, which is to make comprehensible the philosophy of life of a whole
community or race of men by showing us how that philosophy accords with
the impulses and yearnings of typical individuals." Few phrases could be
more foreign to Bible phrases than those. But there is valuable suggestion
in it for more than the literature of the novel. That is exactly what the
Scripture does. Its reasoning is kept concrete by the fact that it is
dealing with characters more than movements, and so it can speak in
concrete words. That always makes for simplicity.
There are two elements common to the history of literature about which a
special word is deserved. I mean the dramatic and the oratorical elements.
The difference between the dramatic and the oratorical is chiefly that in
dramatic writing there is a scene in which many take part, and in the
oratorical writing one man presents the whole scene, however dramatic the
surroundings. There is not a great deal of either in the Scripture. There
is no formal drama, nothing that could be acted as it stands. It is true,
to be sure, that Job can be cast into dramatic form by a sufficient
manipulation, but it is quite unlikely, in spite of some scholars, that it
was ever meant to be a formal drama for action. It does move in cycles in
the appearance of its characters, and it does close in a way to take one
back to the beginning. It has many marks of the drama, and yet it seems
very unlikely that it was ever prepared with that definitely in mind. On
the other hand, a most likely explanation of the Song of Solomon is that
it is a short drama which appears in our Bible without any character
names, as though you should take "Hamlet" and print it continuously,
indicating in no way the change of speakers nor any movement. The effort
has been measurably successful to discover and insert the names of the
probable speakers. That seems to be the one exception to the general
statement that there is no formal drama in the Scripture. But there are
some very striking dramatic episodes, and they are made dramatic for us
very largely by the way they are told. One of the earlier is in I Kings
xviii:21-39.
"And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye
between two opinions? if the Lord be God, follow him: but if Baal,
then follow him. And the people answered him not a word. Then said
Elijah unto the people, I, even I only, remain a prophet of the
Lord; but Baal's prophets are four hundred and fifty men. Let them
therefore give us two bullocks; and let them choose one bullock for
themselves, and cut it in pieces, and lay it on wood, and put no
fire under; and I will dress the other bullock, and lay it on wood,
and put no fire under: and call ye on the name of your gods, and I
will call on the name of the Lord: and the God that answereth by
fire, let him be God. And all the people answered and said, It is
well spoken. And Elijah said unto the prophets of Baal, Choose you
one bullock for yourselves, and dress it first; for ye are many;
and call on the name of your gods, but put no fire under. And they
took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and
called on the name of Baal from morning until noon, saying, O Baal,
hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered. And they
leaped upon the altar which was made. And it came to pass at noon,
that Elijah mocked them, and said, Cry aloud; for he is a god;
either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or
peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awakened. And they cried
aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and
lancets, till the blood gushed out upon them. And it came to pass,
when midday was past, and they prophesied until the time of the
offering of the evening sacrifice, that there was neither voice,
nor any to answer, nor any that regarded. And Elijah said unto all
the people, Come near unto me. And all the people came near unto
him. And he repaired the altar of the Lord that was broken down.
And Elijah took twelve stones, according to the number of the
tribes of the sons of Jacob, unto whom the word of the Lord came,
saying, Israel shall be thy name. And with the stones he built an
altar in the name of the Lord; and he made a trench about the
altar, as great as would contain two measures of seed. And he put
the wood in order, and cut the bullock in pieces, and laid him on
the wood, and said, Fill four barrels with water, and pour it on
the burnt sacrifice, and on the wood. And he said, Do it the second
time. And they did it the second time. And he said, Do it the third
time. And they did it the third time. And the water ran round about
the altar; and he filled the trench also with water. And it came to
pass at the time of the offering of the evening sacrifice, that
Elijah the prophet came near, and said, Lord God of Abraham, Isaac,
and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in
Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these
things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may
know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their
heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the
burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and
licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people
saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is
the God; the Lord, he is the God."
That is not simply a dramatic event; that is a striking telling of it. It
is more than a narrative. In narrative literature the scene is accepted as
already constructed. In dramatic literature such appeal is made to the
imagination that the reader reconstructs the scene for himself. We are not
told in this how Elijah felt, or how he acted, nor how the people as a
whole looked, nor the setting of the scene; but if one reads it with care
it makes its own setting. The scene constructs itself.
The dramatic style does not prevail at most important points of the
Scripture, because it is a fictitious style for the presenting of truth.
It inevitably suggests superficiality. Things actually do not happen in
life as they do in drama.
One of our latest biographers says that a scientific historian is always
suspicious of dramatic events.[26] They may be true, but they are more
liable to be afterthoughts, like the bright answers we could have made to
our opponents if we had only thought of them at the time. You never lose
the sense of unreality in the very construction of a drama. Life cannot be
crowded into two or three hours, and justice does not come out as the
drama makes it do. So that at most important points of the Scripture
dramatic writing does not appear. The account of the carrying away into
captivity of the children of Israel is at no point dramatic, though you
can see instantly what a great opportunity there was for it. It is simply
narrative. It is noticeable that none of the accounts of the crucifixion
is at all dramatic. They are all simply narrative. The imagination does
not immediately conjure up the scene. There may be two reasons for that.
One is that there are involved several hours in which there is no action
recorded. The other is that by the time the accounts were written the
actual events were submerged in importance by their unworded meaning. The
account of the conversion of Paul, on the other hand, brief as it is, has
at least minor dramatic elements in it. On the whole, the Old Testament is
far more dramatic than the New.
There is even less of the oratorical element in the Scripture. There is,
to be sure, a considerable amount of quotation, and men do speak at some
length, but seldom oratorically. The prophetical writings are generally
too fragmentary to suggest oratory, and the quotations in the New
Testament, especially from the preaching of our Lord, are evidently for
the most part excerpts from longer addresses than are given. There are few
of the statements of Paul, as in the 26th chapter of Acts, which could be
delivered oratorically; but here again the Old Testament is more marked
than the New. The earliest specimen of oratory is also one of the finest
specimens. It is in the 44th chapter of Genesis, and is the account of
Judah's reply to his unrecognized brother Joseph:
"Then Judah came near unto him, and said, O my lord, let thy
servant, I pray thee, speak a word in my lord's ears, and let not
thine anger burn against thy servant: for thou art even as Pharoah.
My lord asked his servants, saying, Have ye a father, or a brother?
And we said unto my lord, We have a father, an old man, and a child
of his old age, a little one; and his brother is dead, and he alone
is left of his mother, and his father loveth him. And thou saidst
unto thy servants, Bring him down unto me, that I may set mine eyes
upon him. And we said unto my lord, The lad cannot leave his
father: for if he should leave his father, his father would die.
And thou saidst unto thy servant, Except your youngest brother come
down with you, ye shall see my face no more. And it came to pass
when we came up unto thy servant my father, we told him the words
of my lord. And our father said, Go again and buy us a little food.
And we said, We cannot go down; if our youngest brother be with us,
then we will go down: for we may not see the man's face, except our
youngest brother be with us. And thy servant my father said unto
us, Ye know that my wife bare me two sons: and the one went out
from me, and I said, Surely he is torn in pieces; and I saw him not
since: and if ye take this also from me, and mischief befall him,
ye shall bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave. Now
therefore when I come to thy servant my father, and the lad be not
with us; seeing that his life is bound up in the lad's life; it
shall come to pass, when he seeth that the lad is not with us, that
he will die: and thy servants shall bring down the gray hairs of
thy servant our father with sorrow to the grave. For thy servant
became surety for the lad unto my father, saying, If I bring him
not unto thee, then I shall bear the blame to my father for ever.
Now therefore, I pray thee, let thy servant abide instead of the
lad a bondman to my lord; and let the lad go up with his brethren.
For how shall I go up to my father, and the lad be not with me?
lest peradventure I see the evil that shall come on my father."
That is pure oratory, and it is greatly helped by the English expression
of it. Here our King James version is finer than either of the other later
versions, as indeed it is in almost all these sections where the
phraseology is important for the ear.
We need not go farther. Part of these outstanding characteristics come to
our version from the original, and might appear in any version of the
Bible. Yet nowhere do even these original characteristics come to such
prominence as in the King James translation; and it adds to them those
that are peculiar to itself.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Preface, p. vii.
[18] Page 124.
[19] _Short History of the English People_, Book vii, chap. i.
[20] T. R. Eaton, _Shakespeare and the Bible_, p. 2.
[21] _Essay on John Dryden._
[22] _Historical Sketches, Hampton Court Conference._
[23] Trevelyan, _England under the Stuarts_, p. 54.
[24] _The Spectator_, No. 405.
[25] This table will show the comparison at a glance:
Syllables 1 2 3 4 5 6
The Commandments 259 50 6 4 0 0 319
Professor March 194 65 35 18 5 2 319
[26] McGiffert, _Life of Martin Luther_.
LECTURE IV
THE INFLUENCE OF THE KING JAMES VERSION ON ENGLISH LITERATURE
The Bible is a book-making book. It is literature which provokes
literature.
It would be a pleasure to survey the whole field of literature in the
broadest sense and to note the creative power of the King James version;
but that is manifestly impossible here. Certain limitations must be
frankly made. Leave on one side, therefore, the immense body of purely
religious literature, sermons, expositions, commentaries, which, of
course, are the direct product of the Bible. No book ever caused so much
discussion about itself and its teaching. That is because it deals with
the fundamental human interest, religion. It still remains true that the
largest single department of substantial books from our English presses is
in the realm of religion, and after the purely recreative literature they
are probably most widely read. Yet, they are not what we mean at this
time by the literary result of the English Bible.
Leave on one side also the very large body of political and historical
writing. Much of it shows Bible influence. In the nature of the case, any
historian of the past three hundred years must often refer to and quote
from the English Bible, and must note its influence. An entire study could
be devoted to the influence of the English Bible on Green or Bancroft or
Freeman or Prescott--its influence on their matter and their manner.
Another could be given to its influence on political writing and speaking.
No great orator of the day would fail us of material, and the great
political papers and orations of the past would only widen the field. Yet
while some of this political and historical writing is recognized as
literature, most of it can be left out of our thought just now.
It may aid in the limiting of the field to accept what Dean Stanley said
in another connection: "By literature, I mean those great works that rise
above professional or commonplace uses and take possession of the mind of
a whole nation or a whole age."[27] This is one of the matters which we
all understand until we begin to define it; we know what we mean until
some one asks us.
The literature of which we are thinking in this narrower sense is in the
sphere of art rather than in the sphere of distinct achievement. De
Quincey's division is familiar: the literature of knowledge, and the
literature of power. The function of the first is to teach; the function
of the second is to move. Professor Dowden points out that between the two
lies a third field, the literature of criticism. It seeks both to teach
and to move. Our concern is chiefly with De Quincey's second field--the
literature of power. In the first field, the literature of knowledge, must
lie all history, with Hume and Gibbon; all science, with Darwin and Fiske;
all philosophy, with Spencer and William James; all political writing,
with Voltaire and Webster. Near that same field must lie many of those
essays in criticism of which Professor Dowden speaks. This which we omit,
this literature of knowledge, is powerful literature, though its main
purpose is not to move, but to teach. We are only reducing our field so
that we can survey it. For our uses just now we shall find pure literature
taking the three standard forms: the poem, the essay, and the story. It is
the influence of the English Bible on this large field of literature
which we are to observe.
Just for safety's sake, accept another narrowing of the field. The effect
of the Bible and its religious teaching on the writer himself is a
separate study, and is for the most part left out of consideration. It
sounds correct when Milton says: "He who would not be frustrate of his
power to write well ought himself to be a true poem." But there is Milton
himself to deal with; irreproachable in morals, there are yet the unhappy
years of his young wife to trouble us, and there were his daughters, who
were not at peace with him, and whom after their service in his blindness
he yet stigmatizes in his will as "undutiful children." Then, if you think
of Shelley or Byron, you are troubled by their lives; or even Carlyle, the
very master of the Victorian era--one would not like to scan his life
according to the laws of true poetry. Then there is Coleridge, falling a
prey to opium until, as years came, conscience and will seemed to go. Only
a very ardent Scot will feel that he can defend Robert Burns at all
points, and we would be strange Americans if we felt that Edgar Allan Poe
was a model of propriety. That is a large and interesting field, but the
Bible seems even to gain power as a book-making book when it lays hold on
the book-making proclivities of men who are not prepared to yield to its
personal power. They may get away from it as religion; they do not get
away from it as literature.
The first and most notable fact regarding the influence of the Bible on
English literature is the remarkable extent of that influence. It is
literally everywhere. If every Bible in any considerable city were
destroyed, the Book could be restored in all its essential parts from the
quotations on the shelves of the city public library. There are works,
covering almost all the great literary writers, devoted especially to
showing how much the Bible has influenced them.
The literary effect of the King James version at first was less than its
social effect; but in that very fact lies a striking literary influence.
For a long time it formed virtually the whole literature which was readily
accessible to ordinary Englishmen. We get our phrases from a thousand
books. The common talk of an intelligent man shows the effect of many
authors upon his thinking. Our fathers got their phrases from one great
book. Their writing and their speaking show the effect of that book.