By REV. FRANK RUSSELL, A. M.
The word of God began to be spoken to the first of the race in Eden,
and such is the beginning of the Bible. It was only a spoken word,
doubtless, for nearly twenty-five hundred years. From generation to
generation through all the patriarchal ages it was preserved by fathers
carefully teaching it to their children. Many fragments may have been
lost, but it is no taxation of our belief that for many centuries
much of the early Word may have been carefully treasured through the
exercise of memory. We know of marvelous instances of the power of
memory. It is supposed that the works of Homer, an elaborate poem with
careful divisions, were preserved for centuries in critical form, by
one generation repeating it to the next while it was unwritten. It does
not bear the marks of change during these generations of its history,
but is unique, precise, and giving every evidence of being the original
work of one author, Homer. Sir Robert Peel is stated to have been able
to listen to a speech in Parliament one and a half or two hours long,
and then repeat it all verbatim, and it is also said at the present
time that Gladstone has learned Homer so thoroughly that on hearing
any line of it repeated he is able at once to repeat the following and
the preceding line. Now Shem lived upon the earth after he came out
of the ark five hundred years, and could have thoroughly taught the
new race in Asia the story. Snatches of song and old tales which he
related might have been verbally composed in the antediluvian period,
and many think that specimens of the same still hold their place,
set like pearls in the earliest Scripture writings. There is little
doubt that Job is the first writer whose productions are preserved.
That he wrote before Moses seems quite evident from statements easily
understood; viz., his descriptions are only of the manners and customs
of the ancient patriarchs, his religion is purely patriarchal, the only
idolatry he mentions is the worship of the sun and moon, thus seeming
to antedate the time of their idol worship, and lastly, he makes no
mention of Sodom, Gomorrah, or Abraham, which would scarcely have been
the case had he written after Moses. Moses may likely have read Job and
have received added inspiration from it, if, indeed, he should need
more than to have received the tables writ with God’s own finger. There
are, thus far, six pamphlets bound with sixty of later date that make
up our book. Look at the antiquity of these six venerable fragments,
written one thousand years before Homer sang, one thousand years before
either Herodotus or Confucius was born.
Following these earlier Scripture writings there came to be mentioned
the rolls of the prophets, songs and sketches of genealogies and
history, so that gradually fragments, here and there, came forth by
divine direction, which, preserved by divine care, were to enter the
canon which we have of sixty-six pamphlets, by about forty writers,
the entire authorship spanning a period of about sixteen centuries,
geographically ranging over the cities of Chaldea, the plains of
Arabia, and the mountains of Palestine. The range of mind is equally
varied; written by men who sat on thrones, by some who lived as hermits
in the mountains, and by some who were shepherds and fishermen.
About 600 B. C., it is recorded in Jeremiah xxxvi that Jehoiachim,
while listening to the reading of the roll, became so enraged at its
contents that he took his penknife and defaced it, and then cast it
into the fire-place and saw it consumed. He has had many descendants
of the same temper, and his race is not yet extinguished.
In about 450 B. C.—I am careful to give approximate dates in round
numbers—the sacred rolls were so mutilated that when Ezra and Nehemiah
returned from the eastern captivity and reorganized the old worship
in the city of Jerusalem, they added to their other improvements the
establishment of a district library, Ezra collected and translated all
the copies of the Bible, writing in a kind of Chaldaic Hebrew, the
old language modified by the eastern dialect, with which the Hebrews
in their captivity had grown familiar, so that now there were two
languages of Scripture, the Samaritans clinging tenaciously to the old
Hebrew of Job, and Moses, and the prophets after them.
About 280 B. C., marks another epoch in the development of the book.
Ptolemy Philadelphus, the ruler of Egypt, desired to enrich the great
imperial library of Alexandria with a complete and careful translation
of the sacred writings into Greek, which was the popular language of
his time. He organized a college of seventy or seventy-two eminent
scholars, and classified the work among them; and the result was the
Septuagint translation, the foundation of all our translations of the
Old Testament since. It is said that the last transcript of this work
was made by the hand of a woman named Techla. This was the edition
which the Savior and the apostles used, the very language which
they quoted and mostly spake. Between 130 and 140 B. C., Antiochus
distinguished himself by attempting to burn all the Bibles in the
world, thus acting the part of Jehoiachim No. 2.
In 128 A. D., Aquila made another translation, it is thought in favor
of the more zealous Jews and to the prejudice of Christians, and not
as fair a work as the Septuagint, and in 300 A. D., Diocletian added
to the infamies of the tenth great persecution an attempt to destroy
the Bible by seizing and burning all copies that could be found. He is
Jehoiachim No. 3. Such attempts in fulfillment of the declarations of
the text are like the effort to exterminate a ripened head of wheat by
stamping it beneath your feet; the next year many thrifty growths will
laugh at the result.
In the early part of the fifth century good Saint Jerome, one of the
most distinguished of the Latin fathers, profound in learning and
devout of heart, collected all the important translations that preceded
him, took up his residence in Palestine and made a very thorough
version, called the Latin Vulgate, and used by our Catholic friends
ever since, an important aid in all subsequent Bible work.
In 500 the Emperor Justinian decreed, to quell some discussion about
the preferences of versions, that either might be used with entire
liberty in any part of the realm. It is supposed that the Jewish
sentiment, vacillating for some time between liberal views and their
characteristic conservatism, rebounded at this decree and led to a
tenacity for their own ancient language, to which they have since
scrupulously adhered, reading mostly throughout their wide dispersion
the ancient characters of Job and Moses, but some, as at Frankfort in
Germany, using the Chaldaic shading of Ezra’s version. From a little
before 600 we are able very definitely to trace the way of the book in
England. There was dense ignorance among the masses of common people
throughout the middle ages, but the convents and the great monasteries
were some of them nevertheless centers of great learning. The Jews of
England from the first kept a clear knowledge of their old writings,
and furnished men in every century eminent in scholarship. Monks,
so inclined, had little else to do but to eat and study, and God
perpetuated through their work the knowledge of his word. I was shown
in the British Museum a copy of the Gospels in Latin, of exquisite
beauty, done by Eadfrid in the seventh century. It is on excellent
paper, in red and black characters, executed almost with the precision
of type. Near the close of that century Cædmon, the father of English
poetry, translated portions of the Scripture into the Saxon or early
English.
A fragment of manuscript written by Aldhelm, a bishop, in 706,
praises the nuns for their fidelity in the daily reading of the holy
Scriptures, a circumstance that indicates both that there was something
of education among the convents, and also that they doubtless had many
copies of Scripture manuscripts. Aldhelm himself is known to have
translated fifty of the Psalms into the early English.
A bright picture comes to us by the pen of Saint Cuthbert in 735.
On the 26th of May—Ascension Day—cloudless and beautiful toward its
closing, there were silent tread and hushed voices among the monks of
a great monastery in the county of Durham, in England. All attention
along the cloisters was directed toward the passageway of one cell,
and eager inquiries of all who came thence if the dying one were still
alive.
Within the cell, on a low white bed, was the feeble form of an old man,
bolstered up that his eye might rest upon either of the manuscripts
supported in position on and about his bed. At a table near him was
seated a scribe writing every word which the pale lips spake. One
listening heard the scribe say, “There is only one chapter left,
master, but you are too weary now, and you must sleep.” “No, go on,
it is very easy, write rapidly,” was the reply; and so the writing
proceeded according to the faint dictation of the exhausted old man,
until he seemed to fall asleep. The scribe awoke him again, and the
glassy eyes brightened as the old man heard, “Master, there is but
one verse now,” and with an effort to fix the drooping eyes upon the
adjusted scrolls, there came slowly forth, one by one, the words of
the last verse of John’s gospel, and when the “Amen” was pronounced,
the whitened head sank among the pillows lightened with the last rays
of the setting sun, as it streamed through the grated window, and the
bloodless lips murmured forth, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,
and to the Holy Ghost,” when the form of the Venerable Bede was still,
and the awful silence of death followed immediately the ending of his
translation.
Portions of the Word were also translated in the ninth century,
and were authorized by King Alfred. He himself did something at
translating, and was careful to have nicely executed, as a preface
to every published code, the manuscript of the Decalogue. It might
exercise a salutary effect if our statesmen, every law they read,
might also have the ten commandments before them. King Alfred made the
declaration more than once that he desired to see the day when all men
in his kingdom would be able to read God’s word.
Elfrac also, after Alfred, from 1004 to 1030, translated portions of
the Scriptures into English.
But the last manuscript translation of the English Scriptures is
greater than any which preceeded it, and the only one which can be
called a popular edition. The quaint old stone church of Saint Mary is
still standing in Leicestershire, where John Wycliffe preached when in
1830 he completed his translation. He had long been the fiery lecturer
at Oxford, and had come into sore conflict with ignorant priests of
the papacy for his enunciations of religious liberty and his schemes
for the better education of the masses of the people. So that when his
translation was finished a strong hatred sought his life. He was cited
to Rome, but being too feeble to go, he was buried in his own parish.
Forty years afterward, however, the same council which burned John Huss
exhumed the bones of Wycliffe, and having burned them, they gathered
the ashes and scattered them into the river which had the significant
name of “Swift,” down which they found their way through other rivers
into the ocean, and were washed, it would seem, with the strength of
Wycliffe’s spirit, upon every shore of the world. There were as many as
one hundred and seventy copies of the Wycliffe version made with busy
pens, and circulated secretly, but widely read, thus preparing the way
for greater works thereafter, and confirming the propriety of calling
their author “The Morning Star of the Reformation.”
A few years since I stood long before the great bronze statue of
Gutenberg in Mayence on the Rhine, a place now of over fifty thousand
population. All citizens are eager to show any American that can
make out to ask it, the site of the building where the invention of
printing with movable type was made about 1450. The house still stands
where Gutenberg lived, and another in which he did his first work with
his press. Twenty-five years later printing began in England, and in
another twenty-five years there were in the world over two hundred and
twenty places where printing was done. I took a walk on the heights
back of Bristol, in England, and was asked if I was seeking Sudbury,
the old manor, which I was not, but accidentally had it pointed out to
me where Sir John Walsh lived, when he employed for the instruction of
his children a young priest, a fine scholar and a great reader. The
fact that he devoted so much of his time and thought to the Scriptures,
and even taught children to read it, produced some sensation in the
community. In June, 1523, at a dining, the young priest suffered some
rebuke for his liberal handling of the Scriptures by the pompous parish
priest, who was present, and who, among other things, declared that it
was better even to disobey a law of God than a law of the Pope. At this
the opposition in the heart of the young priest became very decided,
and his reply was almost in these words: “I hope to live to see even
the ploughboys of England knowing more of the Word of God than either
yourself or the Pope.” That young priest’s name was William Tyndale.
When it was noised about that his pen was busy preparing a translation
of the Bible for print, he was obliged to fly abroad on the continent,
where at Cologne on the Rhine he printed a few sheets, then fled
again to Worms, where he printed all of his translation, and was soon
thereafter imprisoned in Antwerp for six months, during which time he
converted the jailor and his family. He was then strangled and burned
at the stake, his last words being, “May the Lord open the King of
England’s eyes.”
It was Henry the VIII who was then King of England, and who assisted
the bishops to buy up Tyndale’s edition and burn the books in a heap
before St. Paul’s in London.
I saw a fragment of one of the books, mostly burned, rescued from the
flames, and now in the British Museum. This is Jehoiachim No. 4.
It is said that a young man named Coverdale had been greatly interested
in Tyndale’s edition; that he was a fine scholar, and that he, with
several others, finding that the edition would be destroyed, succeeded
in selling many copies for the flames, thus erecting a fund with which
they proposed another edition. The prayer of Tyndale in less than two
years was answered. Henry the VIII, with increasing disgust at the
ignorance and corruption of the religious teachers in every community,
determined that, after all, the Bible should be printed and extensively
circulated. So Coverdale, with strong patronage, was employed to issue
it, which he did, under the care of Archbishop Cramer, in 1527, in
Zurich. Two thousand five hundred copies of Coverdale’s edition were
seized and burned by the Inquisition in France. This is Jehoiachim No.
5.
Following Henry VIII, Edward VI ordered that every parish priest should
own a copy and read therefrom a chapter at each service.
In 1558 John Calvin, with able associates, published an edition called
the Genevan edition.
In 1614 King James commissioned forty-seven scholars to make a careful
and complete edition, which was authorized as standard. This is our
own edition or translation in common use since. As Tyndale commenced
his work in 1511, you will see that it took just a century and more
than fifty years after the time of printing to produce a complete and
authorized version of God’s word. The race of Jehoiachims in many parts
have attempted to destroy it, especially in Spain, for the last few
years.
During the time of the preparation of King James’s version, our
Catholic friends completed an edition more to their liking, which was
published in 1609 in Douay, France, and which they have in whatever
common use it is proper to say, called the Douay version.
In 1604, the same year that King James moved for his version, John
Eliot was born. In 1631 he joined the church in Boston, and became
a learned and pious missionary among our American Indians. In 1661
he published his translation, and lived to see over twenty Indians
educated and using his edition in their own tongue, in the pulpit.
Eliot died when he was eighty-six years old. There are now about thirty
copies of his translation remaining, about equally divided between
England and America. There is a copy in the Astor Library in New York,
and one in Yale College library. A copy was sold at auction in New York
a few years since for $1,130, the highest known price ever paid for one
book. There is no man now living who can read Eliot’s Bible.
In 1870 a movement was started, appropriately by the Church of England,
for a thorough revision of our Scriptures. The New Testament has been
in our hands for some time, and we now eagerly look forward to the
appearance of the Old Testament in the new version.
“Within this simple volume lies
The mystery of mysteries;
Happiest story of human race,
To whom that God has given grace
To read, to fear, to hope, to pray,
To lift the latch, to force the way;
And better had they ne’er been born
Than read to doubt or read to scorn.”
—_Sir Walter Scott._
[_January 14._]