In my last I said “I hope to return to this theme in another post”. I had mentioned the Bible, in the King James Version completed in 1611. In its time and for several centuries it was Holy Writ, an authority not to be questioned by its readers, till developments in science, evolutionary theory and psychology were deemed to challenge its monopoly on truth. (As a non-Christian, I never thought of it as truth or otherwise. It was “Scripture”, one of our mandatory school topics, on which exams had to be passed.) Literature is another matter. Its value in human culture doesn’t depend on being factual, but stands or falls on literary merits. The writings of Darwin, Jung and Freud, I’d argue from the little I’ve read of them, are literature, regardless of whether their theories are upheld by posterity. I felt there was more to be said and this is it.
In the back of my mind was The Bible Designed to be Read as Literature, a volume edited and arranged by an American professor, Ernest Sutherland Bates. I wrote a piece about it two years ago. The 1936 Simon & Schuster edition provided an introduction by Bates himself, but the British one from William Heinemann had an introduction by Laurence Binyon. For a hundred years, a poem of his has been quoted out loud probably more often than any other, by millions who never read poetry. On the outbreak of World War I, he wrote a poem, For the Fallen. Extracts from it are an established part of Remembrance Day services throughout the Commonwealth, especially these lines:
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.
His introduction to Bates’ edition of the Bible expresses a view close to my own on education, the Bible, religion, language, cultural heritage and Nature. In particular, he presents all these as interdependent and inseparable. I’d like to think this is a very English view. It is certainly anti-intellectual, as if to say “All things are interconnected. That’s just the way it is. Poetry matters more than analysis.” Or perhaps that’s what I read into his Introduction, blurring his views with my own. I’ve taken the liberty to transcribe it here in full, together with a few portraits of the author.
THE PRESENT VOLUME, for which I have been invited to write these few lines of introduction, is designed to present the English Bible, or rather a selection of the greater part of it, as literature. It is intended for all readers, of whatever belief, opinion, or bringing-up. It is not the first attempt of the kind—W. L. Courtney’s “Literary Man’s Bible,” R. G. Moulton’s “Modern Reader’s Bible,” for instance, are well known—but the selection and arrangement in the present volume are new.
Some twenty years ago a Report on the position of Classics in our educational system was made to the Prime Minister (Mr. Asquith) by a committee appointed for the purpose. The Report was not encouraging to those who believe that the continuity of our civilization is something very precious to the race. “The danger with which we are faced,” wrote the Committee, “is not that too many pupils will learn Latin and Greek, but that the greater part of the educated men and women of the nation will necessarily grow up in ignorance of the foundations on which European society is built.” The Committee were pleading for the preservation of our immense inheritance from ancient Greece and Rome, and the continuing “spiritual value” of classic literature. “The civilization of the Western world is grounded upon the ancient civilization of the Mediterranean coast.” But it is not only the coast of Greece and the coast of Italy, it is also the coast of Palestine from which flows that invisible stream which has saturated the consciousness of modern Europe. And if the place of the classics in English education is a diminishing, a constantly threatened element, what of the great literature contained in the Bible, and its “spiritual value” to the race? Can we take it for granted that the books of the Bible are familiar to English people today as they were familiar a few generations ago? We know that we cannot.
Some time about the end of the last century I remember waiting for a train at a little country station; and I was approached by an old shepherd in a smock-frock who, I learned, was making the alarming adventure of travelling by train (to the next station) for the first time. We fell into talk, and as he told me of his frugal life and the contrast between present conditions and those of his youth, when there was never enough to eat and he had “neither home nor habitation,” I was struck by the Biblical character of the speech in which his thoughts seemed to find their natural expression. The Bible probably was the only book he knew; its language had soaked into his mind and fitted all the needs of his ancient and solitary calling. Looking back, I see that old shepherd as a kind of apparition from the past, a kind of symbol. His world is gone, his language is heard no more. Traditions crumble easily. It is a loss, though many no doubt will think not a momentous loss, that beauty and dignity of speech, and pleasure in its use, should fade from rustic talk. But it is not shepherds and country folk that are most affected by loss of familiarity with the Bible. I have been astonished to find, or hear of, instances of blank ignorance among the educated of the younger generation, ignorance of stories and even names, which not so long ago it would hardly have been possible to escape the knowledge of.
No doubt the vast unconscious debt we owe still operates, far more perhaps than appears upon the surface; it has gone into the fibres of our race. But, apart from all other obvious considerations, to disuse familiarity with a whole great literature—-a familiarity not, as with the Greek classics, to be won only at the cost of long laborious study and then only attainable in the nature of things by a very few, but accessible to all in our own tongue through an incomparable translation: this is a voluntary starving of the mind and an impoverishment of the spirit which seems an incredible folly. There may be some still to whom it savours of a kind of derogation to treat of the sacred scriptures as “literature.” It is the inward message, they will say, which matters, not the outward form. But it is as great an error to imagine that the substance can be abstracted from the form as that the form can be abstracted from the substance. These are one and indivisible. Can it be supposed that the words which have carried hope and awe, fortitude and consolation, into the minds of English people for so many generations would have had anything like the same virtue and power if they had not been shaped into a noble and unforgettable form? Who can measure the loss in that virtue and power of William Tyndale and the translators of the Authorized Version who built on his magnificent foundations had not possessed so wonderful a sense of rhythm in language? Who can say how much of the very “meaning” communicated is communicated by that rhythm? And indeed, to make a rigid division between the sacred and the secular is surely to impoverish both. There is no linguistic obstacle to be surmounted in reading the Bible; but there are many other obstacles to understanding and appreciation, obstacles mainly occasioned by the traditional mode of its presentment. It is the aim of this edition to remove those obstacles.
While the great classics of literature are now presented in a form of which the art of the printer has done everything possible to make them attractive to the eye and lucid to the mind, the English Bible is presented in a form forbidding to the reader and even, except in expensive editions, injurious to the eyesight. Dr. R G. Moulton in his “Literary Study of the Bible,” says: “The Bible is the worst-printed book in the world. No other monument of ancient or modern literature suffers the fate of being put before us in a form that makes it impossible without strong effort and considerable training, to take in elements of literary structure which in all other books are conveyed directly to the eye in a manner impossible to mistake.” And yet, to quote from the same book, “A clear grasp of the outer literary form is an essential guide to the inner matter and spirit.”
Though the Bible represents one of the greatest literatures of the world, it has for centuries been studied apart from its literary form and value. The way in which it is printed testifies to this indifference.
The first thing to note is that though a great part of the Bible is poetry, the poetry is printed as prose. The prose, on the other hand, instead of being printed continuously, is broken up into short “verses,” and arbitrarily divided into “chapters.” The Bible contains almost all the traditional types of literature; lyric poetry, dramatic and elegiac poetry, history, tales, philosophic treatises, collections of proverbs, letters, as well as the type of writing peculiar to itself, what are called the Prophetic Books. Yet all these are presented in print as if, in the original, they had the same literary form.
The arrangement of the books presents, we are told by Biblical scholars, similar confusions, and incongruous juxtapositions, with no regard, in many cases, for the period to which they belong.
In the present edition it is hoped that these barriers to understanding and enjoyment are as far as possible cleared away, and the Bible “clothed in a dress through which its beauty may best shine.” Those are the words of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, to whose three lectures “On Reading the Bible” the reader is referred. Those lectures were a plea, and a very eloquent and moving plea, for the inclusion of portions of the English Bible in the English Tripos at Cambridge: but Sir Arthur speaks also for all students, for all readers: “The English Bible should be studied by us all for its poetry and its wonderful language as well as for its religion—the religion and the poetry being in fact inseparable.”
The ordinary reader is not aware of the obstacles I have mentioned: he accepts them all as inherent in the Bible itself, as something unavoidable. Very likely he is prejudiced against the Bible because he associates it with enforced lessons, learnt in piecemeal fashion; just as many who are supposed to have received a classical education at school have merely imbibed a similar prejudice: so much time is expended over nice points and elaborate comment that the essential is submerged and understanding and enjoyment lost. It is much more important that great books should be read, than that they should be read about. And how can any great books, which are living things, perennial fountains, be felt and known in all their enriching virtue, if studied piecemeal and smothered with minute commentary?
In the case of the Bible the tradition handed down from the Middle Ages has been to regard it as a collection of texts, any one of which could be detached from its surroundings and used, regardless of the circumstances in which it was written or by whom it was spoken, as divine authority for conduct; often (as we know) with devastating consequences. Texts have been set up as idols, as cruel as ever were worshipped by savage idolaters. A single text, literally interpreted, was held by pious slave-traders to authorize the enslavement of the negro race. But the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath! If the world had acted in the spirit of that liberating saying, how different would have been the history of Christendom! But the world still loves to reverse its meaning in every department of life. To read the books of the Bible, each as a whole, with understanding of the circumstances in which each was written (so far as these are known), is the only way to reach a real appreciation of the great literature it contains; it may perhaps help a little at the same time to clean the mind of literalism and legalism. those poisons of the human soul.
It is already a great gain for the reader to have the poetry printed as poetry and the prose as prose.
Hebrew poetry differs in form from the poetry of other great literatures in not having metre or rhyme. This happens to be a piece of great good fortune for us, because translations of metrical poetry into verse are seldom successful even to the limited degree possible (at least when the original is great poetry), and translations into prose, by sacrificing the rhythm and all that rhythm implies, are apt to look like a skeleton compared with a living body. Hebrew poetry, not having metre—at least not in our sense of the word—could be translated into English without any such loss; and the translators, working at a time when the language was far more fluid, and when moreover an instinctive delight in beauty and force of speech was diffused through the nation, have created harmonies of speech-rhythm which challenge comparison with the greatest of original poems in metre. But this poetry is not a loose form, like what is known as “free verse.” Far from it. Its principle is what has come to be called “parallelism”; that is, a symmetrical arrangement of parallel clauses. The simplest and commonest form is an arrangement of two, or sometimes three, of such clauses, though there are more complex forms corresponding to what we call stanzas; and the device of the refrain may be used, as in our ballads, with an enforcing effect. In the couplet, where the parallelism is most obvious, the thought is expressed in the first line and then re-expressed, with a difference, in the second; as one were to hold up a cut stone to the light and then, turning it slightly, show another facet. There is no counting of syllables, or of stresses; but this system performs in its own way the function of metre; it has in common with metre what is absent from prose, the expectation of recurrence in the form. The instinct for parallelism is strong also in much of the prose of the Bible, so that poetry and prose sometimes overlap. Moreover there are occasions when the writer of a prose composition will break for a moment into verse. Such passages are shown in the printing of this edition. The principle which is the foundation of the form of the poetry pervades also the thought. There is a rhythm of thought as well as a rhythm of sound.
It was De Quincey, I think, who noted in the precept “Let not the sun go down upon your wrath,” something characteristic of the literature of the Bible; namely, the seeking for a harmony, a correspondence, between the actions of mankind and the larger movements of the universe in which man’s life is set. And I think that this is one thing which may especially impress the mind in reading Hebrew poetry. There is no description of things for their own sake; they are vividly seen, but all things are related to one another; we are made aware of them all—the mountains and the streams, the vineyards, the olives, the desert places, the sheep and cattle, the wild ass and the lion in the wilderness, the tender grass, the rocks, the sea and the ships upon the sea, the fishes under the water, the stars, the rain, the wind, and in all this world men moving and going about their business, acting, suffering, rejoicing; all these are related to one another because united by the presence in the poet’s consciousness of the pervading power of the invisible Creator. A modern reader may have quite other ideas about the constitution of the universe, a quite different approach to it; but he will hardly deny that it is a living and mysterious whole; and through this profound conviction of the unity of life and the power of the pervading, eternal spirit, touching all life with a kind of glory, Hebrew poetry has a grandeur of horizon together with a kindling warmth and passion which we find in no other poetry with the same constancy or to the same degree.
‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings!’
In such a verse as that the peculiar beauty of this poetry shines out. The appeal is not merely to the mind’s eye, but to the liberated imagination. The thing seen is fused with the thing felt. How much is evoked in how few words!
I have ventured to dwell on this one characteristic of the poetry of the Bible, this vision of life as a whole (it would be superfluous to expatiate on a literature to which our own literature owes such an endless debt) because it seems to me to have a special relevance to the present age.
This world of ours, we may presume, is to continue for thousands and thousands of years, though few seem to look forward more than a century or two at the farthest. Those who venture predictions appear to suppose that the race will go on being absorbed, as it is at the present moment, in eager exploitation of the discoveries of science and their application to daily use and profit, becoming more and more intent on the great business of making things go faster and faster. . . And then? What really will happen, no one knows and no one can imagine. Changes no doubt, immense changes, but in what direction? It may be that we have no inkling at all of what the future will really be. But for those who think that it is the human soul which matters, it may well appear that in seeking to press the utmost of immediate gain out of the mastery of Nature’s secrets we are fast losing the vision of human life as a whole. We are developing one side of human activity and are in danger of letting it dominate over all the others. And this is to our enduring hurt. Life is a whole, just as learning is a whole in which science and “the classics” (in the broad sense of the word) complement each other. We are witnessing today a break with the past, the mental and spiritual past of the race; we can see the gap growing. Will it be completed? Or will some profounder instinct of self-preservation produce a recoil and turn the race back to recover the riches of its inheritance, the irreplaceable riches?
Come what may—and let us look beyond the insane and brutal elements in mankind erupted to the surface in this present moment of an endless history—it is certain that to forgo the opportunity, accessible to all, of frequenting this surpassing literature of the Bible, with its grandeur and abundance—a world of mind and spirit and passionate drama, far transcending the horizons of the little private world we each of us inhabit—is as if one should resolve of set choice to be poor in the midst of plenty and to dwell in a mean street.
LAURENCE BINYON.
a wayfarer’s notes 
I find myself in the intriguing position of being, like Adam in the garden of Eden, tempted by the apple of debate that awaits to be consumed. The ego-Eve who plays the role of temptress in this mini drama, can be very persuasive. However, as I have been taught 'my bible' and am aware of the horrendous outcome that would be my lot (not the later Lot of course) should I choose to forget that there is a power that walks in the Garden in the cool of the evening, I have decided not to follow my own wishes and eat of the forbidden fruit. But maybe I could just throw the apple core in Eve's direction, in the hope that it will bio-degrade before evening comes.
We do need to have reference points in our lives, whether as individuals or as nations. I would guess, a reasonable guess I hope, that this need would apply to every sentient species that might have existed, might still exist, might yet exist at some point in the future, somewhere amongst the multitude of galaxies that exist in the universe. No, there is nothing special about humanity, except in its overly proud presumption of its own importance, a position relative only to this tiny mote of dust in a seemingly infinite universe.
Yet that is not to say that we are without value, nor that we have not created much of great value. But why so many choose to scorn that wealth, often in favour of the handleable trinkets of the present is beyond me. Can it be that to have a living, thriving soul is a necessary requirement for the appreciation of our past, to experience at-one-ment with our cultural and psycho-spiritual environment?
The discovery of our cultural heritage is not made an easy task. Poor quality teaching, by blind teachers, has helped to make that task of discovery and learning all the more difficult. Yet children love to learn! They are full of curiosity about life. And maybe that is a pointer to the problem that confronts a sleeping humanity. That society has thrown so much that is mediocre at its individual members, that the power of discernment is being swamped. As a result, our inner reality-Eves (she multi-tasks as you may have gathered) are having their curiosity instincts stifled. And from whence will come the Serpent, the Lucifer, to light the way to knowledge, understanding and wisdom?
There is a power that walks in the Garden, and evening approaches. I must return to my own tasks.
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At it's best the bible reads like poetry (“…I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”)
But at it's most ignorant (“…If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.” Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB)
At other times it just reads like a voice from the intellectual darkness – the voice of a child afraid of the unknown.
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Brett, I'm glad to say that the Bible Designed to be Read as Literature doesn't contain any of those primitive laws. The offence of including them (because they were alleged to be given to the world by Moses) is compounded by translating them into modern English terms, so that the reader is deprived of a sense of distance, prevented from seeing that they tried in their way to have some kind of justice, comparable to that imposed in many other primitive societies, in some cases up till 100 years ago, e.g. in North Borneo (I have a book about their customs, but will not burden this response with the detail.
In short, I agree, Brett!
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Respect, Tom, to your decision to decline debate. May those tasks you return to help light the way to awakening sleeping humanity.
I see you have requisitioned your own reference point in this matter, taking the Garden of Eden myth and using it for your own purposes. That’s good recycling. Generations have done the same. They may have memorised some of the words, or the sense of what they have read may have biodegraded in their unconscious, providing nutrients and lighting torches to show them a route from their own intellectual darkness, through the voices of other children afraid of the unknown (to seize a few images from Brett's comment).
And some of us may listen endlessly to Bach's Cantatas, knowing none of the German in their chorales and arias, but feeling the inspiration which came from the Lutheran Bible and got transmuted alchemically into heavenly music.
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Among the best ways to avoid experiencing something is to talk about it, think about, it write about it, or best yet, theorize about it. If you want an ice cream cone, just lick it.
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I’ve been intrigued by your pointed comment for days, Ellie, unsure what you’re pointing at. One can’t get ice cream whenever one takes the fancy, and even if one can, one can’t eat it all the time. I’ll grant that it’s readily obtainable, but don’t see how theorizing about it stands in the way (aside from dietary considerations, but surely that’s pushing the analogy too far). I’d hazard that one talks, thinks, writes etc about something elusive to compare notes on the quest. Participants in the discussion have tasted it from time to time, and are curious as to the wherefores.
We could “just lick”, as you suggest, but how sociable is that?
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“Call me Sisyphus love. Yeh, I move the rock. I just don't want to talk about moving the rock, get pictures taken of me moving the rock, anything that distracts me from moving the rock.”
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Now we are awash in a sea of metaphor with naught but the feeble paddle of reason, searching for the twinkling lights of shore.
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Drops of wisdom come to us by listening, reading, meditating, experiencing, imagining. They may come together as a trickle which joins other trickles until a river of knowledge has accumulated. The left side of our brains lay claim this amalgamation to classify it, organize it, codify it, systematize it, and call it thoughts. For quite a while I wondered why Buddhists asked one to clear one's mind of thoughts. To me thoughts were good especially when thy led to insight. Then I realized that frequently thoughts substitute for direct apprehension.
Science is discovering how the brain processes the data which comes to it through various sources. Eventually we may be able to identify and name the messages our brains receive and the different ways they are processed by our brains. Some people are already distinguishing between what their right and left sides of their brains are telling them. I look forward to being completely aware when a word of truth has entered my brain from the internal spirit rather than from sense data, ego processing, or instinctual demands.
The experiences of no two people are the same. Whatever truth a person apprehends is his individual portion of truth. If a person wants others to find their own truth he can try to remove obstructions as well as witnessing to his own truth. Reminding people of ways we avoid affirming our own experience, is my attempt to remove obstructions.
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I'm grateful, Ellie, for your thoughtful and comprehensive answer. I'm still not sure what prompted you in the first place to remind people of ways we avoid affirming our own experience, but that doesn't matter.
I spent thirty years influenced by a guru whose doctrine was similar to Buddhists, though it was more Hindu, sometimes Bhakti yoga sometimes Raj yoga, as the wind blew. He never ceased to preach against the mind as our number one enemy. As a result we listened to his claptrap uncriticaly. Disciples who thought for themselves soon left, for reasons I now accept as quite valid.
Your attempt to remove obstructions implies you see yourself in some way as a teacher, a role to which I have gained lifelong immunity. This is one of the effects of my thirty years in spiritual servitude; I see it as a beneficial effect, saving me from bowing down to any given idea whatsoever, unless it resonates within me.
Having got that out of the way, I do agree with a great deal of what you say; for example that frequently thoughts substitute for direct apprehension. It is so, and rightly so. Many are the occasions when thoughts need to over-ride our direct apprehension.
You say “I look forward to being completely aware when a word of truth has entered my brain from the internal spirit rather than from sense data, ego processing, or instinctual demands.” That makes sense to me. It could be a good starting point for another post I have been meaning to start for more than a month. But I realize at this moment that I can give the gist of that post immediately, now that you’ve established a context for it. Let me try, in a single short paragraph.
We are animals evolved from other animals. Our presence on earth as a surviving species owes everything to sense data, ego processing and instinctual demands. We are not in a position to downgrade the value of these mental events. They take priority. Sense data warns us of danger, ego processing protects us from despair, instinctual demands over-ride reason which can follow any false gods that take its fancy. Promptings from the internal spirit come when there is stillness, and stillness comes when there is stillness inside us, when the other demands step aside and make space. For myself I never want to be a teacher or guide; only to be open to that “internal spirit” when my animal nature, so to speak, allows. Or when I am able to enter what Alastair Reece calls “the Green Zone” (where green = safety, red = danger.
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Anyhow, Ellie, I want to thank you simply for your original message: now it has got home, now understood. I've no more to say on that point.
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A propos nothing in particular (perhaps a mythical “next post” which I may be too lazy to write), I append the following clarification:
My point in comment above that “ego processing [Ellie’s term] protects us from despair” was too succinct.
The human ego is a delicate thing. I don't know if anything comparable exists in other animals. In its ordinary healthy form, it strives ceaselessly to maintain self-respect, whatever the circumstance. Without this solid basis there is failure to thrive, mourning, despair and suicide: the latter not always with violence and conscious intention. There are many ways to shorten one’s life. Ego is no enemy to the spirit, except in its unhealthy forms, which can sometimes be remedied by a sharp blow, (literally and with a stick, if we are to believe tales of the old Zen masters). When this happens spontaneously in every day life, and we recognize its value, we call it a “blessing in disguise”. For which I give thanks.
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