ART. IX.-OUR LITERARY BIBLE.

SOME years ago the question was raised, Shall we teach the Bible as literature. To-day we accept the Bible as essential material for teaching literature. Particularly is this true of academic and collegiate English. Some of our colleges specify portions of the Bible as permissible entrance subjects. But thus far the proper literary method of Bible study has remained a very vague conception, and the importance of some such clear conception is emphasized by recent interest in the biblical element of modern English literature. The study of selections of biblical literature is a very different thing from a systematic examination of the Bible as literature. However clearly we may distinguish the various books and forms of composition, the Bible as a literary monument is essentially one. Any good literary method of study, therefore, must comprehend the whole. But even thus such a method must be more than an examination of the literary forms. These are universal, and such a partial literary study is of immense value. But, while the Bible is as universal and cosmopolitan as these forms, it has taken so unique a position in our English literature and language as to justify a peculiar interest in its growth and form. For as an English book the Bible has had a growth and history coincident with the rise of our literary language. In a very remarkable sense the Bible has been for us a fountain head of literary inspiration, in both material and language. Whether it is such to-day is another question. We are now more properly concerned with its relation to our entire literature. Here opens up a very rich field of study as yet worked only in fragmentary fashion. Our literary Bible is at once the same as the Bibles in other tongues and different from them. Its beginnings are coeval with the beginnings of the language. Its forms of expression have varied with the exigencies of the tongue. Its history is inextricably bound up with the storm and stress of England's political and social growth. Its publication, for centuries only in fragments and finally in many complete forms, has been determined by facilities for production and the spiritual need

of the people. The stories of the Old Testament inspired our earliest native poetry, and Ruskin acknowledged the Bible as the nourisher of his best style. But we are in danger of falling into vain abstraction unless we speedily define our terms. The summary of the preceding paragraph is to be gathered by the most casual student of the subject. We propose a study of the English Bible as an English literary monument. But as such it is the

product of an evolution. For the sake of uniformity, and because it has actually been the great authority for three centuries, we should mean to-day the Authorized Version. This has held its place so long, and the revisions have not had time to establish themselves. Indeed, their changes from the old are so slight as to be negligible for our purpose; the essential force of the King James Version in our literature is not affected. However, before the completion of this rendering there were a full thousand years of literary history when the Bible was present in English forms only more or less complete. Indeed, during nine centuries only manuscript copies could be had. The few complete translations were of very limited authority. It appears to have been a very general custom for the clergyman to translate freely from his Latin or other text as occasion required. Still, through all this period biblical word and phrase are constantly cropping out. As a literary force the English Bible was this miscellaneous assortment of renderings chosen for impression on the people's minds and hearts. The particular renderings were for a moment; but the book was lasting as the people's craving for religious truth.

It is evident that the position of the English Bible is thoroughly unique, and therefore requires a peculiar method of examination. Its history is more than a chronicle of versions. The weight of it in our literature cannot depend upon the power of a fixed and definite form for reference. Properly indeed when we speak of the English literary Bible we must mean no particular version. Neither must we infer an abstract literary force. The Bible presented in numerous ways in the early times was a very real thing. Its stories, its songs, its commands, rendered by the clergy in the common tongue, were concrete possessions of the people. The phrases fitting for the ideas entered the daily speech,

and by repetition produced fairly permanent forms. Thus grew up in the tongue of the people prose and metrical versions of various parts of the Bible. And in turn this process of translating deeply affected the language itself. There were ideas in the Hebrew Scriptures not native to the Saxon mind, and when in the restricted pagan vocabulary no sufficient term could be found there was little hesitancy in making the necessary word. In this way the language and the necessities of scriptural expression together determined the version and an enlarged vocabulary. It is important to notice that this process began in the very infancy of the language. The Anglo-Saxon epic "Beowulf" in the earliest form we possess is deeply colored with these new biblical phrases and words. And these were elements not to be subject to surface changes in the tongue. The heaven-kingdom became as much a part of the Saxon's common speech as his own home.

Now, passing over this long period of manuscripts and individual renderings, when we reach the sixteenth century, amid a bewildering array of Bibles and Testaments, again the fact is very clear that for our purpose the term English Bible means no particular translation. The success of Tyndale's New Testament and the editions of the Bible immediately following encouraged a lively speculation in the business, and edition after edition was turned out. We may remark here that the times and authorities and places and reading publics of these various Bibles form an interesting commentary upon the religious history of the time. The Great Bible, "a splendid folio of largest volume," was a fit production for the impressive services of the Church. But the Geneva Bible, printed usually in a readable Roman type instead of the black letter, with the text divided into verses, and marginal notes attached, became the household Bible of two generations. But at the close of the great Elizabethan period the literary language had attained a sufficiently settled form to assure permanence to a new rendering of the Scriptures. It was a most opportune time for the important work which James intrusted to fifty scholarly men. A fine vocabulary-singularly pure it appears when we consider the classical scholarship of the period-had been produced. The capabilities of the English tongue in the entire

range of prose and verse had been tried and assured. A large variety of translations was at hand for comparison, and the long peace had developed adequate scholarship. But our great body of literature was just beginning. No time in the history of the language could be selected better situated to assure to such a version a large influence upon English prose. And yet we must beware of laying too much stress upon what may be termed the purely formal elements of the problem: the times, the language. The book's the thing. At this point as elsewhere a close analysis demonstrates that the essential power lay in the close relation of this book to the English people. We may never divorce the literary Bible from its peculiar spiritual energy. Because of this the Bible became an essential factor in the life of England. And the Bible is of so great weight in English style not primarily because its translators chanced to be masters of our prose, but because the English biblical mode of expression grew up under the stimulus of the Bible's answer to the spiritual needs of a people; because it is the people's book and its language the people's language.

This, then, is the prime significance of biblical quotation in Old and Modern English, not to prove the biblical style good. In the first place, there is no biblical style. Secondly, if there were its fine quality would need no such proof. These quotations and allusions merely serve to emphasize one side of the unique position of the English literary Bible. They demonstrate its intimate relation to the popular life. It is therefore a precise expositor of the essential literary genius of the race. The truth of the matter is that we have had too much of this attempt to demonstrate the literary quality of the Bible by appeal to other literature. In this we cover up the real essential. The Bible is not great because it is great literature; but it is great literature because it is the Bible. And when we lose sight of that fact our perspective is altogether wrong. The Bible is our book of religion, and any worthy study of it must begin with that assumption. As with any book, we determine first, if possible, its purported relation to human life. No piece of literature, no work of art can be adequately appreciated if this foundation is neglected. Students

often fail readily to appreciate the power of Bible English because they do not grasp the significance of its thought. On the other hand, the presence of a skillfully chosen biblical element argues an appreciation of this great fountain of pure English— English all the more pure and strong because of a certain native vigor and rhythm responding readily to the Hebrew spirit. Even the earliest translations were of a remarkable purity of style and diction. Tyndale's work is especially worthy of note. He himself says, "The Greek tongue agreeth more with the English than with the Latin, and the properties of the Hebrew tongue agreeth a thousand times more with the English than with the Latin." He perceived the likeness between the Hebrew and Saxon spirits-a likeness observable in more than one phenomenon of national life.

And here we arrive at another vexed question. We have been told that this literary Bible is passing as did the Vulgate in the Middle Age; that this passing is necessary because a new language and new literary models have been created that other phrases than those of Holy Writ have become familiar. It is asserted that the narrow literary horizon of our fathers compelled them to seek artistic sustenance in the Bible, but that our presentday writers have discovered new sources and are disregarding the old standards. Now, if these statements are correct, and if there is any truth in the account given above of the influence of the Bible, the situation argues a very decided change in the genius of the peoples who claim the literature of England as a heritage. Certainly this is open to doubt. Some changes, indeed, have taken place in word forms and approved sentence management. But these changes are mostly superficial. They simply bring it about that not all parts of the Bible text sound equally well to the trained modern ear. But this matter of the biblical element in literature is not to be estimated offhand. We may distinguish at least three forms of it: verbatim quotations, allusions, and atmosphere or flavor produced by skillful use of word or turn of phrase. It is clear that all these are not easily to be identified. Moreover, in all essentials of style save the one of archaic word forms the Bible contains all extremes. There is no "biblical style" save as a monotonous reading of the text may produce such an effect. It