When the Bible is restored to its full literary structure, it presents itself, not as a book, but as a library-a library of very varied literature, varied in date, in authorship, and in types of literature presented.1

Happily the difficulties pointed out by Professor Moulton are passing away. The various literary editions now being published make it possible for us to get from the reading of the Bible, not only what our ancestors derived from it, but also a vivid sense of its value as song and story and drama.

THE CHARACTERISTICS OF BIBLE LITERATURE

Literary study of the Bible would not be worth while unless the essential qualities of all great books were present in it. That we may see how abundantly present they are we need but to notice how the Bible meets the ordinary tests of literature. The final rank of any book is largely fixed by its fidelity to life and by its universality. Writings that have attained immortality have stood these tests; they are for all time and for every place.

How do the Old Testament narratives stand these tests? As we read them, we do not think of the many centuries that have passed since these old stories were written, nor the vast differences in the manner of living that have come about. We are conscious only of the people, whom we feel that we have always known, and whose actions, though different from ours, seem perfectly natural. They are real men and women and they

1. World Literature: Richard G. Moulton, p. 60.

act just as we should expect them to act under the circumstances. Truth to life the Bible possesses in a supreme degree.

The other test the Bible answers equally well. Ruskin, whose works, both in their substance and in their style, show a remarkable familiarity with the Bible, points out the incomparable range of subjects treated in the Hebrew history and literature, their universal appeal, and their vitality. He thus summarizes the contents of the Old Testament:

"I. The stories of the Fall and of the Flood, the grandest human traditions founded on a true horror of sin.

"II. The story of the Patriarchs, of which the effective truth is visible to this day in the polity of the Jewish and Arab races. "III. The story of Moses, with the results of that tradition in the moral law of all the civilized world.

"IV. The story of the Kings-virtually that of all Kinghood, in David, and of all Philosophy, in Solomon: culminating in the Psalms and Proverbs, with the still more close and practical wisdom of Ecclesiasticus and the Son of Sirach.

“V. The story of the Prophets-virtually. that of the deepest mystery, tragedy, and permanent fate, of national existence.

...

"Think, if you can match that table of contents in any otherI do not say 'book' but 'literature.' Think, so far as it is possible for any of us-either adversary or defender of the faith-to extricate his intelligence from the habit and the association of moral sentiment based upon the Bible, what literature could have taken its place, or fulfilled its function, though every library in the world had remained unravaged, and every teacher's truest words had been written down?'' 1

Coming to matters of detail, we notice the charm of the language of the Bible, a charm amounting to a com

1. From The Bible of Amiens.

pelling interest, of which every thoughtful reader is instantly and continually conscious. Even in our English translations much of this charm remains, due largely to the robustly simple and pure English of Wyclif, the Father of the English Bible, and of Tyndale, a later translator of equal note. These scholars, and all subsequent revisers, have succeeded to a remarkable degree in making the vocabulary they use at once sonorous and dignified, and yet simple and direct.

The directness and simplicity of the Biblical style are not, however, due solely to the skill of the translator. These qualities are embedded in the original Hebrew. It is now generally conceded that the Old Testament narratives, like all very early literature, probably existed for a long time in the liquid, or oral, form before being written down. Hence, short and simple sentences predominate. Moreover, so difficult was it for the memory to retain the important matters, that all irrelevant and all unessential details were omitted. Abstract terms are not found in the Semitic original; concrete words, since they produce immediate and vivid impressions, suited the purpose of the writers. Modifying words were rarely used. Rhetorical devices are common, but of the most primitive kind, such as appeal to the imagination through readily suggested pictures. We are not merely made conscious that something is being done; we see the scene of action, and, better still, since so much is naïvely suggested we understand the causes and can conjecture the possible results. Interjections are continually used

to heighten the effect. Moreover, the conversation recorded is so realistic that one never thinks of it as book dialogue, but as real human speech.

THE PLACE OF THE BIBLE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

The Old Testament narratives, enriched as they are with poetic and dramatic elements, comprise a literature which, for simplicity, clearness, directness, vividness, and universal appeal, is unique. And these qualities explain its power, not merely to arouse interest in millions of readers, but to inspire the writers of Christendom from the beginning to the present moment. Speaking of the place of the Bible in English literature, Professor J. H. Gardiner says:

The power of the book to stir the imagination to a sense of the realities which are on a higher plane than the affairs of everyday life is not limited to its use as a source of religious belief. Yet this most native of all books is by origin wholly foreign, and in the case of the Old Testament is as foreign as anything can be. The stories of Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers were first gathered at the local shrines of Palestine at a time when the children of Israel were just shedding their wild nomadic habits; and the stories of Judges with the glimpses they give us of bloody raids and tribal feuds, show how little the settling down tamed their wild and bloody temper. . . . All such stories reflect a state of civilization which we look upon as wholly Asiatic.

Much reading in the Bible will soon bring one to an understanding of the mood in which all art seems a juggling with triles, and an attempt to catch the unessential when the everlasting verities are slipping by. The silent, unhurrying rumination of the East makes our modern flood of literature seem garrulous chattering: even the great literature of the Greeks loses

beside the compression and massiveness of the Old Testament. It is this cool solidity of poise, this grave and weighty compres sion of speech, that makes the Old Testament literature so foreign. It has no pride of art, no interest in the subjective impressions of the writer, no care even for the preservation of his name. It is austerely preoccupied with the lasting and the real, and above all, unceasingly possessed with the sense of the immediate presence of a God who is omnipotent and inscrutable. . . . In our modern literature it is hardly possible to find an author who has not some touch of the restless egotism that is the curse of the artistic temperament: in the Bible there is no author who is not free from it.

In this art which is not art, then, in this absorption with the solid facts of reality and the neglect of man's comment and interpretation, in the unswerving instinct for the lasting, and the sense of the constant and immediate presence of an omnipotent God, the Bible stands apart in our literature.

Yet on the other hand, the Bible is of all books the most thor oughly woven into the thought and language of the English speaking people. Not the least of its contributions is the standard which it has set for all writing in English that has an ambition to belong to literature.

Certainly an intimate acquaintance with the English Bible is the best possible preparation for the study of English literature, or for the matter of fact, of any literature. Here, then, is

a work which it seems safe to say is of something like universa appeal to the men of our race, a book which one may therefore look on as touching the soul of the race, as a whole.1

Numerous books have been published showing how strong this influence has been in the case of some of our greatest writers. To mention a few of them will suffice to aid such students as desire to pursue their study further. Concerning Shakespeare alone we mention

1. The Bible as English Literature, by J. H. Gardiner.