The New Testament in Literature and History. I

IMPROVEMENT ERA. Vol. XV SEPTEMBER, 1912 No. 11 The New Testament in Literature and History BY. JOHN HENRY EVANS, OF THE LATTER-DAY SAINTS UNIVERSITY I Eminent men have repeatedly declared that if they were cast alone on an island and had to live there for an indefinite time with only one book of their own choice to read, that book would be the Bible. And the innumerable lists of best books selected this half century have invariably included the Hebrew Scriptures as among the first and most important. Now, the New Testament, being part of this volume, is therefore part of the most valuable literary and historical set of documents that has come to us out of the past. Judged as literature merely, the Old Testament is perhaps greater than the New. Carlyle thought the Book of Job the finest literary product of the ages, and most critics would agree with him in this. But the New Testament, though it also contains writings of supreme literary value, has had incomparably greater influence in the world than the Old Testament. The New Testament is not, properly speaking, one book, but many books. It consists of some twenty-seven books, written by seven different writers. The books, given in the order in which they appear in the accepted version are : Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, First Corinthians, Second Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, First Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, First Timothy, Second Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, First Peter, Second Peter, First John, Second John, Third John, Jude, and Revelation.

964 IMPROVEMENT ERA. These were written by Matthew and Mark, who wrote one book each, Luke, who wrote two, John who gave us five, Paul twelve, Peter two, and the unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. The time usually given as including the dates of the composition of these various books covers from the year 44, when the Epistle of James was written, to about the year 80, both A. D. To make plain the fact that the New Testament is made up of a number of distinct books, or writings, let us suppose that we had (1) four sketches of the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith written by four different persons at various times without any idea that they would ever appear together; (2) an account of the rise and growth of the Church during the first few years, but mostly about the travels of, say, Orson Pratt; (3) twenty -one short letters written by some of the apostles now to this ward, now to that, now to the Church as a whole, and now to private individuals ; and (4) say, Elder Orson F. Whitney's Elias. If we should bind all these in one volume of about five hundred pages of the size you are now reading, we should have a book composed very much after the fashion of our present New Testament. So, you see, the whole of this exceedingly valuable writing can be put into the small compass of an ordinary novel of our day. We have said that there are four accounts of the life of our Savior. These, as stated, were written by four different men, each with a distinct purpose in mind. Matthew wrote his treatise for the use of Jews, Mark for Gentiles, Luke for a person named Theophilus ; John's purpose was to show the divine motive of the Person whose life he described. The Acts of the Apostles, which was written by Luke, gives an account of the rise of the Church, its spread from Jerusalem throughout Palestine to the "uttermost parts of the earth." The rest, except Revelation, is composed of letters, varying from less than a page of this size to twenty-eight or thirty. Revelation would cover only thirtyfour pages like this. When we study the New Testament, we may have in mind one or both of two purposes. We may view it as a great literary work, or we may regard it as a repository of great world-controling ideas. Let us endeavor to find out what its literary value is, and afterwards its historical.

NEW TESTAMENT IN LITERATURE. 965 II The New Testament, we must remember, is a literature itself. That is to say, it is not a story, though it contains splendid narrative, nor a book of wisdom, though it contains wise sayings. It has nearly every form of writing known to us. First, it has narrations of supreme value, as witness the Prodigal Son, in Luke (15 :12-32) ; secondly, it has wisdom, literature, as in the Book of James ; thirdly, it has the personal letter, of which Timothy may serve as an example; fourthly, it has poetry, as seen in certain parts of Revelation (20:11 to 22-5) ; fifthly, it has oratory, Paul's Defense before King Agrippa (Acts 26:1-29); and sixthly, innumerable purple patches like Matthew 6:28-30 and I Corinthians, chapter 13. As to how this writing is done the best judges are those men who have spent their lives in writing and who are classed among the most successful in this department of activity. Charles Reade, an English novelist, says that "no ordinary, no uninspired human skill or genius could rival the marvelous brevity, the 'swift fresco strokes' with which again and again Scripture, as it were undesignedly and unconsciously, with only a word or two, makes the characters of men stand out vividly before us, and live in our memory so that we might almost seem to have known them. Not even in Shakespeare do we find so marvelous a power." Robert Louis Stevenson, another English novelist of high rank, says: "Written in the East, these characters live forever in the West ; written in one province, they pervade the world ; penned in rude times, they are prized more and more as civilization advances; a product of antiquity, they come home to the 'business and bosoms' of men, women, and children in modern days. Then is it any exaggeration to say that the characters of Scripture are a marvel of the mind?" A third English novelist (Hall Cain) testifies to the same great literary character of the work we are discussing. "I think I know my Bible," he says, "as few literary men know it. There is no book in the world like it ; and the finest novels ever written fall far short in interest of any one of the stories it tells. Whatever strong situations I have in my books are not of my creation, but are taken from the Bible."

966 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Swift, the great literary dean of the eighteen century, in England, declares: "I am persuaded that the translators of the Bible were masters of an English style much fitter for that work than any we see in our present writings, which is the simplicity that runs through the whole." Matthew Arnold, a celebrated English poet and literary critic, says that the English Bible "introduces the only element of true poetry, the one elevating and inspiring element that enters into the education of multitudes in our land." Landor, another English poet, says that the Bible "contains more specimens of genius and taste than any other volume in existence." Scott, one of the four greatest novelists of England, says : "The most learned and diligent student cannot, in the longest life, obtain an entire knowledge of this one volume. The more deeply he works the mine, the richer and more abundant he finds the ore ; new light continually beams from this source of heavenly knowledge, to direct the conduct and illustrate the work of God and the ways of men ; and he will at least leave the world confessing that the more he studied the Scriptures, the fuller conviction he had of his own ignorance, and of their inestimable value." This same man, when he was on his deathbed, called for "the book." "What book?" asked Lockhart, his son-in-law. "The book," answered Sir Walter, "there is but one — the Bible !" Dr. Samuel Johnson, the greatest literary figure in the later eighteenth century, declared that he hoped "to read the whole Bible once every year, as long as he lived." Froude, the historian, believed the Bible to be literature "the rarest and richest in all departments of thought or imagination which exists." Macaulay termed the Bible "a stupendous work — a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power." So much for the estimation in which the Hebrew Scriptures have been and are held by those who are supposed to know the secrets of the literary art. It is but natural to suppose that the influence exerted by this great literary model has been extensive. An examination of our English literature will reveal the extent of this influence. Cannon Farrar names Shakespeare, Dante, and

NEW TESTAMENT IN LITERATURE. 967 Milton as the "moral light-houses in a dark and stormy sea," and shows how much these men's writings were influenced by the Bible. "Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are, of course, avowedly his comments on the Fall and the Redemption." The Divine Comedy is nothing more nor less than the life history of a human soul, redeemed from sin and error, from lust and worldliness, and restored to the right path. The three great divisions might be called — not Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise — but Guilt, Repentance, and Regenerate Beatitude." And he quotes two commentators, one as saying that "Shakespeare was habitually conversant with the Bible," and another that the great dramatist "had deeply imbibed the Scriptures." Professor Cook says : "To enrich and ennoble the language of a race is to enrich and ennoble the sentiments of every man who has the command of that language. This process of enrichment and ennoblement has been going on in English for nearly thirteen hundred years, and one of the chief agencies by which it has been effected is the influence, direct and indirect, of the Bible." As to how this influence has come about the following instance will show. Ruskin, when a boy, was compelled by his mother to read the Bible "about once a year," and to learn- by heart long chapters ; "to this discipline," he says, "patient, accurate, resolute, I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the best part of my taste in literature." And Bowen says that Ruskin was "the greatest master that the present century has produced of pure, idiomatic, vigorous, and eloquent English." Macaulay recommends Bunyan's works as "an invaluable study to every person who wishes to gain a wide command over the English language." And Bunyan's mind, "by constant perusal, was thoroughly steeped in Holy Scriptures ; he thought its thoughts, spoke its words, adopted its images." Payne thinks that the frequency with which Burke, one of the foremost orators of the world, employs the impressive phrases of the Bible, shows that "he neglects the most valuable repository of rhetoric in the English language who has not well studied the English Bible." But what are some of the literary qualities that make the

968 IMPROVEMENT ERA. Bible unique among the world's great writings ? We may select these three as illustrations : Brevity. This quality, as already pointed out by Charles Reade, means the power to create literary effects by the fewest words, by "swift fresco strokes." A Shakespearean critic has called attention to the fewness of the words with which the great dramatist develops the character of Macbeth, in the play of that name. But the work of the writers of the Bible is superior to that even of Shakespeare in this respect. Consider how few strokes are used in depicting the character of Peter in the New Testament. In the Bible not everything is told. Much is left to the imagination of the reader. Simplicity. The things that make for simplicity are familiar words, short sentences with no entanglements of structure, and a tying of the new idea on to the old. And these are all exhibited in the Bible. If the Bible is hard to understand by the youth of our day, this difficulty may be due to the fact that the Scriptures are not read at present as much as in former times, to the fact that the language has changed since the age of Shakespeare in which the King James version was translated, and finally, I am convinced, to the abominable breaking up of the books into verses — an evil heritage of the dark ages. Still, the Bible is a supreme example of simplicity. Picturesqueness. By this quality is meant that the words of the Bible have a way of calling up images in the mind. One cannot read this sacred volume anywhere from Genesis to Revelation without realizing how true this statement is. Every page gives us mental pictures in a few, simple words. Take these two passages, for example : "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." "Behold, the angel of the Lord came upon Peter [who was in prison] and a light shined in the prison; and he smote Peter on the side, and raised him up, saying, Arise up, quickly. And his chains fell off from his hands. And the angel said unto him, Gird thyself, and bind on thy sandals. And so he did. And he saith unto him, Cast thy garment about thee, and follow me. And he went out, and followed him; and wist not it was true which was done by the angel; but thought he saw a vision." (to be concluded in the next number.)