The Project Gutenberg eBook, Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature, by Various, Edited by Richard Green Moulton

Title: Select Masterpieces of Biblical Literature

Author: Various

Editor: Richard Green Moulton

Release Date: December 12, 2008 [eBook #27510]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SELECT MASTERPIECES OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE***

E-text prepared by Stephen Hope, Fox in the Stars,
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Transcriber's Note: A minor printing error was corrected (Gen. xliv 29).

The Modern Reader's Bible

Select Masterpieces

THE MODERN READER'S BIBLE

A SERIES OF WORKS FROM THE SACRED SCRIPTURES PRESENTED

IN MODERN LITERARY FORM

SELECT MASTERPIECES

OF

BIBLICAL LITERATURE

EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

RICHARD G. MOULTON, M.A. (Camb.), Ph.D. (Penn.)

Professor of Literature in English in the

University of Chicago

New York

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.

1902

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1897,

By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

Set up and electrotyped September, 1897. Reprinted December, 1897;

August, 1898; February, 1899; August, 1900; July, 1901; April, 1902.

Norwood Press

J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith

Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

Introduction

That which we call 'The Bible' has the outward appearance of a book: in reality it is—what the word 'bible' implies in the original Greek—a whole library. More than fifty books, the production of a large number of different authors, representing periods of time extending over many centuries, are all comprehended between the covers of a single volume. There is no greater monument of the power of printing to diffuse thought than this fact, that the whole classic literature of one of the world's greatest peoples can be carried about in the hand or the pocket.

But there is another side to the matter. A high price has been paid for this feat of manufacturing a portable literature: no less a price than the effacement from the books of the Bible of their whole literary structure. Where the literature is dramatic, there are (except in one book) no names of speakers nor divisions of speeches; there are no titles to essays or poems, nor anything to mark where one poem or discourse ends and another begins; not only is there nothing to reflect finer rhythmic distinctions in poetry, but (in King James's version) there is not even a distinction made between poetry and prose. It is as if the whole were printed 'solid,' like a newspaper without the newspaper headings. The most familiar English literature treated in this fashion would lose a great part of its literary interest; the writings of the Hebrews suffer still more through our unfamiliarity with many of the literary forms in which they are cast. Even this statement does not fully represent the injury done to the literature of the Bible by the traditional shape in which it is presented to us. Between the Biblical writers and our own times have intervened ages in which all interest in literary beauty was lost, and philosophic activity took the form of protracted discussions of brief sayings or 'texts.' Accordingly this solidified matter of Hebrew literature has been divided up into single sentences or 'verses,' numbered mechanically one, two, three, etc., and thus the original literary form has still further been obscured. It is not surprising that to most readers the Bible has become, not a literature, but simply a storehouse of pious 'texts.'

If the sacred Scriptures then are to be appreciated as literature, it is necessary to restore their literary form and structure. To do this, with all the assistance that the modern printed page gives to the reader, is the aim of the 'Modern Reader's Bible.' The present volume is intended as an introduction to the series, and, it is hoped, to the literary study of the Bible in general, by Select Masterpieces, illustrating the different types of literature represented in Scripture.

It is natural to enquire, What are the leading literary forms under which the sacred writings may be classified?

A large proportion of the Bible is History: the History of the People of Israel as presented by themselves. How Israel is chosen from all the nations to be the special people of Jehovah; how the invisible Jehovah is at first their only ruler; how gradually the spirit of assimilation to surrounding nations leads to a demand for visible kings. Just as this tendency to secular kingship becomes strong, there comes into prominence an order of 'prophets': the word signifies 'interpreters,' and the prophets are accepted as the interpreters of Jehovah's will to Israel. Under such rule as that of David, the man after God's own heart, the work of the prophets may fall into the background; but where, as usually happened, the secular government tends to ungodliness, the order of prophets stands forth as an organised opposition. On lines like these the historic narrative of the Bible pursues its course; and with the thread of narrative are interwoven legal and statistical documents which give it support. The History Series of the Modern Reader's Bible presents the sacred narrative divided according to its logical divisions. Genesis is occupied with the formation of the chosen nation, from the first beginnings of things to the development of the descendants of Abraham as a patriarchal family. The Exodus narrates the migration of the fully formed nation to the land of promise; this is the period of constitutional development, and in this part of the history we find massed together the whole of the constitutional lore of Israel. The group of books constituting The Judges volume represents a period of transition: the 'judges' of Israel correspond to the 'heroes' of other peoples, and amid a succession of these judges the incidents of Israel's history reveal the efforts of the people of Jehovah towards a secular government. The Kings takes up the history of the nation from the establishment of the dynasty of David, and covers the struggle between the prophetic and the secular parties until the time of the fall and captivity. Upon the return of the remnant from Babylon all opposition to the theocracy has ceased; to the prophets have succeeded the 'scribes,' or interpreters of the written law, and The Chronicles is the ecclesiastical history, not of a Hebrew nation, but of a Jewish church.

From History we must, in literary analysis, distinguish Story: the one is founded on the sense of record and scientific explanation of events, the other appeals to the imagination and the emotions. The Story literature of most peoples is 'fiction,' in the sense that its matter is invented solely for literary purposes. The stories of the Bible are part of the sacred history, differing only in the mode in which the matter is presented; and a long series of