The Rise and Fall of the Bible

by Timothy Beal

  Yet the ABS’s own Scripture Collection, which is the largest in the United States, makes very clear that other publishers continued to profit by doing exactly what the ABS resisted, thereby “multiplying the leaves” in a very different sense. In many nineteenth-century Bibles, the biblical text is almost entirely overwhelmed by the various value-adding “extras”—annotations, commentaries, and “practical notes”—provided by this or that well-known scholar or churchman. In most of these Bibles, the extras make up well over half of the text on any given page.

  Others introduce novel, “got to have” formats—a finely made red velvet Bible with gold trim (1850), for example, and numerous ultra-tiny “thumb Bibles,” many of which include only a few pages summarizing biblical stories. One exception is David Bryce’s miniature edition (1896). “Printed upon the very thinnest Oxford India paper ever made,” it measures only eighteen by fifteen millimeters and includes the entire Bible on its 520 total pages. It came in a tiny metal box with a tiny magnifying glass. Of course, even with the glass, it is pretty much unreadable.

  David Bryce’s thumb-sized edition of the whole King James Version Bible, printed on 520 pages (1896). It came in a small metal box with a tiny magnifying glass.

  Courtesy ofthe Special Collections Research Center, Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University

  In certain extraordinary circumstances even the ABS was willing to experiment with novel formats, if not notes or comments. It published a red leather pocket-sized Bible with a leather clasp for Civil War soldiers, and small canvas editions of the New Testament for soldiers in both world wars. During World War II it and the British and Foreign Bible Society also published what I believe to be the first waterproof Bible, “for Life Boats and Rafts,” small packets of pamphlet-sized biblical books wrapped and sealed in aluminum and paper.

  A waterproof “Lifeboat Bible” from World War II. This interfaith edition includes fascicles of Gospels and the Psalms wrapped in foil and paper.

  Courtesy of the Scripture Collection, Library of the American Bible Society

  Still other Bibles offered novel versions of the biblical text itself. In 1848 Andrew Comstock published a phonetic Δe Nw Testament ov ør Lwrd and Sevyur JDizus Krist in his own “purfekt alfabet,” which claimed to have a single printed character for every articulate sound, accent, and inflection. In 1876 Julia E. Smith published, at her own expense, the first translation of the Hebrew Scriptures and Greek New Testament by a woman. In her preface, she writes, “It may be thought by the public in general, that I have great confidence in myself, in not conferring with the learned in so great a work, but as there is but one book in the Hebrew tongue, and I have defined it word for word, I do not see how anybody can know more about it than I do.” Others produced far less “word for word” editions, such as Stories from the Bible Put into Basic English (1933), by C. K. Ogden, the inventor of “Basic English,” a simplified language comprised of 850 core vocabulary words. Parodied as “Newspeak” in George Orwell’s novel 1984, Basic English was a foreshadow of the grade-school-level vocabularies used in so many more recent Bible paraphrases.

  One of the most commercially successful Bibles was the ambitious Illuminated Bible, a large-format family Bible published in 1846 by Harper & Brothers, which spent more than six years and $20,000 on its development. Bound in gold-embossed leather, it included over sixteen hundred lavish illustrations, most of them original, along with extensive cross-references, notes, a chronological index, a concordance, and tables of weights, measures, and biblical proper names. It also included spaces to inscribe details of births, deaths, and marriages. In a very real sense, this Bible was meant to be more than simply a part of the family. The family, indeed the world, was encompassed within it.

  Many nineteenth-century portraits idealize the image of the family gathered around the father or grandfather for a brief service of Bible reading and prayer. Others picture a mother reading to her adoring child, almost as though nursing. As cultural historian Colleen McDannell comments, “Just as breast milk gave nurture and pleasure to children, so the mother’s use of the Bible fed, comforted, and delighted her progeny.” In these images as in those with the patriarch at the center, parents are idealized as the pastors of their familial congregations of children, and Bible reading is their primary pastoral activity.

  Supported by such images, the family Bible became the centerpiece of a form of popular American religiosity in the nineteenth century that McDannell aptly calls “material Christianity.” Emerging in the Victorian era in the aftermath of the revivalism of the Second Great Awakening, material Christianity focused on physical objects to awaken powerful religious emotions, fostering devotion to certain Victorian ideals for the Christian home and family, in which the father was breadwinner and public authority figure while the mother was homemaker and domestic spiritual nurturer. At the same time, the industrial revolution was accelerating print culture, making large, ornate family Bibles more plentiful and readily affordable for a growing number of households. These factors combined to make the family Bible both the physical and iconic centerpiece of domestic Christian piety in the mid- and late nineteenth century.

  Lost in Translations

  At the same time as the family Bible was in ascendance, the very idea of a single, universal translation of the Bible for the English-speaking world was beginning to disintegrate.

  Although there had been other translations available, the King James Version reigned more or less supreme from the late seventeenth century through most of the nineteenth century. That changed with the publication of the Revised Version Bible in 1881 (New Testament only) and 1885 (whole Bible). Since 1611, there had been significant discoveries of ancient biblical manuscripts, such as the Codex Sinaiticus. At the same time, scholarship in the ancient biblical languages had made great advances. Done by an ecumenical committee of British and American translators, the Revised Bible aimed not only to update the archaic language of the Authorized Version but also to correct it in light of these discoveries and advances. Theirs was a dream of ecumenical unity among all of English-speaking Christendom. And that dream, they believed, would be realized through this ecumenically produced and therefore truly “common Bible.”

  But the dream quickly turned into a nightmare of greater conflict and division, especially in the United States. By calling into question the authority of the Authorized Version, the Revised Version Bible introduced (or rather reintroduced) what American religious historian Peter J. Thuesen describes as a new “Bible market” in which there was no longer a single, correct choice, not only for what edition of Bible to buy and use, but also for what translation. This raised disconcerting questions that went to the heart of biblical authority. Is any translation trustworthy? Is the task of the translator objective or subjective? Do different translations reflect different values and vested interests? Is the Bible, in English or in its original languages, subject to correction and revision? What meanings might be lost in translation? Is there one Bible or are there many? Driven by an ecumenical desire to produce a translation of the Bible that all could embrace, the Revised Version had inadvertently reopened a can of worms that had been effectively closed since the King James Version had come to dominate the English-speaking world.

  Most fundamentalists initially approved of the Revised Bible. The project was, after all, consistent with its commitment to the doctrine of inerrancy, which claims that, as the literal Word of God, the Bible is without error or contradiction in its original “autographs,” that is, its original manuscript form. Since we no longer have those original autographs, it is the task of the scholar to investigate all later manuscript evidence in order to determine the most reliably original text. Which had been the explicit goal of the Revised Version committee. In time, however, several influential fundamentalists grew to distrust that committee’s motives, seeing that some of its members were proponents of biblical higher criticism, discussed earlier, and those doubters returned to the Kin
g James Version. Eventually, they and many others came to embrace The Scofield Reference Bible, a King James study Bible published in 1909 by the influential theological and biblical inerrantist C. I. Scofield.

  A half century later, another distinguished committee of biblical scholars under the umbrella of the ecumenical National Council of Churches of Christ produced a revision of the Revised Bible, called the Revised Standard Version (New Testament only in 1946; complete Bible in 1952). It, too, drew criticism from fundamentalists and soon came to be seen as the flagship of modern liberalism. One particular bone of contention was its translation of Isaiah 7:14, “Behold, a young woman [Hebrew ’almah] will conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.” Other versions had invariably translated ‘almah “virgin” to conform with the Gospel of Matthew, which quotes this verse in reference to the Virgin Birth of Jesus. In fact, the Revised Standard Version translation is correct. The Hebrew for “virgin” is betulah, not ’almah. But Matthew is quoting from the Greek Septuagint, which uses parthenos, which does indeed mean “virgin.” Such details were clearly too complicated for many critics, who were scandalized by what appeared to be a denial of the Virgin Birth. Martin Luther Hux, a Baptist minister from North Carolina, went so far as to burn that page, declaring the Revised Standard Version “a master stroke of Satan.” For many, this translation soon came to represent all that was wrong with modern liberal Christianity and ecumenism.

  Needless to say, the Revised Standard Version brought Christians no closer to the dream of a common Bible than had the Revised Bible. In fact, it inaugurated a proliferation of new and competing translations. In 1959 the inerrantist Lockman Foundation enlisted a large committee to revise the American Standard Version. Twelve years later, it published the New American Standard Bible (New Testament 1963; whole Bible 1971). This form-driven, often very wooden translation quickly gained popularity over the Revised Standard Version in conservative evangelical and fundamentalist circles. It was the best-selling Bible in America in 1977, and continues to be popular among iner-rantists to this day. The following year, 1978, saw the publication of the New International Version (New Testament only in 1973), which has dominated the Bible market ever since. Like the New American Standard Bible’s translators, its large committee of biblical scholars and ministers were explicitly committed to biblical inerrancy and aimed to revise what many conservatives saw as problems with the Revised Standard Version (both, by the way, restored the virgin to Isaiah 7:14). But the more neo-evangelical-leaning New International Version was dramatically different in that it moved away from word-for-word translation and toward the new functional-equivalence, or meaning-driven, approach. In the wake of its success, as well as that of the loose paraphrasing style of the best-selling The Living Bible, the majority of new commercial translations have moved even further in that direction. And so the dream of a common Bible has been replaced by the reality of a Bible that is legion.

  Not a Rock but a River

  As overwhelmingly vast as it is, the Scripture Collection at the American Bible Society in New York would be much vaster had the society continued to collect every edition of the Bible in English up to the present. But during my visit, the collection’s curator, Dr. Lupas, explained to me that the ABS had to stop striving for total inclusiveness in the early 1970s. “At that point,” she explained, “it simply became unmanageable.” Indeed. Around that time, as we have seen, the number and variety of Bibles began to grow exponentially.

  Still, the difference between the early centuries of English Bible publishing and today is one of degree, not kind. All the seeds of the current distress crop were there: a wide variety of physical forms and formats, often promoting novelty over readability; voluminous value-adding “extras” attached to celebrity ministers and authors, often overpowering, even burying, the biblical text in a mass of “supplemental” notes and comments; new and alternative translations and paraphrases; and massive abridgments, reshufflings, and rearrangements. Thus we discover a puzzling paradox in our brief history of the Bible in print culture: the Bible’s iconicity—the image and idea of it as The Book of books and singular, literal Word of God—has grown in tandem with its multiplication of forms. The image of oneness and the reality of manyness have developed hand in hand, each simultaneously encouraging and challenging the other.

  Waiting to meet another ABS staff member in the bookstore downstairs, I overheard a conversation between two dark-suited, middle-aged ministers and a young African American woman standing next to a shelf full of edgy, newfangled, youth-oriented Bibles. “These things have charred the Bible,” one man said, while the other two shook their heads in agreement. Then the woman made an interesting comment. “For me, it’s about the continualness of the Bible. My Bible is always out, on my bed stand at night, on my desk at work. It’s always there, so I can always be in it, in the Word; it’s not for certain times or places. The Bible is always there, and has always been there.” I found her words insightful on more than one level. First, it reveals something about how a lot of people feel about Bible reading, or being “in the Word.” It’s not a book to read and then say you’ve read. It’s about a continual process of reading and rereading—not cover to cover, but all around, over and over, here and there. It’s an ongoing relationship. To her, I gather, the newfangled Bibles on the nearby shelf seemed to be marketed as Bibles for certain occasions and contexts, passing novelties to enjoy for a time. But I think her concern for the continualness of the Bible resonates on another level as well. It expresses a deep desire, shared by many, for permanence and stability, for the Bible as something that is the same everywhere and doesn’t change over time.

  But if there’s one thing that this “story of the Book” makes clear, it is that the only constant in the history of the Bible is change. The history of the Bible is one of perpetual revolution. In that light, we might begin to think about the Bible not so much as a fixed thing but as a dynamic, vital tradition. In light of its history, the Bible looks less like a rock than a river, continually flowing and changing, widening and narrowing, as it moves downstream.

  For some, thinking about the Bible as a river and not a rock is liberating. That rock has been a millstone around the neck and a tombstone that won’t be rolled away. But for others, seeing it this way can be disorienting. That rock has promised solid foundation in a stormy world. Cling to it or be swept away. I remember a very bright first-year student who came to my office after the first session of my historical introduction to the Bible course. “I really liked your opening lecture, but I need to drop the course.” Before I could ask why, she continued. “I know I need to look at this stuff, but I can’t go there now. The Bible is my rock, even though I know eventually I’ll need to face the fact that it really can’t be that rock. But right now there’s just too much chaos in my life.” Even when we know that the Bible is not the rock we want or need it to be, it’s hard to let go. Sometimes faith is not about leaping. Sometimes it’s simply a matter of letting go and going with the flow, trusting that although there’s no going back, there is a way forward.

  7

  Library of Questions

  GRANT THAT THE CULTURAL icon of the Bible as the literal Word of God and closed book of answers is a dead end. Grant that it’s a bad idea anyway. So where do we go from here? It’s the end of the Word as we know it. Which begs the question, what’s another way of knowing, one that is true not only to the Bible’s history but also to its contents?

  It might be nice if we could start by giving it a new name. “The Bible” literally means “the Book.” In fact, that proper name above all names came into modern English via mistranslation. The original Greek word for Christian Scriptures was ta biblia, which is the plural form of biblion, “scroll” or “book.” Ta biblia therefore meant “the scrolls” or “the books.” It did not refer to a single, unified text in scroll or book form, but to a collection of biblical literature. In the Latin of the Middle Ages, however, biblia came to be treated
not as a neuter plural, “books,” but as a feminine singular, “book.” Thus “the books” became known as “the book.” From there it migrated into the other Romance languages as the name of a singular book rather than as a body of literature. And it is from that mistranslation that we inherit our name for it, the Bible.

  It’s probably impractical to launch a campaign to correct the error and begin referring to the Bible by its more original name, “the Bibles.” Still, it is important to remember that the Bible is not a single book, “the Book,” but rather a collection of books—or, more accurately, a collection of writings, since none of them were originally published as books.

  The Bible, as we have seen, is not a book, and its fate is not tied to the fate of the book in our twilighting print culture. It’s a collection of texts written by many different people, mostly anonymous, in many different translations, and in many different historical and social contexts. These texts were edited, revised, and translated by many others. They were copied and circulated widely in scroll and codex forms for a very long time as independent texts and in smaller collections. They were not the same from copy to copy. There was no beginning and no end to them, no first and last page. They did not have one author or one voice. They were not read in a linear way, but were read around in. And they grew through interpretation, as newer texts that created new meanings from older texts became part of collections. Eventually, when the medium of the book was finally capable of holding such a large collection, they were bound together as a closed canon in a single volume. Even then, moreover, there was never one single, official version of the whole. There were various collections, translated in various ways from a variety of earlier manuscripts, none of them original, each written in different ancient languages. The Bible, then, refers not to a single collection but rather to a kind of collection, a family of Scriptures, of which there are many significantly different versions and editions.