Chapter V

Are we forbidden on the ground that our Bible is directly inspired? Well, inspiration, as Sir William Davenant observed and rather wittily proved, in his Preface to "Gondibert," 'is a dangerous term.' It is dangerous mainly because it is a relative term, a term of degrees. You may say definitely of some things that the writer was inspired, as you may certify a certain man to be mad--that is, so thoroughly and convincingly mad that you can order him under restraint. But quite a number of us are (as they say in my part of the world) 'not exactly,' and one or two of us here and there at moments may have a touch even of inspiration. So of the Bible itself: I suppose that few nowadays would contend it to be all inspired _equally._ 'No' you may say, 'not all equally: but all of it _directly,_ as no other book is.'

To that I might answer, 'How do you _know_ that direct inspiration ceased with the Revelation of St John the Divine, and closed the book? It may be: but how do you know, and what authority have you to say that Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey," for example, or Browning's great Invocation of Love was not directly inspired? Certainly the men who wrote them were rapt above themselves: and, if not directly, Why indirectly, and how?'

But I pause on the edge of a morass, and spring back to firmer ground. Our Bible, as we have it, is a translation, made by forty-seven men and published in the year 1611. The original--and I am still on firm ground because I am quoting now from "The Cambridge History of English Literature"--'either proceeds from divine inspiration, as some will have it, or, according to others, is the fruit of the religious genius of the Hebrew race. From either point of view the authors are highly gifted individuals' [!]--

highly gifted individuals, who, notwithstanding their
diversities, and the progressiveness observable in their
representations of the nature of God, are wonderfully
consistent in the main tenor of their writings, and serve, in
general, for mutual confirmation and illustration. In some
cases, this may be due to the revision of earlier productions
by later writers, which has thus brought more primitive
conceptions into a degree of conformity with maturer and
profounder views; but, even in such cases, the earlier
conception often lends itself, without wrenching, to the
deeper interpretation and the completer exposition. The Bible
is not distinctively an intellectual achievement.

In all earnest I protest that to write about the Bible in such a fashion is to demonstrate inferentially that it has never quickened you with its glow; that, whatever your learning, you have missed what the unlearned Bunyan, for example, so admirably caught--the true _wit_ of the book. The writer, to be sure, is dealing with the originals. Let us more humbly sit at the feet of the translators. 'Highly gifted individuals,' or no, the sort of thing the translators wrote was 'And God said, Let there be light,' 'A sower went forth to sow,' 'The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took,' 'The wages of sin is death,' 'The trumpet shall sound,' 'Jesus wept,' 'Death is swallowed up in victory.'

Let me quote you for better encouragement, as well as for relief, a passage from Matthew Arnold on the Authorised Version:

The effect of Hebrew poetry can be preserved and transferred
in a foreign language as the effect of other great
poetry cannot. The effect of Homer, the effect of Dante, is
and must be in great measure lost in a translation, because
their poetry is a poetry of metre, or of rhyme, or both; and
the effect of these is not really transferable. A man may make
a good English poem with the matter and thoughts of Homer
and Dante, may even try to reproduce their metre, or rhyme:
but the metre and rhyme will be in truth his own, and the
effect will be his, not the effect of Homer or Dante. Isaiah's,
on the other hand, is a poetry, as is well known, of
parallelism; it depends not on metre and rhyme, but on a
balance of thought, conveyed by a corresponding balance of
sentence; and the effect of this can be transferred to another
language.... Hebrew poetry has in addition the effect of
assonance and other effects which cannot perhaps be
transferred; but its main effect, its effect of parallelism of
thought and sentence, can.

I take this from the preface to his little volume in which Arnold confesses that his 'paramount object is to get Isaiah enjoyed.'