THE BIBLE AND ENGLISH LITERATURE The purpose of this study is to give an indication of the princi pal ways in which the Bible, in its various English versions, has in fluenced the development of English prose and English literature generally. The history of the English Bible is dealt with elsewhere; here, however, we must recall some of the more important rele vant facts. There are two periods in the history of the English versions: one during which English translations of the Bible, or parts of it, made directly from the Latin Vulgate, circulated in manuscript form; the other beginning with the circulation of printed Bibles, which were translations of the original Hebrew and Greek of the Old and New Testaments.
One of the marvels of history, it has been said, is the rapidity and thoroughness with which Christian civilization was adopted by the English; from the writings which have survived, it would seem as if men strove to forget that England had ever been heathen. Augustine landed in 597 ; and within 5o years, native versions of the Psalms and Gospels were in circulation. The earliest version still extant is one of the Psalms by Aldhelm of Malmes bury (d. 709). Next in date comes the interlinear English trans lation added about 950 to the famous "Lindisfarne Gospels," which had been written in Latin about 68o, and the similar trans lation added to the "Rushworth Gospels." To the loth century be longs also the version of the Psalms by Aelfric of Canterbury (d. ioo5), and versions of the Gospels and other books which have been supposed to be by the same hand. All the translations which have been mentioned are in the ancient form of the Eng lish language, which has been called "Anglo-Saxon." In estimat ing their literary influence, we must bear in mind that although the surviving Old English poetry is almost entirely Christian, the images and diction are mainly those of the older heroic poetry; and Christ and the saints are often introduced in the guise of northern warriors. Incongruous as this may appear in modern ages, it is an interesting example of the reaction of inherited national or racial feeling on religious ideas and images sprung from a differ ent source.
The 14th Century.--The vernacular tongue of the country was fundamentally, though gradually, altered through its contact with the French spoken by the upper classes, and new versions of the Bible became necessary. From statements made later by Cranmer, More, Foxe, and others, we learn that a number of such versions had been made; but only fragments now remain—the most important being two versions of the Psalms, one by William of Shoreham, Kent, the other by Richard Rolle of Hampole (d. r349). This version, with the other writings of Richard Rolle and his school, was very popular, and materially influenced the literary development of contemporary English. The great rhym ing chronicle of biblical and other stories, the Cursor Mundi, which circulated widely, had the same effect. The author insists on English for the English, not as a truism but as a novelty for which sound reasons must be given; but it is typical "Middle English" in which he writes. The two great versions (sometimes called "Wickliffite versions") which were made later in the 14th century, have survived in their entirety; viz., that of which John Wickliffe and Nicholas of Hereford were the principal translators, and that of John Purvey, resembling the former but making no reference to it. These were the last English Bibles issued during the period in which it was a translation from the Latin Vulgate, and before the invention of printing was applied to its circulation. These versions and Wickliffe's own non-academic writings made English the popular language of religious thought. and feeling (for different views of the attitude of the Church to the circulation of the Wickliffite Bibles, see F. A. Cardinal Gasquet, The Old Eng lish Bible, and M. Deanesley, The Lollard Bible, 1920). Wick liffe appealed to the people of England in the speech of the peo pie, sending out pamphlets and sermons couched in short clear sentences, full of the homely words used in his own Bible. In his work the literary expression of popular religion at this period reaches its height in the realm of prose, as in \Villiam Langland it reaches its height in the realm of poetry. In the dreams and ideals of the Piers Plowman poems—whether Langland be their sole author or not—a voice speaks from the heart of the people themselves; the poems are in the old alliterative English verse, and the wayfaring man could understand them. But there moves in them a prophetic impulse closely akin to that of the prophets of Israel. In them we hear the social movement—as in Wick liffe the distinctly religious movement—of revolt, in the name of the Bible, against Roman Christianity. When we turn from Wick liffe and Langland to the greatest figure in the creative literature of the age, it is not possible to say how far the influence of the Bible was effective in the development of his mind and art from his early imitations of French models to the latest and most origi nal of the Canterbury Tales, with their rich humanity and simpli city of diction. But the author of these tales was well versed in "Christes lore and his apostles twelve." The promise of a new era in English literature, arising from the later years of the 14th century, was not fulfilled. We are con cerned only with lines of influence which can be traced directly to the English Bible. The most original and powerful poetry of the 15th century was composed in popular forms for the ear of the common people—songs, carols, popular ballads. Of those dealing with religious subjects, some are curious and delightful blendings of religious worship and aspiration, with earthly tenderness for the embodiments of helpless infancy and protective motherhood, which gave Christianity so much of its power over the affections and imagination of the middle ages. We can only mention the addi tions made in the i5th century to the ancient cycles of Scripture plays, the so called "mystery plays" (on these, see DRAMA; and for a brief, but instructive introduction to the whole subject, R. H. U. Bloor, Christianity and the Religious Drama, 1927).
forms, as it were, a watershed in the life of the nation, and in its literature as the expression of its life. From the age of Elizabeth we seem, more thoroughly than in any earlier time, to find in history men who are in all things our own fellows. Spenser and Shakespeare, Hooker and Raleigh, stand to us in a relation different from that in which Caedmon or even Chaucer stands. And, above all, the i6th century gave us in the English Bible a model of the language which has been the chief literary, as well as the chief religious food of millions of English men. It came at a psychological moment in the moral and politi cal development of the people. It not only entered into the warp and woof of literature, but served to give pointed emphasis and expression to the new social and religious impulses which were moving in the country. The reign of Elizabeth is itself the most marked epoch in English literature. The stirring of men's minds which led to the great political and religious events of the age, led also to the outburst of a whole literature in prose and verse. The English drama began, modern English theology began, the writing of history in the modern sense and in the English lan guage began. As regards the English Bible, the first-fruits of the printing press had already been achieved in the New Testament and the Pentateuch of William Tyndale, published in England in 1526 and 153o respectively. Tyndale's work, and the subsequent publication of Coverdale's Bible (1535), the "Great Bible"
the Geneva Bible (156o), and the "Bishops' Bible" (1568) is described elsewhere. At length, in order to secure one uniform translation, a large committee of the most . competent scholars in the country was appointed in 1604, to revise previous ver sions, taking the Bishops' Bible as the basis. The world-famous "Authorized Version" was published in 1611, "the late fruit of the long toil which had begun with the work of Tyndale, and, on the side of style, with the Wycliffite translations." More scholarly than all the preceding versions which it utilized, it won its incom parable form, not so much because of "the grand style which was in the air," which would have been the worst of models, as be cause the style had already been tested and ennobled by gen erations of translators.
In any description of the literary influence of the English Bible we are not specially concerned with the literary forms which can be distinguished in the writings of the Old and New Testaments themselves (see, for example, R. G. Moulton, The Modern Reader's Bible and The Literary Study of the Bible) ; but there are some aspects of that literature which must be borne in mind for our present purpose. "Few abstract terms exist in ancient Hebrew, and no compound words. Abstraction and constructive power are almost as absent from the grammar and syntax as from the vocabulary. The sub ordination of clause to clause, in which the subtlety and flexibility of other languages appears, is hardly found; but to the end, both in prose and verse, the clauses are almost invariably strung to gether by the bare copulas and and then in a co-ordination which requires both skill and spirit to redeem it from monotony." (Sir G. A. Smith in The Legacy of Israel, edited by E. A. Bevan and C. Singer, 1927.) Ancient Hebrew is the dialect—concrete and even sensuous—of a few small tribes of herdsmen, peasants, and warriors, which the literary genius of a religiously and morally gifted people made into the vehicle of the sublimest truths, the most spiritual ethics, and, in the end, of a gospel for mankind. Part of the power of the English Bible is that it reflects these quali ties so faithfully. Another characteristic is important for our pres ent purpose, although it is one of material rather than of literary form. The Hebrew mind was entirely unfamiliar with the idea of evolution or development : "it fixed upon results rather than upon processes; things which came into being only gradually ap peared to it as the offspring of a word, of a moment. In Deuter onomy, the effect of centuries of ethical influence on the law and ritual of Israel is presented as a single discourse of Moses. To the Hebrew, power and authority were personal and immediate, the effect of a single fiat or proclamation, and secondary causes were ignored" (op. cit.). The Old Testament is the surviving literature of such a people during the intensely creative periods of their religious experience; and, when we pass to the New Testa ment, so far as literary atmosphere is concerned, the writers of the first three gospels belong to the Old Testament school. But in Acts we are emerging into a new world, which begins to be real ized, not only in doctrine, but in substance and form, in all the epistles, especially in those of Paul; and in this sense it is true that "when we pass from Proverbs and Job to St. John and Romans and Hebrews, we have passed from the world of Solomon to the world of Socrates." The Old Testament is the literature of a nation; the New Testament is the literature of a movement, gathering round one central and supreme personal figure and spreading out into the world of Greece and Rome.
This is the literature which, bound together within the covers of a single volume, had become the book of books in England before the end of Elizabeth's reign, and which, for most of the i 7th century, was the one book familiar to every Englishman. It was read in churches and read at home; and every where its words, as they fell on ears not deadened by custom, kindled a startling enthusiasm. There was more than one side to this. The Bible was accepted in the new English version in its baldest and most literal sense, as all equally "the Word of God," above all by the Puritans, those most typical of Protestants. They found a close analogy between their fortunes and those of Israel of old. The immediate influence of the national translation of the Bible was in the life rather than the literature of England. The English Reformation (and every important aspect of it was of native origin and can be traced at least as far back as Wickliffe) was political as well as doctrinal and imaginative. But the debat ing weapons of vernacular English were sharpened in the pamph let battles which ensued (see W. B. Selbie, "The Influence of the Old Testament on Puritanism," in The Legacy of Israel) . The powers of the same style for religious appeal were proved in the "blunt, sound rhetoric and forthright jests" of Latimer's sermons, with their essentially biblical note. Foxe's Book of Martyrs is a type of early Protestant English ; but reforming divines were not "men of letters." Their spirit comes out in the byways of litera ture, as in Spenser's Shepherd's Calendar.
As regards the Anglican Church, the fruit of the struggle was not long delayed. In the sermons of Fisher (d. 1535) and Cran mer (d. 1556), we see the beginnings of the work continued by Hooker (d. i600), which made of the reformed Church a school where English prose was well trained for the purposes of learning and oratory, and as a medium of poetic feeling. Jeremy Taylor (d. 1667) one of the first pleaders for toleration in his Liberty of Prophesying, was the ideally humane Anglican of his age; while the lineage of Anglican strength was carried on by Isaac Barrow (d. 1677), John Tillotson (d. 1694), William Sherlock (d. 1707), and Robert South (d. 1716). For such men the Church came first, though the Bible was behind it. On the other hand, the Puritan temper is ideally represented in Paradise Lost. The strength of the Bible is assimilated without its tenderness. The subject is biblical, the form that of the classical epic, the doctrine Protestant, though not orthodox, and the feeling strangely divided by the claim of the vanquished—even Satan—to judge and deny the victor. In Sam son Agonistes, the subject is biblical, the form that of a Sophoclean tragedy, and the suffering portrayed is Milton's own. Milton stands apart; but noble varieties of vernacular prose are found in the Puritans of the Restoration: John Bunyan (d. 1688), George Fox (d. 169o), Richard Baxter (d. 1691), and John Howe (d. 1706) had the English Bible behind them, which gave them the best of their inspiration. Baxter and Howe were also men of learning; but Bunyan, whose reading was the Bible and the popular alle gories of giants, pilgrims, and adventure, stands out as the great est literary artist of them all, bringing into the service of spirit ual intensity, a keen, humorous vision and a power of simple speech ,consummately chosen.
18th Century.—When we pass to the 18th century, we soon find ourselves in a changing world. The charm of the litera ture is of the national and sociable kind. It is, before all else, the age of prose ; not of the greatest prose, but an age where every variety of English prose is brilliantly exemplified. Little illus trative material, for our present purpose, can be derived from it.
Religious thought, among educated people, was ruled by the spirit of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding. In other words, thought was governed by a great respect for facts and realities ; and the most real fact, from which we cannot get away, with which we must always start and to which we must ever re turn, was the infinite machine called Nature. Paley argued that we can reason from the universe to its Divine Maker, as we can from any other machine to its human maker. Theism was based on the world of sense-perception; and the nature of the Deity was further defined by appeal to revelation, guaranteed by the miracles believed to have accompanied it. The same reliance on tangible facts emerged in the realm of morality, the true ground of which is declared by Locke to be "the will and law of a God who sees men in the dark, has in his hands rewards and punishments and power to call to account the proudest offender." An intellectual atmosphere of this kind fails to supply the life-breath of vital religion. In the missionary work of John Wesley (d. 1791) and George Whitefield (d. 1770), the fervid gospel of personal religion and personal salvation was borne to the neglected masses, with the Bible once more in the foreground, and found its literary ex pression in the hymns of Charles Wesley (d. 1788). These events, great in themselves, were still greater in their importance as signs of new and vitalizing currents entering into the religious life and thought of England ; and from this time onwards it is scarcely pos sible to separate the influence of the Bible from the many streams of feeling and belief which made "not so much a movement as a spirit afloat, rising up in hearts where it was least suspected, and working itself, though not in secret, yet so subtly and impalpably as hardly to admit of encounter on any ordinary human modes of opposition" (J. H. Newman, History of My Religious Opinions, 1839, ch. iii.). For the Bible it meant no abatement of reverence for its religious value, but a revival of the old natural human feeling for its great humanities, such as had found expression in the ancient English religious poetry and in the mystery plays; but which proceeded now from a far wider and deeper range of knowledge and experience.
the opening years of the 19th century this was not apparent. Keats died in 1821, Shelley in 1821 and Byron in 1824. In 1825 Charles Lamb was 5o years old, and Cole ridge 53 ; and of the two greatest names in the literature of the time, Scott had already written most of his Waverley Novels, and Wordsworth had done most of his influential work. But John Ruskin was a child of six; Charles Dickens and Robert Browning were boys of 13; Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson, and William Ewart Gladstone, boys of 16; James Martineau was a young man of 20, as was Richard Cobden; Ashley (earl of Shaftesbury) and John Henry Newman were young men of 24; and Carlyle, aged 31, was beginning to feel that he had a message to deliver to man kind. It is a matter of common knowledge that these are only some of the leaders of an army of pioneer workers who have, directly or indirectly, made the literature of the 19th century what it has been. In this the influence of the Bible has been re flected back in the form of a searching light on its own contents. It is no longer startling to say (as it was when Benjamin Jowett said it in Essays and Reviews, 1853) that the Bible must be inter preted like any other book. The obviously different strata in the complex elements composing it have been distinguished. Questions are asked about its value as an explanation of the origin of things; about the value of its contributions to our knowledge of human history; about its religious value ; about its literary value ; but these are different questions. The answer to one of them does not prejudge the answer to another. And abundant illustrative proof might be given showing that in the literature of the 19th century the Bible has made itself felt in such a way as to pro duce an assured conviction about it ; whatever else it may be, the Bible, as a whole, is the greatest and, indeed, the unique record of man's religious experience ; and above all, whatever else may or must be believed of the Founder of Christianity, his historic personality and teaching have made the New Testament the rich est mine of religious and moral insight and inspiration which has been given to the world.
The critical and other considerations arising from the revision of the Authorized Version, carried through by committees of convocation, fall outside the scope of this article. The Revised Version of the N.T. was issued in 1881 and that of the O.T. in 1884. Translations, altogether independent of the Authorized Version, have been published by J. Moffatt (The New Testament, 1913; The Old Testament, 1924), and by W. G. Rutherford (St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, 1900 ; St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians and Corinthians, 1908) . The fol lowing books deal directly or indirectly with the subject of the fore going article: A. S. Peake (edit. by), The People and the Book (1925), illuminating essays on the O.T.; S. H. Mellone, The New Testament and Modern Life (1921) ; R. G. Moulton, The Literary Study of the Bible (1901) ; J. H. Gardiner, The Bible as English Literature (1906) ; E. von Dobschiitz, The Influence of the Bible on Civilization (1913). See also A. S. Cook, Biblical Quotations in Old English Prose Writers (2 vols., 1898, 1903) ; J. Moffat, The Bible in Scots Literature (192o) ; C. Wordsworth, Shakespeare's Knowledge and Use of the Bible (1864) .
(S. H. M.)
