Graeme Richardson’s review of new books by Michael Edwards and Marilynne Robinson (March 22) shows that there are many ways to read or hear readings of sacred scripture. But neither book appears to consider how most of our Bible was put together over decades and centuries of oral tradition. Events and stories were passed on in a memorable form before they were written down.
Preliterate societies all over the world pass on their origins or past history, and the way they ought to do things, through recitation by bards or other remembrancers. Later the important texts are written down and often edited and rearranged to meet contemporary needs. Rabbis arranged the Hebrew Bible in three sections: Law, Prophets and Writings. But when Christians took it over as the Old Testament, they moved the Prophets to come immediately before the New Testament, to emphasize the influence of ancient foretelling on the events of the gospels.
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the twelve shorter ones were either written or dictated by the prophets. So we have their words, although their texts in many cases were rearranged or even added to after their deaths. In the New Testament we have letters largely written or dictated, and in some of them St Paul adds his signature. They relate mostly to matters of importance to the time and situation of the recipients, and were read out to the congregations to whom they were addressed. Some important facts about the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are here written some time before our present gospels.
The first Christians expected Christ to return while most of them were still alive, so the events and teachings we now read in the gospels were passed down by oral tradition in the same way as accounts of events in the Old Testament were, albeit over a much shorter period of time. But at work were the factors I have already described. This means that there is a good element of poetry as well as propaganda in some of these accounts first written down towards the end of the first century AD/CE.
We who are believers value and accept the Bible as the Word of God. Just as Jesus, the Word of God, comes into our world as a human being, so the scriptures are for many of us mediated through human writers and preachers, who are trying to bring out its relevance for their readers or hearers.
Parts of the Bible have been set to music – by Bach and Handel, for example. Music, like poetry, does not appeal first of all to the rational understanding. There is a strong connection with the emotions. We know that there are many Christians who want to take the Bible as ethical teaching or history, as might be understood by a news report. But it is far richer than that.
Stephen Leacock’s Hezekiah Hayloft
James Blanchard (Letters, March 15) drew attention to Thomas Macaulay’s prophecy in 1857 that the death of American democracy would be engendered by the c
