The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
Religion
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
McAfee, Cleland Boyd
Bible -- History; Bible -- Influence; Bible and literature; Bible. English -- Versions -- Authorized
When this form of criticism has done its part, and careful study has
yielded a text which holds together and which represents the very best
which scholarship can find for the original, there is still a field more
difficult than that, higher in the sense that it demands a larger and
broader view of the whole subject. Here one studies the meaning of the
whole, the ideas in it, seeks to find how the revelation of God has
progressed according to the capacities of men to receive it. Higher
criticism is the careful study of the historical and original meanings of
Scripture, the effort to determine dates and times and, so far as may be,
the author of each writing, analyzing its ideas, the general Greek or
Hebrew style, the relation of part to part. That is not a thing to be
afraid of. It is a method of study used in every realm. It is true that
some of the men who have followed that method have made others afraid of
it, because they were afraid of these men themselves. It is possible to
claim far too much for such study. But if the result of higher criticism
should be to show that the latter half of the prophecy of Isaiah is much
later than the earlier half, that is not a destruction of the Word of God.
It is not an irreverent result of study. If the result of higher criticism
is to show that by reason of its content, and the lessons which it
especially urges, the Epistle to the Hebrews was not written by the
Apostle Paul, as it does not at any point claim to have been, why, that is
not irreverent, that is not destructive. There is a destructive form of
higher criticism; against that there is reason to set up bulwarks. But
there is a constructive form of it also. Scholarly opinion will tell any
one who asks that criticism has not affected the fundamental values of the
Bible. In the studies which have just now been made we have not instanced
anything in the Bible that is subject to change. No matter what the result
of critical study may be, the fundamental democracy of the Scripture
remains. It continues to make its persistent moral appeal on any terms.
Both those great facts continue. Other great facts abide with them. And on
their account it is to our interest to know as much as we can learn about
it. The Bible has not been lessened in its value, has not been weakened in
itself, by anything that has taken place in critical study. On the other
hand, the net result of such studies as archaeology has been the
confirmation of much that was once disputed. Sir William Ramsay is the
authority for saying that the spade of the excavator is to-day digging the
grave of many enemies of the Bible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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