Daniel Martin Varisco
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (John 1:1)
I wish to begin with a confession, a mea culpa before a somewhat meandering musing on what this great book means to me. My interest tonight is not so much the "good book" as it is a nostalgic look back at an old friend, one that I at one time loved -- though not in the proverbial biblical sense -- and still find extraordinary as an aging text -- an "ex" that excites as much as it exasperates. When I hindsight it back to the initial publication of this text almost four centuries ago, I am less blinded by its brilliance (translations are in my mind always inferior creations, especially when they are sacralized), than I am burdened with its legacy.
I grew up with this book; my English was molded by it ... my mind played with its words like a small child sifts sand to build imaginary castles. And, as only a child can, I believed in it until curiosity and a critical spirit taught me how not to believe any of it. There came a time when I realized that the book that said "let there be light" was also full of dark words. I also discovered that some of the people who read and believed this book have done much evil and I have yet to forgive this book for the sins of its readers.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. (I Cor. 13:1)
These voices were there in the beginning, and the voices were with me and these voices were me. Perhaps o nly one of the voices is "authoritative" -- the text itself -- letting you hear its cadence and measure -- I will call it "James" since I have long felt myself on a first-name basis with his majesty's version. James will tell you things about how the text got here and what people have said about it as a text. Then there is my voice -- as best I can reflect it now -- as an otherwise normal kid brought up on the KJV (I had the KJV before I had a TV) as God's word in a small Baptist church in Ohio. And, last and most probably least, the voice of the mentally wizzened scholar who takes the burden of the legacy of this book and what it stands for far too seriously for his own good. Three voices refracted in about the time it takes to sit through a Sunday morning church service, but all for one -- my personal stab at unity in diversity -- a polyphony of oration to sustain an otherwise cacophonous worldview.
JAMES:
And Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar, her maid, the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband, Abram, to be his wife. And he went in unto Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her eyes. And Sarai said unto Abram, My wrong be upon thee: I have given my maid into thy bosom; and when she saw that she had conceived, I was despised in her eyes; the Lord judge between me and thee. But Abram said unto Sarai, Behold, thy maid is in thy hand; do to her as it pleaseth thee. And when Sarai dealt hardly with her; she fled from her face. Genesis 16:3-6
The Authorized or King James Version of the Bible was conceived in 1604, when King James I announced in a letter to his archbishop that he had appointed 54 "learned men" to render the most holy text of Christendom into vernacular English. The actual work began in 1607 with 47 men (some of whom died in the process) and culminated in 1611 with a printed edition of some 1,500 pages over three inches thick even without the cover. But our story begins not with the text but the man who sponsored it -- James Stuart, known as James VI of Scotland and later James I of England and Scotland. The birth of James Stuart -- the only son and dazzling potential heir of Mary, Queen of Scots -- in Edinburgh on July 19, 1566 was, if anything, resoundingly "biblical." The political intrigue, scandalous behavior and moral mayhem surrounding the birth of young James is no less sensational than the gross stories of lust, incest, hatred and vengeance recorded in Sacred Writ itself.
The young Mary, Catholic Queen of Scotland, bedded (successfully in this case) a blond English gentleman of royal lineage potential by the name of Henry Darnley, who soon rose in short order to be an earl, a duke and then Scottish King-Consort by a solidly (and in some Protestant circles "sordidly") Catholic marriage -- a whirlwind romance that fiction would feebly embellish. Elizabeth the Queen (of England) was furious at the illicit union that produced young James. Historians argue that she preferred young Mary to marry her own intimate lover, Lord Robert Dudley, whose (as someone once said) "virtues were invisible and vices were glaring." Shortly before James emerged into the royal mess of Elizabethan politics, an attempt was made on Mary's life in which her Italian secretary -- a certain David Rizzio -- was murdered. Relevant to the unfolding plot is the alleged fact that husband Henry himself fueled (in private, of course) the rumor mill that James was a bastard son of this Italian rather than a siring of his own. A year after James was born, his mother -- taken in adultery, one might say -- was forced to abdicate the throne in a profoundly Protestant coup. And at the age of only a year plus this innocent babe was crowned as King of Scotland to be regulated by a run of roguish regents until, as fate would have it, a James of 37 years succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 as the King who at last could unite England and Scotland.
When James I came to Westminster, he inherited a highly successful empire (one that had defeated the Spanish Armada and could boast the exploits of Sir Walter Raleigh and the opening up of a New World). The age of James was also very much the age of Shakespeare, who in 1603 had yet to write Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello or King Lear; and it is perhaps not mere irony that this age produced two of the greatest literary productions in the history of English -- Shakespeare and the King James Bible. James ruled, to the extent he was capable of ruling, until his death of dysentary and sundry ills on March 27, 1625. I put no stock at all in the fact that March 27 also happens to be my birthday.
What kind of a king has his name embossed at the head of the most historically revered English translation of the Bible. He may have legitimately been a Prince of Peace, a man who preferred diplomacy (if he could have his way) over war. He was well educated, to the extent that one historian refers to his "clumsy precision born of too much book learning." He was witty, but he was also rather coarse and petulant -- the kind of king who prefered the chase to being chaste, playing cards, strong drink and gluttony to the rigors of ruling an unruly empire. He was certainly an avid avoider -- even shunning the deathbed of his son and heir, Henry. He was perhaps, as Henry of France put it, "the wisest fool in Christendom." But this wise crack must be tempered with the simple fact that James had earlier turned up his nose at Henry's sister -- Catherine de Bourbon -- who apparently was somewhat lacking in the beauty department -- for a Danish princess named Anne.
There is an old joke -- in various forms -- that something that appears to be a monstrosity -- an ungangly camel, for example -- must be the work of a committee. Anyone who has ever served on a committee knows why the joke exists and should exist. The KJV just happens to be put together by a committee. The committee -- full of revered deans and probably underpaid professors -- had strict instructions from James (more likely from Richard Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury -- whose hatred of the Puritans exceeded common Christian charity). The first of these instructions was that the common "Anglican" Bible at the time, known as "the Bishops' Bible" was to be followed and "as little altered as the truth of the original will admit." These committees were in effect teams responsible for certain portions of the translation-- Hebrew scholars to handle the Hebrew, Greek scholars to handle the Greek, and so on. Each scholar would do his draft and then meet with the others who would thrash out a consensus -- at least this was the theory. Then each group of scholars would send the result to each other group -- so that basically everybody's hand would at some point be in the pot. If this is indeed how the KJV was done, it is truly a miracle -- at least in my mind -- that anything ever came of it.
How was this translation by committee received? The Puritans were not terribly thrilled; they much preferred the Geneva Bible, even though the latter was simply out-editioned by the KJV (some 182 editions between 1611 and 1644 for the KJV). There were other detractors; Hugh Broughton (one of the most capable scholars in England at the time) received a pre-publication copy and responded by saying, "Tell His Majesty that I had rather be rent in pieces with wild horses, than any such translation by my consent should be urged upon poor parishes." Perhaps the facts that he had a lifelong vendetta against "the Bishops' Bible" and planned a translation of his own had something to do with his critique. There were lots of printing errors as well -- especially in subsequent editions. A certain edition from 1653 rendered I Corinthians 6:9 as "the unrighteous shall inherit the kingdom of God."
One can only wonder, pray God, what James I inherited when he met his maker on my birthday.
MENTALLY WIZZENED SCHOLAR:
For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. ( 2 Peter 1:21)
This verse in 2 Peter 1:21 implies for the Christian that his (I choose the sexist pronoun here with conscious intent) sacred text comes from God to man and not the other way around. Holy men of old, even though they at times wrote the most unholy of things, were moved by the Holy Ghost. The idea that the Bible as a text is ghost-written is not terribly off the mark from the assumptions of contemporary critical exegetes. To the one who suspends belief in the text as revelation, the Bible becomes a collection of texts and fragments of texts (maybe even rumors of texts) redacted over a millennium perhaps for various Machiavellian purposes from all-to-human authors. My scholarly voice shouts with sheer alacrity that the KJV -- and indeed the Bible per se -- is a quintessentially human book in that it can be almost anything you will it to be. In this there is a recognizably Marxian echo that "Man makes religion, religion does not make man." From my particular bully-pulpit of anthropology, I find some solace in atheist sociologist (these two terms seem to combine so effortlessly) Emil Durkheim, a rationalist's godsend for interpreting religion as society's idealized view of itself. So what then, does this mirror image from 1611 say about the holy old men King James brought together and the many men that have combed through the text in the years since? I am willing to wager, along with Pascal, that this version was created through a sincere belief that it was in a very real sense the Word of God. Even today, some Christian missionaries hurridly translate portions of the Bible (often from the KJV itself, I might add) into obscure "heathen" languages. Of all such heathen tongues, however, it is English which is our primary concern tonight.
A prominent pre-Englishman, the Venerable Bede (who be borned in A.D. 673 I do so believe) completed a rendering of the Gospel of John into vernacular on his death-bed (so we are told). Those of you who watched the World Series last fall might have noticed how in one of the games a man positioned in the stands directly behind home plate held up a sign that simply said "John 3:16" with every pitch. Both men, at least in my mind, believed enough to act on it.
Monks were not the only vernacularists in English history. Alfred the Great, it is said, translated the 10 commandments into Anglo-Saxon as a preface to the laws of his kingdom. You may or may not be aware of a curious "Ripley Believe-It-or-Not " fact that a 1631 edition of the KJV, known in infamy as "The Wicked Bible," accidentally rendered Exodus 20:14 as "Thou shalt commit adultery." The printers were fined 300 pounds. I should think that an original copy of this edition -- should any still exist -- would bring a hefty sum at Sothebys -- perhaps more than the $5.39 million for an original Gutenberg auctioned in 1987.
But back to the consequences of belief ... the first weighty translation into common English (directly from the Latin Vulgate) was that of Oxford alumnus John Wycliffe (born in 1324 in Yorkshire). I provide his version of the Lord's Prayer in the handout. In much of the 15th century, there was much at stake in reading this translation, including being burnt at the stake. Clerics and Kings in England before James I were fearful that reading the Bible so as to understand it was a crime worthy of capital punishment. In 1546 Henry VIII, who fathered the Church of England even as he disposed of various wives, complained to Parliament that the sacred text was "disputed, rhymed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern." Thus, it is not surprising that the most important English translation before the KJV was done abroad in Germany. This was the work of William Tyndale, whose New Testament was the first printed Bible (in 1526) in English. Despite being outside England, Tyndale was tied to a stake, strangled and burnt on October 6, 1536: a royal act that deprived him of any royalties other than a hallowed spot in the 16th-century Protestant Foxe's Book of Martyrs.
Were I to sum up the KJV in two words, it would not be difficult: "belief kills."
OTHERWISE NORMAL KID:
And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. (Genesis 2:7)
In 1951, the year I was born, a hydraulic engineer and fundamentalist Christian named Henry Morris wrote a book called The Bible and Modern Science. "The purpose of this book," he wrote in his preface, "very frankly and without apology, is to win people to a genuine faith in Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God and the Bible as the Word of God, and to help strengthen the faith of those who already believe." Morris believed (and still believes, I would imagine) that the Bible was without human error and was true even when it discussed issues of modern "science." He had clever answers for all those nagging questions, like how could Adam live 930 years (diffrent atmosphere before the flood, you see), where did Cain get his wife (so where does it say God did not create anybody else?), how could Jonah be swallowed by a whale (depends what you mean by a whale), how could the sun stop in the sky for Joshua (other people recorded this as well, so what's the problem)-- you know the kind. And he argued that it is "impossible to believe in the Bible as the complete and literal Word of God and to believe in the theory of evolution." Evolution is described as "atheistic and satanic (he does not capitalize Satanic)" and not really good science at all -- far better, he thinks to explain all of geology as a result of a literal Noah's Flood just a few millennia ago.
Some of you might be asking: Didn't he hear about the Scopes' Trial? How could he get a Ph.D. (hydraulics -- not totally irrelevant for talking about Noah's Flood I suppose) and still believe in literal creation? And, how could he argue that the story of Adam and Eve was more "scientific" than what every university science department at the time was teaching?
In 1966 (I was 15 and therefore still a technical idiot in adult terms) I wrote a book -- I mean I "wrote" it in pencil in script -- and it was called "God's Marvelous Creation." It had a preface, section of selected scriptural references on creation, six chapters, four appendices, bibliography and even an index (my index even includes Eusebius) -- all in 37 pages. "The purpose of this book," I wrote, "is to stimulate Christian thought on the creation as presented in the Bible. To achieve this, the reader must study. The following is an outline by R. A. Torrey in his book, Proper Bible Study (1921) on why we should study the Bible." At this point I did what drives me stark raving mad when my students do this to me on their papers -- I quote verbatim Mr. Torrey's outline for two single-spaced pages. I then quote a lot of Bible verses, even talk about the meaning of obscure (certainly to me at the time) Hebrew words and conclude chapter one with the following statement: "If you can believe this first verse (Genesis 1:1) you can believe everything else in the Bible through your faith in God."
I was taught to believe and it would be foolish, I think even detrimentally so, to deny that I did not actually "believe" what I was saying. This is what my parents taught me; what the church I attended several times a week taught me. It made sense to me then in the same way that it makes sense to so many other people. If you can believe God created everything from nothing willy-nilly, ex nihilo, then my point was certainly well taken -- you can easily reconcile anything else in the Bible as something that makes sense. "O ye of little belief," I might have said.
In chapter five I wrote, "Look at a cell from a little pond water which you need a microscope to see and look at yourself. Can you actually believe you came from this by mutation as the evolutionist holds even when the word of God tells you that you're created?" I knew what I was talking about -- behind my parent's house was a woods with a small creek and swamp and I used to go back there to get stagnant water samples to look at under my microscope. I saw those little hydras with funny looking cells squirming their meaningless lives away and I knew I could crush them at will. How could these oddities be my ancestors? It made more sense to me to be a direct creation from God. I mean, let's face it: God wrote the Bible and he said he created us. And in my book I quoted several scientists and famous men who admitted, you see, that evolution was nonsense -- Professor Virchow of Berlin, Dr. Trass the Paleontologist (I spelled it correctly, too), H. G. Wells, even Darwin himself (Let me explain: Darwin said the following in his 1871 (p. 158) Descent of Man: "We must not fall into the error of supposing that the early progenitors of man were identical with, or even closely resembled, any existing ape or monkey." Sounded to me like Darwin couldn't make up his mind or the Holy Ghost would not let him.)
I ended my last chapter the way Henry Morris began his: "If you are not saved, you should be." Later I wrote a variation of this book as a term paper in my 10th grade English class. It was not a particularly bold move on my part -- I was not fully aware that the ideas which were taught to make sense to me were not just as sensible to others. To be honest, I don't remember being taught "evolution" in any serious sense in my 9th grade biology course (we spent a lot of time going outside and identifying leaves of trees and we of course did the frog in the lab routine). The amount of red ink that the remarks of my English teacher -- he was a Shakespearean actor, by the way -- consumed might very well be measured -- it bled my poor argument to death. All those logical inconsistencies, all those statements that twisted, all those faulty analogies -- all that made sense in the world I grew up believing in -- all were brought out in stark relief. The grade was not bad -- it was well written, even if somewhat absurd. And this teacher -- who probably would never remember who in the world I was -- summed it all up in one almost "biblical" comment: he asked me to come out for the debate team because they could use me and -- here was the revelation for me -- and I could use myself.
In 1981, the year before I received my Ph.D. (not in hydraulics, I can assure you), I gave my first professional paper. The title was "The Recent Evolution of `Scientific Creationism'" and it began with the following statement: "The battle to keep the Bible as an authoritative source for science and history was waged and lost in the nineteenth century." The paper ended with the following: "Scientific creationism has evolved through the creationist rhetoric of ardent Biblical Creationists. But, with no apologies to the Genesis myth, it is clear that both are the same `kind.' Both models interbreed and find life only among dogmatic Fundamentalists. We are only too well aware of a missing link in the thinking of Henry M. Morris -- the lack of a rational argument. Whether this type of thinking, as hoary with age as Grandfather Methuselah himself, will be an evolutionary dead-end, it is hard to predict. But it it's to be the apes vs. the angels, I'll take 10 to 1 on the apes." This brought down the house, admittedly a friendly crowd of ranting skeptics, promoting at the same time a bizarre feeling of elocutionary power that I have never quite felt in a similar manner since.
In the end it appears I had little choice but to evolve.
JAMES:
"And it came to pass, that at midnight, the Lord smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt, from the first-born of Pharaoh who sat on his throne unto the first-born of the captive who was in the dungeon; and all the first-born of cattle. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he, and all his servants, and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt; for there was not a house where there was not one dead. And he called for Moses and Aaron by night, and said, Rise up, and get you forth from among my people, both ye and the children of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as ye have said."
Exodus 12:29-31
Cecil B. de Mille, with numerous liberties and a nearly naked Charlton Heston, took the story of the exodus -- bricks without straw, escalating plagues, a pharaoh's hardened heart, the parting of the Red Sea, and a cast of thousands -- and Hollywoodized the KJV. There are dozens of Hollywood Bible films, one more awful than the next. John Huston went so far as to film The Bible (I suspect that this film might have been the inspiration for Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part 1), about which novelist John Steinbeck quipped, "Saw the movie. Loved the book."
[give a bunch of literary examples (Moby Dick, etc.), testimonials, etc.
Shakespeare in King Richard III (Act 1, sc. iii):
Richard Gloucester --
"But then I sigh; and, with a piece of Scripture,
Tell them that God bids us do good for evil:
And thus I clothe my naked villainy
With odd old ends, stol', forth of Holy Writ."
KID:
"For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Romans 3:23
Sin is a tough concept for a child to grasp; adults seem to have an intuitive, even if not entirely original, understanding of what it means to sin. I heard a lot about sin in Sunday sermons but the gist was that the snake deceived Eve who deceived Adam who deceived himself and ate an apple after which Adam and Eve developed a taste for clothes and forgot about gardening. This is why people die. As a kid you don't really question a story like this any more than you admit to not believing in Santa Claus. I have always liked "just-so" stories and the KJV is quite accommodating to a child-like imagination; after all, Jesus said "Suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of God" (Luke 18:16). My parents suffered me and I certainly suffered through quite a few "sinners in the hands of an angry God" type sermons for their sake.
But my knowledge of sin as a small child was about as sophisticated as my knowledge of sex. Both happen to be three-letter words that adults spend a lot of time talking about, but the specifics were rarely mentioned in either case, especially the latter. Every Sunday morning the preacher would issue an invitation, usually as an organ played softly (and tenderly) in the background -- an invitation to ask God for forgiveness for your sins and accept Jesus into your heart. I figure I must have done this at some point, because almost every time I heard this invitation I would assume it was for someone else. Of course, it was a rather small church and I doubt if any real unsaved folk -- especially hardened sinners -- ever really bothered to come in.
But the sermon often had an effect and a few people would go forward to at least rededicate their lives to Jesus. At a rather early age it occurred to me that it was usually the same people who needed to get right with God on a regular basis. Imagine my shock -- as a young teenager -- when the following event happened. First let me set the stage. In the mid-1960s a traveling evangelist came to the Elyria Baptist Church and gave a talk on what he called "the impending holocaust." God had revealed to him, through the KJV of course, that the Russians were poised to knock out all the electricity in the U.S. and take over the country for godless communism unless -- we all got right with God. I had come to hear this special service with the youth group and my church pastor. This man did the Billy Graham routine of urging people to come forward as everyone bowed their heads and sang "Just as I am, without one plea, but that thy blood was shed for me.." and so on. We sang that dang last verse about five times with no takers, because he was sure someone was being convicted by the Holy Spirit. Guess who went down the aisle -- cracked under the heat, so to speak? My pastor. Now this was a disconcerting, even disequilibriating, event for a teenager with real important issues like getting rid of zits on his mind. If the pastor needs to get right with God, then what about the rest of us? The service ended and we of the youth group waited another hour until the pastor came out with a whole bagful of flyers on "The Impending Holocaust."
I read a lot of religious tracts as a kid. At one point I even wrote one myself and won a prize from a local organization (I think it was called Fellowship for Baptist Home Missions). My title was "Watch out for Falling Gods" and it was rather witty for a pretentious teenager who still had not been baptized, but it in fact was never published. You did hear right, I had somehow avoided being baptized, in part because I did not like cold water and never went in water above my ankles if my mother could help it. I had earned my marks as a Baptist in almost every other way: I excelled at Bible Sword drills, served as an usher, gave talks to the youth group, and even sang "O Little Town of Bethlehem" one time (I think my parents still have the recording) at the Christmas pageant. But somehow one of the pastors (they tend to come and go in independent Baptist Churchs) figured out that here I was a junior in high school and had never been immersed. The fact is our small church did not have a baptismal font, because hardly anyone ever got converted in it (just an occasional unsaved spouse of one of the ladies that would come alone on a Sunday morning). So we had to get baptized in another Baptist church. I had to get baptized in the First Baptist Church of Brunswick, the kind of church were hillbilly music was their way of being formal. It was a humiliating experience: one of the "racs" (that's what we called the greasy kids who beat up on you in the hall) from my high school was there in the audience. There were three of us getting baptized; the other two were girls. To show you how sheltered I grew up, this was the closest I had ever got to a girl in a dripping wet t-shirt in my life.
While going through old boxes at my parent's house in preparation for this talk, I came across several of the tracts I used in that time period. One is called "Gateway to Knowledge of the Bible," copyrighted in 1935. This begins by saying "The Bible is a library containing 66 books on various subjects. No matter what your taste in reading, you are likely to find here the type that you like best. Prose, Poetry, High Adventure, Plain Narrative, History, Biography, Stately Hymns, Terse epigrams, Philosophy, Inspiring Sermons, these and more are to be found in this diversified library." A few pages inside there is a section called "The Testimony of Great Men" with quotable quotes on the Bible from George Washington, John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant (certainly a noted authority on religious texts if there ever was), Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Henry Huxley (an odd choice, if you know what I mean), Herbert Hoover and George V (the last identified as "King and Emperor, British Empire"). The concluding testimonial simply says: "When asked which books have influenced him most, Mahatma Gandhi replied, `The New Testament.'"
PROFESSOR:
"In Ramah there was a voice heard, -- weeping, and lamentation, and great mourning; Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted."Matthew 2:18
The following verse is quoted at the start of chapter XII of Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published in 1851. My grandmother had an 1887 version, which includes in the preface a copy of a letter written December 14, 1853 from the Earl of Shaftsbury to Mrs. Stowe, in which he says: "Let us continue, as St. Paul says, `fervent and instant in prayer,' and may we at the great day of account be found, with millions of this oppressed race, among the sheep at the right hand of our common Lord and Master!" (p. xxvi). As Israel was oppressed in Egypt and wandered through the Wilderness of Sin for forty years until crossing over into the Promised Land, so black slaves rooted out of Africa and sold to good Christian men in America had little to hope for apart from crossing over their Jordan. Some Christians justified slavery of blacks because of a literal reading of the "Curse of Ham" in the Genesis story of Noah's drunkenness after the flood. Stowe, in a brilliant retort d' force uses the KJV to fight the KJV in her account of George, the runaway mulatto and Mr. Wilson. This reads as follows:
"Well George, I s'pose you'r running away, -- leaving your lawful master, George, -- (I don't wonder at it), -- at the same time, I'm sorry, George, -- yes, decidedly, -- I think I must say that, Geroge, -- it's my duty to tell you so."
"Why are you sorry, sir?" said George, calmly.
"Why, to see you, as it were, setting yourself in opposition to the laws of your country."
"My country! said George, with a strong and bitter emphasis; what country have I, but the grave, -- and I wish to God that I was laid there!"
"Why George, no, --- no, -- it won't do; this way of talking is wicked, -- unscriptural. George, you've got a hard master, in fact, he is, -- well, he conducts himself reprehensibly, -- I can't pretend to defend him. But you know how the angel commanded Hagar to return to her mistress, and submit herself under her hand; and the apostle sent back Onesimus to his master."
"Don't quote Bible at me that way, Mr. Wilson," said George, with a flashing eye, "don't! for my wife is a Christian, and I mean to be, if ever I get to where I can; but to quote Bible to a fellow in my circumstances is enough to make him give it up altogether. I appeal to God Almighty, -- I'm willing to go with the case to him, and ask him if I do wrong to seek my freedom."
JAMES:
"And these are the names of the men who shall stand with you: of the tribe of Reuben: Elizur, the son of Shedeur. Of Simeon: Shelumiel, the son of Zurishaddai. Of Judah: Nashon, the son of Amminadab. Of Issachar: Nethanel, the son of Zuar... Numbers 1:5-8.
At the back of West's analysis is a section on statistics on "all the Existing Religions" as only an anal Victorian gentleman could compile. Here we read about, for instance, the "Dorrelites" who are "followers of man names Dorrel, who preached in Leyden, Massachussetts, about the beginning of the century. He claimed to be the equal to Christ, and invulenrable; and on his being soundly beaten by an indignant hearer, acknowledged his imposition publicly, and his congregation at once dispersed." On "gypsies" we are told that they "have apparently no religious belief. Their language has no words for God, the soul, or immortality. Place, chiefly Europe. Numbers, about 700,000." West reckons there to be 17,500,000 Lutherans in the world in 1863 and there was apparently one self-proclaimed atheist in Ireland in the census of 1863.
Don't you just love details.
KID:
"And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made." (Genesis 2:2)
Like most otherwise normal kids I have always been fascinated by numbers, which abound in the KJV. Is it just a coincidence, I wondered, that God worked seven days and my dad only had to work five, unless you consider Saturday a work-day? "And Noah lived after the flood three hundred and fifty years; and he died." (Genesis 9:28) Exactly 350 years or did Moses round it off? Did it really rain for precisely 40 days and 40 nights? "And he that is eight days old shall be circumcized among you, every man child in your generations..." (Genesis 17:12) So, is a child too weak in the first week to have his foreskin foresworn? Was there a reason that only five virgins were wise enough to take oil for their lamps, that three loaves and two fishes could feed a multitude, only twelve disciples, four horsemen of the apocalypse, flogging prescribed as forty stripes minus one (isn't that Jack Benny's age as well?)? The numbers must mean something. Consider, just for a moment, how often you run across a street address of 666.
One strong memory I have is being dragged to church twice on Sunday (morning and evening) as well as Wednesday night prayer meeting. For the Wednesday Night Bible Study my dad once put together a giant folding chart called "God's Plan for the Ages." He still has it in the attic, but the ink has long since smeared to an unreadable state due to long storage folded upon itself. The basic outline is called "dispensationalism" and posits distinct ages stemming back to the creation of the world. My dad got the idea from Clarence Larkin ( a mechanical engineer turned preacher, who wrote Dispensational Truth in 1918). There are seven thousand years of human history, seven great days or ages to parallel the seven days of creation. Numbers were the symbolic glue that held the chart together. Creation started at 4000 BC (give or take a couple of years); Enoch "was not" at 3000 BC; Abraham got the covenant at 2000 BC; Solomon expanded the earthly kingdom at 1000; Jesus' birth is the center of the whole scheme; the "Dark Ages" come along at A.D. 1000, and the Antichrist will appear (by this reckoning) three more years from now. This ushers in the Millennium or thousand year reign of Christ on earth, followed by the end of Satan at A.D. 3000 and then a whole new earth of unknown duration. Larkin, Pythagorean that he undoubtedly was unaware he was, saw numbers as proof positive of the divine plan. For example -- "Seven" is the number of "perfection" and it is all over the KJV. Seven days of creation week, Enoch was the seventh from Adam, Jacob served seven years for Rachel, seven priests blew seven trumpets to fit the battle of Jericho, Solomon took seven years to build the temple, Job had seven sons, Jesus spoke seven words from the cross and the number seven "owns" the symbolism in the book of Revelation. On top of all the Biblical sevens there are seven notes in the musical scale, seven colors in the rainbow and seven rays in prismatic light . Seven, if you haven't noticed already, is the sum of three plus four, three being the divine number and four being the world number. Now, clearly for Clarence Larkin this was no coincidental crapshoot. And that greatly appealed to me and still does.
PROFESSOR:
So were all those who were numbered of the children of Israel, by the house of their fathers, from twenty years old and upward, all who were able to go forth to war in Israel; Even all they who were numbered were six hundred thousand and three thousand and five hundred and fifty. But the Levites after the tribe of their fathers were not numbered among them. (Numbers 1:45-47)
There was a man named Enoch,
he walked a lot with God.
He was, but then he was not:
which I find rather odd.
But be begot, as was his due,
Methusaleh, a son
Who lived much longer than I will do
but I'm glad
unlike his dad
he was and was not -- undone.
There is, from my cynical side, a fascination with the absolute nonsense in the KJV and written about the KJV. Consider, for example, the following verse from Ezra 7:21: And I, even I, Artaxerxes, the king, do make a decree to all the treasurers which are beyond the river, that whatever Ezra, the priest, the scribe of the law of the God of heaven, shall require of you, it be done speedily. You will note on your U-FAQ guide under conundrum #1 that I have recorded this verse with the challenge for you to find what is unique about it compared to all other verses in the KJV. Any ideas? (Someone figured out it contains all the letters of the English alphabet except "j"). As also noted in the U-FAQs, a couple of English gentlemen (one assumes English women had better things to do with their time) calculated the exact number of words and letters in the KJV. Did you know, for example, that the longest verse in the Bible is Esther 8:9 and the shortest is John 11:35 ("Jesus wept"); the latter by the way is off limits for Bible Sword drills, which I probably need to explain.
If I may, I would like to yield the rest of my time to that otherwise normal kid to explain to you what a Bible sword drill is. When I was a kid, I was a whiz at this. First, you have to memorize where every book in the Bible is (note the poem in the handout, O ye of weak minds). Second, you cannot cheat with a thumbed edition, one that has a little thumbed indentation along the margin with the name at the start of each book. Cheaters never prosper (try and find that proverb in your KJV...). Third (every good sermon has to have at least three points), you need to have fast hands. The idea is that all the youths in the young people's group hold their Bibles up in the air as a chapter and verse are called out, like Hezekiah 3:7. (The pros at this know there is no book of Hezekiah in the Bible). Then whoever finds the verse first jumps up and reads it. Here is where cheating (by memorizing a verse) can actually help you prosper.
The "sword" is, of course, the Bible and I was always taught that the KJV had the sharpest edge of all "For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow..." Hebrews 4:12.
There is also the Old Testament metaphor of "the sword of the Lord, and of Gideon" in Judges 7:18 where judge Gideon and a hundred men (and the element of surprise, it would seem) routed the Midianites and the Amalekites. This verse gives rise to two organizations I remember well as a kid. One is the "Gideons," those friendly but earnest people who put free Bibles in hotel rooms. (I have always dreamed of demanding equal time for Darwin's On the Origin of Species but perhaps it is not good bedtime reading). The other is "Sword of the Lord Publishers" and evangelist John R. Rice. John R. Rice was the 40s and 50s fundy version of Phil Donahue. He had wonderful titles for his little "booklets on important subjects" -- titles such as "Petting and Scarlet Sin," "Rebellious Wives and Slacker Husbands," and my all-time favorite "Bobbed Hair, Bossy Wives, and Women Preachers." The last title is described in the following terms: "A strong, sane, Scriptural answer to three controversial questions. Shows why bobbed hair pictures rebellion against God, husband or father; woman's place in a happy, Christian home; Bible proof that God never planned women preachers, pastors, evangelists, and why. Picture of the author's wife and six daughters, other pictures showing two daughters with beautiful long hair. Beautifully cloth bound. Price postpaid, only ... $1.00."
James:
"The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies; thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." Psalm 23
The 23rd Psalm may very well be the most oft quoted portion of scripture and certainly it stands as the epitome of KJV English. The nagging problem with all newer translations (more accurate or understandable as they may be) is that none can hold a candle to this. Many have tried. The New Living Translation (it's main claim to fame is translating I Samuel 20:30 "thou son of the perverse" as "you son of a bitch."), published by Tyndale House, reads: "The Lord is my shepherd; I have everything I need." Somehow I want the "not want" and don't need the "need." Captain J. Rogers came out with the Seaman's Version of the Bible -- to make the metaphors more user-friendly to his profession of sailors. But I find it hard to take it seriously: "The Lord is my pilot; I shall not drift."
KID:
Praise ye the Lord. sing unto the Lord a new song, and his praise in the congregation of saints. Psalms 149:1
To grow up in a small Baptist church is to sing a lot of hymns. I imagine that I have sung several hundred different gospel songs in my youth and many of the choruses and melodies still stick in my mind. The hymn book (Hymns of Praise) I remember best had all the old standards from "The Old Rugged Cross" and "Bringing in the Sheathes" to "Standing on the Promises" and "There's Power in the Blood." Bible Baptists are not faint about songs of blood. Saturday night was my weekly bath and Sunday I would be "washed in the blood of the Lamb." But the young kids start out with the easy ones:
"Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little Ones to him belong,
We are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me, Yes, Jesus loves me
Yes, Jesus loves me ... the Bible tells me so."
The Bible, of course, was the KJV -- the one that kept in all those references to the blood.
"The B-I-B-L-E,
Yes, that's the book for me.
I stand alone on the Word of God
the B-I-B-L-E."
The preacher chose the hymns for Sunday morning, usually to tie in with the theme of the message. But on Sunday night you got to ask for your favorites. We were a small church without a regular choir, so we sang more than we listened to others sing. I always liked Christmas songs and it really bothered me that they only got sung around Christmas time, so I always tried to encourage Christmas in July with my requests on a Sunday evening.
PROFESSOR:
The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God... Psalms 53:1
Yes, it would be foolish to say there is no God and mean it from the heart; the heart needs a God so badly it has to invent one if none is handy. But what about the mind? What if you just don't mind not believing in God -- at least the one who seems to thrive on eternal praisesinging?
Songs are supposed to rhyme; they should be poems set to music. I don't think it ever occurred to me as a youth that the Biblical Psalms were meant to be sung since they didn't rhyme. Once, while rummaging through my grandmother's attic I found an early 19th century prayer book where the Psalms had been versified. I still have a booklet published in 1955 called The Bible in Verse. My copy is from 1968 (at which point there were 225,000 copies in print, which is rather humbling when I consider that my book with University of Washington Press on medieval Arab agriculture has only sold about 300 copies -- many of which I bought myself and gave to friends). The author or poet, Alvy E. Ford, was a blind veteran of World War II who based his poetic rendering on the KJV. There is a quatrain for every chapter in the Bible: for example, Leviticus, chapter 13, is rendered:
"Rules for discerning the leprosy plague,
If it be spreading or if it be stayed.
All those with leprosy must be contained.
Baldness and freckles are also explained."
Can you imagine sending Mother Theresa a get-well card with these words as a cheery message?
On a slightly less sober strain, I also inherited a book from my grandmother called The War Bible of the Moment Written into Colloquial English and Pure Slang by James Austin Murray in 1914. I actually own certified copy No. 903 of the 1000 copy first edition. Much of the author's musings focus on Genesis, for example:
"A little apple, what a cost!
Through it a Paradise was lost.
Terror struck, the recreant lovers
Put on skimpy fig leaf covers;
Eden's lovely first edition
Brought the race to sure perdition.
And it happened on a Sunday --
Sic transit gloria mundi."
After the serious portion of the book with invitation "To have your bible close at hand, For reference, you understand," there are what appear to be literary out-takes near the end; the title of one illustrated ditty being "When Adam Dressed for Dinner," which reads:
"It was Wash Day in Eden
tho' Eve didn't care;
The pieces were scanty
Her wardrobe was bare:
Said Adam, bewildered:
"Your Washing
Looks fine!
But tell me, dear Eve-a:
Which Fig Leaf
Is mine?
We have now degenerated in a most unoriginal way to mere doggeral, the paragon of which is the limerick. Over the years I have made it a habit to collect limericks on Biblical themes. And, I am still in the process of rendering Genesis into limerick form. Indeed, I hope to have my first edition up on my web page by this summer. How does Genesis sound in basic hindsight limerick? For example ... in a philosophical mode ...
At the start, there was God, one in all,
Quite alone as the universal.
With forethought unfurled,
He whipped up the world
Out of nothing in no time at all.
At this point the work was half done,
And the crowning achievement undone.
The stage had been set
For life to beget --
All God's creatures, both rare and well done.
and for my biologist friends in the audience ...
Mr. Darwin and many bright thinkers
Said creation by fiat is stinkers.
Natural selection
Is more the direction
Despite all that missing of linkers.
and in the most basic and demeaning yet earthly spirit of doggeral ...
Eve's breasts heaved in such new elation
To see her man's member's sensation.
"This thing, why it rises,
Can even change sizes --
What's this, Adam? Ejaculation?
That's a first, Adam. Congratulation!
JAMES:
The king hath brought me into his chambers. Song of Solomon 1:4
When King James died in 1625, the Bishop of Lincoln eulogized him as follows:
I Dare presume to say, you never read in your lives of two Kings more fully paralell'd amongst themselves, and better distinguished from all other Kings besides themselves. King Solomon is said to be Vnigenitus coram Matre sua, the only Son of his Mother, Prov. 4.3. So was King James. Solomon was of a complexion white and ruddy, Cant. 5:10. So was King James. Solomon was an Infant King, puer parvulus, a little Child, I Chron. 22.5. So was King James, a king at the age of Thirteen Months... Solomon was twice crowned and annointed a king, I Chron. 29.22. So was King James. .. Solomon was Learned above all the Princes of the East, I King 4:20. So was King James above all the Princes in the Universal World. Solomon was a Writer in Prose and Verse. I King 4:32. So in a very pure and excuisite manner was our sweet sovereign King James. Solomon was the greatest Patron we ever read of to Church and Churchmen; and yet no greater (let the House of Aaron now confess) then King James... Solomon was a great maintainer of Shipping and Navigation, I Kings 10.14. A most prospect Attribute to King James... Lastly, before any Hostile act we read of in the History, King Solomon died in Peace, when he had lived about Sixty years ...; and so you know did King James.
KID:
How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor; thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. Thy neck is like a tower of ivory; thine eyes, like the fishpools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is like the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus. Thine head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the galleries. Song of Solomon 7:1-5
Not too many Baptist ministers base their Sunday morning sermons on the Song of Solomon, or Canticles. When I was young and actually tried to read through every part of the Bible, this book offered a special challenge. In his introductory notes to the book, conservative C. I. Scofield noted that "Nowhere in Scripture does the unspiritual mind tread upon ground so mysterious and incomprehensible as in this book, whereas saintly men and women throughout the ages have found it a source of pure and exquisite delight." Scofield, by the way, put out his Scofield Reference Bible in 1909 -- with the kind of literalistic references appealing to fundamentalists. My father's copy was old and well-worn; I did not have my own until the New Scofield Reference Bible came out in 1967. For Scofield, with his saint's eyes, the tender thoughts of Solomon for the Shulamite maiden symbolized the love of Christ for his bride, the Church.
As a young kid who had not seen any kind of maiden, let alone a Shulamite, in a state where her various body parts could be metaphored, this book was somewhat of a tease. I could imagine what breasts might look like, but roes, fishpools and the tower of Lebanon left much to the uninformed imagination. The rather archaic language clothed what the unspiritual mind might find titillating. I mean, how can you get turned on at the following? My beloved put his hand to the hole of the door, and my bowels moved for him. Song of Solomon 5:4. Hell, this was an enema, not sex.
When I was growing up Baptist, what I knew about sex you could put on the head of an angel as it danced on the head of a pin. I remember once in elementary school looking through an issue of Sports Illustrated in the library and noticing that virtually every page had been ripped off. In all innocence I walked up to the librarian (your worst stereotype) and pointed out that someone had been destroying the magazine. I did not realize that that someone was her and that that issue was the annual swimsuit issue and that she thought I was being a smartass and boy did I get into trouble. The only girls I had any kind of contact with outside of school were the girls in my church youth group. None of them were Shulamites, but a couple did indeed have a belly like an heap of wheat -- a haystack, even. The biggest physical thrill I remember was sledding on Bunker Hill in winter and going down the slope in a sled with one of the church girls layid out on my back. She had to hold on real tight, but the ride was rather short and the snow was far too cold. This is what passed at the time for good, clean Christian fun.
PROFESSOR:
"But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. Matthew 5:28
When Jimmy Carter, a Southern Baptist Sunday School Teacher and Peanut Farmer (not that there's any connection between the two), was running for President in 1976 he granted an interview to Playboy Magazine. Here Carter paraphrased the verse above by saying whoever thinks about screwing a woman is just as guilty as if he did it. The New York Times, all the news they see fit to print, refused to print Carter's statement on the grounds it was too vulgar. I find it a bit vulgar as well, but not for the same reason. What a revamping of our criminal justice system would be needed if intent became synonymous with action. The implication here for Baptists is that sexual fantasy is wrong, not surprising for a worldview that says "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." (I Corinthians 7:1). Well, at least this is one verse in the Bible which is not homophobic.
Think about that last quote for a moment. What is so bad about sex that in order to get closer to God you need to control your carnal desires and mortify the flesh? Sex is denigrated from the very start. After all, when Adam and Eve ate the apple and knew good from evil, the first thing they noticed was that they were naked. So, out of the garden of ease they go to have kids and Eve has no one to blame for her labor pains but herself. Sex is for kids, a necessary evil (I am refering to sex and not to kids here). But there is a great deal of attention paid to what kind of sex is tolerated. Thou shalt not commit adultery, unless you have that 1635 version of the Wicked Bible. Of course, it is alright for a man to "find a damsel who is a virgin, who is not betrothed, and lay hold on her, and lie with her, and they be found; Then the man who lay with her shall give unto the damsel's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall be his wife..." Deuteronomy 22:28-29. Curious, is it not, that the 10 commandments forbid adultery -- spoiling another man's property, but do not include rape in the top ten.
Archaic language aside, there is an awful lot of illicit sex in the Bible. There was Lot whose two daughters lay with him in a cave to "preserve his seed." These were the same daughters Lot had offered to the Sodomites (the geographical Sodomites) instead of his male visitors, you will remember. Then there was Onan, who spilled his seed rather than have sex with his sister-in-law "and the things which he did displeased the Lord: wherefore he slew him also" Genesis 38:10. Poor Onan gets tagged for the sin of masturbation, but in fact his crime was coitus interruptus -- he screwed her and pulled out. King David got the hots for Bathsheba after watching her bathe on the rooftop; this got her husband Uriah into a heap of trouble. David's son Absalom set up a tent on his father's house and "went in unto his father's concubines" in full view of the people. Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines; as the KJV says, he "loved many strange women." (I Kings 11:1). There were lots of whores, women taken in adultery, and men who lusted with the heart. It's amazing parents ever let children read this book; I wonder if they would if it was in understandable English?
The KJV has a few gender biases. You may have heard about a recent PC translation where God the Father becomes God the Father-Mother. James' scholars tow the male line from the get go -- Eve appears as a "help meet for" Adam (Genesis 2:18) but the wording here is easily colloquialized into a "helpmate" -- what more defining role for the Judaeo-Christian woman-rib. The rules compiled by the priestly editors and rendered anew by Jame's scholars were also decisively the work of men. A particularly egregious example is Deuteronomy 25:11: When men strive together one with another, and the wife of the one draweth near for to deliver her husband out of the hand who smiteth him, and putteth forth her hand, and taketh him by the secrets, thou shalt cut off her hand; thine eye shall not pity her. Moral of the story: let the two bastards fight it out for themselves and keep your hands on your own secrets. The KJV translators were quite fond of secret parts. In II Samuel 5:9 we read that God got so angry with the Philistines that "he smote the men of the city, both small and great, and they had emerods in their secret parts." Emerods are hemorrhoids. Moral of the story: keep your ass clean or God will zap it. The word ass is always somewhat problematic in today's non-KJV slang. King James and his scholars knew the difference between their asses and their arses, but most Americans do not. (The use of ass for your butt is slang for "arse" -- the r drops out since an ass was nothing more than a donkey in holy writ.) Imagine the potential misunderstanding in a Bible sword drill with Joshua 15:18: "And it came to pass, as she came unto him, that she moved to ask of her father a field; and she lighted off her ass. And Caleb said unto her, What wouldest thou?" Caleb should have simply yelled "Fire!" Then again in II Kings 6:25: "And there was a great famine in Samaria; and behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver..." It is not clear from the KJV English whether it was a whole ass head or just a piece of ass head. Or St. Peter's (2/2:16) discussion of Balaam, who "was rebuked for his iniquity; the dumb ass speaking with man's voice..." I am reminded of an old and tired joke told to me by a Catholic friend about a nun who tries to peddle her ass, but enough is enough.
The KJV also has something to say about shit, which it calls dung (It took me awhile to figure out what shittim-wood is -- you know the stuff used to make the Ark of the Covenant -- just don't ask what they used for pitch.) Deuteronomy 3:13 is a wonderful example of how KJV English has not kept pace with the times (or the New York Times for that matter): "And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith. and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee." Euphemisms, anyone?
JAMES:
And I saw a great white throne and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away, and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God, and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life. and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and hell delivered up the dead that were in them; and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosover was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:11-15
PROFESSOR:
And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire.
Do you believe in hell? I mean, do you really believe in it? In my religion class here at Hofstra I give a survey asking the students if they believe in some kind of an afterlife? The overwhelming majority say they do. Then I ask if they believe in a literal hell. Only a small minority seem to. Apparently a lot of people no longer believe in hell; for some perhaps life is hell enough reson to have no desire to revisit it in the afterlife. This bothers fundamentalist and evangelical preachers. Billy Graham, for example, in one of his "Hour of Decision" broadcasts from 1957, concluded that "No one can read the Bible without recognizing that there is a hell." The bad news, from Billy Graham, is that, "Yes, Virginia, there is a hell;" the good news (pun intended) is that hell was created for the Devil (chances are if you don't believe in hell, you don't go for the Devil either) and his angels and you can escape it if you follow his (Billy Graham's not the Devil's) advice.
The KJV did a hell of a job in translating this idea of "hell." There are actually four words translated as "hell" -- not often consistently -- by James' scholars. One is sheol, a Hebrew term for some sort of fuzzy and shadowy underworld; but at times this comes out in English as "pit" or "grave". Another is hades which is in some ways the Greek version of sheol. Then there is tartarus, which is more like a very dark dungeon and used only once (II Peter 2:4). The last hot spot is gehenna, a reference to the valley of Hinnom, which served as the city dump of Jerusalem. And we must not forget the burning "lake of fire" in Revelation.
One major advantage of hell that many people seem to overlook is that hell is a great motivator. It convicted the complacent souls of quite a few missionaries to take the gospel to heathen lands even at the risk of boiling in some primitive stew. Old drunks falling into a city mission may find the idea strong medicine for their booz blues. Harlots, thieves and wanton criminals have an incentive to mend their ways.
But what about people who don't do a lot of hellish things, like most kids and virtually all lactating mothers? If you are going to go to hell for even a small sin, or just failing to take Jesus into your heart, why not do what you want and to hell with the afterlife? If lusting after a woman is really the same as doing it, then why settle for the sin of Onan? Maybe it's a good thing after all that most people don't believe in hell anymore.
KID:
And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy... and I saw one of his heads as though it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed, and all the world wondered after the beast. Revelation 13:1,3
When I look back into the sea of my memories and focus on the voice that seems so childlike today, I fear that what I will see is not a child but a beast -- not so much an ogre-ish monster as a buffoonish dumb beast. I hear another voice -- or perhaps only an echo of the child -- that does not want to admit belief in ideas that seem so absurdly childish. What made sense to the child in me no longer makes sense to the child I still must remain. Where Jesus once was the bumper-sticker answer, I find only the same nagging questions that that answer never really resolved. The God I once thought created me has come down considerably as I realize how much the likes of Him was created by the likes of me.
I have obviously evolved. The biological sense is not really what I mean; I am no longer the same child who believed and I am not quite sure how and why.
There are clues, of course. In preparing this talk I sifted through a lot of memory aids, the most poignant of which are poetry. I seem always to have been writing poems -- not always in a doggeral mode -- and reading over them I see the influence of the KJV time and time again. From the tenth grader in me:
Soul, wend thy way to lasting bliss,
God's hand will guide thee there;
This fleeting hour thou wilt not miss,
For thou, His love will share.
But there was a sense of rebellion at work -- another high school poem assignment:
Thou sonnet, structure of the bard,
From olden time: primordial child,
I find thy rigid precepts hard --
So hard my spirit lies defiled.
That Muse invoked to give thee life
No longer Greek deserves to be.
Sonnet, do behold thy wife,
And see if she be poetry.
O form, O lines, O meter cold,
Thou nothing art without the mind
Of man to grasp, to stir, to hold --
Creating gods of verbal kind.
No form in poesy e'er may say:
"I am the life, the truth, the way."
Then, as it happened, I went to college and took a course in poetry as a first-semester freshman. It was a religious college -- Wheaton -- and I was still very much wired to be religious, at least attend church on Sundays. But the poems continued to evolve...
God is silent is dead is removed.
God is dead is silent is removed.
God is removed is silent is dead.
You haven't walked down our streets
for three months now, God.
You no longer bring
plumbers and carpenters to make repairs.
Have we offended you, God --
not covering the stink of the
garbage left outside our doors
with dime store perfume?
Maybe its our hair, God --
dandruff and dirt
cascading down
second-generation, patched, faded clothes?
We're ignorant, God.
Too black to afford the schooling
that would put us on your level.
Too hurt to care.
We act different, too --
no father around to whip us
for taking thirteen year old girls
into abandoned buildings at midnight.
You were the only one who ever came, God,
so we thought you cared.
But slum scum like us
only hurt your good reputation.
Your're still our God, though.
We''ll pay the rent as usual --
lay dead rats on the doorstep
of your downtown office.
We won't come in
where we don't belong.
We'll do it quietly, God, and at night
so no one will know.
God is removed is silent is dead.
God is dead is silent is removed.
God is silent is dead is removed.
When did I stop believing or thinking I believe?. It seems to have happened overnight, to wake up one morning and realize you don't believe what you were taught to believe and you no longer believe you have to. Of course, it can't happen like that in the real world, but the real world is not the stuff of memories. The real world is not what King James English is about. One day I returned to Genesis -- not as doggeral but more like looking for a lost love:
male and female
he cre-
ated them (but what
of us)
God fore-
knew that man would
eat the forbidden.
it was written in
the genes (some still
say Genes-
is)
male and female
were naked and not ashamed
of the tree of the knowledge
of forbidden. So
they ate
God's juiciest fruit
and God grew angry
thorns to crown man's brow
with sweat. And yet
it was written in
the genes
that man prefer the fig
to the lamb
God fashioned in snake-skin.
That was original sin.
man for-
gets he can't see God
unclothed. No naked eye
can make God ashamed (so
we cover him with whole cloth
thinking he might be
naked)
male and female
he cre-
ated them (but we cre-
ated him)
JAMES:
To every thing there is a season, and a time to every Purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; A time to weep, and a time to laugh; A time to mourn, and a time to dance; A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; A time to rend, and a time to sew; A time to keep silence, and a time to speak... Ecclesiastes 3:1-7
PROFESSOR:
The following quote is from Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (chapter 12):
"As to Tom, he was thinking over some words of an unfashionable old book, which kept running through his head again and again, as follows: `We have here no continuing city, but we seek one to come; wherefore God himself is not ashamed to be called our God; for he hath prepared for us a city.' These words of an ancient volume, got up principally by `ignorant and unlearned men' have, through all time, kept up, somehow, a strange sort of power over the minds of poor simple fellows, like Tom."
KID:
God, do you
understand yourself?
Or do you exist too?
Bibliography (not complete )
Ashton, Robert
1969 James I by his Contemporaries. London: Hutchinson.
Bergeron, David M.
1991 Royal Family, Royal Lovers: King James of England and Scotland. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.
Hill, Christopher
1993 The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution. London: The Penguin Press.
Kehl, D. G., editor
1970 Literary Style of the Old Bible and the New. Indianapolis: Bobbs- Merrill.
Lewis, C. S.
1963 The Literary Impact of the Authorized Version. Philadelphia: Fortress (not examined)
McElwee, William L.
1958 The Wisest Fool in Christendom: The Reign of King James I and VI. London: Faber and Faber.
MacGregor, Geddes
1968 A Literary History of the Bible. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Scott, Otto F.
1976 James I. N.Y.: Mason/Charter.
