The Bible; A Literary Viewpoint

vaught retired the bible is primarily religious words or more accurately a number of religious writings va does it however have a place in the world of literature a part of that is from its religious significance well certainly has a place in the world of literature one could not think of a single collection of writings certainly no single book which is minnesota's formative in the literary tradition of western europe and particularly in the english literary tradition in the bible has are you ask you know whether it has this apart from its religious significance six string a difficult separate those two in my mind hugo and there are attempts to do so for instance in the year a recent article that robert graves wrote attacking me a new english translation of the newest bubble so called new testament was published in the

spring but if you ask about its impact upon our culture it seems to me that it's been an impact which has resulted from the fusion lawyer works in most cases over high order combine with the idea a religious core of meaning which was essential to the culture one interesting thing to see in the future might be in whether as our culture moves further away from the score of meaning contained in the christian symbols whether the bible retains its place in the curriculum of the schools and as an insurance riders but up to the present time russian soul or the similar autism as religious scholars have been fused you may have been remarkable what i say you mentioned the un use of the bible in academic circles and particularly as it has been talk quite frequently and colleges where the bible is very often talk as literature

we asked you feel it is valid to read the bible purely as literature well you might ask a question whether its violent to read any writing purely as literature know what city in that case would pure water and you're mean and if you take any a given texts that you have in front of you know there are certain questions that you can ask about it which might be close to work no one calls pure libertarian passed laws form you can ask about it's a grammatical and rhetorical structure and you can ask about the consistency of symbolism that's found in it and some poor and so on these are often called literary questions but no genuine theory of literature that i know of stops at that point whether it's an all or a poem or a book of the bible one asks also about it what's

its relationship to life it's it is it's not a purely self contained construction and there are it haven't sensed that showed role of artists old mirror up to nature well in this case lee major that was pointed out was not only physical nature of another nature of my hand we're also the nature of god and nature man's relationship to god so that i don't believe that anybody has ever read the bible purely as literature he has read it for what this literature were contained switches part a rhetorical but partly a reflection of assumptions about life the soul relates very much to the answer to that you gave the first question which you were making the point that the religious aspect or the religious reading of them i was very closely tied in with the reading of the bible as literature in other words yes now this doesn't mean that you cannot ask literary questions about it as

well as theological questions in fact it means for the opposite it means that if you as theological questions you also asked literary questions but similarly good parlor is also true is if you ask a literary questions about it you will end up asking for a lot of questions about also i think here of the a reformation principle which has been so important in expanding renewable name of the right of individual interpretation loser might not anticipated that no one result of this would be that the individuals who were exercising their right to interpret it were using us sanctions in the later days especially for their interpretation not drawn from the theological traditions of the church but drawn from buddhism to have drawn from the understandings of democracy and drawn from a certain aesthetic assumptions and so forth

so the three year run and brutal interpretation has a dozen were fanned out recently to a place where you go through these kind of far out in some cases their interpretations of scripture what even reserved for this out and this is what i want to say are in one way or another implicitly theological to read the bible as literature then it's also to be confronted with the religious question absolutely because almost every instance either to the few exceptions to the sport almost every instance of the literature is one which is meaningless unless you you see that it has to do with the relationship between gun ban there's always some personal involvement in the reading of literature oh absolutely absolutely and there's also israel woman's point out lately some always some pre understanding that one has when he comes toward worker when i come to any work i come as my model

self i try to rid myself of that many preconceptions as possible but i know that i can't read most of the water so i have a kind of pre understanding about myself about my situation unless i bring to this text and at any given text will then highlight and focus its attention upon certain aspects of my pre understanding and we're judges correctly elaborate in terms of what was happening and as long run as though i remember a market northrop frye makes in his book of literary theory called the anatomy of cruises and he mentions along the way that the bible would today still be a widely read book if it were not to an authoritarian book or within the christian tradition and here he means to say that you know if people did not feel that they were supposed to read it because the area and authoritative church tradition asks them to read it

i would say rebel against and seance poetry and therefore won't repeat this were not present search for on that you would still occupy its position in our literature this leads me to another question which is also related to a comment you made earlier regarding the situation of the bible as we are in transition from what might be called christian culture to what has been called a post christian culture the bible has always exercise a considerable influence on writers as you have indicated chaucer and milton and dante would come most easily to mind perhaps from the person in modern literature and every moment of shakespeare or shakespeare and in modern literature we might mention ts eliot are faulkner mcclish one thinks of to me certainly these are literary artists who have reflected in their writing a major influence by the bible what about younger writers today do they reflect this same influence perhaps with regard to allusions

to biblical themes our myths our images i don't believe that they reflect its yearly year same quantity that we heard earlier the reasonable us i think is that our whole educational pattern is changing so that what might be called the classical humanist tradition in education is no longer necessarily the diet probably of the younger students remember paul greenberg playwright saying to me once when i talked with him in chapel hill north carolina that it was possible for a student to graduate from the rest of north carolina without a remote and english pub paul green i will not be thought of as a theologian or even a special plea there for the church but he regarded this as a shocking lack of education another illustration comes from

under similar a smarter nicholson have the vetting list for military community recently described to me a classroom situation in which she referred to an allusion in milton to the aunt mary who chose about her part and she interrupted her lecture at that point and asked the students what mary this was who is being talked about no one knew they'd yes mary magdalen only guest heard mary the mother of jesus and so forth but no one understood that it was a reference to marry mr ma mickelson said i cannot imagine such ignorance but there's now to this extent they owe the quantity of biblical imagery which is in the contemporary writers i think his is smaller than it was before but on the other hand it is quite true that many of the younger poets who are we would not to think of necessarily as

serving spokesman of a religion then turned to it in a very sensitive way john silken i'm thinking about theodore rescue richard wilbur elizabeth jennings i mentioned many others who have written marvelously sensitive poems on the only a biblical imagery so that while quantity is not there the quality of it sometimes is quite impressive your reference to the classroom and colombia causes me to ask in terms of conversation that i had with a college professor a few weeks ago just how much students these days are reading the bible and certainly i indicated there is much less reading of the bible was going on then grabs in four years but it is very interesting to me in a recent nationwide contest which her aside church sponsors inviting college students to submit poems the contest but the results of the contest will be published in

january i believe under the title riverside porch before there were very few images and allusions in these poems that and their origin in the bible there were a few explicitly religious poems which of course did have some biblical imagery so as the press with whom i was talking also indicated students today read the bible less and their writings reflect almost no influence from the bible well i well i would my sauces almost no ice is considerably less than it was before what i was recently working on our anthology which is devoted to religious poetry of the twentieth century and maybe depends on the assumptions you begin this task with but i was surprised to find more than i anticipated that i would find among the principal names in twentieth century poetry now it often is transmitted it's sort of the way i was talking about while ago in the biblical imagery is not necessarily interpreted in the light of a crucial

theology it may assume are private meaning which of religion would seem very dubious but i don't worry about it because it seems to me that it indicates that the biblical imagery is still capable of freedom day the imagination of the poet and as long as this is true and the murdoch the son i wonder if the aisle number of new translations which are occurring you mentioned the new english bible i wonder if this is going to increase the reading of the bible and one on the subject i would like to ask you a question regarding these new translation from literary standpoint many people of course maintaining the king james version remains the best translation literally these would suggest at least some of them that the new translations have not come up to the quality of the king james with its beautiful poetic language with you agree agree to comment on this why would agree with that very much i want to add something to it but i would certainly agree that there is no translation in english of the bubble

which can hold a candle to change and direction the only lead to charges have been made against the king james one is that the language is obsolete in many cases the others that was based upon texts which have been shown to be needed some improvement in the lives of more recent discoveries but neither of these you see as a charge against the literary quality of the king james version you may say something about a scholarship that was unavailable to translators knew my so the language has changed what shakespeare's languages change and sign language is condensed version and no lawyer suggested shakespeare's in comprehensible the only difference here is that i think we eat what you what you must do in case the problem must not do in the case of shakespeare is to have continued new versions but i do not believe that these new version should be thought as replacing making jams if the church has allowed this impression to go abroad that the new translation should replace the king james

that i think has a very serious problem and the church may be a force for allowing such an impression actually if i were in charge of a church congregation i think that i would read from the king james on the border and what have copies of in your translation they are as the only english bible and the new english bible is much more readable of the as to a lot of copies of it in the pews and i would encourage my congregation to follow him are not a translation what i was reading in that in the king james this would educate them first of all to the fact that no translation is defending what would also educated in india in the beautiful a highly expressive and i should say inimitable qualities of the king james english you see the change it was so fortunate in the king james version because it was made at a time when the english language was undergoing a radical

transformation and that means that it was done in a very vigorous and very rich period in our linguistic history and to lose this whatever the values the new translations would be about to lose this as part of their tradition would be intercepted would be bizarre war perhaps there already have been such efforts made to attempt to duplicate are used to in some way i approach the literary in terms of poetic beauty quality of the king james version in more modern language or is the library do you do the best you can but there's a problem would be the same again with shakespeare show i ride a modern play which has leah qualities the butler and dramatic of shakespeare i can't i'm in a new age by loch a new translation might achieve a tremendous vigor and nobody knew when the king james version was done that it was going to be a

literary masterpiece they just want to work and do the best that i could and the one word turns out to be masterpieces sort of miraculous race if i myself president so that's why i say you do not intend to replace engines were you might just have a version as you can and if it's not it's a change and so you don't put it in the place of the earlier one but he retained the most modern greeting you can or clarity sake if you needed what you retain the king james because very often though it's not as claire it's richer very often you need translators will will smooth out and ambiguity in the king james vi of the poetic quality against its flattened into a kind of contemporary clear prose with i think good deal of loss so both essentially are necessary

but for different reasons i see that our time is oh thank you very much dr driver for dissipating this discussion on the bible as literature it's b fb