I have often wanted to read the Bible through again. They ask officer candidates in my church whether they have read the whole book. I think they leave it at that, not asking how many times they’ve read it through, just whether they have.
I have never read the Bible cover to cover in a systematic way. I can only say I’ve read all of it because I had to read through the Old Testament for a survey class in college. I’ve read the whole New Testament in the course of many studies, but I think if we could look at the data, I’d be surprised to see how little I’ve read of some books (I may have read 2 Corinthians only once).
This year I wanted to read all of it, and here at the end of August I’m probably far more behind than I realize. I’ve read from Genesis to 2 Samuel 1, most of Psalms, Matthew, half of Mark, Galatians, and Ephesians, I think. I don’t like skipping around as some reading schedules recommend, but after getting through the Pentateuch, I needed to change the pace.
Reading long passages of the Bible has always been a problem for me. I tend to read slowly, and when reading the Bible, I can barely stop reviewing what I just read prayerfully or studiously. A passage spelling out geographical details can get me thinking I need to remember what’s north and what’s east. And the weeds are just too deep most of the time.
My greatest reading aid has been listening to David Suchet read from the NIVUK on BibleGateway.com. He has a marvelous voice and delivers passages more smoothly than other readers I’ve listened to, but the main benefit is that he doesn’t stop. He reads one paragraph of land rights for a tribe and moves on to the next. When I read that paragraph and find that I starting thinking of something else, I go back to the beginning and read it again, and consequently do not get through a day’s reading. But because I take in so much by listening, I still hope to finish the book by the end of the year.
Listening to Suchet reading Judges in two sittings drove home the darkness of that history. Samson wasn’t a detailed story plucked out of context. It was a noir tale told in an alley with a hint in the air of burning homes. It may have been when Samson was praying for final vengeance against the Philistines that I thought, “This isn’t about to let up. It’s only getting darker.” Had I been reading, I may have stopped at that point, but I was listening and kept on to the end.
What ways have you found helpful for reading long passages of the Bible, or do you recommend it?
After a couple weeks with Rodney Riesel’s light – and short – Dan Coast books, I have plunged (with some relief, actually) into a little more challenging material. I’m reading Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings, by Neil Price. It’s a long book, and it will take me a while to get to the point where I can review it. I’m finding it a good object to wrestle with – I like parts very much, and I disagree now and then. Here’s a nice passage from near the beginning:
When properly recited in appropriate surroundings, Viking-Age poetry can taste like cold iron on the tongue, its complex rhyme schemes building upon one another like layers of frost—treacherous but beautiful. We gain something old and true in this language, even if only understood in translation, and for that reason I have included a selection here.
Tolkien would have liked bit that very much. Even if you disagree with a historian, prose like this can make reading his book worth your time.
Correctly handling the Word of God does not permit making the text say what we want. To understand the Bible accurately, we must discover (or “exegete”) the single, God-inspired meaning of every verse before us. The text of the Bible means what God inspired it to mean, not “what it means to me.”
When praying the Bible, our primary activity is prayer, not Bible intake. Bible reading is secondary in this process. Our focus is on God through prayer; our glance is at the Bible. And we turn Godward and pray about every matter that occurs to us as we read.
King Eystein I of Norway, carving in the Bergen Museum. Photo credit: Nina Aldin Thune, Creative Commons LIcense.
I’ve been doing a little translation lately (I’ll tell you more about it later) which reminded me of one of my favorite passages from Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla.
This story involves King Eystein I, far from the most renowned of Norway’s kings, but very possibly the most likeable.
He was part of a set, sharing a joint monarchy with his brother, Sigurd Magnusson. They were both the sons of King Magnus Bareleg, who never got the memo that the Viking Age was over, and died young and outnumbered in Ireland, declaring, “Kings were made for glory, not for long life.”
Eystein and Sigurd were very different men. Eystein, the older, was handsomer and friendlier, as well as more thoughtful. Sigurd was taller and stronger, and mercurial in his temperament. Some historians suspect, based on saga descriptions, that he may have suffered from bipolar disorder.
Sigurd was actually the first European king to go on a crusade, heading out in 1108 and returning in 1111. He fought in various places in the Mediterranean before helping King Baldwin of Jerusalem capture Sidon. He went home by way of Constantinople. Meanwhile, Eystein stayed home and watched the store.
One memorable scene in their saga has them together at one of Eystein’s estates in the Upplands. During the feasting they decide to amuse themselves by “mannjevning,” what we might call “ranking” today. A bragging competition.
Sigurd boasts about his prowess in war. He tells of his battles in the Holy Land, and all the honors he received from great princes.
This is how Eystein answers:
“I have heard that thou hast won many battles in foreign lands, but it might have been more useful for the land what I meantime did at home. North at Vagar I built booths for the fishing folks, so that poor people could get help, and earn their living. There I founded a priest’s garth and endowed the church. Before this the place was almost heathen. These men will remember that Eystein was King of Norway. The road from Trondheim went once over Dovre-fell, where people were lost in bad weather or had to sleep out of doors and suffer hardships. There I built a mountain inn and gave it an income; those people will know that Eystein has been King of Norway. At Agdenes there is a dangerous rocky coast and no harbour; and many ships were lost every year. There is now a harbour and a landing place for wintering ships, also a church. Afterwards I raised beacons on the high fells and this I hope will be useful for the country. I built at Bergen a king’s hall and the church of the Apostles, with an underground passage between the two. The kings that come after me will remember my name for that.
“I built St Michael’s Church and a monastery besides. I have also, my brother, shaped the laws so that the people can now obtain justice, and when the laws are kept the country will be better ruled. I have set a warping pole with iron rings in Sinholm sound. The Jämtland people are again under the Norse king’s rule, and this was brought about by blithe words and wise persuasion and not by force or fighting. Now these matters are of small importance, still I do not know, if the people in the land are not better served by them, than if thou hast killed black men in Serkland and sent them to hell…”
As good a “guns vs. butter” argument as I’ve ever read, I think.
But though that’s a memorable story, it’s not the best Eystein story. That comes earlier {and is not included in some translations). It represents one of those weird moments you occasionally experience in reading old books when time contracts and you encounter a historical character who seems like someone you might know, and would like to know, today.
There was an Icelandic poet in King Eystein’s court whose name was Ivor Ingemundson. Ivor was a witty conversationalist, and the king enjoyed his company. But a time came when Ivor’s mood changed. He grew quiet and sad, and the king noticed it.
The whole passage is quite long (in Monsen’s translation), but the essence of the story is that Eystein spoke to Ivor privately. Ivor was reluctant to talk at first, but the king asked a series of questions, finally working out through deduction that Ivor was lovesick. He had counted on marrying a particular girl back home, one he couldn’t help thinking about, but his father had arranged for his brother to marry the girl.
King Eystein then proposed a series of remedies – he offered to introduce him to suitable young women; he offered give him property; he offered money to enable him to travel. Ivor replied that none of those things appealed to him. So the king says this:
“I have suggested everything that comes to my mind. There is but one thing else that might help thee, although it is little compared to what I have offered thee. Every day when I am not taken up with important matters, thou shalt come to me and we will talk over this matter about the maid, for it often happens that sorrow shared is sorrow lessened, and every time I shall give thee something before thou goest away.”
The saga says that Ivor agreed to that. “He was thereby consoled in his sorrow and became glad again.”
I’m in haste tonight. Got a translation assignment, and I think I may have promised to deliver faster than I should have. So time’s wingéd chariot is tailgating me like a Ferrari on a blue highway.
In lieu of anything original, I’ll share this nice article from Atlas Obscura about the curses medieval scribes placed in books, so that people wouldn’t steal or mangle them.
“These curses were the only things that protected the books,” says Marc Drogin, author of Anathema! Medieval Scribes and the History of Book Curses. “Luckily, it was in a time where people believed in them. If you ripped out a page, you were going to die in agony. You didn’t want to take the chance.”
No Amazon link. I checked and Drogin’s book is very rare and copies are expensive. At those prices, they should have their own curses.
I wrote an essay on Sigrid Undset for the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s web site:
Like one of her own characters, Sigrid Undset followed her heart, confronted the consequences, and learned. Enabled by a government grant to live abroad, she began an affair in Rome with a married Norwegian painter, Anders Castus Svarstad. They married in 1912, after his divorce, and divorced in turn in 1919. By that time, they’d moved back to Norway, where their third child was born. Their second child, a daughter, was mentally handicapped. When Sigrid learned to her horror that Svarstad’s ex-wife had placed her children by him in an orphanage, Sigrid adopted them. One of these was also mentally handicapped. (Years later, when she received her Nobel Prize, she would donate the entire sum to children’s charities.)
Good will is not enough to safeguard freedom and justice: this delusion leads to the triumph of every demagogue and tyrant, and no amount of transplanted Idealism can compensate for the loss of religious sanctions. Men’s passions are held in check only by the punishments of divine wrath and the tender affections of piety.
This passage from Kirk’s chapter on Orestes Brownson is part of one of many discussions where the place of Christianity – or at least religion in general – is considered. Although most of the notable conservatives in the book are heterodox in some sense, and some are even agnostics or atheists, the importance of religion as such looms large. One exception is Roman Catholicism – several of the great conservatives are Catholics, or at least high Anglicans.
Catholics come off pretty well in this book – which annoys
me a bit, of course. Still, I can’t deny that the Reformation was a
liberalizing force (heck, I’m proud of it. See my post last night). Luther didn’t
abolish the hierarchy of the church (check out the organizations of most
Lutheran churches worldwide), but he affirmed the principle that there’s a
direct line between the believer and Christ, absent the mediation of the
priest. In the context of history, this was a step toward individualism and
what Kirk calls “atomization” – mankind conceived as a mass of unconnected
individuals, all free-floating clients of the state, undistinguished by family,
status, or personal qualities.
It’s interesting for an evangelical to observe that
evangelicals are newbies to the conservative movement. Again, this is something
I already knew – evangelicals were Abolitionists and the Prohibitionists, trying
to re-shape the world through legislation, to change mankind through enlightened
government force.
But there were dangers in that
approach, as we can see now. The reformer who wants to save the world from
slavery and Demon Rum, goes on to try to save it from guns and cigarettes and fossil
fuels and transphobia.
And yet I don’t believe in a purely libertarian approach either. I think the government has a role to play in legislating morality – all laws, after all, legislate morality to one extent or another.
OK, folks. I’m back on course. I hope you’re all safe, sheltering in place, avoiding hugs, and keeping well.
As I explained a few inches down the page, I’m reading Russell Kirk’s interesting but interminable The Conservative Mind, and blogging as I go. Parts of the book were kind of a shock to me, though a salutary one.
One thing you learn in reading this book this that it’s not
a canard to say that conservatives are against Democracy. To the contrary,
early conservatives (like Edmund Burke, particular hero of this book),
considered Democracy a positive threat to a decent social order. The American
Founders generally shared that view. When we say “We are not a democracy, we’re
a republic,” it’s true – or was.
Kirk lays that principle down, early in the book, in a list
of conservative principles. Here are his words:
[Conservatives hold a ] Conviction that civilized society requires orders and classes, as against the notion of a “classless society.” With reason, conservative often have been called “the party of order.” If natural distinctions are effaced among men, oligarchs fill the vacuum. Ultimate equality in the judgment of God, and equality before courts of law, are recognized by conservatives; but equality of condition, they think, means equality in servitude and boredom.
This idea in itself was not a surprise to me – I talk about the same thing in my work with Lutheran Free Church history. But I’ve approached it from the other side. I’ve often told listeners and readers that the Norwegian Lutheran pietists who founded my church body were liberals in their time. That the primary difference between liberals and conservatives in those days was their different ideas about the place of the common people in society. Conservatives wanted hierarchy and ancient privileges preserved. Liberals wanted the common people to participate ever more fully in all public life. Hence universal education, leading to broader voting rights.
To the early conservatives, this was all disastrous. The breakdown of the social classes must inevitably lead to the debasement of moral life. There would be no more great, highly educated men to emulate – everything would be debased to a common level of undistinguished mediocrity.
I don’t think we’re meant to take all the early
conservatives’ ideas seriously – they mostly distrusted the abolition of
slavery, for instance (wanting it to be delayed and happen naturally). For my
own part, I can’t help being proud of the achievements of (limited) democracy
in America – Abraham Lincoln, as I’ve often said, was a walking reproach to the
class-conscious old conservatives.
On the other hand, the horrors those old conservatives predicted seem to be coming upon us at last.
Possibly the American experiment was a fragile flower, one
that bloomed briefly in a specialized environment in a blessed time and place,
never to be seen again.
The public library has always been a boon to the impecunious reader. The utility that permits me to download e-books from my library is a particular blessing (not least in these days when Pestilence stalks the land). My library’s system is a little cumbersome, but less cumbersome than driving to the physical building, so I’ve got no gripe coming.
My main problem with my library’s e-book collection is selection. Mostly I read mysteries for light reading, and when I pull up “mystery” on the library site I always get the very same list of books. I don’t know if they’re arranged by popularity or date of acquisition, or some other criterion. But I have to page through screens and screens of listings before I find one that a) interests me, and b) isn’t being read by somebody else.
Last week I tried a new approach. Instead of looking for
mysteries, I thought, why don’t I try one of those “important” books I’ve
always heard I should read, but have never gotten around to? I’ll bet nobody’s waiting
in line for those.
So, on a whim, I searched for Russell Kirk. Several books were available, and I selected The Conservative Mind.
Brilliant. Masterfully written. Illuminating.
And long. Dear, sweet jasmine tea, it’s a long book. I started it last week, and I’m not half way through yet. I complained a while back about the length of Walter Scott’s The Pirate, but that was an Amazon review compared to this.
The nice part is that my book-buying expenses have plummeted
for the duration.
So… of what shall I blog until I finish this thing?
I think I shall discuss the reading as I go.
The first thing that struck me as potential blogging
material was Mr. Kirk’s assessment of Sir Walter Scott, mentioned above.
In the Waverly novels, Scott makes the conservatism of Burke a living and a tender thing—in Edie Ochiltree, showing how the benefits and dignity of hierarchical society extend even to the beggar; in Balfour of Burley, illustrating the destructive spirit of reforming fanaticism; in Montrose among the clans, “the unbought grace of life”; in Monkbarns or the Baron of Bradwardine, the hamely goodness of the old-fashioned laird…. Delighting in variety like all the Romantics, repelled by the coarsening pleasure-and-pain principle of conduct, Scott clearly saw in Utilitarianism a system which would efface nationality, individuality, and all the beauty of the past. Utilitarianism was the surly apology for a hideous and rapacious industrialism.
“By her troth,” she said, “she thought it was time to bid Mr. Mertoun gang hame and get bandages, when she had seen, with her ain twa een, Mordaunt ganging down the cliff like a wildcat….”
What you see in the passage above is an example of something I had heard of (from my friend, the scholar Dale Nelson), but had never encountered – or hadn’t noticed before. It has to do with the use of quotation marks. Turns out the rules have changed over time.
For you and me – living today and erudite as we both are – the rules of quotations are fairly simple. You’ve got direct quotations and indirect quotations (there are probably proper names for them I never learned – feel free to enlighten me). A direct quotation is supposed to recount what the character said, word for word. Direct quotations are to be set off with quotations marks:
“Lars Walker’s books,” he said, “are the best Viking novels written in Robbinsdale, Minnesota in our time.”
Then there are indirect quotations, usually indicated by the
word “that”:
He said that Lars Walker’s books are the best Viking novels written in Robbinsdale, Minnesota in our time.
The quotation way up at the top of this post comes from Walter Scott’s The Pirate, which I reviewed below. The speaker is a woman named Swertha, and the “she” who thought it was time to bid Mertoun “gang hame” was Swertha herself.
Quotation marks were a relatively new thing in those days,
and writers hadn’t yet worked out exactly how they should be used.
Our rules for direct and indirect quotations are, in fact, a
fairly recent phenomenon. They should not be applied (in my view) to older
literature, such as the Bible.
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