Words and the word: the family bible

Stonewall Jackson's family Bible

The idea that the family bible would be owned, and read, by the family has a venerable history. But it is not altogether clear how much the Bibles were actually read. The value of the Family Bible was sometimes seen less in its being a book to read, and more in its role as a safekeeper of family history, and a sign of God's blessing on the household. It became the tradition to inscribe significant family dates in the opening pages - x married y; list of their children's births and baptisms, etc. This gave the Family Bible the air of a talisman - that its presence in the house was more important than reading or understanding the texts within it.

All kinds of things are prone to taking on the status of an artefact - they become more important as a symbol of what they represent than as what they are in themsleves. And the Bible has been supremely prone to this kind of veneration. Unfortunately, it has the effect, in Christianity, of ossifying the religion to which it pertains. When the book becomes a talisman, and has superstitious value, then faith in the living God may easily be diminished. There's a fine line between symbolism, metaphor, understanding of truth-through-beauty, and the kind of superstition that places faith in an object, not in the wider truth perceived in and through a work of art, music, literature. Symbolism enriches faith; superstition ossifies it.

There are faiths, of course, in which the book itself really is deemed to be an object of faith. Sikhism (a most attractive religion in many ways) treats its scriptures as literally Holy; the scriptures are only handled (and then very respectfully) by people appointed to the task; the book is put in its little shrine-like place each day, and at night - almost with the reverence of putting it into its bed - it is tucked into soft fabrics and put away for the night.<>

But the Bible cannot be treated with the same veneration, because within our belief system the scriptures are not a Holy BOOK as such. Rather, they are a collection of books that convey the knowledge of something, someone, Holy. The book is a medium of communication, a source of authority in matters of faith and practice, a book that is valued above other books for its role in our faith.  Ultimately the book itself it is dispensible, because it is not deemed to be the words (literally) of God, but a witness to the Word of God (Jesus Christ). There will be no Bible on a stand in Heaven.

Comments

[Caroline]

It is a LIVING word isn't it, that's its wonder and also why it's so tricky to engage with as we live and seek to reflect the living WORD.

[Mark Ingram]

You said that Christianity doesn't view the Bible as holy but rather its content attests to someone who is holy - I totally agree!

But you also said: "Ultimately the book itself is dispensible, because it is not deemed to be the words (literally) of God, but a witness to the Word of God (Jesus Christ)." I'm maybe catching on to a minor point that wasn't explained fully... but if the Bible is not the words of God (commissioned by God, not necessarily literally spoken by Him), then it has no authority. Just because Peter and Paul say it has authority wouldn't give it authority because the authority given to them by God is recorded only in the Bible... it breaks out into circular reasoning.

Whilst I don't believe God actually spoke each word of the Bible into the ears of the original writers or many translators since, I do believe that the words recorded have been (through the Holy Spirit) inspired and commissioned by Him. It's for that reason that I accept that the Bible has authority and choose to submit to it.

Did that make sense or did I say "authority" too much in one sentence? :)

[Hugh A]

Years ago I was on holiday with my grandparents and helped collect second hand goods for a charity shop. Among the things we collected was an unused Victorian family Bible which I fell in love with - particularly the illustrations. My granny bought it for me and I was subsequently given an old Bible box to keep it in. I still have it - currently it holding up the wine rack! I have other Bibles which may not be such works of art but are read; for Christmas I was given a parallel TNIV / The Message Bible which I am using with reading s from the Northumbria Community. It is when we read and study the Bible that it becomes The Word - not when it sits in a box unread.

[phillip]

Reverence is an essential quality in understanding, for it is an innate aspect of love itself, when the Scripture is treated as 'ultimately dispensable' then all talk of God slides into opinion. Of this the internet is a marvelous example. As a person who was raised in a CofE school and thus entirely lacking in religous knowledge, aside from having to mumble the Lord's prayer before being informed in Biology my actual ancestors were really clever apes, my encounter with Scripture was shocking when at 29 the profound certainty of the gospel witness to Christ fractured the comfort of my atheistic worldview. This resulted in an adoration of the Word itself, which took several years of Literalist/Fundamentalists using Scripture as a baseball bat to alter. So what I'm saying is faced with a choice between a KJV only view and its a literary production view, the latter is far more likely to awaken that understanding of God's desire for his creatures, my only reservation is Christ's insistence that His words will stand forever which implies that the Bible might just be shining now on that stand in heaven.

[James Pepper]

The American Bible Society made this video on my handwritten illuminated manuscript of the Bible which I placed into the URL box for this comment. I am the first person you see in the video and then 4 minutes and 20 seconds into the video Paul Irwin the head of the American Bible Society introduces me.
When I designed my pages, I relied on inspiration from the Holy Spirit, I only wrote and drew when I was inspired. When my bible was on exhibition people noticed that I had things in my pages that I had no idea I had drawn. They saw things that I did not intend and it spoke to them in ways I did not plan. Thats the Holy Spirit at work, using me to reach other people.
It is the same process that was used by God for the people who wrote the Bible. They wrote it according to their understanding and the inspiration of God and they did not have to plan every aspect of it, they just did it. And it reaches us and teaches us here in a society that is completely alien to the Gospel writers. Why does it speak the truth to us today? Because God is the mind behind the reason.