Chapters of Bible Study / A Popular Introduction to the Study of the Sacred Scriptures

by Herman J. Heuser

For the discovery of the literal sense we must, of course, be guided by the rules of ordinary grammatical construction. Where this proves insufficient we must have recourse to the idiomatic use of language, the habits of speech, which prevailed among the Hebrews or those with whose utterances or history we are concerned. This is very important in order that we may get a right understanding of the expressions employed. As an instance of misconception in this respect may be cited the words of our Lord to His holy Mother at the nuptials of Cana, which literally sound like a reproof, yet are far from conveying such a sense in their original signification. The like is true of the use of certain comparisons which to our sense seem rude and cruel, yet which were not so understood in the language in which they were originally spoken or written. Thus when our Lord said to the Canaanitish woman who followed Him in the regions of Tyre and Sidon that it is not right to give the bread of the children to "dogs," He seemed to spurn the poor mother, who prayed Him for the recovery of her child, as a man spurns a cur. Yet such is not the sense of the expression, which hardly means anything more than what we would convey by "outside of the pale of faith."

Besides the usage of speech peculiar to a people or district or period of time, we must have regard to the individuality of the writer. His subjective state, his temperament, education, personal associations, and habits of thought and feeling necessarily influence the style of his writing. Thus in the letters of St. Paul we recognize a spirit which the forms of speech seem wholly inadequate to contain or express. He writes as he might speak, impatient of words. His thoughts seem often disconnected; he omits things which he had evidently meant to say, and which the hearers might have supplied from the vividness of the image presented, but which become obscure to the reader who only sees the cold form of the written page. There is no end of parenthetical clauses in his discourses; often he begins a period and leaves it unfinished. Sometimes there appears a total absence of logical connection in what he intends for proofs and arguments; then, again, there is a wealth of imagery, which suggests the quick sense and power of comparison peculiar to the Oriental mind, but slow to impress itself on the Western nations. All this makes it necessary to study St. Paul rather than to read him, if one would understand the Apostle. Of this St. Peter shows himself conscious when he writes that certain things in the Epistles of St. Paul are "hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction" (II. Pet. iii. 16).

Another element which contributes to the right interpretation of the Sacred Text is the knowledge of what may be called the historical background of a passage or book. This includes the various relations of time, place, persons addressed, and other circumstances which exercise an influence upon the material, intellectual, and moral surroundings of the writer. Accordingly, different parts of the Sacred Scriptures require different treatment and different preparation on the part of the reader. Thus to comprehend the full significance of the Book of Exodus we must study the geographical and ethnographical condition of Egypt. For a right understanding of the Book of Daniel we should first have to become acquainted with the history of Chaldea and Assyria, especially as lit up by the recent discoveries of monuments in the East. The Canticle of Canticles presupposes for its just interpretation a certain familiarity with the details of Solomon's life during the golden period of his reign. The Letters of St. Paul, in the New Testament, reveal their true bearing only after we have read the life of the Apostle as it is described in the Acts; and so on for other parts of the Sacred History.

Finally, a proper understanding and appreciation of the inspired books depend largely on our realization of the proximate scope and purpose, the character and quality, of the subject treated by the sacred writer. The Bible is a wondrous combination of historic, didactic, and prophetic elements. Each of these goes to support or emphasize the other, but each of them has its predominant functions in different parts of the grand structure. Hence we may not judge a prophecy as we judge the historical narrative which introduces and supports it; we may not interpret in its literal sense the metaphor which is simply to convey a moral lesson to the mind.

XVII.

"DEUS ILLUMINATIO MEA."

The subject-matter of the Bible obliges us, however, to apply not only the various cautions and methods of interpretation which are required for the understanding of the classics generally, but it exacts more. The Sacred Scriptures, as a grand work of art, have not only a human, but primarily a divine conception for their basis. Hence it does not suffice to have mastered the meaning of the words and the outline of the subject, or the individual genius and human ideal of the writer who acted merely as the instrument executing a higher inspiration. We must enter into the conception of the divine mind. If the principal and all-pervading motive of the great Scriptural composition is a religious one, it stands to reason that it can be comprehended only when judged from a religious point of view.

Now the divine mind is so far above us that we can reach it only if God Himself brings it down to us. He has to descend, to lift the veil from His immensity, not by opening to us, before the time, those sacred precincts which "eye hath never seen," but by emitting a ray of light to clear up our darkness, to give us a glimpse of the awful splendor which vibrates in those celestial realms where light and sound and warmth of eternal charity mingle in the sweet harmony of the divine Beauty whose tones speak now to our senses in separate forms. God descends to our humility to interpret His own image. First He came in human form, and told us all the things we were to believe and do. Then He sent the Paraclete, and under His direction men of God taught the same things. Then they wrote them, or, as St. John tells us, some of them. The Paraclete veils Himself, as our Lord had announced to His Apostles, in the Church, whose divinely constituted earthly chief was to be Peter—to the end of time. The Church, therefore, founded by Christ, and an ever-living emanation of the incessant activity of the Holy Spirit, although necessarily speaking to men through men, is the first and surest interpreter of the purpose and meaning of each and every part of Holy Writ.

And because God cannot contradict Himself it follows that every truth of the written word must correspond with every truth of the spoken word. In doubtful cases, therefore, as to the meaning of a word or text in the Sacred Writings, we have recourse to the supreme, divinely-guided judgment of the Church. Her doctrines, defined, are the first and most important criterion of Scriptural truth.