The influence of the Bible

Last year celebrated the 400^th anniversary of the King James Bible and saw the publication of many books explaining its virtues and influence. The following is a review I wrote for Evangelical Times of one such book (in full).

Among the many books written on the King James Bible this year it may come as a surprise to see one by Melvyn Bragg (Baron Bragg of Wigton in Cumbria), the well-known writer and broadcaster. Some may have seen his programme on the same subject on television, or read a recent article of his, My first steps back on the road to faith. For several reasons, therefore, it is likely that some readers of Evangelical Times will also read this book. It must be borne in mind, then, that it is not written by one who is a Christian believer. He says himself: ‘The whole idea – God, Genesis, Christ, Resurrection – is now to me a moving metaphor, a poetic way of attempting to understand what may forever be incomprehensible.’ But he adds: ‘When I was six it was the truth about all of life.’

The book is inevitably like the proverbial curate’s egg, good in parts. There is much that is interesting and informative, and sometimes surprising. The twenty-five chapters are divided into three main sections: ‘From Hampton Court to New England’; ‘The Impact on Culture’; ‘The Impact on Society’. Quite rightly he emphasizes the contribution of William Tyndale in the production of the early English Bibles: ‘As for his English it reads like a rare, perhaps transcendent gift.’ Bragg is good, as would be expected, on the literary quality of the King James Bible and its enormous influence on nearly all the major English speaking literary figures right up until quite recently. He even has a chapter on Richard Dawkins, who does not impress him.

However, although he recognizes the immense influence for good that the Bible has been over the past four centuries – the abolition of slavery, the rise of democracy, even its influence on science – he nevertheless sees it as a mass of contradictions. He also seems to me to attribute to a translation what actually belongs to the Bible as Bible. We must be deeply grateful for a translation used to change so much in the world, but it is the fact that it was the Word of God that was translated that is vital. The worst chapter in the book, in my opinion, is entitled ‘The Bible and Sex’: ‘The modern secular world has reached back to the classical world and the waters have closed over certain unsustainable prejudices in the Bible.’ And is the modern secular world the better off for it? Surely not!

If he sees contradictions in the Bible there is also a fundamental contradiction in his book. Granted that the Bible has been misunderstood, misapplied and misused by fallible humans, it is nevertheless a contradictory position to maintain that a book as flawed as he sees it to be can actually be such an agent for good as he shows that it has been. I cannot recommend this book to the average Christian reader but I do pray for its author.

Now I want to draw attention to another: The Book that Made Your World, by Vishal Mangalwadi. Here he is how he almost ends – I say ‘almost’ because he finishes with verses of Scripture: ‘Rome’s collapse meant that Europe lost its soul – the source of its civilizational authority – and descended into the “Dark Ages”. The Bible was the power that revived Europe. Europeans became so enthralled with God’s Word that they rejected their sacred myths to hear God’s Word, to study it, internalize it, speak it, and promote it to build the modern world. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the West is again losing its soul. Will it relapse into a new dark age or humble itself before the Word of the Almighty God?’ This is a big boys’ (and girls’!) book, and the more impressive being written by an Indian.