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A Guide to Understanding the Biblereturn to religion-onlineA Guide to Understanding the Bible by Harry EmersonFosdickHarry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most eminent and often controversial of the preachers of the first half of thetwentieth century. Published by Harper & Brothers.in many editions in the 1930s. This material was prepared for ReligionOnline by Ted & Winnie Brock.A clear and helpful explanation of the development of key ideas within the Old and New Testamentincluding the idea of God, man, right and wrong, suffering, paryer and immortality.IntroductionBiblical scholarship of the last half of the 19th century has made it possible to arrange the texts inapproximate chronological order as well as develop broad chronological outlines. This book is notwritten by a technical scholar and not written for technical scholars but for the general public.Chapter 1: The Idea of GodFrom the beginnings of the Bible to the end, the advance in the idea of God was extreme: Beginning witha territorial deity who loved his clansmen and hated the remainder of mankind, it ends with a greatmultitude out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation, worshiping one universal Father;beginning with a god who walked in the garden in the cool of the day, it ends with the God whom "noman hath seen.at any time."Chapter 2: The Idea of ManThe Old Testament starts with social solidarity so complete that the individual has practically no rights,and achieves at last profound insight into the meaning, worth, and possibility of personal life. The NewTestament starts with personalities as in themselves supremely valuable, and conceives the "belovedcommunity" in terms of their free cooperation and the social hope of the kingdom of God the crowningevidence of their faith and loyalty.Chapter 3: The Idea of Right and WrongThere were three main limitations on early Hebrew morals: the field of ethical obligation was triballyconstricted; within the tribal circle certain classes were denied full personal rights; and the nature ofmoral conduct was interpreted in such external terms of custom and ritual as to make small demand oninternal insight and quality. The progress made, therefore, in the later stages of the Old Testament, in thefile:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&id 553.htm (1 of 2) [2/2/03 8:19:10 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the Bibleinter-Testamental period, and in the New Testament, may be interpreted as the overpassing of these threeinadequacies. The thought expressed here is adverse to those who claim apocalypticism as the realcreator of the new Testament’s ethic.Chapter 4: The Idea of SufferingAll concepts of suffering found in the Old Testament are also found in the New Testament. Both saw thatsome human pain and torment are punitive, that some trouble is disciplinary was taken for granted, thatin one way or another the cosmic process should not in the end be ethically unsatisfactory, that the wholeexperience of suffering remained mysterious, but that the climactic element in the New Testament’scontribution to the understanding of suffering is to be found in its treatment of vicarious self-sacrifice.Chapter 5: The Idea of Fellowship with GodThe idea of the fellowship with God (prayer) development from the unapproachableness to theimmediate accessibility of God, and from magical and ceremonial conditions of divine fellowship to themoral fitness of a sincere soul, represents one of the most permanently valuable contributions of HebrewChristian religion.Chapter 6: The Idea of ImmortalityIn the Old Testament even the references to life after death are few; in the New Testament from thebeginning the reader is in an atmosphere of radiant hope concerning life eternal. Considered as a whole,the development of ideas in the Bible concerning the future life represents one of the most notable andinfluential unfoldings of thought in history.Approximate Chronology of the Old Testament WritingsApproximate Chronology of the New Testament Writings32file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&id 553.htm (2 of 2) [2/2/03 8:19:10 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the Biblereturn to religion-onlineA Guide to Understanding the Bible by Harry EmersonFosdickHarry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most eminent and often controversial of the preachers of the first half of thetwentieth century. Published by Harper & Brothers.in many editions in the 1930s. This material was prepared for ReligionOnline by Ted & Winnie Brock.IntroductionOne major result of the last half-century of Biblical scholarship is ability to arrange the documents ofScripture in their approximately chronological order. The typical questions asked by scholars concerningBiblical writings -- Who wrote them? When, to whom, and why were they written? -- while stillpresenting many baffling difficulties, have been answered sufficiently to clarify the broad outlines of theBible’s chronological development.An important result of thus seeing the Biblical writings in sequence is ability to study the development ofBiblical ideas. Upon this problem some of the best scholarly work in recent years has been expended.Seen as informed students now regard it, the Bible is the record of an incalculably influentialdevelopment of religious thought and life, extending from the primitive faith of early Hebraism into theChristianity of the second century. Such a bald statement, however, does scant justice to the illuminationwhich has thus fallen on the Jewish-Christian writings. The first results of critical research into the Bibleseemed disruptive, tearing the once unified Book into many disparate and often contradictory documents.The final result has turned out to be constructive, putting the Bible together again, not indeed on the oldbasis of a level, infallible inspiration, but on the factually demonstrable basis of a coherent development.The Scriptures reflect some twelve centuries and more of deepening and enlarging spiritual experienceand insight, in the written record of which nothing is without significance, and everything is illumined byits genetic relationships.In general, this view of the Scriptures has become the common property of the well-informed, but it stillremains, in many minds, a mere framework without substantial content. That the Bible is the record ofcenturies of religious change, that its early concepts are allied with primitive, animistic faiths, thatbetween such origins and the messages of Hebrew prophets and Christian evangelists an immenselyimportant development is reflected in the Book -- this general view is the familiar possession of many inboth synagogue and church. All too few, however, have any clear and specific conception of the ways inwhich the Biblical ideas unfolded from their beginnings until they became one of the most potentinfluences in Western culture.file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 1&id 553.htm (1 of 6) [2/2/03 8:19:14 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the BibleOne reason for this situation is that scholars, who know the fascinating story of the development ofBiblical ideas, have commonly written of it in technical terms, so that while the average minister, theintelligent layman, and the college student may know by hearsay the outline of their findings, the bookswhere the substance of the matter lies are often too recondite for general reading. Yet the story ofdeveloping Scriptural ideas ought to be popularly known. It is fascinating in itself; it throws light onevery portion of the Bible; it clears up obscurities, explaining what is else inexplicable; it distinguishesthe minor detours from the major highways of Biblical thought; it gives their true value to primitiveconcepts, the early, blazed trails leading out to great issues; and, in the end, it makes of the Bible acoherent whole, understood, as everything has to be understood, in terms of its origins and growth. Thisilluminating outlook on the Scriptures ought somehow to be made a more available possession than it isfor the general reader.This present book is written neither by a technical scholar nor for scholars. It is written for the interestedstudent and endeavors to build a bridge over which available information concerning developing Biblicalideas may pass into the possession of a larger public. To be sure, no device can translate so weighty amatter into light and casual reading. The subject is serious and, at its simplest, requires seriousconsideration. Nevertheless, with the Bible still the world’s "best-seller," there must be many whosereading of it would gain meaning and interest if the knowledge possessed by the expertly informed weremore easily at their disposal.Readers unaccustomed to think of the Biblical literature in terms of its chronological development areadvised to consult the approximate dating of the documents presented in the Appendix. (Ed. -- SeeChronology File) The unsolved problems in this realm are many and in some cases wide variations existbetween the estimates of different scholars, but the main outline seems dependable as a basis for sogeneral a statement as we are here attempting. Since the chronological arrangement of the Biblicalwritings is fundamental to this book’s discussion, two thorough and readable treatments of the matter arespecially recommended: The Literature of the Old Testament in Its Historical Development, by Julius A.Bewer, and The Literature of the New Testament, by Ernest Findlay Scott, both published by theColumbia University Press.In trying to achieve the object we have just described, two major methods have been used in this book.First, six main strands of developing thought have been, so far as possible, disentangled from theirmutual complications, and have been separately presented. The ideas of God, Man, Right and Wrong,Suffering, Fellowship with God, and Immortality have been traced, each by itself, as each progressesthrough the two Testaments. The alternative method, often used by scholars, considers one epoch ofBiblical religion at a time, presenting the entire complex of ideas which characterized that era, and thenmoves on to study the next succeeding epoch as a whole. For the general reader, however, this methodadds the confusion of complexity to the natural difficulties of the subject. I have hoped that, by drivingsix separate roadways through Scripture, clarity might be gained without serious sacrifice of balance andproportion, and that the very fact of repetition, as each roadway inevitably brings the traveler within sightof familiar scenes common to all six, would help rather than hinder comprehension.file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 1&id 553.htm (2 of 6) [2/2/03 8:19:14 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the BibleSecond, these lines of developing thought have been traced, one at a time, through both Testaments. Thespecialization of surgeons, who will not invade one another’s domain, is hardly more precise than is thespecialization of Biblical scholars. In particular, the Old Testament, the inter-Testamental writings, andthe New Testament, represent areas of well defined and highly differentiated expertness. The result isthat while the general reader may find available the story of developing thought in one era, or in the OldTestament, or in the New Testament, no first-rate scholar has written or would be likely to write a bookcarrying the course of thought through the Bible as a whole. Only some one with no reputation fororiginal scholarship to maintain, free to avail himself of any scholar’s work, professing only atransmissive and interpretive function, and interested not in moot details but in general results, wouldhave the hardihood to undertake the task. Having, therefore, lived for years with Biblical scholars as myfriends and colleagues and in the classroom having dealt with students, trying to gain a coherent andusable understanding of the Bible for practical purposes, I have dared the attempt to put togetherdevelopments of ideas which the separate Biblical disciplines leave apart. I am under no illusion as to theadequacy of the result. This book is now published only after two of my colleagues, Professor Julius A.Bewer and Professor James E. Frame, one an authority on the Old Testament and the other on the New,have read the manuscript with painstaking care. I may not hold them responsible for any opinionexpressed in this book, but to their criticism and guidance I am unpayably indebted and only because ofit dare hope that I have presented without undue distortion or prejudice a picture of the major trends ofthought in the Jewish-Christian scriptures.In writing the book I have constantly encountered four difficulties, and since the author has been acutelyaware of them they will probably be visible to the observant reader -- oversimplification, inadequateexposition, the chronological fallacy, and modernization.Over-simplification is inevitable in the very process of selective attention involved in the method of thisbook. To disentangle from its many complications the idea of God, for example, and to follow throughfrom early Hebraism to second-century Christianity this idea’s progress, while it makes the story moreeasily understandable, obscures the actual confusion of cross-currents, back-eddies, stagnant shallows,whirlpools, rapids, and cataracts present in history itself. It tends toward over-clarifying the picture and,in the end, it may even draw a diagram, rather than reproduce in the reader’s imagination the totalstruggle involved in the working out of Biblical ideas. Of this danger I have been constantly aware andhave endeavored to guard against it. If the reader will do the same, he may avail himself of suchsimplification as has been achieved, without too serious loss of historic realism.Inadequate exposition of the matured convictions of Scripture is also necessarily involved in the purposeand method of this book. Its major interest is not expository but genetic; it tries to trace the highroadstraversed by Biblical ideas from their origin to their culmination; when they have reached theirculmination it makes no endeavor to give a systematic and adequate exposition of them. It is notprimarily a book on Biblical theology but a genetic survey of developing Biblical thought. To be sure, ifthe reader shares at all the author’s experience, he will find that clear light is shed on the matureconvictions of Judaism and Christianity by such a study of their origins and growth. To know whereScriptural doctrines came from is in itself an indispensable help in understanding what they mean.file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 1&id 553.htm (3 of 6) [2/2/03 8:19:14 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the BibleNevertheless, if the reader wishes an adequate theological treatment of such a theme as Biblicalmonotheism, he should look elsewhere, here he will find only the story of the way in which Biblicalmonotheism emerged from early origins.The chronological fallacy haunts such a study as this and is difficult to avoid. The very fact that sixhistorically influential ideas are presented in terms of development, with their later formulations on analtitude immeasurably higher than the lowlands from which they came, may produce the illusion ofconstant ascent, as though being posterior in time always meant being superior in quality. But truth andchronology are incommensurable terms. A poet writing in the twentieth century A.D. may be a punyfigure compared with the titanic stature of a Greek dramatist five centuries before Christ, and ethicalinsight cannot be graded on the basis of the calendar. The fact that one Biblical book is later in time thananother is in itself not the slightest indication that it is superior in quality -- Nahum is on a much lowerspiritual level than Amos, and the Book of Revelation in the New Testament is morally inferior to thewritings of the Great Isaiah in the Old Testament. Of this fact the reader is continually reminded in thisbook, and no statement, I think, denies or neglects it. I have tried to make plain the retrogressions inBiblical thought, the irregularities of change, with its ups and downs, its persistent lags, and its moralsurrenders. There is no smooth and even ascent in the Book. There are, instead, long detours,recrudescences of primitivism, lost ethical gains, and lapses in spiritual insight. There are even vehementdenials of nascent truth, and high visions that go neglected for centuries. At this point I am solicitous thatmy desire for clarity in tracing development may not beguile any reader into the illusions of thechronological fallacy.Modernization dogs the footsteps of any one who endeavors to make ancient developments of thoughtlive for contemporary readers. By subtle, unnoticed gradations the presentation of old patterns ofthinking slips over into twentieth-century categories and phrases. The more one perceives in ancientliterature, whether of Judea or Greece, values of permanent validity, the more one tends to lift them outof their original frameworks of concept and present them in modern terms and ways of thinking. But‘corporate personality,’ demonology, Messiahship, apocalypticism, the Logos-doctrine, and many othermental categories in the Bible are not modern. It requires a difficult thrust of historic imagination tounderstand at all what they meant to their original users. It may be comforting to translate them intopresent-day equivalents but that always involves an historic fallacy. This difficulty is everywhere presentin this book and I wish the reader to be aware of it. I have honestly tried never to picture an ancient wayof conceiving facts as though it were identical with modern thinking, but always to portray the Biblicalwriters as using their own mental forms of thought in their own way, however diverse from ours thoseforms may be. Such is the difficulty involved, however, in making modern language serve this purposethat in this regard the coöperation of the reader is imperative.The implications of this book with regard to theories about the Bible are not discussed in the text.Obviously, any idea of inspiration which implies equal value in the teachings of Scripture, or inerrancy inits statements, or conclusive infallibility in its ideas, is irreconcilable with such facts as this bookpresents. The inspirations of God fortunately have not been thus stereotyped and mechanical. There is,however, nothing in the process of development itself, whether in the organic world in general or in therealm of mind and morals, to call in question the creative and directive activity of God.file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 1&id 553.htm (4 of 6) [2/2/03 8:19:14 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the BibleNeedless to say, the author is a theist. The process of spiritual development reflected in the Bible seemsto him to involve not only human discovery but divine self-disclosure. Indeed, the unfolding of ideaswhich the Scripture records would represent not so much discovery as illusion, were there not anobjective spiritual world to be discovered. Any one, therefore, holding a religious rather than amaterialistic philosophy, will think of the process of Biblical development as dual -- seen from one side,a human achievement; seen from the other, a divine self-revelation.Nevertheless, there is no finality about it in the sense that the ideas which the Scriptures opened up werefinished when the Scriptures stopped. Neither Judaism nor Christianity, despite their theories, has inpractise succeeded in so treating the Book. Every one of the six lines of unfolding thought traced in thisvolume has had a long subsequent history of continuing development, and the end is not yet in sight. TheGod of the Bible has proved his quality as "the living God," who has not said his last word on any subjector put the finishing touch on any task. The supreme contribution of the Bible is not that it finishedanything but that it started something. Its thinking is not so much a product as a process, issuing from along precedent process and inaugurating an immeasurably important subsequent development.To be sure, as Copernicus achieved a finality in establishing a heliocentric universe, so the Biblerepresents final gains in thought and insight -- apprehensions of truth which, once laid hold on, need notbe discovered all over again. The real glory of Copernicus, however, is revealed not so much in what hefinished as in what he started -- initiating an insight of incalculable future promise, which modernastronomy is unfolding yet. So, the finalties of Scripture are mainly important because they aregerminative. They are misinterpreted and misused when employed to stop further development ratherthan to encourage it. One reason for such a study as this book presents is that one cannot understandWestern thought in any era, or our own thought in this modern age, without knowing the Biblical originsof our ideas in religion and morals.It would be less than the truth, however, if the author’s interest in writing the book were represented asmerely the desire to explain ideologies. I have faithfully tried to present an objective, factual picture ofunfolding Biblical thought, but it will doubtless be evident that the central ideas of Scripture, in whateverchanging categories they may be phrased, seem to me the hope of man’s individual and social life.One major problem in writing this book has been the difficulty of deciding when to quote the Scripturesfully in the text and when merely to refer to them in the footnotes. I have used such judgment as I possessin this matter, but obviously much of the Biblical evidence that confirms and illumines the statementsmade is concealed in the unquoted Scriptural references. No one, therefore, can read the book thoroughlywho does not read it with a Bible at hand for constant consultation. Except when otherwise indicated, theAmerican Standard Edition of the Revised Bible is used, save that ‘Jehovah’ is replaced by the morecorrect form, ‘Yahweh.’That I am at every point indebted to the work of others is evident in the text, and in major matters thishas been made explicit in the footnotes. The larger field of the book’s indebtedness is indicated in thefile:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 1&id 553.htm (5 of 6) [2/2/03 8:19:14 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the Bibleappended bibliography. As to obligations of a more personal nature I have many people to thank -colleagues who have advised me, students at Union Theological Seminary who have stimulated me withtheir responsive interest, members of the congregation of The Riverside Church, New York, who, bytheir attentive listening to mid-week lectures on the subjects handled in this book, have kept alive myconfidence that even difficult and recondite problems concerning the Bible are of vital, contemporaryimportance. Nor would it be fair to publish this book without acknowledging my debt to the tirelesspatience of my secretaries, and especially to the painstaking care of Miss Margaret Renton in correctingand preparing the manuscript.Harry Emerson Fosdick, June 30, 193847file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 1&id 553.htm (6 of 6) [2/2/03 8:19:14 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the Biblereturn to religion-onlineA Guide to Understanding the Bible by Harry EmersonFosdickHarry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most eminent and often controversial of the preachers of the first half of thetwentieth century. Published by Harper & Brothers.in many editions in the 1930s. This material was prepared for ReligionOnline by Ted & Winnie Brock.Chapter 1: The Idea of GodNowhere do the early documents of the Bible more obviously carry us back to the ideas of primitivereligion than in dealing with the concept of God. The first chapter of Genesis reveals a confidentmonotheism, but that represents centuries of developing life and thought from the time the Hebrews wereintroduced at Sinai to their god, Yahweh. At the beginning, the distinctive deity of the Hebrews was atribal divinity to whom the clans of Joseph first gave their allegiance at the time of the Exodus fromEgypt. That previously the Israelites had not known their god, Yahweh, by his name is explicitly stated inthe Bible: "God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Yahweh: and I appeared unto Abraham, untoIsaac, and unto Jacob, as El Shaddai; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them." (Exodus 6:2-3[marginal reading]. The meaning of El Shaddai is dubious, and "God Almighty" a very questionablerendering.) This passage appears in the late Priestly Document and all the more because of that theprobabilities favor its truth. Without a solid basis in historic fact, such a delayed beginning of Yahweh’sworship would not have been invented by succeeding generations. The natural tendency of loyal devoteeswould be to carry back the name of their god to their most ancient patriarchal legends and to confirm hisworship with the sanctions of antiquity. So, one story in Genesis, referring to the days of Seth, son ofAdam, says, "Then began men to call upon the name of Yahweh." (Genesis 4:26)The statement in Exodus is more convincing than this contradictory account in Genesis, not only becauseof intrinsic probability but because the evidence available in the Bible clearly indicates that it was inconnection with the Exodus from Egypt that Yahweh first became god of the tribes of Israel. Although,centuries afterward, the name Yahweh was commonly put upon the lips of ancestral heroes and patriarchsand was used even in the narrative of man’s creation in Eden, the bona fide historic fact was too firmly setto be eliminated -- at the Exodus, for the first time, Yahweh and Israel had met and sworn mutualallegiance. The Ephraimite Document of narratives, for example, carefully avoids the name Yahweh in allthe early stories until the Exodus is reached and then warns the people to "put away the gods which yourfathers served beyond the River [Euphrates], and in Egypt; and serve ye Yahweh.’’ (Joshua 24:14.).Commonly also in the prophets, the beginning of Yahweh’s relationship with Israel is associated with theExodus, as when Hosea twice represents the deity as saying, "I am Yahweh thy God from the land ofEgypt," (Hosea 12:19; 13:4) or Jeremiah places Yahweh’s espousal of his people in the Mosaic period,file:///D:/rb/relsearchd.dll-action showitem&gotochapter 2&id 553.htm (1 of 37) [2/2/03 8:19:28 PM]
A Guide to Understanding the Bible(Jeremiah 2:1-2.) or Ezekiel represents God as calling Moses’ generation "the day when I chose Israel."(Ezekiel 20:5.)According to the available evidence, Moses first came upon Yahweh at "the mountain of God," (Exodus3:1 ff.) called both Sinai and Horeb. (Horeb and Sinai are presumably different names for the samemountain variously located. Horeb may be the more primitive. See W. J. Phythian-Adams: The Call ofIsrael, pp. 131-133.) Like Zeus upon Olympus and many another primitive deity, Yahweh, at the first,was a mountain god. Indeed, he was so confined to his habitat that, when the tribesmen under Moses leftSinai the problem of believing in Yahweh’s continuing presence with them was serious. According to theoldest traditions they did not suppose Yahweh himself would go with them -- he was attached to hismountain home. Three times it is explicitly stated that not he but his angel was to accompany them on thejourney to Canaan. (Exodus 23:20-23; 32:34; 33:1-3.)For centuries this special attachment of Yahweh to his wilderness mountain remained vivid in theimagination of his devotees. When Deborah won a victory far north in Palestine, she still picturedYahweh as coming in thunderous power from Sinai to his people’s help. (Judges 5:4-5) When Elijah,dismayed by the apostasy of Israel, wished to stand in the very presence of his deity, he fled to "Horeb themount of God." (I Kings 19:8.) Deuteronomy and Habakkuk, in the seventh century B.C., still kept intheir symbolism the old picture of Yahweh coming from Sinai; (Deuteronomy 33:2; Habakkuk 3:3.) and apost-Exilic psalmist thought of God and Sinai together. (Psalm 68:7-8.)As for the train of events which led to the momentous introduction of Israel to Yahweh at the "mountainof God," the probabilities are strong. Moses, fleeing from Egypt to the wilderness, joined himself to theKenites, a Midianite tribe of nomads living in the desert about Sinai. Into this tribe Moses married. Hisfather-in-law was its religious head, "the priest of Midian," (Exodus 3:1.) and Moses, associating himselfwith his wife’s clan, became a devotee of Yahweh, the Kenite god. In such an incident as is presented inExodus 18:1-12, revealing the pride of Jethro, priest of Yahweh, in the conquests of his tribal deity, this"Kenite hypothesis" seems to fit the facts.Far down the course of Hebrew history, the Kenites continued to appear as uncompromising devotees ofYahweh. They associated themselves with the tribes of Israel and, settling in southern Canaan, continuedthere on the edge of the wilderness a semi-nomadic life. (Judges 1:16.) Jael, a Kenite woman and aworshiper of Yahweh, smote Sisera; (Judges 5:24-27.) the son of Rechab, a Kenite, supported Jehu in thebloody revolt of Yahweh’s devotees against the apostasies of Ahab; (II Kings 10: 15-18[cf. I Chronicles2: 55.]) and even in Jeremiah’s time, the Rechabites, driven from their ancient nomadic ways by guerillawarfare, could in Jerusalem be used to shame the Hebrews by their uncompromising devotion to the lawsof their fathers. (Jeremiah, chapt. 35.)This Kenite hypothesis may be modified in detail as new evidence becomes available, (see TheophileJames Meek: Hebrew Origins, pp. 86 ff.) but its core of truth seems solid and dependable. Interpreted interms of it, the scene at Sinai gains substance and clarity. Moses, himself a convert to the worship ofYahweh, led his fellow tribesmen from their bondage and at the "mountain of God"
A Guide to Understanding the Bible return to religion-online A Guide to Understanding the Bible by Harry Emerson Fosdick Harry Emerson Fosdick was one of the most eminent and often controversial of the preachers of the first half of the twentieth century. Publishe
