Influence of the Bible upon writing

       The events which led to the compilation of the Gospels were of the greatest moment in the history of writing. The educational influence of the Bible apart entirely from its claims to supernatural importance in spreading the use of letters and creating schools for the study of reading and writing, has been incalculable. The historical and religious traditions of the Jews would probably have had but little effect upon the world, if the result of the various wars by which Syria was so often desolated had not been to expatriate the chosen people of the Lord. A large Jewish population occupied Northern Egypt at the time when Alexander's conquests revolutionized the old world. The establishment of Greek dynasties in that country and in Syria speedily Hellenized the upper classes and the citizens in both; and the linguistic subjugation of the Jews in Egypt was even more complete than that of their old masters. Their peculiar condition facilitated a change; for while they possessed the sacred book of the Law of their forefathers in a language that had been dead for centuries, they had only translations in the language of the country of their former exile (Chakbsa) ; and though they had the commercial qualification of bilingualism, their Chaldee and their Egyptian were probably equally weak. Two generations were enough to Hellenize them, and seventy years after Alexander's death, the Bible was introduced to the knowledge of the Greek world in an edition destined to render the old Hebrew scripture intelligible to Egyptian and Syrian Jews. This fortunate circumstance drew a number of people into the Elohistic fold who would never otherwise have been found there; and had no small influence in bringing about the social and moral revolution which signalized the beginning of our era.

       The Septuagint must remain the true Bible of Christendom until the Hebrew text of the prse-Christian ages is discovered. Next to it in importance is the Syriac Bible, and next to that, the Latin Yulgate. All three indicate the prior existence of a Hebrew original ; but to obtain a critically exact knowledge of what that original was at the time of Alexander the Great, one must resort to the Septuagint; at the time of Christ, to the Syriac; and at the time of the Emperor Julian, to the Yulgate. The Hebrew text, as we now have it, underwent so many changes and corruptions during the first few centuries of the growth of Christianity as a younger rival to Judaism, that even the oldest Hebrew MSS. are precluded by their comparative modernity from claiming equal importance with the three versions referred to. The multiplication of copies of the Syriac Scriptures, between the first century after Christ and the seventh, must have been very great; that of the Greek Bible and Testament, from the first to the fourteenth century, still greater; and that of the Latin Yulgate, from the fifth to the fifteenth, enormous. The early missionaries of the Christian Church were Hellenized Syrians or Egyptians, and they stamped the art of their native countries upon the new Biblical literature in every country except Italy. Italy was the exception, simply because it was the centre of political power and of Grasco-Roman culture, and thus too learned and too fastidious to accept a new popular religion or an inferior type of ornamental art. But all the external provinces of the Empire underwent the influence of the enthusiastic proselytizers, and even Byzantium succumbed to it after the Empire of the West had been extinguished. The types of ornament created for the embellishment of Bibles were Egyptian in design and coloring; and this is the reason why the pictures in all the early examples of book-illustration in the West are supposed to have a Byzantine aspect ; the fact being that while classical art faded away almost with paganism in Italy and Hellas, the Oriental substitute, which reigned from Asia Minor to Ireland, was preserved in Byzantium till the downfall of the Greek empire. A few belated specimens of degenerate classical ornament are found to represent the ages between Constantine and Charles the Great; but in general terms it may be said that Roman book-illustration died out in the fourth century. It came to life again, but in utter metamorphosis, in the decorated Irish books of the sixth-seventh century, which were really the first examples of the medieval art of illumination.

       The Coptic alphabet and the Gothic alphabet were two late and artificial inventions, due entirely to a holy rage for producing the Bible in the language of the Egyptians and the Goths. The two Slavonic alphabets likewise were late scripts, invented for the purpose of translating the Bible into Slovene. The Armenian alphabet (and out of it the Georgian) had a similar origin, and seems to have had some relationship to the Slav Glagolitic. They are both attributed to the fifth century.

Index 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, You Are Reading Chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34 chapters