PROLOGUE CHAPTER I How the THE CHURCH AND THE BIBLE I RECENTLY a thoughtful, devout layman said to the writer, "I never read formed the the Old Testament now, as I feel that Bible. the results of modern scholarship have entirely upset for me its foundations as an inspired book." This is a very dangerous misunderstanding and unfortunately a widespread one. It is futile to hide our heads in the sand and imagine that people are not disturbed about it. And it is equally futile to decry the critical studies which have caused the disturbance. For our best Christian scholars are now agreed that the main central results of critical scholarship have come to stay. The aim of this book is to arouse interest and remove misunderstanding by telling the story of the making of the Bible simply and frankly in the light of modern scholarship. For it is a very interesting and helpful story. There is nothing really disquieting in it. Nay, rather, when we have got over the disturbance caused by shifting our point of view, it should make the Bible for us a more living throbbing human presentation of God. People talk of the Bible coming down from its pedestal as a result of modern research. Perhaps in a sense it is true. Old classic legends tell of the young sculptor who carved his statue of surpassing beauty and then, as he gazed at it on its pedestal, fell in love with the work of his own hands. He prayed to the gods to give life to his creation and lo! as he prayed came stirring breath and colour, and at length it came down into his arms, a living, throbbing woman to be his joy and companion and comfort in his daily life. If the fuller light which has fallen on the story of the Bible should tend in any degree to bring it down from the conventional pedestal on which verbal inspiration and such like theories have placed it, may it not be to bring it closer to our hearts, and make us feel more truly behind it the real, living, throbbing spirit of God, who inspired it? The story of the making of the Bible is a |