Some Christian Convictions - A Practical Restatement in Terms of Present-Day Thinking by Henry Sloane Coffin
page 37 of 138 (26%)
page 37 of 138 (26%)
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amounts to saying with the nursery rhyme:
Oats, peas, beans, and barley grows, Where you, nor I, nor nobody knows. We have not only to collate the manuscripts we possess and try to reconstruct the likeliest text, but when we know what the authors probably wrote, we must press back of their language and ideas to the religious experience they attempt to express. As writers the Biblical authors do not claim a special divine assistance. Luke, in his preface to his gospel, merely asserts that he has taken the pains of a careful historian, and Paul and his various amanuenses did their best with a language in which they were not literary experts. The Bible reader often has the impression that its authors' religious experience, like Milton's sculptured lion, half appears "pawing to get free his hinder parts." Or, to change the metaphor, now one portion of their communion with God is brought to view and now another, as one might stand before a sea that was illuminated from moment to moment by flashes of lightning. The Bible is the record of an _historic_ religious experience--that of Israel which led up to the consciousness of God in Jesus and His followers. The investigation of the sources of Hebrew religion has shown that many of its beliefs came from the common heritage of the Semitic peoples; and there are numerous points of similarity between Israel's faith and that of other races. This ought not to surprise us, since its God is the God of all men. But the more resemblances we detect, the greater the difference appears. The same legend in Babylonia and in Israel has such unlike spiritual content; the identical rite among the |
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