by winston » Sat Nov 19, 2011 8:49 pm
The Greatest Bestseller of All Time
by Alexander Green
The word spiritual may be the most nebulous word in the English language.
When I started this project nearly four years ago, I used the term spiritual wealth not to argue for or against any religious point of view, but rather as a general term to distinguish the content here from our usual discussions about material wealth.
However, some readers conflate the term with a particular religious perspective and so I am regularly asked, "Where is the Bible in your Spiritual Wealth?"
I would not presume to lecture anyone on matters of faith or belief - indeed I am utterly unqualified to do so - but since this year is the 400th anniversary of the King James Version, let's take a closer look at the book itself.
In England in 1604, an extraordinary group of 47 clergymen, scholars and translators - authorized by King James and divided into six committees - began laboring intensively at Westminister, Oxford and Cambridge.
Seven years later, they completed the King James Version, a famously eloquent and beautiful translation that rendered the Old and New Testaments into crystalline English prose.
It quickly became an object of inspiration, instruction and devotion. (Indeed, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" may be the best encapsulation of ethical wisdom ever articulated.)
The King James Version had a monumental effect on our language. Many everyday terms originated there, including "labor of love," "skin of your teeth," "bird in the hand," "drop in the bucket," "the powers that be," "bite the dust," "eat, drink and be merry," "salt of the earth," "see eye to eye," "ends of the earth," "old as the hills," "give up the ghost," and, perhaps most famously, "turn the other cheek."
In his plays, Shakespeare alludes to the King James Bible more than 1,300 times. Coleridge, Donne and Milton - among other immortal poets -mined its riches.
And its grand language and powerful message inspired American novelists from Herman Melville and William Faulkner to Saul Bellow and Toni Morrison.
The Bible is the most influential book ever written. It is not just the best-selling book of all time. It is the best-selling book of the year every year. (Worldwide, more than 80 million copies are sold annually.)
The Bible, of course, has been used for purposes both good and ill throughout its history. It has engendered faith, hope and charity as well as violence, sectarianism and intolerance.
It provided the theological underpinnings for American independence, the abolition of slavery, women's suffrage and the U.S. civil rights movement, as well as the divine right of kings, the Crusades, the Inquisition and the Salem witch trials.
Its poetry and prose remain unsurpassed. Yet - aside from the letters of Paul and a few other exceptions - much of the Good Book's authorship remains unknown.
In "Who Wrote the Bible?" , Richard Elliott Friedman writes, "People have been reading the Bible for nearly two thousand years. They have taken it literally, figuratively and symbolically.
They have regarded it as divinely dictated, revealed, or inspired, or as a human creation. They have acquired more copies of it than of any other book.
It is quoted (and misquoted) more than the others as well. It is called a great work of literature, the first work of history.
It is at the heart of Christianity and Judaism. Ministers, priests, and rabbis preach it. Scholars spend their lives studying and teaching it in seminaries.
People read it, study it, admire it, disdain it, write about it, argue about it, and love it. People have lived by it and died by it. And we do not know who wrote it."
Archaeologists and historians are still putting the pieces together, but much of the Bible's history is shrouded in the mists of time.
Traditional attributions vary - and there are no original copies of the books that make up the Old and New Testaments. Or even copies of copies of copies of the originals.
Most of the teachings were passed down orally at first, transferred to scrolls many generations later and today bear the inky fingerprints of hundreds of anonymous writers, editors and translators down through the ages.
Yet the Bible is an amazingly enduring document, the most controversial and influential text of all time and a major force in the development of Western culture.
Its influence is so pervasive that it is hard to call anyone educated who hasn't considered its key passages. Yet there is still widespread ignorance about its contents.
Pollster George Gallup has dubbed America "a nation of biblical illiterates." Only half of Americans can name even one of the four Gospels. The majority cannot name the first book of the Bible. Less than a third know who delivered the Sermon on the Mount.
Fewer still can identify the Trinity or explain what Easter commemorates. The most widely quoted Bible verse in the United States - "The Lord helps those who help themselves" - is not in the Bible.
In 1924, in an argument about whether Spanish should be used in Lone Star schools, Texas Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson proudly declared, "If the King's English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for the children of Texas." It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
The Bible has always meant different things to different people. To Jews and Christians, it is the Book of Books, the Word of God. They have invested these writings with their greatest fears, highest aspirations and most extravagant hopes.
Others are less devout but consider the Book an unsurpassed guide to wisdom and moral action. Still others consider it the supreme work of literature, one that infuses the entire Western canon.
Many of today's most heated arguments revolve around what in the Bible is to be taken literally. One of the most haunting scenes in Genesis, for example, is when Jacob wrestles all night with a mysterious stranger and discovers in the morning that he had in reality been struggling with God.
Perhaps the best question for the modern reader is not where did it happen, when did it happen, or how can we be sure it happened, but rather "what does this passage mean?"
In her book "In the Beginning: A New Interpretation of Genesis," religion scholar Karen Armstrong writes, "In almost all cultures, scripture has been one of the tools that men and women have used to apprehend a dimension that transcends their normal lives.
People have turned to their holy books not to acquire information but to have an experience. They have encountered a reality there that goes beyond their normal existence but endows it with ultimate significance...
It has helped human beings to cultivate a sense of the eternal and the absolute in the midst of the transient world in which they find themselves."
This sentiment is perhaps best expressed in an injunction from Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians:
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.
Source: Spiritual Wealth
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"