The Bible as Literature

The Bible is plainly a literature, that is, an important collection of writings which were not composed at once and did not proceed from one hand, but rather were spread over a considerable period of time and are traceable to different authors of varying literary excellence. As a literature, too, the Bible bears throughout the distinct impress of the circumstances of place and time, methods of composition, etc., in which its various parts came into existence, and of these circumstances careful account must be taken, in the interests of accurate scriptural interpretation.

As a literature, our sacred books have been transcribed during many centuries by all manner of copyists to the ignorance and carelessness of many of whom they still bear witness in the shape of numerous textual errors, which, however, but seldom interfere seriously with the primitive reading of any important dogmatic or moral passage of Sacred Scripture.
In respect of antiquity, the Biblical literature belongs to the same group of ancient literature as the literary collections of Greece, Rome, China, Persia, and India. Its second part, the New Testament, completed about 100 AD, is indeed far more recent than the four last named literatures, but it is older by ten centuries than our earliest modern literature. As regards the Old Testament, most of its contents were gradually written within the nine centuries which preceded the Christian era, so that its composition is generally regarded as contemporary with that of the great literary works of Greece, China, Persia, and India.

The Bible resembles these various ancient literatures in another respect. Like them it is fragmentary, i.e. made up of the remains of a larger literature. Of this we have abundant proofs concerning the books of the Old Testament, since the Hebrew Scriptures themselves repeatedly refer us to more ancient and complete works as composed by Jewish annalists, prophets, wise men, poets, and so on (cf. Numbers 21:15; Joshua 10:13; 2 Samuel 1:18; 1 Chronicles 29:29; 1 Maccabees 16:24; etc.). Statements tending to prove the same fragmentary character of the early Christian literature which has come down to us are indeed much less numerous, but not altogether wanting (cf. Luke 1:1-3;Colossians 4:16; 1 Corinthians 5:9). But, however ancient and fragmentary, it is not to be supposed that the biblical literature contains only few, and these rather imperfect, literary forms.

Of course the widest and deepest influence that has ever been, and ever will be, exercised upon the minds and hearts of human beings remains due to the fact that, while all the other literatures are but human productions, the Bible is indeed "inspired of God" and, as such, especially "profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice" (2 Timothy 3:16).