Chapter 8.
The Bible's Influence on Selected English and American Literature

The two dangers in considering the theme of "influence" are at the extremes, overemphasis or underemphasis. It would be irresponsible to claim that the Bible is the single dominant influence on western literature. However, it would be untrue to state that the Bible is of negligible influence. The reality lies somewhere in between, because, as this chapter demonstrates, the Bible definitely has influenced both English and American literature.

The Bible's Influence on Selected English Literature

That the English Bible "is the greatest of English books, the first of English classics, the source of the greatest influence upon English character and speech" is the remarkable claim of George Sampson in The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature (1941). He elaborates as follows:

Its themes are those of perpetual concern in great literature: God, Man and the Universe. It has, in spite of its vast diversity, a supreme unity … In the Old Testament … the narrative books are sometimes epical in their directness of story and vividness of character. The poetry is mainly lyrical, uttering in the voice of one person a universal cry, The prophetical books are, for the most part, poetry of the highest kind, rehearsing the relations between man and God. Both the Old and New Testaments are rich in wisdom or proverbial literature … The Gospels of the New Testament contain in little space an almost miraculous diversity of matter and unity in presenting with overwhelming simplicity a supreme tragedy (178).

Even given the fact that George Sampson wrote in the days before secularism gained the victories it achieved in the "postmodern" period, his glowing account is probably still an extravagant claim of the influence of the Bible on English literature.

Other scholars, however, have expressed similar confident sentiments about the influence of the Bible not only in the United Kingdom, but also in other countries around the world. They would have agreed with Sampson when he wrote of the place of the Bible among the poor and unlearned in practically all western nations that "The one book that every household was sure to possess was the Bible; and it was read, sometimes ignorantly, sometimes unwisely, but always memorably" (180).

Anglo-Saxon Literature

The earliest Anglo-Saxon literature reveals numerous instances of biblical influence. The poet Caedmon (c. 670 AD) wrote several paraphrases of books of the Bible, including Daniel, Exodus, and Genesis. No one can fail to be moved by Bede's description of the "notable brother (Caedmon) at the Abbess of Hild" who

"sang of the creation of the world, and beginnings of mankind, and all the glory of Genesis, of the going of Israel out of Egypt, and their entering in the land of promise, and of very many other histories of Holy Scripture, of the incarnation of the Lord, of His passion, resurrection and ascension into heaven, of the coming of the Holy Ghost, and the teaching of the apostles."

Many Christian elements are found in the Anglo-Saxon heroic poem Beowulf, such as the Creation chant of "How the Maker wrought / The shining earth with its circling waters." The pagan Danes are said not to know how to worship "the Lord of heaven," … "wielder of glory." The story-teller reminded his audience that the

"all-wise God And the hero's courage had conquered Fate. The Lord ruled over the lives of men As He rules them still."

This is not to insist that Beowulf was originally a Christian poem, but, according to David Zesmer and others, there are Christian elements along with pagan elements, properly reflecting actual conditions in those dark, distant days (Guide to English Literature From Beowulf through Chaucer 38). Even then authors, story-tellers, courts, and the general populace very naturally mingled biblical allusions and ideas into their national epics and folk tales. Audiences were not at all surprised to find such biblical influences in their oral or written literary heritage, and they took for granted that their religious faith and its scriptural basis enriched their customs and traditional way of life.

The Anglo-Saxon carefully-crafted poem The Wanderer expresses the Christian faith and hope that one who suffers sorrow may seek mercy and comfort "From his Heavenly Father, our Fortress and Strength." The autobiographical tale of The Seafarer reveals abundant biblical material and allusions, such as "graced by God," "the joys of God," "The wealth / of the world neither reaches to Heaven nor remains," "all glory is tarnished," "we all fear God," "Death leaps at the fools who forget their God," "A man must conquer pride," "God [is] mightier than any man's mind," and "life born in the love of God / And the hope of Heaven."

Medieval English Literature

As one moves into the Middle Ages, the influence of the Bible upon English Literature becomes notably stronger and more evident. Five major forms or works, Pearl, Piers Plowman, Everyman, The Miracle Plays, and The Canterbury Tales illustrate the central theme of this chapter. The Pearl poem is widely viewed as a religious allegory of innocence lost and restored. Piers Plowman is a long poem written in the form of a dream vision about the way a person can attain salvation. It is a brilliant religious allegory, while being at the same time a biting satire on the social conditions of fourteenth-century English life. The morality-type drama Everyman (c. 1500) presents the theme of Death (personified) coming at God's command to get Everyman ready for an unavoidable pilgrimage. These works show clearly not merely the influence of scattered phrases from the Bible but also central ideas.

The Miracle Plays, or Corpus Christi Plays

English drama had its birth in the churches of the late Middle Ages. Drama was a natural way for the church to teach the people the stories of the Bible, and to give the people in the various guilds an opportunity to act out their faith, particularly that aspect of their trade which they found in the Bible.

As examples, the ship builders preferred to put on the story about Noah and the flood, while the shepherds wanted to enact the Nativity Stories. York, Coventry, Chester, and Waverly had their own special versions or cycles of plays that were enacted by tradesmen of the various guilds. The stories of creation, of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood, Daniel and the other prophets, the Birth, Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ, his "Harrowing of Hell," and the Judgment, were all portrayed in biblical cycles near Corpus Christi Day.

When drama became too secular and entertaining for serious religious performances in the churches, the actors turned to outdoor performances or to neutral public buildings or courtyards. As dramatic groups became more professional (we are stretching the meaning of the term!) some began to tour the countryside, at first performing so-called morality plays on personified biblical ideas or concepts (like Everyman, Death, Purity, Perseverance). Eventually these dramatic performances became more like comedies than solemn religious plays, with more humor (sometimes bawdy) inserted into the dialog. They became more secular than religious, although the spiritual element was almost always present.

Chaucer's Pilgrimage to the Shrine of a Martyred Saint

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) lived in the days when English drama was just beginning to emerge as an expression of religious life and experience. Nobles and the common people loved to hear entertaining tales and stories read or told or acted by anyone who could fill the need for such literary expression. Chaucer readily obliged them.

Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales depicts a religious pilgrimage by a group of twenty-nine "sondry" pilgrims who gathered in London from all over England. They traveled together for the last stage of their pilgrimage to the shrine of the Christian martyr St. Thomas á Becket in Canterbury. They decided to entertain each other on the way to Canterbury and help the time to pass pleasantly by telling tales.

Some of the tales are quite secular, bawdy, or risque in nature, but some are very religious and serious. For instance, the The Second Nun's Tale is a religious narrative about St. Cecilia. Many of the tales, and the pilgrims themselves, and accounts of events and persons along the journey reveal much about the religious thought of the time—the end of the fourteenth century. One of the pilgrims was a Prioress, another a Pardoner (an agent commissioned by the church to grant temporal indulgences in exchange for a donation), another a clerk (cleric, church official, an unworldly Oxford scholar), another a Monk, another a Friar, and another a godly Parson.

The concluding tale is not a tale at all, but a sermon by the Parson on the Seven Deadly Sins and Penitence. It stands at the end of the pilgrimage, just before the pilgrims arrive at Canterbury and the martyr's shrine. Many modern critics have questioned such an ending, even for an unfinished poem. But most medieval readers would feel the appropriateness of such a religious message at the point where the pilgrims have narrated and demonstrated all of the seven deadly sins. The end of the pilgrimage is the moment of reality, the proper time for serious soul-searching and preparation for the imminent visit to the sacred shrine at Canterbury Cathedral.

Here Chaucer the poet steps out from behind the mask of the pilgrim persona and appends to the entire work a retraction in which he expresses regrets for the immoral and bawdy works he has authored in his lifetime. At the same time he is grateful that not all of his work was in this vein. He produced also much religious literature, which never attained the wide acceptance, in his lifetime or afterward, as his more "secular" writings. But he is thankful to God for helping him write such works of morality and devotion.

The Canterbury Cathedral, where Archbishop Thomas á Becket was murdered on orders from King Henry II in 1170, is one of the most beautiful and stately edifices in England. It is a very moving experience to visit this shrine of the martyred Becket. To meditate on the circumstances of the violent death of this man of God, who later became venerated as a true saint, is, in itself, a solemn reflection. But to be there in person is an experience one can never forget. It is this Christ-like martyrdom, the event that beckoned Chaucer's pilgrims, which inspired a twentieth-century British poet, dramatist, and Nobel Prizewinner, T. S. Eliot, to compose (in 1935) his first stage play, Murder in the Cathedral.

T. S. Eliot's Murder in The Cathedral

The "murder" of Thomas Becket in Eliot's play, literary critic John Peter, from the University of Manitoba, says, "is not primarily a murder at all, but an act of redemption. The idea of redemption from sin through the death of a martyr obviously recalls Christ's redemptive death as narrated in the Gospels of the New Testament. Eliot also brings into the dramatic action an allusion to Peter, who warmed himself at the fire of the enemies of Christ, and who denied his Master three times:

Who has stretched out his hand to the fire and remembered the Saints at All Hallows, Remembered the martyrs and saints who wait? and who shall Stretch out his hand to the fire, and deny his master?

To refresh the memory of those not instantly recognizing the scriptural allusions and references, we furnish the following citations:

John 21:18: "Truly, truly, I say to you [to Peter], when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you [Peter] will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go." (RSV)

Mark 14:54: Peter followed him at a distance, right into the courtyard of the high priest. There he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire. (NIV)

Acts 22:20: And when the blood of your martyr Stephen was shed, I stood there giving my approval and guarding the clothes of those who were killing him.' (NIV)

Acts 9:13: "Lord," Ananias answered, "I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your saints in Jerusalem. (NIV) Luke 22:34 Jesus answered, "I tell you, Peter, before the rooster crows today, you will deny three times that you know me." (NIV)

Another reference to Jesus Christ, who often called himself, "The Son of Man," is observed in Eliot's line, "Shall the Son of Man be born again in the litter of Scorn?" Again the careful reader notices another biblical reference in the words of Thomas,

… action is suffering And suffering is action. Neither does the agent suffer Nor the patient act. But both are fixed In an eternal action, an eternal patience To which all must consent that it may be willed And which all must suffer that they may will it.

There are several biblical allusions here, but let us notice the one significant reference to the importance of the will, the act of will, of voluntary choice, in a suffering action of martyrdom. This kind of death is not something wholly thrust upon one from external sources and circumstances. It usually can be avoided by some means if the threatened martyr is willing to pay the price of cowardly avoidance of suffering by the abdication of personal integrity and compromise of conscience. John the Evangelist records in the Gospel which bears his name that Jesus voluntarily laid down his life in suffering and sacrifice to redeem his children:

Jn 10:17, "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. (RSV)

Jn 10:18, "No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." (RSV)

In like manner Thomas Becket, in the twelfth century, makes a conscious, deliberate decision of his own free will to lay down his life, because he can not deny who he is and what he stands for. And, according to T. S. Eliot, Thomas does it not for self-glory, or for any reason other than to take the path of redemption for the sake of his own soul and for the sake of the church and the Christ he loves. After considering all the tempting offers, Thomas says, "Now is my way clear, now is the meaning plain." For him, in this situation, as for his Master before Pilate centuries earlier, there can be no other way except the way of suffering and redemption.

If time allowed, much more could be written about the influence of the Bible on other important Eliot works, such as The Waste Land, "The Four Quartets," his work on "The Metaphysical Poets," "Ash-Wednesday," and many of his shorter poems.

Likewise, because of the constraints of time and space, this discussion must skip over many other great English writers who were enormously influenced by the Bible, but it is impossible to ignore John Milton.

The Bible's Influence on John Milton

Milton is chosen for special attention here because of his stature as a great poet, his distance from our modern time, and his obvious influence by the Bible. Most of Milton's great works were poetic elaborations of biblical themes. Paradise Lost is based on the biblical story of the fall of Adam and Eve, which Milton begins long before the fall of Lucifer the Archangel and before the creation of the heavens and the earth. Paradise Regained is inspired by the temptation of Christ in the Gospel according to Luke. Samson Agonistes is an expansion of the story of the power, temptation, and fall of Samson in the Hebrew Bible, or the Old Testament.

John Milton understood, perhaps better than anyone since his time, the literary themes, genres, and style of the Bible. He committed himself so much to a study of these three elements of biblical studies that he tried, as Mary Ann Radzinowicz says "to become as far as possible a biblical poet himself." This Cornell University scholar demonstrates how Milton read the Bible thematically as "forming one body of saving truth … generically as consisting of law, story, prophets, and poetry … and stylistically, with a greater skill and purity than any other ancient poetry," (The Cambridge Companion to Milton, "How Milton Read the Bible," 207). She summarizes, and later illustrates, that "These three modes of reading [the Bible] influenced his [Milton's] own poems from the beginning to the end of his career, as he took scriptural themes, events … adapted scriptural genres to them, and echoed biblical style in them." (207).

Milton knew several languages and could read and easily translate the books of the Bible directly from the original Hebrew and Greek or from the Latin versions. Thus he was not limited to any one version, and he went far beyond merely using the language and phrases of the Geneva Bible or the King James Version.

His intelligence and scholarship remain a challenge and a model toward which modern biblical scholars and general Bible readers can strive to the best of their ability and potential. Milton was tremendously influenced by the Bible, and his writings have greatly influenced thousands of writers down to the present time.

The Bible's Influence on Other English Literature

Robert Lowth's Pioneering Work

A significant milestone was marked in 1753 when the Oxford Professor of Poetry, Robert Lowth, published his Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews. This was an original and creative work which opened up the entire area of biblical poetry to modern literary criticism. Lowth showed exactly how Hebrew poetry in the Bible worked, and from there others quickly noted how it influenced English literature in so many ways.

Eighteenth Century British Writers

Eighteenth-Century British writers such as Jonathan Swift, Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope, Thomas Gray, Samuel Johnson, and Oliver Goldsmith produced prose and poetry that revealed strong biblical influences. They frequently wrote about themes from both the Old Testament and the New Testament, and their references to specific passages showed their profound respect for and debt to the Bible. Examples are "The Shortest Way with the Dissenters" (Defoe), "A Modest Proposal" (Swift), "An Essay on Man" (Pope), "Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard" (Gray), "The Vanity of Human Wishes" (Johnson), "The Deserted Village" (Goldsmith).

Romantic Age Writers

The so-called giants of the Romantic Age (late 18th and early 19th centuries), including Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelley, Keats, and Scott, were all strongly influenced by the Bible as literature, although some of them chose rather unorthodox paths in their own writings.

William Blake

Northrop Frye called William Blake "a Bible-soaked middle-class English Protestant," although Blake was known for his anticlericalism and his strange visions. Blake's famous poems like "The Lamb," "The Tyger," "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," "London," "A Poison Tree," are a mixture of biblical allusions—albeit some parody, some irony, and some tenderly reverent. His four-stanza poem which follows the conclusion to his Preface to Milton is today looked upon by some more as a hymn than as secular poetry:

And did those feet in ancient time Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic Mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold: Bring me my Arrows of desire: Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire. I will not cease from Mental Flight, Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green and pleasant land.

Blake urged young writers to reject the classical style of authors such as Homer and Plato in favor of "the Sublime of the Bible." He was not only aware of the sublimity of the Bible, but he was also a genius who possessed both the artistic skill and the intellectual capacity to write the words:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Coleridge has a trilogy of poems which the well-known critic G. W. Knight points out is like Dante's Divine Comedy in that they reflect the themes of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. These works are Christabel, The Ancient Mariner, and Kubla Khan. Knight calls attention to parallel imagery of biblical rhetoric found in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. He also suggests a close relationship between the theme of The Ancient Mariner, a "profound poem with universal implications," and Bunyan's biblical theme in The Pilgrim's Progress. Coleridge was an admirer of Bunyan, and he tended to use in his own way Bunyan's (and the Bible's) theme of pilgrimage from the byways of sin and temptation to the celestial city of redemption. ("Coleridge's Divine Comedy," 213).

The Victorians

The successors to the Romantic writers are the Victorians, who showed a more direct indebtedness to the Bible than did the writers of the Romantic age. The works of Tennyson, Browning, Carlyle, Kipling, Dickens, and Hardy are greatly influenced by the stories and ideas of the Bible. And in the twentieth century the works of W. H. Auden and C. S. Lewis, in addition to T. S. Eliot and others, could be cited if time and space allowed. Those writers that have been cited and selections from some of their works illustrate numerous examples of linguistic, rhetorical, thematic, and stylistic biblical influences on English authors throughout the centuries to the present time.

The Bible's Influence on Selected American Literature

Early colonists of what later became the United States of America brought their Bibles with them from Europe. They also brought the language, phraseology, and ideas of the Bible with them, including what Edwin Gaustad calls "a biblical world view and a biblical storehouse of knowledge."

Early Colonialists

The world view of the early colonists included some assumptions and beliefs that seem strange to most people today. The way these colonists read their Bible led them to feel that they were living "a literal reenactment of the Biblical drama of the Hebrew nation," as Gabriel Savan says in The Bible and Civilization. "They themselves were the Children of Israel; America was their Promised Land; the Atlantic Ocean their Red Sea; the kings of England were the Egyptian pharaohs; … the pact of Plymouth Rock was God's holy Covenant; and the ordinances by which they lived were the Divine Law" (236). During the time of the American Revolution many religious patriots viewed the problems with England as having been "foreshadowed by Israel's conflicts with Assyria or Babylonia or Persia or even Rome" (Gaustad 111).

Roger Williams, Early Religious Liberty Advocate

One tradition which many Puritans brought with them from Europe was that, although they were dissenters, they would not tolerate dissent from their Commonwealth principles in the New World. Thus Roger Williams, a 1627 graduate from Cambridge University in England, and an unordained student of divinity, came under suspicion of the Massachusetts Bay colony when he arrived there and began teaching what they called "strange opinions." He was banished by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay and fled into the wilderness where he spent the winter among Indians.

He purchased land from the Indians, rather than from the Crown or the Massachusetts Bay Company, and with a small group of associates founded Providence in 1636 . From the beginning Providence was open to all settlers, who were freely welcomed under the assured separation of church and state. Having bought the land from the Indians, he went to England (1644) to procure a parliamentary charter for the new Rhode Island colony. Williams was president of the Rhode Island colony from 1654-1657. True to his word, he maintained full religious liberty for all in a society where church and government were separate, thus forming a pattern which was adopted almost 150 years later with the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The philosophies of religious liberty and the separation of church and state were spelled out in the one great publication of Roger Williams, "The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution" (1644). In this work he argues in the strongest terms for freedom of religion and worship, and against the persecution of anyone for "cause of Conscience." He uses the literary device of a dialogue between the personifications of Truth and Peace, urging that "Having bought Truth deare, we must not sell it cheape."

Williams sees the state as a purely political body separate from the church, and therefore he contends that the state has no right to meddle in spiritual matters. Likewise the church is solely a religious body and therefore without any civil power or physical means to enforce its orthodoxy. He writes that the civil government is a democratic institution "having no more power, nor for no longer time, than the civil power or people consenting and agreeing shall entrust them with" (The Writings of Roger Williams 3:249-250). Along with these advanced ideas, and his conviction that the American land belonged to the Indians rather than to the King of England, Roger Williams was greatly influenced by the thought and language of the English Bible and by Calvinistic beliefs.

Cotton Mather, Almost-Epic Author

Considered by some as "the most prominent intellect of the early eighteenth-century America," philosopher-theologian and minister to Boston's Second (Old North) Church, Cotton Mather (1663-1728) wrote an enormous work entitled Magnalia Christi Americana: or, The Ecclesiastical History of New-England, from Its First Planting in the Year 1620 … unto the Year … 1698. This seven-volume work of 1,200 pages is filled with biblical allusions and conventions. It shares the genres of prose-epic, history, and biography, with echoes of the Aeneid and the style of the English Bible.

Jonathan Edwards, Minister/Theologian/Writer

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), a minister in Northampton, Massachusetts, and later missionary to the Indians at Stockbridge, effectively used an eighteenth-century literary style that was strongly influenced by the biblical style of the King James Version of the Bible. His ministry and writings represented an early phase of the Great Awakening religious movement of that time. Two of Edwards's best known works are a sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" and his ambitious philosophical work on Freedom of the Will. A man of tremendous intellect, he was the president of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University.

John Woolman, Diarist and Humanitarian

Diaries were popular in the century after the first colonialists arrived in the New World. Among these, the diary of John Woolman (1720-1772) is representative of the spirit of Quaker humanitarianism. His diary was published posthumously (in 1774), and it revealed Woolman's compassion for the poor, sick, bereaved, dispossessed, and enslaved. He did not hesitate to ask the slave-holding Quakers to free their slaves. Many of his literary images and metaphors were drawn directly from the Bible.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Renaissance Author

No one can doubt the influence of the Bible on the thought and writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864). His symbolism directly refers his readers to similar symbolic devices in the Bible. The ideas of sin, evil, guilt, remorse, and morbidity recur frequently in Hawthorne's writings, such as The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, "Young Goodman Brown," and "The Minister's Black Veil." He uses imagery of the forest to symbolize variously escape, freedom, unlimited possibility, the American Dream, evil, witchcraft, and moral bewilderment. Critics have pointed out that in The House of the Seven Gables Phoebe (described with sun imagery) plays a redemptive role by bringing the gift of love into the story to offset the Judge's evil.

"Direct allusions to the Bible in The Scarlet Letter are actually not very numerous," Roland Bartel writes, "Yet no one would question the pervasive influence of the Bible on the novel." This influence is illustrated by the use of the King James Version pronouns "thee," "thou," etc., and by biblical expressions such as "and it came to pass." Other biblical allusions carry similar implications, as in Hester's badge as a brand of Cain (referring to the story of Cain and Abel in the early part of the book of Genesis). Similar biblical associations are suggested by the tapestry in Dimmesdale's library that represents the story of David, Bathsheba, and Nathan in the second book of Samuel in the Old Testament. For those familiar with this story in the Bible, the idea of adultery is immediately suggested.

Herman Melville and his Story of The Great White Whale

The great American novel with epic and dramatic devices, Moby Dick, by Herman Melville (1819-1891), uses biblical themes more than biblical language. Melville's dominant theme here is the confrontation of evil in the universe and in mankind. Captain Ahab, master of the whaling ship the Pequod, is associated with his Old Testament namesake early in Melville's novel by one who announces, "Ahab of old, thou knowest, was a crowned king!" Ahab demonstrates many of the same moral qualities of many of the kings of Israel; in the recurring Old Testament phrase "He did evil in the eyes of the LORD." In Moby Dick Ahab feels that there is in the universe a force of positive evil, for him personified in the great white whale. Ahab is determined to destroy this evil or be destroyed by it.

Ishmael, the foil of Ahab, cannot accept this simplistic religious outlook. He sees the whale as inscrutable and unknowable as the God who, for him, may or may not exist. We note that both of the names "Ahab" and "Ishmael" are well-known Hebrew names from the Old Testament, and the philosophical problem of evil is as old as Job or Adam. As the biblical Ishmael is banished to "the wilderness of Paran," Melville's Ishmael wanders on the "wilderness of waters" of the sea.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Poet of the People

The phrase "footprints on the sands of time," from Henry W. Longfellow's "A Psalm of Life" is one of his most memorable lines. Biblical words in the titles of some of Longfellow's poetry reveal his association with religious tones and forms: "A Psalm of Life," "The Cross of Snow," and "Hymn to the Night." His six sonnets accompanying his translation of Dante's Divina Commedia" (which he compares to a medieval cathedral) indicates his interest in biblical and religious themes. Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha includes an epic journey to the underworld and ends with the bringing of Christianity to the Indians.

The second part of his long narrative poem Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie he himself considered his best and most representative literary work. It is interesting to note that this part of Evangeline is an odyssey or a pilgrimage, much like Bunyan's A Pilgrim's Progress. Although not so explicitly filled with scriptural references as Bunyan's spiritual odyssey, Longfellow's poem does make it clear that Evangeline's journey is a spiritual one. Evangeline humbly accepts God's will even in her sorrowful quest for her lost lover. Much of the diction such as the "forest primeval," the "hemlocks," "moss," and the "twilight," suggest powerful symbolism filled with obvious biblical connotations.

Archibald MacLeish and J.B., The Modern Job

Another American writer who illustrates the influence of the English Bible is the dramatist Archibald MacLeish. No one who saw his 1958 production of J. B. ever forgets the exceptionally stark stage and black and white contrasting costumes and lighting of this modern version of the biblical drama of Job. The Collected Works of MacLeish (1952), which includes this play, won for its author the Pulitzer Prize.

In this modern drama J. B. the protagonist is a prosperous business man whose success is destroyed by a series of calamities. In the Bible Job's comforters and friends give him the traditional philosophy of Jewish wisdom, which is unavailing, as Job maintains his innocence. The comforters (a clergyman, a scientist, and a Marxist) seek to exonerate J. B., while he concentrates on his own moral guilt. Thus MacLeish completely reappraises and reverses the ancient situation and thinking in the light of modern psychology. His handling of the dramatic situation is a critique both of the conventional arguments of the Bible, that suffering is the result of sin, and of the modern psychotic tendency to dwell morbidly on guilt rather than dealing with it realistically (Savan, The Bible and Civilization, 244-245).

Where the Bible Intersects with Other Literature

Our selective survey is necessarily limited. It would require a second book to present all the major authors and literary works from Great Britain and the United States that were influenced by the Bible. And it would require yet another book to illustrate the enormous influence of the Bible on the literature of many other countries.

Literary Form and Successful Purpose

But we believe that we have presented sufficient evidence to show that the Bible has greatly influenced the literature of Great Britain and the United States. This influence has been extensive and profound, and to properly understand it is to gain a greater appreciation for both the Bible and literature. The inevitable conclusion is that this phenomena could not have developed unless, first, the Bible in its present form really is literature, and, second, the Bible is highly significant and successful literature, not only in its literary art, but also in its subject matter and substance.

For a comparable work in political science, history, philosophy, economics, social science, or in any other field of human endeavor, to achieve anything approaching the unique influence of the Bible in literature, that work would have to have the formal marks of great literature and also the qualities of a successful and highly significant work in its own field of inquiry.

For example, if Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1859 had been a total failure as a scientific book, no amount of literary art could have redeemed it as significant literature. And, if the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Constitution of the United States (1788), and the Bill of Rights (1791) had been unsuccessful and insignificant as political documents, no literary prose could have achieved for them the universal fame that they command today.

This is the point made so eloquently by T. S. Eliot in his landmark essay on "Religion and Literature." Eliot seems extremely agitated over those who say they enjoy the Bible solely because of literary merit, and he unkindly calls these persons "parasites." He continues, "The Bible has had a literary influence upon English literature not because it has been considered as literature, but because it has been considered as the report of the Word of God." If Eliot is correct in this judgment, then those who rave about the beautiful literature in the Bible are obligated to look further for more substance and essential truth in its core religious and spiritual contents. This is the first point where the Bible and literature intersect.

Enjoyment and Instruction

Since ancient times men of letters have written that the two primary purposes of literature are (1) to delight or entertain, and (2) to instruct or teach. It is, of course, preferable to do both at the same time.

Dante, for example, wrote that the purpose of the Divina Commedia is moral, or "designed to produce practical results." The noted literary critic D. W. Robertson, Jr., writes that in making this statement Dante "is not simply concocting an 'excuse' for his literary activity," but that "he is expressing, rather a traditional tenet of Christian aesthetics" (79).

Chaucer's word for the deeper implications or meanings of stories is the word "sentence," (not to be confused with our contemporary word used for a sentence). Chaucer's Middle English word "sen-tén-ce" means "significance," "meaning," "contents," or "subject." It often suggests "the deeper meaning" as opposed to "the superficial meaning." Thus the Clerk in The Canterbury Tales customarily spoke concisely and reverently, in the proper form, "short and quyk and ful of hy sentence," that is, full of profound significance or deep meaning. And the nun's priest tells the pilgrim audience that Saint Paul says all that is written in the Bible has been written and stands certainly written today for our "doctrine" or teaching, or instruction (Romans 15:4).

In other words, the purposes of literature (according to Dante and the classical writers) and the purposes of the Bible (according to the scholars) are not only aesthetic, or for enjoyment, entertainment or delight. The purposes of all literature (including the Bible) are both aesthetic and instructional, that the readers may enjoy, profit and learn from the content or message. Here is the second point at which the Bible and literature intersect, at the crossroads of aesthetic enjoyment and moral instruction.

Never say that the Bible and literature run forever on infinitely parallel tracks, like two railroad trains on separate lines. There are points of intersection, not of collision, but of sharing in a mutual industry and an easy transfer, then proceeding by a different way to a common destination. Much of the enjoyment may indeed be in the journey itself, but there is more to it than that. The question concerns, rather, what the traveller or pilgrim is going to do with the things learned on the journey to improve the lives and landscapes for those who follow and for those in the stations along the way.