Light, wind, fire, all natural phenomena, brush against the invisible and open this world to another that, always present, suffuses it...' Photo: Book cover of Bible and Poetry, by Michael Edwards
Light, wind, fire, all natural phenomena, brush against the invisible and open this world to another that, always present, suffuses it...' Photo: Book cover of Bible and Poetry, by Michael Edwards
This book begins with the bold assertion that ‘we do not read the Bible as it is meant to be read’. After a sentence that casts shade on traditional theological approaches, its author goes on to explain that it’s ‘the presence of poetry in the Bible’ that is ‘the key to a more pertinent and faithful reading’.
The first paragraph, then, acts like a stone thrown into a still lake. The rest of the book is made up of the ripples that ride out from the impact. The ripples are the ramifications of Edwards’ idea for our understanding of key parts of the Bible, and for belief and worship. The author also spends time carefully defining his thought, and clarifying what he does not mean, so that the reader’s mind does not head off in the wrong direction.
Part of the book’s charm is that it includes a lot about Edwards’ personal beliefs, and the impact his thoughts on biblical poetry have had on his own faith. He is very honest about the fact that he has no Greek or Hebrew and, as a Brit steeped in French culture, is working from the French version of the Jerusalem Bible. (Edwards was the first Englishman elected to the Académie Française.)
While emphasising the importance of the Bible’s poetic content, the author is keen that we should not read it as we might a book of poetry with no particular spiritual significance. In fact he is ‘down’ on such an approach, denying that ‘the present infatuation with the “literary” study of the Bible is a great step forward: more often than not its dilettantism misses the essential’.
For Edwards, Jesus is not, therefore, a poet who never wrote anything down, who claimed that his body was bread merely because it was a startling metaphor. The implication is that the Bible uses poetry and does not offer us poetry for its own sake. The Bible has a unique status and is not just another text to be rummaged through for fine poetic effects.
Edwards is, however, trying to read the scriptures having first stripped away the superstructure of interpretation that centuries of theological work have built on top of them. In this way, his approach resembles that of some of the early Quakers and their spiritual ancestors. Like them, the author finds, for instance, that there is very little biblical foundation for the Eucharist as it is re-enacted in churches today.
Noting how poetry seems to reach out beyond conventional language (and how poets often seem to have to reach beyond themselves to write it) Edwards suggests that the mysterious power of poetry in the Bible is both inspired by, and reaching out for, the divine. We are fallen creatures with an imperfect language, but in our imperfection we strive to attain to something perfect. Examining how fire, wind and light are used poetically in biblical passages, Edwards writes that here: ‘Light, wind, fire, all natural phenomena, brush against the invisible and open this world to another that, always present, suffuses it, but to which we are insensible most of the time. We move among the figures of another reality. These phenomena make us feel that all that is material gives onto the immaterial; our words, through their relation to the Word of God, lead us there.’
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