The Bible’s Unity as a Book

AMONG the many internal evidences of the Bible that argue for its authenticity and divine origin is its unity as a book. Making some pointed observations along this line is the scholar Orr in his book The Problem of the Old Testament:

“The first thing, we think, that must strike us in connection with it, is, that this book is, in a remarkable sense, a unity. From another point of view, of course, the Bible is not one book, but a collection of books: as Jerome named it, ‘a divine library.’ It comes to us ‘by divers portions and in divers manners.’ The writings that compose it are spread over at least 1,000 years. Yet the singular fact is that, when these are put together, they constitute, structurally, one book; make up a ‘Bible,’ as we call it, with beginning, and middle, and end, which produces on the mind a sense of harmony and completeness.

“This peculiarity in the Bible, which is not essentially affected by any results of criticism—since, indeed, the more the critic divides and distributes his material, the outcome in the book as we have it, is only the more wonderful—is best illustrated by contrast. For Christianity is not the only religion in the world, nor is the Bible the only collection of sacred books in existence. There are many Bibles of different religions. The Mohammedan has his Koran, the Buddhist has his Canon of Sacred Scriptures; the Zoroastrian has his Zendavesta, the Brahman has his Vedas. On the basis of this very fact, comparative religion groups a number of these religions together as ‘book religions.’ These sacred books are made accessible to us by reliable translations and we can compare them with our own Scriptures.

“But not to speak of the enormous superiority of the Bible to these other sacred books, even in a literary respect,—for few, we presume, capable of judging, would think of comparing even the noblest of the Babylonian or Vedic hymns, or of the Zoroastrian Gothas, in power or grandeur, with the Hebrew psalms or would draw a parallel between the wild extravagances of the Buddhist Lolita Vistara and the simplicity, beauty and self-restraint of the Christian Gospels,—we would fix attention only on this one point—the contrast in respect to unity. We seek in vain in these ethnic Scriptures for anything answering to this name. The Koran, for instance, is a miscellany of disjointed pieces, out of which it is impossible to extract any order, progress or arrangement. The 114 Suras or chapters of which it is composed are arranged chiefly according to length—the longer in general preceding the shorter. It is not otherwise with the Zoroastrian and Buddhist Scriptures. These are equally destitute of beginning, middle or end. They are, for the most part, collections of heterogeneous materials, loosely placed together.

“How different everyone must acknowledge it to be with the Bible! From Genesis to Revelation we feel that this Book is in a real sense a unity. It is not a collection of fragments, but has, as we say, an organic character. It has one connected story to tell from beginning to end; we see something growing before our eyes; there is plan, purpose, progress; the end folds back on the beginning, and when the whole is finished, we feel that here again, as in the primal creation God has finished all His works, and behold, they are very good. This is a very external way, it may be granted, of looking at the Bible, yet it is a very important one. It puts the Bible before us at the outset as a unique book. There is nothing exactly resembling it, or even approaching it in all literature. To find its explanation, it compels us to go behind the fragmentariness of its parts, to the underlying unity of thought and purpose of the whole. The unity of the Bible is not something factitious—made. . . . Bible history is not a mere record of happenings but evinces design, purpose, a goal, indicating a Divine mind in back of it.”