# LCMS Convention Proceedings_St. Louis Missouri_1950_S566
# Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

566 ‘PUBLICATION MATTERS

. 1. The FAMILY BIBLE should be a fresh translation. '
Since neither God (Jesus) nor His writers spoke an archaic

‘language, such a language in our Bible is an unnecessary diffi-

culty for those who should read it. Especially since there is in
modern life a multitude of other obstacles to the reading of the
Bible, the Church cannot with a good conscience retain such
a serious obstacle as an aniquated language in its Bible.

One attempt to solve the difficulty has been to retell the Bible.
As a result we have Bible story books, most of which are inexact,
incomplete, and much too wordy. The best retelling gives up the
really effective concrete appeal of the Bible text. We need a word-
ing by which the Prophets, Jesus, and the Apostles may speak
as they spoke in their day. It must be faithful to the original text:
A Christian should be able to put his finger on any sentence of
this text and say, “That is what God says.”

A Bible that speaks strange words seems cold. But when we
let God speak in the words that people think and feel, that are
warmed at the bosom of family life, that vibrate with the sorrows
‘and joys of real living, these words breathe life and power into
the hearts of people and enable Christian families to grow by an
intimate and loving contact. with their God.

2. The FAMILY BIBLE should be arranged chronologically.

The present arrangement of the Biblical books is not. self-
evident. It is a confusion that God has not intended. To read the
twenty-third Psalm after Nehemiah, Lamentations far away from
the fall of Jerusalem, Philemon after Paul’s dying words, is nothing
divine. That is not how God gave the Bible.

We wish it were all as harmless as many take it to be. For
the general reader the Prophets in their present arrangement, and
some parts of the New Testament, too, are a somewhat pointless
‘and ineffectual assignment; these sections have necessitated heavy
isagogical explanations — hard to learn and easily forgotten by
siniple people. We're making heroic efforts to help the puzzled
reader unscramble what ought never to have been scrambled.

If we had been reasonably successful in clarifying the sequence
of the Biblical materials to the average reader, there might be no
need of a special production to help him. But while we have sup-

“posed ‘that the reader ought to find his own way, we have piled

up materials about the Bible instead of leading him into it. Once
we realize the complications of the task, that a rather advanced
theological’ study is required to find a path through the Bible, we'll
be“convinéed that we’re asking something impossible of the simple
reader and that we are spending an unwarranted amount of effort
in: helping people master the mechanics of the Bible, which ought

PUBLICATION MATTERS 567

to be taken for granted while we teach its contents. The result is
that most people have an interest-dulling, confused picture of the
Bible, and it is hard to wipe out that first conception. And - ‘yet
that picture ought to be clarified, also in view of the hopeless
muddle that Higher Criticism has made of the Bible. The task
of “teaching all things” is’ difficult enough without adding \ un-
necessary encumbrances.

The difficulty of an unchronological Bible stands in special
relief when we try to illustrate it. Page through Tissot’s Old and
New Testament or any other illustrated Bible, and you are jarred
by the sequence of the pictures — that jarring is only an accentua-
tion of the disarrangement of the contents. .

The enactment of God’s plan of salvation was chronological —
that’s like saying white is white. Now, to study God’s ways with
man as they happened, is a basically correct way of. understanding
His truth.

God gave most of His Word in a chronological sequence. What
the collectors and editors did with the revealed books is not the
fault of revelation. Now, the setting in which God gave His Word
is the best for reading it.

Your own experience in reading a chronological Bible will im-
mediately convince you that such a structure makes reading inter-
esting and richly meaningful. If you have never read the Bible
chronologically, the Prophets with the kings under whom they
lived, Lamentations with the fall of Jerusalem, Paul’s Letters with
his travels, there is a new delight waiting for you. All our theo-
logians, teachers, and lay people are entitled to that delight.

More than that, the chronological study of the Bible is Scripture
interpreting itself: Contemporary history is the vital “technicolor”
setting for the abstract truths of the Prophets and the Apostles;
and the doctrinal revelations are, as thought is to practice, a precious
enrichment of the bare historical records. Since Biblical. history
and doctrine essentially belong together, it is basically correct to
read and study them together.

3. This FAMILY BIBLE should be a biographical series" “of
books.

The titles. of these books might be: Adam to Abraham, Joseph,
Moses, Joshua, Gideon and Samson, Samuel, David, Elijah. and.
Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezra, Daniel, Esther; Jesus, Peter. and
John, Paul.

The arrangement of the Bible in convenient smaller volumes
with biographical titles would give it a definitely more inviting
appearance. If you work through the Bible from Genesis to
Revelation, you realize that you have in your Bible a large col-