>>511053714Imagine another book compiled in a similar manner. Suppose, for illustration, that we take 66 medical books written by 40 different physicians and surgeons during a period of 1600 years, of various schools of medicine, as Allopathy, Homeopathy, Hydropathy, Osteopathy, etc., and bind them all together, and then undertake to doctor a man according to that book, what success would we expect to have, and what accord would there be in such a medical work.
While the Bible has been compiled in the manner described, it is not a "heterogeneous jumble" of ancient history, myths, legends, religious speculations and superstitions. There is a progress of revelation and doctrine in it. The Judges knew more than the Patriarchs, the Prophets than the Judges, the Apostles than the Prophets. The Old and New Testaments are not separate and distinct books, the New taking the place of the Old, they are the two halves of a whole. The New is "enfolded" in the Old, and the Old is "unfolded" in the New. You cannot understand Leviticus without Hebrews, or Daniel without Revelation, or the Passover or Isaiah 53 without the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
While the Bible is a revelation from God, it is not written in a superhuman or celestial language. If it were, we could not understand it. Its supernatural origin however is seen in that fact that it can be translated into any language and not lose its virility or spiritual life giving power, and when translated into any language it fixes that language in its purest form.
The language however of the Bible is of three kinds. Figurative Symbolical and Literal. Such expressions as "Harden not your heart," "Let the dead bury their dead," are figurative, and their meaning is made clear by the context.
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