What is Anglicanism?. Urban T. Holmes III

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СКАЧАТЬ finger. He finished his Easy Wenli translation in 1894 and then went to Japan to seek the assistance of a Chinese secretary in polishing the translation. There he lived out his final years, often in much pain, but with little complaint. His last words, most reminiscent of Dame Julian of Norwich, were, “It is well; it is very well.”

      Schereschewsky was not the “typical Anglican.” He was neither born to it nor did he join as a result of a desire to move socially upward. He was convinced of Christianity and its Anglican expression by reading the Bible. He spent the rest of his life making the Bible available to the people of China, enduring all kinds of strange vicissitudes. This understanding and devotion to the Scriptures is in the best Anglican tradition, and Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky, a Lithuanian Jew, is the patron saint of all who in our tradition seek to live and teach the Scriptures.

      I do not know what Schereschewsky’s convictions were as to the nature of biblical interpretation. He was contemporary with the great Cambridge (England) triumvirate, B. F. Westcott (1828-1901), J. B. Lightfoot (1828-1889) and J. A. Hort (1828-1892), who initiated the Anglican tradition of biblical criticism. It is difficult to determine how well Schereschewsky knew their work and shared their viewpoint, although a scholar such as he must have been conversant with Westcott and Hort’s Greek New Testament and the landmark commentaries of Lightfoot. Schereschewsky believed that the Bible tells a story which can be a means of God’s saving grace changing the lives of those who read it. It is this understanding of the Bible that is characteristic of Anglicanism.

      Our tradition understands the cultural conditioning of the books of the Bible as self-evident. Many of the books are products of an oral tradition centuries long and the result of an editorial process. Some of them are like a montage, where different versions and points of view overlay one another. Two different accounts of the same thing can appear side by side, such as the two creation stories (Genesis 1:1-2:4 and 2:5-25). Different points of view, shaped by different cultures, can be readily identified. For example, there are at least three different interpretations of the experience of Jesus in the New Testament: Palestinian Jewish, Greek Jewish and Gentile. The authors and editors of the books of the Bible were historical human beings with the normal biases we would expect.

      We know there is no perfect text of the Bible and until modern times every copy of the Scriptures was done by hand. We may have fragments of manuscripts from the second century of the New Testament and whole manuscripts from the fourth (our Old Testament manuscripts are older), but no autograph copies. The fact, for example, that there was a shorter and longer ending appendixed to Mark’s Gospel (Mark 16:9-20) or that the story of the woman taken in adultery was added to John’s Gospel at a later date (John 7:53-8:11), for example, are questions of historical interest, but do not gainsay the authority of the Scriptures. They illustrate in a dramatic way the living form of handwritten manuscripts and the attitude of the copyists.

      It is evident, as well, that the books of the Bible reflect the various literary genre of the time and that many contemporary anecdotes and aphorisms found their way into the account. For example, when Paul writes, “Bad company is the ruin of good character” (I Corinthians 15:33), he is quoting a Greek playwright, Menander (342-291 B.C.). Some of the sayings attributed to Jesus are from the common wisdom of the times. The Gospel stories of the star of the magi, the visit of the young Jesus to the Temple, and the changing of water into wine are examples of folk motifs commonly found in contemporary tales told of other heroic or divine figures. The writers had no idea that what they were doing required “all new material.”

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