Post by Teddy Bear on Aug 12, 2013 14:22:09 GMT
The sentence I use to characterise this category;
The BBC replaces the Holy Bible with the Wholly (or Holey) Beeble
could never be more true than is highlighted by this topic.
One of the items that anybody appearing on Desert Island Discs automatically have included in their possessions is a bible. But the BBC are now looking to remove that particular item with some spurious excuse, although it hasn't happened yet.
Whether one is believer in the bible or not, its relevance to our society makes it one of the most important books to understand where we are and how we got here.
But if course this only applies to intelligent beings.
There is much evidence to show that the BBC sees the Church as a competitor, giving those in its flock a different view of life and reality than the BBC would have them believe.
So any excuse to downplay or eradicate the main book relevant to Christian theology will be used.
Allan Massie gives his view if the BBC were to remove it from the show.
We can’t cast away Our Bible
By Allan Massie
Suppose you are cast away on a desert island. You might find yourself asking, “why me?” and wondering what you had done to deserve such a fate. Well, ever since the programme began, Desert Island Discs has provided its castaways with two mandatory books, the Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, volumes in which you might find answers to these questions or, if not answers, at least consolation. The best of Muriel Spark’s later novels was entitled The Only Problem. She described it as “a meditation on the Book of Job”, and the problem is: “How can an omnipotent and benevolent Creator permit the unspeakable sufferings of the world?” Job, one has to say, doesn’t come up with a convincing answer, but he asks all the right questions. Moreover the book, recounting his tribulations and the test of his faith which God sets him, has, amid marvellous poetic passages, its lighter, if also puzzling, moments: why is one of his daughters called “Box of Eye-Paint”? You could spend a long time on your island wondering about that.
The National Secular Society, a body not noted for its sense of humour, thinks you would be wasting your time. It has called for the Bible to be dropped from the programme and it appears that this may have been discussed within the BBC. I say “appears” and “may have been” because the BBC has been stonewalling and says there are no plans to ditch the Bible. Still, one can imagine a case being made for doing so. We live, some bright spark might say, in an ever more secular society. Most people don’t go to Church regularly. Practising Christians are now in a minority. Why should non-Christians be lumbered with a Christian and, in the case of the Old Testament, Jewish book?
When Kirsty Young, the presenter of the programme on Radio 4, suggested to Philip Pullman that, as an atheist, he might not be too keen to have the Bible, he replied: “Why not? There are lots of good stories in the Bible.” So indeed there are, especially in the Old Testament, lots of good stories and fascinating characters; and many of the stories and the people provoke teasing moral problems. They are usually true to life, too; even characters clearly regarded as heroes are never perfect. The Bible reminds us that even good men, such as Joseph or King David, may do bad things. St Peter, too, the rock on whom Christ said the Church should be built, has his moment of weakness when he denies Christ. The Bible may, or may not, be the Word of God, but it is a very human book. There is drama and tragedy, the story of Saul, first King of Israel, for example.
This touches only on the fringe of the Bible’s centrality to our culture, though. After all, there are lots of good stories, some with sound morality and others that are very moving, to be found elsewhere – in The Iliad and The Odyssey, in the Arabian Nights and in the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. So what is so special about the Bible? For practising and believing Christians, the answer is obvious, but even for those who don’t accept it as the word of God, or who don’t even believe that there is a personal God, the Bible may still matter.
First, though not all Christians may accept this, by the Bible I mean the Authorised or King James version, not any modern translation, even if it may be more accurate. God may not be an Englishman, as some in past generations seem to have believed, but one reason to be thankful for having been born into an English-speaking culture is that the English Bible is a great resplendent work of literature, made when our language was at its most fecund and vigorous. “If the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?”
The public language of 21st-century English has indeed lost much of its savour, and is cluttered with abstractions, but the Bible is “a well of English undefiled”, from which we may yet draw refreshment. George Orwell once took a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes and translated it into contemporary bureaucratic English to make this point. (His example is too long to quote here; you can find it in the essay “Politics and the English Language”.)
Nobody would pretend that all the Bible is of a high literary quality. Some books (Leviticus, Numbers) are tedious in the extreme. St Paul’s Epistles are written in language that is often clotted and obscure, though he does occasionally rise to heights of eloquence as in the Faith, Hope and Charity chapter in Corinthians, read at so many marriage ceremonies, and always movingly — so long as the reader is using the King James version. The content of the Book of Revelation is pretty crazy, though there the language is often sublime. There is indeed much fine poetry in the Bible. Any castaway on a desert island would find delight as well as consolation in the Book of Psalms.
Of course there is much great poetry elsewhere — plenty in the castaways’ other compulsory companion volume, Shakespeare. Indeed, Shakespeare and the King James Bible are so far complementary, so much part of our linguistic heritage, that many quote indiscriminately from either, and may well not know which they are quoting, or be able to distinguish between the two.
For this surely is the point: the Bible is at the heart of our national culture, just as Shakespeare is, perhaps even more so. For centuries it was found in any home where someone could read. The family Bible might be the only book there; often it might sit next to John Bunyan’s allegorical Christian novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress. This makes one thing clear: our historical culture, which has formed the country we have inherited, is a Christian one. Many today may no longer think of themselves as believers. Perhaps a majority of us have abandoned the faith, and yet we have been formed by it. Our ideas of what is right and what is wrong remain essentially Christian, and have been inculcated by the reading of the Bible over generations. We may have come to disregard many of its prohibitions, but whatever is admirable and generous in our morality derives from it, and especially from what Jesus taught, notably in the Sermon on the Mount.
Desert Island Discs is not itself important. It is agreeable easy listening, no more than that. And yet in one way it is significant. It has always been a favourite programme of Middle Britain. If it were to decide that its castaways should no longer be provided with the Bible, this would say something about the BBC’s understanding of the country it exists to serve. It would be tantamount to a rejection of our inherited culture, a rejection of our history, and an acceptance that the National Secular Society is more representative of Britain today than the Churches. Lord Reith, the BBC’s first Director-General who established the ethos of the corporation, would surely be whirling in his grave.
The BBC replaces the Holy Bible with the Wholly (or Holey) Beeble
could never be more true than is highlighted by this topic.
One of the items that anybody appearing on Desert Island Discs automatically have included in their possessions is a bible. But the BBC are now looking to remove that particular item with some spurious excuse, although it hasn't happened yet.
Whether one is believer in the bible or not, its relevance to our society makes it one of the most important books to understand where we are and how we got here.
But if course this only applies to intelligent beings.
There is much evidence to show that the BBC sees the Church as a competitor, giving those in its flock a different view of life and reality than the BBC would have them believe.
So any excuse to downplay or eradicate the main book relevant to Christian theology will be used.
Allan Massie gives his view if the BBC were to remove it from the show.
We can’t cast away Our Bible
By Allan Massie
Suppose you are cast away on a desert island. You might find yourself asking, “why me?” and wondering what you had done to deserve such a fate. Well, ever since the programme began, Desert Island Discs has provided its castaways with two mandatory books, the Bible and The Complete Works of Shakespeare, volumes in which you might find answers to these questions or, if not answers, at least consolation. The best of Muriel Spark’s later novels was entitled The Only Problem. She described it as “a meditation on the Book of Job”, and the problem is: “How can an omnipotent and benevolent Creator permit the unspeakable sufferings of the world?” Job, one has to say, doesn’t come up with a convincing answer, but he asks all the right questions. Moreover the book, recounting his tribulations and the test of his faith which God sets him, has, amid marvellous poetic passages, its lighter, if also puzzling, moments: why is one of his daughters called “Box of Eye-Paint”? You could spend a long time on your island wondering about that.
The National Secular Society, a body not noted for its sense of humour, thinks you would be wasting your time. It has called for the Bible to be dropped from the programme and it appears that this may have been discussed within the BBC. I say “appears” and “may have been” because the BBC has been stonewalling and says there are no plans to ditch the Bible. Still, one can imagine a case being made for doing so. We live, some bright spark might say, in an ever more secular society. Most people don’t go to Church regularly. Practising Christians are now in a minority. Why should non-Christians be lumbered with a Christian and, in the case of the Old Testament, Jewish book?
When Kirsty Young, the presenter of the programme on Radio 4, suggested to Philip Pullman that, as an atheist, he might not be too keen to have the Bible, he replied: “Why not? There are lots of good stories in the Bible.” So indeed there are, especially in the Old Testament, lots of good stories and fascinating characters; and many of the stories and the people provoke teasing moral problems. They are usually true to life, too; even characters clearly regarded as heroes are never perfect. The Bible reminds us that even good men, such as Joseph or King David, may do bad things. St Peter, too, the rock on whom Christ said the Church should be built, has his moment of weakness when he denies Christ. The Bible may, or may not, be the Word of God, but it is a very human book. There is drama and tragedy, the story of Saul, first King of Israel, for example.
This touches only on the fringe of the Bible’s centrality to our culture, though. After all, there are lots of good stories, some with sound morality and others that are very moving, to be found elsewhere – in The Iliad and The Odyssey, in the Arabian Nights and in the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm. So what is so special about the Bible? For practising and believing Christians, the answer is obvious, but even for those who don’t accept it as the word of God, or who don’t even believe that there is a personal God, the Bible may still matter.
First, though not all Christians may accept this, by the Bible I mean the Authorised or King James version, not any modern translation, even if it may be more accurate. God may not be an Englishman, as some in past generations seem to have believed, but one reason to be thankful for having been born into an English-speaking culture is that the English Bible is a great resplendent work of literature, made when our language was at its most fecund and vigorous. “If the salt hath lost its savour, wherewith shall it be salted?”
The public language of 21st-century English has indeed lost much of its savour, and is cluttered with abstractions, but the Bible is “a well of English undefiled”, from which we may yet draw refreshment. George Orwell once took a passage from the Book of Ecclesiastes and translated it into contemporary bureaucratic English to make this point. (His example is too long to quote here; you can find it in the essay “Politics and the English Language”.)
Nobody would pretend that all the Bible is of a high literary quality. Some books (Leviticus, Numbers) are tedious in the extreme. St Paul’s Epistles are written in language that is often clotted and obscure, though he does occasionally rise to heights of eloquence as in the Faith, Hope and Charity chapter in Corinthians, read at so many marriage ceremonies, and always movingly — so long as the reader is using the King James version. The content of the Book of Revelation is pretty crazy, though there the language is often sublime. There is indeed much fine poetry in the Bible. Any castaway on a desert island would find delight as well as consolation in the Book of Psalms.
Of course there is much great poetry elsewhere — plenty in the castaways’ other compulsory companion volume, Shakespeare. Indeed, Shakespeare and the King James Bible are so far complementary, so much part of our linguistic heritage, that many quote indiscriminately from either, and may well not know which they are quoting, or be able to distinguish between the two.
For this surely is the point: the Bible is at the heart of our national culture, just as Shakespeare is, perhaps even more so. For centuries it was found in any home where someone could read. The family Bible might be the only book there; often it might sit next to John Bunyan’s allegorical Christian novel, The Pilgrim’s Progress. This makes one thing clear: our historical culture, which has formed the country we have inherited, is a Christian one. Many today may no longer think of themselves as believers. Perhaps a majority of us have abandoned the faith, and yet we have been formed by it. Our ideas of what is right and what is wrong remain essentially Christian, and have been inculcated by the reading of the Bible over generations. We may have come to disregard many of its prohibitions, but whatever is admirable and generous in our morality derives from it, and especially from what Jesus taught, notably in the Sermon on the Mount.
Desert Island Discs is not itself important. It is agreeable easy listening, no more than that. And yet in one way it is significant. It has always been a favourite programme of Middle Britain. If it were to decide that its castaways should no longer be provided with the Bible, this would say something about the BBC’s understanding of the country it exists to serve. It would be tantamount to a rejection of our inherited culture, a rejection of our history, and an acceptance that the National Secular Society is more representative of Britain today than the Churches. Lord Reith, the BBC’s first Director-General who established the ethos of the corporation, would surely be whirling in his grave.