Understanding Language and Literature

​British prime minister Margaret Thatcher in a speech given in 1988 said:
We are a nation whose ideals were founded on the Bible.  Also it is quite impossible to understand our literature without grasping this fact. That is the strong practical case for ensuring that children at school are given adequate instruction in the part which the Judaeo-Christian tradition has played in moulding our laws, manners and institutions.[1]

Meditation
1 Corinthians 13:8--Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for languages, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end.
 
The Bible has always played a huge piece in the advancement of language and literature.   When Paul wrote the Corinthians his famous thoughts on love, he noted that languages would cease (because in heaven we will all speak one language).  But on earth, before Jesus returns, language and literature still have formidable influence.  After the invention of the printing press, at a time when Europeans became far more literate, the book most families owned was the Bible.  It was the primary source of their language and worldview.[2]  Because of Bible translators and the influence of British and American missionaries, India, the world’s second most populated nation, received its mother tongue, Hindi.  “Every living literary language in India is a testimony to their labor.”[3]  Reverend S.H. Kellogg, an American missionary to Allahabad, utilizing more than twelve dialects, created Hindi.  His Hindi Grammar book is still used today.[4]  

Just as it did for Europe and for America, the Bible imbued in the Indian people a nationalistic consciousness. It helped create the modern idea of the nation-state and nationalism (which unfortunately gets a bad rap today in large part because of the atrocities it stimulated in the previous century). The Bible inspired great writers to produce amazing literature like Shakespeare’s Hamlet, St. Augustine’s The City of God, Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poetry, John Ruskin’s writings, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, Stephen King’s The Green Mile, and John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress—the second most translated and published book after the Bible.  “The Bible’s impact on literature made it the West’s source of cultural authority.  A rejection of the Bible is resulting in moral and intellectual anarchy.”[5]

Ludwig Wittgenstein once noted, “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
God’s Word gives us limitless knowledge.  I’m not a mathematician yet I wonder if we were to count all the ideas from scripture that have inspired men and women from its canonization until today and assign each idea the size of an 8-ounze glass could we drain the Atlantic Ocean?  Something to think about . . . in reveration!
 
Inspiration
. . . language is the vehicle of thought.—Jack Canfield and Dr. Peter Chee in Coaching for Breakthrough Success
 
©2020 Daniel York ARR.  Reveration is the weekly devotional ministry of First Cause.  If you would like to receive these devotionals go to www.firstcause.org and click on the “Click here to receive weekly devotionals” box.  Unlimited permission to copy this devotional without altering text or profiteering is allowed subject to inclusion of this copyright notice.      
 
Ecclesiastes 12:10-The Teacher sought to find delightful sayings and to accurately write words of truth.  (Holman CSB)
 


[1] Vishal Mangalwadi in The Book That Made Your World, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2011)
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid