Which version of the Bible?

Co-author of The Reforming Power of the Scriptures, Mary Trammell, has contributed hundreds of words to the Christian Science periodicals over many years. In her article The Eternal Version of the Bible (The Christian Science Journal November 2013 - find it on jsh-online.com to read and to listen to, or at your local Christian Science Reading Room), she quotes a letter from Mary Baker Eddy.

Her article sets thought on fire with the possibilities for each reader today to search the Scriptures and to let its voice speak to the heart -- to uplift and to heal. The following is a substantial excerpt (six paragraphs) from Mary Trammell's very informative article:

A letter in 1900 from Mary Baker Eddy to William P. McKenzie, a trustee of The Christian Science Publishing Society, first thanks him for the Twentieth Century New Testament he’d sent her, noting both advantages and disadvantages of the new translation, as well as her general preference for the “grandeur of climax” in the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible. Then her words suddenly take flight in this arresting conclusion: “When we translate matter into Spirit we shall then have not only the Authorized Version, but the eternal version of the Scriptures. I never read the Bible now without such an illumination that every word of it contains a spiritual meaning” (L13053, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, The Mary Baker Eddy Library).

What would this “eternal version” of Scripture look like? Who would translate it? What would it mean for humanity? These questions take us to the heart of Mary Baker Eddy’s own spiritual journey. 

It was “misinterpretation of the Word” that had cost her decades of invalidism. But with her discovery of Christian Science came the “right interpretation” of the Bible, restoring her health and awakening her to a whole new life as a religious leader. ...

How does Mary Baker Eddy illumine the spiritual meaning of the Bible in her book? First, she establishes the Bible as the foundation of Christian healing—as her “sole teacher” and “the chart of life” (Science and Health, pp. viii, 24). She makes this bold declaration as the first tenet of Christian Science: “As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life” (Science and Health, p. 497). She weaves into virtually every page of her book quotations, references, and paraphrases, mostly from the translation she’d been raised with, the King James Version. And she provides a 100-page “Key to the Scriptures” that includes a detailed spiritual exegesis of portions of both Genesis and Revelation, as well as a Glossary of Bible terms, all illustrating the deep insight an inspired spiritual perspective brings.  

Science and Health repeatedly emphasizes that Bible words alone have no inherent healing power. It’s the spiritual sense behind the words that brings comfort and healing: “Take away the spiritual signification of Scripture, and that compilation can do no more for mortals than can moonbeams to melt a river of ice” (p. 241). 

This spiritual sense of the Scriptures is an indispensable part of her discovery. It means reading the Bible with the conviction that Spirit must triumph over matter. It means looking beyond centuries of mistranslation and misinterpretation fostered by “hierarchies, and instigated sometimes by the worst passions of men” (p. 24). It means digging into the Greek and Hebrew texts to find their original meaning, and researching alternative or modern renderings as she herself does in Science and Health, where she quotes from contemporary Bibles such as the one translated by George R. Noyes, as well as from the Saxon and Icelandic translations. Eddy’s Bible collection, housed in The Mary Baker Eddy Library, shows how deeply she researched not only the King James text, but also then current translations such as Weymouth’s, Rotherham’s, and Fenton’s. ...

And so, as we continue with our reading of The Reforming Power of the Scriptures, we pause to consider the continuing impact of the Bible on the lives of readers and seekers everywhere.

 Julie Swannell