(continued from "The Lady of Shalott" )
The works of the exhibit “Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde” were arranged in categories. One sentence in the commentary at the beginning of the religion section jumped out at me:
“To the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the Bible was a treasure house of human drama in which to seek not theological but literary and poetic meaning.”
This struck me as a refreshing way to read the Bible. I know
ways to read the Bible. You can view every jot and tittle as
literal truth, absolute and eternal. You can figure the Bible is all true somehow--if not literally, then
metaphorically. You can mix and match as suits you. You can roll up your
sleeves for the historical-critical method. You can ignore the Old Testament
for the New and look for moral instruction: “What would Jesus do?” You can
mythologize it. Or demythologize it. Really, you can do as you please, but I
get a little weary of all that.
So how about just read it like a story?
I’ll admit, the Bible soured for me when I realized the idea
on which it was founded and the assertion it was designed to promote--the
existence of God--was a fantasy. Nonetheless, there are some deep characters
there, some fine dramatic action, and plenty of literary merit. As the years
pass, certain stories from the Bible will come to me, and instead of those
stories shining light on my experiences, my experiences shed light on the stories. I
think, “Ah, this is the point of the story!”
The Bible can, for all its uselessness as a textbook of
facts, provide insight into the human spirit--our emotions, our travails, our
moral dilemmas--and do so in a profound way as a work of art. The way Anna Karenina does. Or The Satanic Verses. Or DOA: Dead or Alive. We all get something
out of stories even when we know they are fiction.
I suppose it encourages me to think that such eminent
artists and thinkers as the Pre-Raphaelites, kindred spirits to a certain
extent, could
have the clarity of vision and boldness of spirit to approach the Bible this
way over a hundred years ago in Christian and Victorian England. It’s an approach that affords a kind of truth, just not the kind that will
make me go to church.
I am, after all, an apostate.
