Religious writings usually serve a special function amongst their adherents -not the least of which is to convey the beliefs and principles in a way that allows them to be used as a reference. They may be regarded as sacred if believed to be divinely revealed, or merely special guides to expected behaviour. But whichever, they usually embody the fundamental assumptions of their divine source. And, although they may be summarized for the easier assimilation of their acolytes, the message is the same, no matter the simplified wording.
I am not an especially religious person, but I was brought up in the Christian Protestant traditions, with the Bible -amongst fervent believers, at any rate- a sacred book to be searched for clues as to proper comportment. It was a moral and ethical guide, if sometimes a little vague on specifics.
Indeed, so important was the Bible, that Martin Luther felt that it, not the Pope, should be the only source of divinely revealed knowledge from and about God. He also translated the it into German making it more available for any of the laity who could read.
My point is that the Bible has been considered the foundational book for the Judeo-Christian tradition, and its wisdom, I assumed, undisputed until relatively recently. Altering it or questioning its teachings was anathema, and anyway, unthinkable. So it was with considerable surprise that read about the changes made to it by British missionaries in the Caribbean: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/heavily-abridged-slave-bible-removed-passages-might-encourage-uprisings-180970989 Today, just three copies of the so-called “Slave Bible” are known to exist. Two are held in the United Kingdom, and one is currently on view at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
‘When 19th-century British missionaries arrived in the Caribbean to convert enslaved Africans, they came armed with a heavily edited version of the Bible. Any passage that might incite rebellion was removed; gone, for instance, were references to the exodus of enslaved Israelites from Egypt… The abridged work was first printed in London in 1807, on behalf of the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves. The missionaries associated with this movement sought to teach enslaved Africans to read, with the ultimate goal of introducing them to Christianity. But they had to be careful not to run afoul of farmers who were wary about the revolutionary implications of educating their enslaved workforce.’
‘That meant the missionaries needed a radically pared down version of the Bible. A typical Protestant edition of the Bible contains 66 books, a Roman Catholic version has 73 books and an Eastern Orthodox translation contains 78 books… By comparison, the astoundingly reduced Slave Bible contains only parts of 14 books.’
I must admit that I don’t recognize many of the omitted texts, but I can see that some of them might induce some anxiety in the slave holders and, no doubt, some inspiration in those who were enslaved. For example, ‘Exodus 21:16—“And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death” -they cut that one out, but of course, were happy to leave ‘Ephesians 6:5: Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.’
I suppose an obvious point about leaving things out of Biblical text needs to be made here: Luther, and what he decided to do with his translations. Because he believed in Sola Scriptura -in other words that the scripture alone was adequate to define Doctrine- he decided that some of the other (opposing) apostolic traditions of the existing church weren’t appropriate. The book of James comes to mind. Luther felt it disagreed with his Sola Scriptura, so in his ‘Protestant’ Bible he put it, and a few others, in a separate section, the Apocrypha.
I’m certainly not a Biblical scholar, so I have to admit I’m obviously floating on the surface here, but my point is that one might well argue that rearranging the text, as did the Society for the Conversion of Negro Slaves, does not set any precedents. What it does do, however, is change the entire thrust of the Biblical message by not merely rearranging it, but by expurgating it. It ends up as different information -a different spirit.
It is a variety of historical revisionism -history is written by the victors, after all: the most powerful. And the winning side not only gets to control the propaganda, it also gets to interpret the outcome, doesn’t it? Views change as history moves on I suppose, but sometimes we can only contextualize things in retrospect. At the time, it’s only too easy to cave in to vested interests too comfortable to omit the inconvenient truths.
With the egregious omissions of the Slave Bible, the intent is fairly obvious, of course, but there seems to have been no effort to adhere even to Luther’s stringent changes, and at least from the article, I’m not convinced that the Christianity promulgated was of much comfort to the enslaved workers either.
Unfortunately, we often rationalize the means to whatever end we have convinced ourselves is right -whether it be for the good of Britain’s overseas empire that enriched the home country establishment, or for the benefit of the government closer to home. After all, in Canada, we decided that the aboriginal owners of the land we appropriated would be more manageable if they came to accept our Old World -largely European- values. So, we stole their children and forced them into Residential Schools with or without parental permission and attempted to interdict their native languages and inculcate standards entirely foreign to them. Although we all pretended it was for their own good, the reasoning was an opaque attempt at domination. And the irony, in Canada at least, was that it was done both with the blessings, and under the aegis of the Church.
Plus ça change, eh? We have learned little over the years, I think. There still seems to be a need to convince anyone who will listen -and perhaps especially those who won’t- of the righteousness of our beliefs. Of our cause. And yet, a hundred or so years in the future, if there’s still anyone left, they will study us and sigh. ‘What were they thinking?’ they will ask, and then shrug and read their own zeitgeist into the story.
