The Most Influential Book Ever Written – Historians, Theologians, Philosophers & other Interested Parties Comment!
June 22, 2011 3 Comments
Wayne Grudem, Christian theologian said in a podcast I was listening to earlier:
‘hands down, no questions about it this is the most influential book in the history of the world’
Now my naturally skeptic and apologetic mind thought of what somebody, who did not care for the veracity of the Bible, may say in response:
“oh well it is the most influential book in the history of the world because those who were in power were the ones who yielded it”
But then (the dialogue between me myself and I continuing) I thought, no – wait a minute ‘Cory who does not believe the Bible’ let’s take the past 1000 years (as opposed to the 2000 years of Christian history) since that is more influential on our culture(s) as a context for this argument.
For the first 500 you had a Roman Catholic church which kept the Bible very much the preserve of the priests by not translating it out of Latin to the common tongue of the people and even much of the “clergy” were not well versed in what the Bible even said neither did they teach & preach it truly, much of the time.
Then you had the Reformation where you had the Protestant Reformers (who held the Bible in the highest regard and translated it into the language of the region where you were from Latin into English, German, French etc). So yes perhaps the argument could work there……..but only for 150 years/200 at a push.
By 1700 we entered into the so-called ‘Enlightenment Age’ where for the next 200 years or so through to what the philosophers call the time of ‘modernity’, the truth of the Bible was questioned and rejected by a sort of Richard Dawkins-on-steroids; enter David Hume!
Now for the past 50 years we have been questioning whether there even is objective truth or not!
So my question for you historians, theologians…philosophers maybe, is this.
Considering my very quick run through of the past millennium and its seeming rebuff to the whole “it’s only influential because the power brokers believed it and passed it to the people who in turn received it” What would you say to this?
Please comment!! and correct me perhaps if my take on the past 1000 years is skewed to the wrong end?
P
We need to outline a few other contenders for “most influential book in the history of the world,” and avoid the easy mistake of only considering books with influence on Western society.
the Qur’an – although its adherents are statistically less prevalent than those of the Bible, these scriptures were ideologically the central motivation, or perhaps simply the most effective tool, for the unification of the Middle Eastern tribes in the seventh century and onwards. This fundamentally changed the geopolitics of the continent, and also created the society that would preserve much of Greek thought and carry mathematics, architecture and science through Europe’s Dark Ages.
Similar arguments could be made for the Bible unifying Europe during the period after the Roman Empire, although the Bible held together a pre-existing empire whereas the Qur’an created a totally new one. Other scriptures should also at least be considered contenders, as they have each deeply influenced cultures of some size or another. I don’t really know the history of those cultures well enough to gauge their historical or ideological importance though.
Plato’s Republic – all of Western philosophy has been described as “a series of footnotes to Plato,” in the sense that he was the first to ask the questions that it tries to answer. Influencing the entire of secular (and a good amount of religious) thought for two and a half millenia, give or take, is pretty impressive. Granted, western philosophy only really got going in the last 400 years, but the effect, particularly on present-day society, is definitely of the same order as that of the Bible.
Darwin’s Origin of Species – a total paradigm shift in biology, which in itself would make it among the most important scientific publications ever written. But it has implications that profoundly affect the philosophy of morality and of what it means to be human, especially when combined with atheist worldviews. Probably the most effective challenge ever made to the supremacy of religion as an explanation of our origins and by extension, to its right to give moral or philosophical direction.
As for the Bible, a lot of its perceived influence is probably due to its association with modern Western society – the Catholic or Protestant ruling parties of many centuries of European history – but whether either of these churches effectively communicated the real message of the Bible rather than simply using it to justify their preconceived ideas is debatable. Even if the words of the Bible have influenced modern society, in the form of various justifications (honest and less so) for social and political action, that is different from the true Godly attitudes of the Bible having affected the world significantly.
In conclusion, I don’t really have a conclusion (yet) but by comparing it with some other contenders it will be easier to see the Bible’s effect on the world – western or not – and judge whether or not Grudem is right.
I have written *far* too much. =)
A small list of contenders (besides the one’s addressed above which I heartily agree with):
- Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations: the text that marked the shift from mercantilism to capitalism and influenced the dominant European empires in the 18th and 19th centuries.
- Newton’s Principia Mathematica: the foundation of the scientific method.
- John Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding: a major work in the evolution of modern empircism.
- Shakespeare’s First Folio
- Marx and Engel’s Communist Manifesto: the defining ideology of opposition to Western hegemony in the 20th century.
There’s so many more, but that’s all I can think of for now!
- Euclid’s Elements, which is to maths what the Principia is to science.
- Nineteen Eighty Four and Brave New World – as the most well read and remembered examples of dystopian literature, these are a point of reference for many people’s opinions on various significant political and scientific developments.
-Homer’s Illyiad and Oddysey – comparable to Shakespeare himself in their significance to the history of literature. Also possibly quite significant in the theology of the Greeks, which shouldn’t be overlooked.
probably some key texts of the postmodern movement ought to go on the list too, but I’m not sure what they are, and they probably rest on philosophies based in large part on the implications of the Origin of Species.
Defining the problem is difficult though. Is the influence cumulative or direct? is the “world” only considered at the present or at all times in the past?
As for direct influence on the present world, the Bible is probably a lot lower than Darwin, Smith and probably Marx and Engels. The world is distinctly more motivated by capitalism in some parts and communism in others than it is by biblical ideals in any part. And the West, which tends to have a larger influence on world politics, are becoming more and more atheist, pushing natural selection above the afterlife as a motivation to action. The influence of China and India in the near future should probably not be underestimated though. That would push the Communist Manifesto (not to mention the Little Red Book) up further, and probably the Qur’an and the Hindu Sruti.
Taking the older texts, the direct influence of the Republic to the present day world is very little, but its cumulative effect of providing a foundation for the western ideal of questioning everything has literally defined “western society” to a very significant degree. As has the Bible, undoubtedly, being as it was one of the primary tools of politics from Mount Ararat onwards. Even the Qur’an would not exist without the Bible, and its entirely possible that that could be said, to some degree or another, of everything bar the Greek works mentioned. Would the western world have been as interested in the development of philosophy, or science, or economics, without the Bible? Or would it have followed a course closer to that of Eastern societies? Or something essentially removed from both?
It would be interesting to gauge the importance of books pre-scripture on its emergence. There aren’t many book at all in this era, of course, but as a purely linguistic example, the Hebrew alphabet is believed to be based on Egyptian hieroglyphs, so perhaps it merits consideration that without Egyptian writings, the development and thus influence of the BIble would have been different.
now I’ve written twice as far too much… =)