Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1927-07-05
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
BIBLE LANDS TODAY. William T.
Ellis. d. Appleton & Co.
I. C.. M.


Ellis. D. Appleton & Co.
No other part Of the earth's surface
Is so generally and so completely lack.
ing in any effect Of reality as the area
that staged the great national epic of
the Jews, that drama which gave rise
finally to a text book on religion for
all Christendom, the Bible. Other re-
gions, no matter how remote and OBJ
Scure, are accepted as actualitieS-
bodies of land and water supporting
life, fostering pursuits. achieving be-
lievable, tangible results of one sort
and another. Not so. however. in re-
spect to the Holy Land. SO sedulously
has the Bible been faced upon the life
to come, SO thoroughly spiritualized
has been It's content, that 1t connotes
no temporal existence whatever. It's
geography is not that Of mountain
and plain, of seasons and cities, and
populations with which we are so IA
miliar in other parts Of the world. In
effect. the Bible charts only a celes-
tial kingdom, to be attained, hardly,
hereafter. Its history Is not the rec
ord of man upon earth at definite
point of time. Rather Is 1t the story
Of sojourners, beset and tormented,
pressing ever onward between the
forces of good and evil. Even it's SUI
preme moment, the death of Jesus
Christ, has not a literal significance,
such as the execution of innocence
through the miscarriage of justice at
the hands of an inflamed populace
might have elsewhere. This poignant
effect Is to degree effaced by the
spiritual promise of vicarious atone
ment, by the personal vision of re-
demption to an otherwise lost human
ity. Paul and Peter and John and
Mark are, to the common understand
ing, not men at all. They, too, are
shadows moving vaguely through a
dim domain lying somewhere outside
the borderland of life upon the earth.
No, clearly the Bible is not history.
1t is not the pageant Of people NOV
ing toward a national goal through
triumphs and defeats such as have
marked the rise and fall Of every CIV
ilization throughout time. Instead, the
Bible is prophecy faced upon the COM
ing of a Savior of lost souls. 1t is
lesson and exhortation fronted exclu-
sively upon another life than the one
at hand, the daily life in which we are
so deeply concerned. By this DELHI
erately exclusive practice of obscur-
ing the Bible save as an apostolic
program of salvation, something has
been sacrificed of the reality and
beauty of the religion which it en-
bodies and offers.
i X 4 y
Happily, nowadays, the Holy Land
is being brought back to life again
through the good service of travellers
and writer's. Dom Byrne, George
Moore, Bruce Barton, John Oxenham
and others have engaged themselves
to reset parts of the great drama en-
acted within this region, the drama
projecting the narrative of the Jewish
people and, set within 1t, the supreme
story of the earthly life of Jesus
Christ and His disciples. Such service
is calculated to emphasize, inspiring
ly, the progressive human kinship of
Jesus, and to restore to His time and
to His life realities that are not es-
our time. These travellers and these
spirit of high intent, are contributing
most substantially to a matter Of
moment.
"Bible Lands Today" is a travel
book. Behind it is no Interior mo.
tive-scientific. religious. sentimental.
Headed upon this locality you would
expect Mr.. and Mrs. Ellis to be fired
with one. at least, of these special
brands of zeal. Just as others take
to the Riviera or Northern Africa or
the South Seas, these two set out to
see the Holy Land in which they, Ike
the rest of us, had been so schooled as
to have become convinced, no doubt,
that there never had been such a
place in actual fact.
Going along with them, we arrive,
in a shock of surprise. For the Holy
Land Is, like all the other lands. rife
with political unrest and rebellion,
with economic competition and pres
sure from the outside, with social
problems and experiments on the in
side-migEt as well be America or
Europe or any other homegrown
commonwealth. That's merely the
beginning. Matters speedily improve,
for Mr.. Ellis spreads map of the
Bible lands as they stood in Bible
times and it is this course that we
are to take, picking our way from
point to point where once fiourished
the cities and outlying lands and
modes of life peculiar to the period
and place within which the Bible has
to do. Let me say at once that the
recreative power of this writer is ex-
ceptional This means that, once
amazing reality-old cities standing
again, about whose streets ancient
peoples pursue the daily round, as we
do. And among these, here and there,
as alive as you and I, are the great
exceptional ones, Jesus and John and
Paul and Roman rulers. This man,
truly. is no Bible commentator. unless
a new school upon the subject has
arisen. He Is a traveller, keen to
every aspect of the road as an artist
Is keen to his theme, or an adventurer
to unexpected happenings. He talks
along the way--talk that is a sort of
chant OF joy-about strange doings
in Paul's Greece" and about quiet
days by Galilee" and ION the other
side of Jordan" and so on and so on,
pausing. beautifully. "by the waters
of Babylon
Everybody who reads this packed
and crowded book-and I'm thinking
that it will have a wide reading, as it
should have-will pick out his own
place in 1t. The habit Of Bible reading
was set within me when I was q
child, and gradually it has come to be
a source of joy to me, except for one
place that has always stood in the
way of whole-hearted acceptance.
When ! reach John and the Isle Of
Patmos and Revelations-well,a hap
pier way at this point is to forget all
that, instead listening to Mr.. Ellis
You really should hear him talk, so
let's have him talk about John and
the island. Few wanderers have
taken the Book Of Revelations for
their actual travel guide. The Seven
Churches of Asia to which the last
book in the Scripture canon was adj
dressed, and the Island of Patmos,
where 1t was written, are actual
places" And we are told of Johns
exile to Patmos by the Roman EN-
peror who prosecuted the Christians.
Truly this is hallowed ground. Here
earth saw Heaven opened. The dis.
ciple who best understood Jesus on