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From the
Manse November 2001
So how did God’s people get to know the Scriptures? Answer:
they memorised them. In the home and in the synagogues,
Jewish children learned by heart huge chunks of Scripture. The first
duty of Jewish parents was to teach their children the Scriptures.
“These commandments that I give you
today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk
about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when
you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and
bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the door-frames of your
houses and on your gates..” (Deut 6:6-8). In New Testament
times, a Jewish boy began to memorise Scripture from the age of three.
The first two texts he learned were Deuteronomy 6:4 and 33:4. By the
time he was in his teens he was expected to know much of the Law (the
first five books of the Bible) by heart. But the learning process never
ended. Week after week for the rest of his life, he sat in the
synagogue, heard Scripture read aloud and memorised what he
heard. When Jesus preached to the crowds, he constantly
quoted Scripture. He would certainly not have had copies of the Old
Testament books in front of him - that would have meant carrying piles
of large, heavy scrolls everywhere he went! He didn’t need to: he
could quote from memory - and he could assume that his Jewish hearers
would recognise the quotations straightaway. Look through the book of
Acts and see how much Scripture Peter (Acts 2), Stephen (Acts 6) or
James (Acts 15) quote in their sermons... from memory! It was no different in the New Testament churches.
Most Christians would never have a copy of a gospel or of one of Paul’s
letters. But they listened as these new books were read aloud again and
again - and they memorised what they heard. Paul
encouraged Timothy, the young pastor of the church in Ephesus, to devote
yourself to the public reading of Scripture (1 Timothy 4:13).
That was the only way the members of the church would get to know and
remember the Old and New Testament Scriptures. It is only in fairly recent times that ordinary
people have had access to books. (The first book ever to be printed in
England was published in 1477). And it was only in the 19th century that
literacy began to spread through the working-class population of England
and Wales. Remember the story of Mary Jones and her Bible: how she
longed to learn to read and then to get her own Bible? Such hopes seemed
an impossible dream to the ordinary working-class people of 18th century
Wales. Yet Christians could still get to know God’s Word. How? They
used their memory. In church and in Sunday-school,
Scripture was read aloud, taught and memorised. Mary Jones was
memorising the Scriptures long before she could read them for herself! It was not only the Scriptures that Christians
learned by memory. All through the centuries, Christians memorised
the great creeds - the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, the
Athanasian Creed. They fed their souls on those wonderful statements of
truth: I believe in one God, the Father Almighty; Maker of heaven and
earth.. One of the first priorities of the Protestant Reformers was
to write catechisms - simple summaries of Bible truth in question and
answer form, which people could memorise. Luther’s shorter catechism
set out profound truths in the simplest language so that every child
could understand and memorise: “Q. Thou shalt have no other gods:
what does this mean? A We should fear and love God, and trust in him,
above all things.” In Presbyterian Scotland, every child was
expected to know the Westminster Shorter Catechism by heart. Then there were hymns. Hymns were “lined out”
in the churches till people knew them by heart. The minister (or
precentor) would read a line aloud. The people would sing it. He would
read the next line - and so on through the hymn. People who would never
learn to read books of systematic theology learned their doctrine from
the hymns they memorised. John Wesley claimed that his “Collection
of Hymns for the use of the people called Methodists” was “in
effect, a little body of experimental and practical divinity”. And
so it was. The human memory is a wonderful thing, its capacities
almost unlimited. Yet how little we exploit its potential today. We
assume that we shall always have access to the printed page or the
computer disk. No-one is too young to start memorising. And no-one is too old. Generally speaking, the older we are, the harder we find it to learn anything by heart. But it’s amazing how the memory improves with practice. Set yourself realistic goals. For some of us, a verse a week is a triumph. Better a little well-learnt than chapters crammed in but not properly digested. Last hint. Learn with others. Christian families can memorise together. Christian friends can agree on a programme of learning. Why not find a few friends and learn a catechism together, one question a week. Agree that whenever you bump into one another, or whenever you phone, you’ll greet one another with the words of question you’re learning that week. “Hello, this is John. What is the chief end of man?” “Oh, hi John. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever...”
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I hope you can read this! We take it for granted that most people
can read. But that was not true in Bible times. In the Greek and Roman
world, only a small minority of people ever learned to read. The
proportion of Jewish men who could read was certainly higher, but there
were still many who never learned - and of course, it was almost unknown
for a Jewish woman to read or write. Another fact we tend to forget is
that there were no printed books. Every copy of a book had to be made
painfully by hand. To get your own copy of a booklet meant paying a
skilled scribe a week’s wages. Writing materials were expensive too.
Very few people could afford to own books.