Book Review: The Bible Story the Book of Beginnings

Book Review: The Bible Story: The Book of Beginnings

Author: Arthur S. Maxwell

Date: 1994

Publisher: Review & Herald

ISBN: 0-8280-0795-0

Length: 96 pages

Illustrations: many full-page color paintings

Quote: “The Bible Story provides the widest coverage of any Bible storybook on the market...all the stories suitable for telling to children, form Genesis to Revelation.”

Arthur S. Maxwell (1896-1970) collected several true, instructive Bedtime Stories for children, and wrote some nonfiction for adults, but his life’s work was The Bible Story. During his lifetime the series was printed in ten volumes, all copiously illustrated with beautiful full-color paintings. These books were bound to stay bound through years of abuse by generations of children—and puppies. The paper was remarkably mildew-resistant; the glossy, colorful covers were peanut-butter-and-jelly-proof. I know of no American book that was a better example of the bookbinder’s craft than the original Bible Story set. 

(Maxwell was not American--his life began in England and ended in Australia--but his publishers were US-based. The Bible Story, as a picture book whose high market value owed a lot to the paintings and the binding, could even be classified as a Maryland book since several of the paintings were done in Maryland. Many a pleasant afternoon can be spent finding the real-world versions of Bible Story paintings northeast of Washington.) 

In the 1990s, however, some tasteless innovator decided to change a good thing, and so The Bible Story is now being printed in twelve volumes. Although the language has been changed too, the most obvious difference is the quality of the new edition—or the lack of it. The paper is thinner and slicker. The pages are glued, not sewn, so they won’t lie flat and Grandma can’t read aloud while she knits. The covers won’t take much scrubbing. The binding is guaranteed to fall apart the very first time a puppy drags it under the porch to chew on it. It is still a better bound volume than many children’s books on the market today, but this one will not be enjoyed by generation after generation of children.

The innovator wanted to use recent translations of the Bible. “Language that today’s children readily understand”? Not quite. Children do not understand “vegetation” more easily than they understand “herb yielding seed.” Children do not understand “hallowed” at an earlier age than they understand “made holy.” Children learn “serpent” as easily as they learn “snake.” Maxwell wrote histories using King James’ and Queen Elizabeth’s words alternately to help children realize that they were synonyms, but the innovator changed the vocabulary to include only the “modern” words, making Maxwell’s stories sound repetitious and clunky. This may have been a favor to parents who had learned English as a foreign language, but it’s no favor to children like Maxwell as a boy, or like me as a girl, who are fascinated by exotic words and names, who may enjoy the rich strangeness of the King James' Version's language before they’re old enough to understand its content.

The long-term effect of dumbing down biblical or classical language is not to make traditional books more accessible to children; it is to cut off children’s access to older language, and thus to older books, and thus to ideas. Children can learn words like “tilled the earth” and “beast of the field” by seeing them used alternately with “worked the soil” and “farm animals.” Learning is what childhood is all about. By learning obscure phrases, as Maxwell intended them to do, through hearing those phrases alongside their modern equivalents, children were prepared to understand the Bible, and also Shakespeare, Milton, Paine, Jefferson, Adam Smith, and Margaret Cavendish, if they so chose. By being taught that they “can’t” understand the language of older books, children are prepared to be defeated by any opportunity they may get to become educated adults.

There is another effect of using the new translations of the Bible. The Geneva Bible, Authorized Version (KJV), and Revised Standard Version (RSV) are works in the public domain—not copyrighted. The up-to-the-minute translations are copyrighted, and the copyright holders demand credit (and payment). Some readers may believe, as I do, that it is not only tasteless but blasphemous for mortals to claim commercial copyrights on the Bible. The publishers of this travesty of Maxwell’s Bible Story claim to believe that the Bible is the Word of God. How, when, and to whom did God assign the copyright on the Word of God?

It gets worse, Gentle Readers. My review copy of the first volume of the “new” Bible Story was marked “Display Copy,” the one pediatricians and dentists will be offered to store in their waiting rooms, to encourage children to beg their parents to buy the rest of the set. The “display copy” marketing technique worked well during Maxwell’s lifetime. But this particular “display copy” can’t serve its intended purpose very well, because it was so hastily slapped together that not only does it identify itself as “the first of 10 volumes” on the back cover and “the first of 12 volumes” inside, but it also cuts off in mid-sentence on page 96. I am not mean enough to have made this up if I’d sat down and worked at it. Nothing has fallen out or been torn out., The table of contents still promises 187 pages of stories, and the last 90 of those pages have not been glued in.

The Bible Story is global—multilingual and ecumenical. Maxwell had the books vetted by ministers in several denominations, including a probably Messianic Jewish Rabbi, to ensure that they could be used by all the major religious groups. (Maxwell, personally, was a Seventh-Day Adventist.) The stories are available in several other languages as well as English. And they’re still distributed by deserving college students who board with church members, during the summer, and sell the books door to door for tuition money. And you can still call your local S.D.A. church and request that a deserving student bring a complete set of Bible Story books out for your inspection. But you should know that the older editions were much, much better bargains than the new edition. Review & Herald needs to be held to its own standard.