Sequential Bible Reading in Early Modern England

• Published in: Bunyan studies no. 15; p. 64
• Main Author: Owens, W R
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Newcastle Upon Tyne Northumbria University, Department of Humanities, Faculty of Arts, Design and Social Sciences 01.01.2011
• Subjects: Bible; British & Irish literature; Bunyan, John (1628-1688); English literature
• ISSN: 0954-0970

[...]there are problems in accepting its account of how the Bible was read, and in particular its argument that Protestant denominations shared with Roman Catholicism 'an emphasis upon techniques of discontinuous reading', and that nonsequential reading practices remained central 'to nearly all Christians in early modem England'.7 On the contrary, there is a great deal of evidence to support Collinson's argument that repeated, sequential reading of the Bible from start to finish was a practice frequently and strongly recommended by Protestant writers. Stallybrass lays much stress on what he calls the 'innumerable exceptions' that disrupt the attempt to produce a sequential reading structure,11 but as Alison A. Chapman has argued, what is much more striking than the exceptions is the extent to which 'despite the frequent interruptions, Cranmer constructed his lectionary calendar so as to linearize the Scripture reading whenever feasible'.12 Cranmer's insistence on the importance of sequential reading of the Bible was shared by other Protestant reformers. For ten years, we are told, Luther 'read the Bible through twice a year'.13 Calvin argued for a return to the practice of the early church, in which 'the Books of Scripture were expounded to the people in one uninterrupted series'.14 The Book of Discipline prepared in 1560 for the use of the Scottish Church similarly required that 'the Scripturis be red in ordour': skipping from place to place in the Bible is, it says, 'not so proffitabill to édifie the Churche, as the continewall following of ane text'.15 The English Presbyterian Directory for the Publick Worship of God prepared by the Westminster Assembly in 1645 as a replacement for the Book of Common Prayer, enjoined that 'all the Canonicali Books be read over in order, that the people may be better acquainted with the whole body of the Scriptures: And ordinarily, where the Reading in either Testament endeth on one Lord's day, it is to begin the next'.16 It seems clear enough from this that English (and Scottish) Protestants regarded sequential reading of the Bible as important in public worship. In the life of Mary Gunter appended to the sermon preached at her funeral, her diligence in reading right through the Bible is singled out for special commendation: she would every yeare read over the whole Bible in an ordinary course, which course she constantly observed for the space of fifteene yeares together, beginning her taske upon her birth day, and reading every day so many Chapters as to bring it about just with the yeare.27 These may of course be somewhat exceptional cases, but taken together with the earlier evidence from guidance books, this evidence suggests fairly conclusively that sequential reading of the whole Bible was one of the most important modes of Bible reading in the early modern period.