[In the following essay, novelist Undset outlines some minor disagreements with Chase's biblical interpretations in The Bible and the Common Reader while treating the book as a whole in positive terms.]

It always seemed to me that literary elaborations on subject-matter borrowed from the Bible never improved the old stories. It is true that the Ages of Faith produced a wealth of religious poetry and drama which belong among the treasures of our spiritual inheritance. The Mysteries of the Middle Ages—the Latin hymns and sacred songs in the vernacular—the great religious epics—even a work like the Old Norse “King's Mirror” (which draws upon the Book of Proverbs for the advice of a father to his son on practical as well as spiritual matters) prove the immeasurable debt of European letters to the Scriptures of the Hebrew people. But in the eyes of the old authors the Bible was divinely inspired and nobody could improve upon it. They were content to borrow gold from its hoarded treasures and never dreamed of gilding the lily.

Modern novels and drama, however, when they borrow their matter from biblical narratives, usually spoil the old story, and especially when they try to explain in terms of modern psychology the behavior of bearers of names which have been household words to all of us since childhood. The old tales—treasured by generations of our forefathers as warnings, or as encouraging patterns to mold their lives upon—are told ever so much better. Whether the psychological implications were as plain as sunlight or as baffling as the behavior of real people everywhere about us, the succinct and unadorned biblical manner of story telling is really of an artistic perfection that, strangely enough, often evaded recognition because it seems so simple and natural.

It is from this point of view—the Bible reviewed as some of the finest literature in the world—that Mary Ellen Chase has written her delightful volume [The Bible and the Common Reader] about the great collections of Hebrew poetry and prose which make up the Old and the New Testament. Her point of view is not that of Orthodox Christians. This, of course, assumes that the Testaments (widely differing as to the times of their final composition, their nature, and their literary merit) are nevertheless unified into one great tale, the most important in the world. The over-all unity results from the fact that each item describes some aspect of the bringing-up by God the Creator of a chosen people, from which ultimately the Saviour of all mankind was to rise. Revealing Himself to patriarchs and prophets—moving with His invisible hands peace-loving herdsmen and tillers of the soil as well as warriors and rulers of the Hebrew people—striking down renegades and traitors to His cause, this Saviour infuses the whole Bible story with His Light. Therefore, in the orthodox view, each scriptural poem or work of history, or tale of private lives should teach us something of God in His manifest or hidden care for His creatures.

Miss Chase, however, treats the Bible as primarily the history of the Jewish people from its remote tribal and pastoral beginnings through ages of war and peace, prosperity and disasters—till at last the small country, so passionately beloved by its people, and the nation, so proudly conscious of its separateness from other people, fell under the sway of conquerors and was forcibly incorporated in the Roman World Empire. Forbidden to seek self-expression in the arts of painting and sculpture—as these arts were still inextricably tied up with magic and idolatry—the intensely gifted Jews turned the full force of their genius to literature. In her book, which is addressed to the Common Reader, Miss Chase reminds us eloquently of the debt Western civilization owes to this heritage from the Hebrews.

Her beautiful and whole-hearted acknowledgment of this debt is certainly needed now, when the supreme value of the Jewish element in our spiritual history, and even in our largely secularized civilization of today, has been minimized or even rejected by spokesmen of a new barbarism. Miss Chase is gloriously right. What would we be, she asks, without the influence of the Bible through two thousand years of cultural growth? Have the people of Europe and America a more important source of education—and of inspiration—in their thinking and living and writing?

Triumphantly she marshals the multitudinous riches of the Scriptures: the majestic picture of the world's beginning in Genesis, the drama and the profound humanity in the tales of patriarchs and judges and kings, the towering figures of Moses and the prophets, the grandeur of the Book of Job—riches never exhausted by the readers and writers who, for more than twenty-five centuries, have pondered these depths and summits of human passion and divine mystery. Quoting generously from the poetry of the Bible, the old hymns and paeans, the Psalms and the Song of Songs, she reminds us of the eternal debt of poetry to the Bible for imagery and technique—for insight to the heart and soul of man—for appreciation of the marvels and the beauties of the earth he inhabits. The treasure house of the Bible cannot be exhausted; the very fact that many of us would mention as their favorite pieces in the Bible certain ones other than those chosen by Miss Chase proves the wealth we draw from.

For instance, I disagree with her about the Book of Esther. Miss Chase admires its composition, but does not grant it much merit besides the formal perfection. To me Esther praying in her lonely chamber, passionately imploring the Lord to save her people, reminding Him of her unhappiness as the wife of an alien and of how hateful to her is her splendor as the consort of Ahasuerus, is one of the greatest and most moving heroines of world literature. Certainly her own and Mordecai's patriotism was always easily understood by downtrodden minorities and conquered nations who read the story of Esther.

Though I would subscribe whole-heartedly to every word of Miss Chase's concerning the beauty of the Gospel according to St. Luke—to its tenderness and its strength, to its emotional depth, above all to the dramatic power of his Acts of the Apostles—yet if I were stranded or imprisoned and were permitted to keep but one of the four gospels, I would still choose St. John.

Miss Chase's warm appreciation of St. Paul as a man and a writer is very satisfying. Too many common readers of the Bible seem to be prejudiced against the great Apostle—possibly because his letters have been used by warring theologians as a quarry for stones to throw at the heads of opponents. The idea that St. Paul is dry or difficult to understand is of course entirely wrong, and Miss Chase has splendidly refuted it in the pages where she pays homage to him. But her statement that the Book of Revelation is today perhaps the least read of all the New Testament astonished me somewhat. In Europe I believe it is still a favorite among Bible readers. And in the liturgy of the Catholic Church it has of course a prominent place.

One suspects that among non-English readers there must be a feeling of envy for the people who possess such a treasure as the King James version of the Bible. Musical as the Latin of the Vulgate, natural and lucid as the language of ballads and folk tales, it is easy to see why this monument in their mother tongue has been to the English-speaking nations an everlasting inspiration in their lives, in their thinking and in their letters. The gems of sacred poetry and splendid phrases which Miss Chase offers so lavishly in the pages of her book should send her readers back to the volume from which she quotes. And this, I believe, is what she meant to achieve with her fine labor of love.