Fragment from: Ward, William Hayes.
What I Believe and Why. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915.
I think my first unrecognized doubt as to the historical certitude of the Bible came in the three years between the ages of six and nine, during which my father required me to read the Bible through in Hebrew, he being my teacher. He believed, I am glad to say, that Hebrew was an easier language to learn than Greek or Latin, and with three years for each, and in this reverse order, he required me to read the whole Bible in the original tongues, with the Old Testament also in Greek, and the New in Hebrew, and both in Latin. It was during those years given to Hebrew that I learned from my Gesenius's "Lexicon" that Babel in Arabic means the gate of God, Bab-Il, and not confusion as the Genesis story tells us...
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ReplyDeleteI owe two pieces of my basic education to a novelist, William Gaddis: his first novel, The Recognition, introduced me to higher criticism, and his third, Carpenter's Gothic, introduced me to Steven Runciman.
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