{"id":32830,"date":"2018-04-04T06:00:18","date_gmt":"2018-04-04T10:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=32830"},"modified":"2018-04-03T01:59:31","modified_gmt":"2018-04-03T05:59:31","slug":"bach-and-his-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2018\/04\/bach-and-his-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"Bach and His Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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Is Bach Lutheran?\u00a0 The question is like, \u201cIs the Pope Catholic?\u201d\u00a0 OK, there may now be some question about that, but not about Bach among his fellow Lutherans, who know him as their greatest artist.\u00a0 And yet some critics have been saying that Bach \u201cwas a forward-looking, quasi-scientific thinker who had little or no genuine interest in traditional religion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Setting aside the counter-historical assumption that a person can\u2019t be forward looking and scientific while holding to traditional religion, the critics who say that are just demonstrably wrong when it comes to Bach\u2019s faith.<\/p>\n

And major evidence for what that faith consists of can be found in Bach\u2019s Bible with its extensive underlining, notes, and marginalia.\u00a0 That text, a study Bible with commentary by Abraham Calov mostly drawn from Luther\u2019s writings, happens to be in the library of Concordia Seminary in St. Louis.\u00a0 (I have held it in my hands and leafed through it!)<\/p>\n

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Now a facsimile edition has been prepared for the low, low price of $5,000.\u00a0 (It isn\u2019t on Amazon.\u00a0 You can get it here.)<\/a><\/p>\n

This enables scholars to see for themselves that Bach was a Bible-believing, evangelical, Lutheran Christian.<\/p>\n

An article in the New York Times<\/em>, no less, underscores that fact.\u00a0 Written by Michael Marissen, the author of the excellent Bach & God,\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0the article has the unpromising title\u00a0Bach Was Far More Religious Than You Might Think<\/a>\u00a0(at least, presumably, more religious than most readers of the New York Times<\/em> think).<\/p>\n

But Marissen\u2019s article makes brilliant use of Bach\u2019s Bible.\u00a0 For example, the Calov Study Bible was a great resource, but it was filled with typographical errors.\u00a0 Bach\u2019s copy contains many corrections that the composer inserted into the text, based on a better edition of Luther\u2019s translation.\u00a0 Several times, Bach\u2019s emendation is itself incorrect, substituting a similar-sounding word for the correct rendition.\u00a0 Which suggests that Bach was listening<\/em> to the Bible being read.<\/p>\n

Marissen concludes that Bach was following along with his Bible, pen in hand and noting corrections, as someone else was reading the Scriptures\u00a0 out loud.\u00a0 Marissen says this would probably have been in connection with family devotions, with some of Bach\u2019s 20 children taking turns reading the Bible.<\/p>\n

Note too Bach\u2019s reflections on vocation, as Marissen unpacks them.<\/p>\n

From Michael Marissen,\u00a0Bach Was Far More Religious Than You Might Think,\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>New York Times<\/em>, March 30, 2018:<\/p>\n

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Bach biographers don\u2019t have it easy. Has there ever been a composer who wrote so much extraordinary music and left so little documentation of his personal life?<\/p>\n

Life-writing abhors a vacuum, and experts have indulged in all manner of speculation, generally mirroring their own approaches to the world, about how Bach must have understood himself and his works.<\/p>\n

The current fancy is that Bach was a forward-looking, quasi-scientific thinker who had little or no genuine interest in traditional religion. \u201cBach\u2019s Dialogue With Modernity,\u201d one recent, indicative book is called. In arriving at this view, scholars have ignored, underestimated or misinterpreted a rich source of evidence: Bach\u2019s personal three-volume Study Bible, extensively marked with his own notations. A proper assessment of this document renders absurd any notion that Bach was a progressivist or a secularist.<\/p>\n

Bach\u2019s copy of these tomes \u2014 which were published in 1681-82 with commentary culled by Abraham Calov from Martin Luther\u2019s sermons and other writings \u2014 was unexpectedly discovered in the 1930s among the belongings of a German immigrant family in Frankenmuth, Mich., and is housed today at Concordia Seminary Library in St. Louis. An enterprising publisher in the Netherlands, the Uitgeverij Van Wijnen,\u00a0has now issued a spectacular facsimile<\/a>.<\/p>\n

All three volumes are inscribed \u201cJSBach.1733\u201d and contain a host of handwritten corrections and comments. Bach handwriting experts have identified the vast majority of these verbal entries as \u201cdefinitely Bach\u201d or \u201cprobably Bach.\u201d Hundreds of passages are further scrawled with marginal dashes and other nonverbal markings. Although these are harder to evaluate, physicists at the Crocker Nuclear Laboratory have concluded through ink analysis that \u201cwith high probability, Bach was also responsible for the underlinings and marginal marks.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Where does all this science get us? Bach\u2019s notations bear witness to a life of conservative Lutheran observance.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Illustration:\u00a0 Bach\u2019s annotation on 2 Chronicles 5: 13,<\/a> translation by Martin Luther (1483-1546), Abraham Calov (1612-1686), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) (http:\/\/bach.csl.edu\/media\/calov) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons<\/em><\/p>\n

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HT:\u00a0 Paul McCain<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n