"But every great scripture, whether Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese, apart from its religious value will be found to have some rare and special beauty of its own; and in this respect the original Bible stands very high as a monument of sublime poetry and of artistic prose"
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Hearn is doing something slyly radical for a late-19th-century man of letters: he praises scripture without submitting to it. The line begins as an apparent act of reverence, then quietly pivots into a cosmopolitan aesthetic manifesto. By stacking “Hebrew, Indian, Persian, or Chinese” in one breath, he flattens the prestige hierarchy that Victorian culture typically enforced, where the Bible was treated as singular not just in authority but in taste. Here, it’s one great book among other great books, and the category that matters is beauty.
That “apart from its religious value” is the loaded phrase. Hearn isn’t attacking faith; he’s detaching literature from doctrine, inviting readers to approach sacred texts the way they’d approach Homer or Shakespeare: for cadence, image, architecture of language. It’s also a strategic move in an era of higher criticism and comparative religion, when educated audiences were learning to see scriptures as historical artifacts shaped by translation, politics, and genre. Calling the Bible a “monument” makes it cultural infrastructure, not just divine instruction; it survives because it’s built to last.
His final compliment - “sublime poetry and artistic prose” - isn’t neutral. It smuggles a modern reader’s permission slip: you can admire the Bible even if you don’t believe it, and you can read it with the same discriminating pleasure you’d bring to any masterpiece. The subtext is pluralism as taste: respecting other civilizations not by exoticizing them, but by granting their holy texts the dignity of artistry.
That “apart from its religious value” is the loaded phrase. Hearn isn’t attacking faith; he’s detaching literature from doctrine, inviting readers to approach sacred texts the way they’d approach Homer or Shakespeare: for cadence, image, architecture of language. It’s also a strategic move in an era of higher criticism and comparative religion, when educated audiences were learning to see scriptures as historical artifacts shaped by translation, politics, and genre. Calling the Bible a “monument” makes it cultural infrastructure, not just divine instruction; it survives because it’s built to last.
His final compliment - “sublime poetry and artistic prose” - isn’t neutral. It smuggles a modern reader’s permission slip: you can admire the Bible even if you don’t believe it, and you can read it with the same discriminating pleasure you’d bring to any masterpiece. The subtext is pluralism as taste: respecting other civilizations not by exoticizing them, but by granting their holy texts the dignity of artistry.
Quote Details
| Topic | Bible |
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