A tour of England this past year in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible has been an eye-opener for me. It has me wanting to shout from the rooftops: How blessed we are to have ready access to the whole Bible in our own language!
I’m also so grateful that Mary Baker Eddy had access to the Bible, which she refers to as “my only authority” (Science and Health, p. 126) because in its pages she discovered the divine revelation she eventually named Christian Science. It’s clear that she expected the Bible to be the primary authority for her followers as well. Her writings have given us an invaluable key to the spiritual message of the Scriptures, but we can’t fully grasp that message without searching the Scriptures for ourselves. When we find Christian Science in the Bible, as its discoverer did, we gain a renewed perspective on it as the timeless, universal truth that it is—a perspective that transcends denominational barriers.
In my efforts to search the Scriptures, I’ve taken to heart the statement in Science and Health that “Acquaintance with the original texts, and willingness to give up human beliefs . . . open the way for Christian Science to be understood, and make the Bible the chart of life, where the buoys and healing currents of Truth are pointed out” (p. 24). Since the original Bible texts are in Hebrew and Greek, becoming acquainted with them might appear daunting at first. But the truth is that, even for those of us who are not Greek and Hebrew scholars, getting at least some “acquaintance with the original texts” has never been easier. Books such as The New Strong’s Expanded Dictionary of Bible Words are most helpful in gaining insight into what the words might have meant to their earliest readers. And there are websites where the original meaning of each word of a Bible verse can be researched with the click of a mouse.
