When it comes to speaking on the Venerable Bede, any preacher is positively spoilt for choice. Such was the scope of our saint's thinking and breadth of his published oeuvre that one can with justification address just about any topic: space, time, history, language, literature. Bede the polymath invites us to see everything as worthy of spiritual enquiry and reflection.
Yet if there is one area which can easily be overlooked – not here in Durham Cathedral of course - it is Bede as biblical scholar. This can be partly due to a historical sloppiness which can occur when we view Church history through a post-Reformation lens and imagine that careful biblical scholarship only really started with Luther and his ilk. I have to confess I am not sinless in this respect. But even popular presentations of Bede have focussed on Bede the historian or Bede the mathematician but sometimes soft pedalled his engagement with scripture.
But the truth is that Bede actually had the most profound engagement with scripture, in ways which went beyond his daily reciting of the psalms and canticles and listening to portions of scripture being read, as in the rhythm of monastic prayers he would have done.
First, Bede engaged with scripture as a scribe, taking his seat at the scriptorium desk and physically copying out the word of God. Professor Michelle Brown makes a compelling case for one of the seven hands that penned Codex Amiatinus, the oldest complete Bible in the world, being that of Bede himself. The Roman scholar Cassiodorus suggested that every word written by the monastic scribe was a 'wound on Satan's body' and so a scribe such as Bede could be seen as a soldier of Christ. Certainly it was arduous and demanding work, requiring utmost attention and physical strength. He felt scripture in his fingers.
Second, Bede engaged with scripture as editor and commentator, both assembling what became the standard text of the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible, and also expounding particular books in both the Old and New Testaments. To read Bede's writing on scripture, as we will he in the Galilee Chapel later, is to encounter a man sensitive to the nuances of scripture and alert to different layers of meaning. He wrote on Ezra and Nehemiah - not exactly the go-to texts for OT theologians today - and I wonder if he saw in the scribe Ezra and rebuilder Nehemiah something of his own vocation in this inflection point in English history. Scripture for Bede was not just history but a living text through which God continued to speak to his church.
Third, Bede engaged with scripture as a translator. As we recall in this service Bede was translating John's Gospel on the day he died, and there is good evidence that it is preserved in Aldred's gloss in the Lindisfarne Gospels, with Bede's words preserved in red. In any event it seems clear that Bede is the first translator of any of the books of the Bible into the English language. Centuries before Wycliffe or Cranmer, Bede knew the importance of believers hearing the word of God in the vernacular, in a tongue understanded of the people.
Such was Bede's deep and enduring engagement with scripture. Yes Bede's life and scholarship embodied a commitment to the revelation of God in creation, in all of its diversity and majesty - as my colleague Daniel Parkinson so powerfully expounded yesterday - but he was also clearly convinced of the unique revelation of God in scripture and especially its witness to the person and work of Jesus Christ, the morning star for his and future generations.
If you want a physical reminder of this, one has only to look at Codex Amiatinus in which I suggested earlier Bede played an important part. I saw it when it came to the British Library in 2018 and it was an unforgettable experience. With 2060 pages, the skins of 515 calves and a weight of half my body, it has as one commentator noted a presence and gravitas that compels you to bend the knee, if not physically then emotionally. It was a symbol of the overwhelming presence of scripture in Bede's world.
It would seem that the presence of Christian scripture is today's culture is far from overwhelming. When I started a languages degree over 30 years ago I was told as part of my pre-reading to read the Bible. It was impossible, so I was rightly told, to understand Western literature from the last 200 years without a knowledge of scripture. Yet the reason I was being told to read it was that such knowledge could not be assumed. And that is even more true today. The Christmas story aside, and perhaps not even that, the stories of scripture are not widely known.
And yet these stories form the foundations of Western civilization. As we will show in our own Magna Carta exhibition this summer the concepts of equal access to justice and the accountability of kings - to take but two examples - did not spring from nowhere. They sprang from the pages of scripture.
Popular historian Tom Holland has argued this broad point at some length including in his excellent book Dominion. He makes a case that while it is easy to think of the classical era – the Greeks and Romans – as the wellspring for Western civilisation (and of course in many ways it is), concepts such as the equal value of every human being, of the importance of caring for the most vulnerable including the alien in our midst, and the rights of an individual flowed from a Christian faith found in the scriptures which was often counter to Greco-Roman culture. So it was no surprise when, faced with an audience of bishops last year, Holland encouraged them to focus on sharing the stories of scripture with new generations. People need to know the Bible, he argued.
There are some encouraging signs. SPCK report an increase in Bible sales; Open the Book takes the Bible into 3000 schools nationwide. Just a few Sundays ago I was talking to a lady in an East Durham parish whose new faith is growing in leaps and bounds through the daily reading of scripture. 'The more I read it, the more it makes sense ' she said.
So, I wonder, therefore, what the example of Bede the biblical scholar might have to say to us today? The task of scribing has been rather overtaken by printing and now digital technology. The work of Bible translation continues, albeit that in many languages excellent translations exist. Careful exegetical and theological work is still being done _ praise God for the appointment of a new Lightfoot Professor!
But the broader task, the bigger task, of ensuring that the Bible captures the intellectual and popular imagination, so that the stories of the loving kindnesses of God - seen supremely in Jesus Christ - are received as good news in our world today, that remains a task for us all. It might start, I suggest, with our treasuring as Bede did the unique witness of God in scripture, getting it under our fingers so speak, and valuing it containing precious words of life for today.
Bede's last day on this earth was spent translating John's gospel, that gospel apparently so beloved of Cuthbert, which spoke of the eternal Word through whom all things were made. As we today thank God for our saint, Bede, there can be no finer tribute than to consider the part we can play in receiving and sharing the stories of God, fulfilled so wonderfully in Jesus Christ, that we might read, mark, learn and inwardly digest that holy word which so shaped Bede's life and which remains the place of good news today. Amen.