The Bible in the American Wilderness

The Puritans read the Bible as the story of the creation, fall, wanderings, and rescue of the human race. Within this long and complex narrative, each Puritan could see connections to events in his or her own life or to events in the life of the community. Thus, William Bradford compares the experiences of the Pilgrims to the experiences of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness. Mary Rowlandson sees countless similarities between her captivity by the Indians and captivities recorded in the Old Testament.

The Puritans believed that the Bible was the literal word of God. Reading the Bible was a necessity for all Puritans, as was the ability to understand closely reasoned theological debates. For these reasons, the Puritans placed great emphasis on education.

But their interest in education was not confined to simple literacy. Many of the New England settlers had enjoyed the benefits of higher education in England, and they wanted the same for their children. Thus, Harvard College was founded in 1636, just six years alter the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established and only sixteen years after the first Pilgrims had landed.

Puritan Writings

The Bible was also the foundation upon which Puritan literature was built. In their religious services, Puritans rejected any ceremonies or adornments not

mentioned in the Bible. The same restrictions applied to literature. The Puritans did not object to figures of speech used to drive home a point, but they rejected mere "adornments" such as ornate figures of speech or witty plays on words. The ideal Puritan style was a plain style— strong, simple, and logical. It was a literary style that could make explanations of the scriptures accessible to everyone.

Their beliefs required the Puritans to keep a close watch on both the inner and outer events of their lives. This central aspect of the Puritan mind greatly affected their literature. Inner events, such as feelings of despair or great joy, were stages on the road to salvation; external events, like a snake entering a church, contained messages from God. And so diaries and histories were important forms of Puritan literature, because they were records of the workings of God.

Such concerns determined as well what incidents the Puritans chose to write about. They recorded forms of revelation. The Puritans believed that God revealed His purpose to humanity in three principal ways: through the Bible, through the natural world, and through Divine Providence, or God's direct intervention in human affairs. Thus the Puritans wrote on Biblical and devotional topics: the first American bestseller was Michael Wigglesworth's long poem on the Judgment Day, The Day of Doom (1662). They wrote about the spiritual truth they discovered in the natural world: Edward Taylor's poems are especially good examples, but you will find this theme in diaries and histories as well. And they wrote about moments of special Providence or events that contained great lessons, such as Anne Bradstreet's poem on the destruction of her house by fire.

The Puritans were not machines programmed for worship and nothing else, however. Although they cannot be separated from their religion, neither can they be fully contained by it. They were complex and complete human beings who took great joy in their lives and relationships, while facing hardships difficult to imagine today. Anne Bradstreet's poem on the burning of her house, for example, does not simply draw a dry lesson from the event. It records her moments of joy in the house and works through her grief to a spiritual solace. If there had been no complexity in her, no conflict between her love of things of this world and her conviction that the ultimate, value lay in the spiritual world, the poem would have been very different. At its best, Puritan literature records not merely the moments when the physical and the spiritual worlds cross but rather the moments when they seem to diverge— when love of things of this world threatens to push out love of eternity.