Roger Holden rightly reminds us that 'having books in your library does not necessarily mean that you read them', but as a young man JND claimed that 2 Timothy iv.13 'saved me from selling my little library'. It is also worthy of note that several of the books which we know JND read (eg. J H Newman's Apologia, F W Newman's Phases of Faith, J S Mill's System of Logic, not to mention some of the writings of Edward Irving,) do not appear in this catalogue. Perhaps they were the 'bad books' to which Nick Fleet's quotation refers. Whether JND consciously decided that (unlike Darwin, Kant and Schleiermacher) they were not worth keeping in his library is another question. Timothy Stunt
J. N. Darby wrote in a Letter (1851, letters, vol. 1, p. 189): “My books are quite alarming, as if I was regularly settled in the world; however, my life would hardly bear out the charge. But I use them diligently now.”
W. Scott wrote in “Truth for the Last days” 3 (1904), p. 152: “Are we right with God in the literature we read? We have no sympathy with the absurd statement, ‘You should only read the Bible;’ nor should we advise you to act upon the remark made to the writer by the late eminent Mr. J. N. Darby. We were accompanying him to the railway station and carrying for him a large book. ‘What is this work upon?’ we enquired. ‘O that is a German infidel work,’ adding, ‘I only read the Bible, and bad books.’ These latter, of course, for examination and exposure. He could do that without being specifically defiled; we could not. There are certain papers, books, and magazines which we used to read, but not now. If tired with study or otherwise, read a good biography, book of travel, or history.”
W. B. Neatby: A History of the Plymouth Brethren, p. 47, informs us: “In after years Darby’s library was not little, and possibly he modified his more extreme views, though he certainly never permitted himself the mere luxury of culture. It is reported that he said, ‘I read nothing but bad books and the Bible'; and the story, as Newman would say, if it is not true, is startlingly well invented.”
M. S. Weremchuk wrote (John Nelson Darby, a Biography, 2021, p. 146): “There is a story that a sister once asked Darby what books he read; he replied, ‘Only bad books, Madam.’” But Weremchuk does not say where he got this from.
It seems that W. Scott’s story is the one which is not by hearsay, but a personal experience.
It is interesting to see how J. N. Darby seems to have used his books in difficult passages when translating. Take as an example the יְרַד in Judges 5:13. In the German Translation of the OT (1871) he gives it as “(er) ließ herrschen” (“he let … rule”), which seems to reflect the Hebrew-German lexicons of Fürst (1857) and Gesenius-Tregelles (1846) as a short form piel of רדה, similar to the King-James-Version. But in the French translation it is „descends, toi“, and so also in the English JND Version (1884): “come down, thou”. This is obviously interpreted as a qal imperative of ירד which JND might have taken from Davidsons Lexicon (1867). The second edition of the German translation (1890) has “Da zog hinab“ (Then went down), similar to the B-text of the Septuagint (τότε κατέβη) interpreted, perhaps, as Aramaic form for יָרַד. But this last was probably not under the influence of JND.
This seems relevant, and I always wondered about it: https://www.stempublishing.com/authors/darby/NOTESCOM/42050E.html
Was Darby interested in interacting with the rise of Oriental interest, particularly in its religious aspect, in the 1800s?
Here is the Wikipedia edit that Timothy refers to, fwiw
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/30135530
