The Unerring Interpreter: How Some Answered Questions Came to Be

A retelling drawn from the history of Some Answered Questions by 'Abdu'l-Bahá, the published record of His table-talks with Laura Clifford Barney, together with the account of its making preserved in that volume.

The Day of the Covenant remembers 'Abdu'l-Bahá as the Centre of Bahá'u'lláh's Covenant. But that office had more than one dimension. Bahá'u'lláh did not only appoint His Son as the One to whom the believers should turn; He appointed Him, in His Will, as the authorized Interpreter of His revealed Word — the one mind whose understanding of the Writings could be trusted as unfailing. There is a quiet, almost domestic story that shows that office in action, and it produced one of the best-loved books in all the Bahá'í literature.

The book is Some Answered Questions, and it was born at a dinner table.

In the years around the turn of the century, a young American believer named Laura Clifford Barney made her way to 'Akká. She came from a cultivated family of Washington, and she had been drawn to the Faith in Paris. But what set her apart was a simple, persistent hunger to understand. During the years 1904 to 1906 she returned to 'Akká again and again, sometimes staying for weeks or months at a time, and she carried with her a list of the questions that puzzle every thoughtful soul: What is the nature of God? What becomes of us after death? How should we read the prophecies of the older scriptures? What is the soul, the spirit, the mind? Why is there evil in the world?

These were not questions to be answered lightly, and they were not answered in a study. They were answered, for the most part, at the Master's own table, in the moments He could spare between the unending labours of His life — for these were years when 'Abdu'l-Bahá still bore the full weight of confinement, still rose before dawn to write tablets to the friends, still carried on His shoulders the care of the poor and the sick of 'Akká and the protection of the whole Cause from the attacks ranged against it. Amid all of that, He sat with Laura Barney and unfolded the deepest matters of heaven and earth in language a seeker could grasp.

The way the record was made matters as much as the talks themselves, for it shows the care taken to preserve His authority exactly. As the Master spoke in Persian, one of His sons-in-law or one of His secretaries wrote down His replies. From the gathered notes a selection was made. And then — this is the heart of it — 'Abdu'l-Bahá Himself went over the text twice in His own hand, sometimes revising substantially, weighing every word, until the wording was precisely as He meant it to stand. What was published, therefore, was not a pilgrim's impression of what the Master might have said. It was His own considered exposition, corrected and sealed by His own pen.

This is precisely what the Covenant had provided for. A community could be torn apart not only by rival claimants to leadership, but by rival readings of the holy text, each insisting its interpretation was the true one. Against that danger Bahá'u'lláh had set a single authorized Interpreter, so that the meaning of His Word would not splinter into a hundred contending opinions. In Some Answered Questions the friends could see that office at work: here was the Word of God, explained by the One whom God's own Covenant had empowered to explain it, unerring and authoritative.

First published in 1908 — in Persian, in English, and in French at nearly the same time — the book travelled out from the prison-city to readers around the world, and it has never been out of the hands of the believers since. Seekers who will never reach 'Akká can still pull up a chair, in a manner of speaking, at that table, and hear the Master answer the very questions they carry in their own hearts.

There is something fitting in the fact that the Centre of the Covenant left this particular legacy. He might have left only commands. Instead He left understanding — patiently given, carefully corrected, freely shared. The Covenant gave Him the right to interpret the Word of God; in Some Answered Questions He used that right to open the treasures of the Revelation to anyone willing to ask.

This is a retelling. For the fuller account, and for the answers themselves, see Some Answered Questions by 'Abdu'l-Bahá in the Bahá'í Reference Library.

'Abdu'l-Bahá. (1908). *Some Answered Questions*. Bahá'í Publishing Trust. https://www.bahai.org/library/authoritative-texts/abdul-baha/some-answered-questions/