Don't Know Much About the Bible - Kenneth C. Davis [1]
He wasn’t alone. Millions of people around the world own a Bible, profess to read it and follow its dictates. Many say they study it daily. But most of us have never looked at a Bible, despite insisting that it is important. According to one recent survey, nine out of ten Americans own a Bible, but fewer than half ever read it. Why? For most folks, the Bible is hard to understand. It’s confusing. It’s contradictory. It’s boring. In other words, the Bible perfectly fits Mark Twain’s definition of a classic: “a book which people praise and don’t read.”
Not only do we praise the Bible, but we quote it daily in public and private. It permeates our language and laws. It is in our courts for administering oaths. Despite the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, it is on the Capitol steps when America inaugurates a president. It is cited by politicians and preachers, playwrights and poets, peace lovers and provocateurs.
As its phenomenal sales prove, the Bible holds a special place in nearly every country in the world. The worldwide sales of the Bible are literally uncountable. It is even tough to keep track of all the translations of the Bible that exist around the world. There are complete Bibles in more than 40 European languages, 125 Asian and Pacific Island languages, and Bible translations into more than 100 African languages, with another 500 African-language versions of some portion of the Bible. At least fifteen complete Native-American Bibles have been produced. The first Native-American translation, completed in 1663, was made into the language of the Massachusetts tribe, which the Puritan colonists then promptly wiped out.
In English, there are more than 3,000 versions of the entire Bible or portions of the Bible. The King James Version, first produced in 1611, and the Revised Standard Version remain the most popular translations, but publishers thrive on introducing new versions and “specialty” Bibles every year. The Living Bible, one contemporary, paraphrased version, has sold more than 40 million copies since 1971. Around the world, active Bible study classes attract millions of students. So, whether we worship in some formal setting or not, it is clear that people of nearly every nation remain fascinated by the Bible and its rich treasury of stories and lessons.
To many of them, it is still the “Greatest Story Ever Told.” For millions of Christians, the Old and New Testaments make up the “Good Book.” For Jews, there are no “Old” and “New” Testaments, only the collection of Hebrew scriptures that are equivalent to the Christian Old Testament. In spite of these differences, the common chord for Christians and Jews is strong: these books have been the source of inspiration, healing, spiritual guidance, and ethical rules for thousands of years.
The Bible is clearly many things to many people. The problem is, most of us don’t know much about the Bible. Raised in a secular, media-saturated world in which references to God and religion leave us in embarrassed silence, we have wide-ranging reasons for this ignorance. For some, it was simply being bored by the drone of Sunday school or Hebrew class. Others received their Bible basics from the great but factually flawed Hollywood epics like The Ten Commandments, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and The Robe.
But most people simply never learned anything at all about a book that has influenced the course of human history more than any other. Public schools don’t dare go near the subject of religion—perhaps we should be grateful for that, given their track record on the other three R’s. The media generally limits its coverage of religion to the twice-yearly Christmas-Easter stories, unless there is a scandal or a lunatic-fringe