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Copyright @ 1996 by Peter J. Gomes Inside back oover author photograph by Jerry Bauer Published by arrangement witl¡ the author Visit our website at http:/þww.AvonBools.com/Bard ISBN: 0-380-72323-9

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CHAPTER I .WHA’T’S IT ALL ABOUT?

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l\ ,lf ANY yeers ago when I began my service as minister in Harvard’s LYltr¡emorial Church, an enonymous bJnefactor offered to present as many Bibles es were needed to fill the peJs. No particular translation was specified; and no obiections were mede to the Revised Standard Version. Before proceeding’too far along the road of this benefaction I felt it wise to take the advice of some colleagues, and I found their reection to be apprehensive, and in fact quite suspicious of the moti, vation behind the gift. “What does the benefactor want or expect?” I was asked, and warned that placing Bibles in the pews would create an invitation to steal tÈem. Further, I rvas wamed that “people will think that this ìs a fuñdamentalist church. If they see Bibles in the pews you will have an image problem.?’My colleagues and counselors meantwell, I knew, and wished only to protect the church from secular and religious zealots. These concerns notwithstanding, however, we eceepted the gift, placed the Bibles in the pews, and, happily, over the years we have lost quite a few to theft.

one orthe more ” :::,:::”:’:::::”pon which even Miss Manners and other arbiters of social etiquette have failed to provide a useful strategy, is the one in which you have more than a nodding acquaintance with sorneone. At the point of introduction you got the person’s neme, forgot it, asked it again, and forgot it again. Meanwhile you go on rneeting this person, ch:r’tting and being chatted’with, but you have cleady passed beyond the point where.you can ask for the

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The William Monow edition contains the following Library of Congress Caaloging in Publication Data:

Gomes, Peter J. The good book : reading tlre Bible with mind and hea¡t / Peter J. Gomes.

p- om. l. Bible{riticism, interpretation, etc. I. Tiile.

BS5ll.2.G66 1996 220.1–4c20

First Bard Printing: May 1998

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If you pwcbased this book u,itliout a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen p¡operty. It was rcport€d as ‘l¡nsold and destoyed” to the publisher, and neithe¡ Ëe autüc.nor úe publisher has received any payment for this “strip@book”

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*q 4) OPÐNING 1’HE BIBLE name again. It is easy enough to maintain the facade of friendship until that awful moment comes when you are required to introduce your nameless friend to a third party. what to do? I have seen artfur evasions such as “Surely you two know each other?” foilowed by a discreet with- drawal while they got on with the job themselves, leaving you unex_ posed. Another stratagem is to avoid the risk of introduction altogether by declaring emphatically, “Ah! Here’s an old friendr” what we should know, pretend that we know, and wish that we knew, we don,t. Worse still, we do not know, without risk of embarrassment, how to ask about what we need to know.

This, I suggest, is the way it is with so many people and the Bible. Once, perhaps a long time ago in childhood or in early youth, or even as late as in college, you were introduced. you have a nodding acquain- tance with the Bible, or at least you feel you ought to, and you can recognize some familiar phrases, especially if they “sound” like the King |ames version of the Bible; yet, to ail intents and purposes, the Bibre remains an elusive, unknown, slightry daunting book. It is awkward to concede that you don’t know very much about the Bibre, giverqits cul- tural prominence, and it is di{ficult to figure out how to get reintroduced without conceding your illiteracy. perhaps the lament I have heard more and more frequently in recent years is the one that says, “r wish I knew more about the Bible.”

Poll after poll continues to find the Bible atop every best-seiler list, and one survey after another confirms the fact that an astonishingly high percentage of American households claims not only to own a Bible, but to read it on a regular basis. Hardry a hotel room in the world is without a copy of the Bible in the bedside iable, placed there courtesy of the Gideons; and through the unremitting efforts of the wycliffe Society the Bible has been translated into nearly every language on earth. There are Bibles for women, Bibles for children, Bibres fòr Asians, Bibles for African Americans. There are so many translations, paraphrases, revi_ sions, and editions now available, many of which are the products of the last twenty years, that the market for the Bible may well be saturated. In ihe introduction to their 1983 study of twentieth-century English ver-

whdt’s lt AII ltbout? (s

sions of the Bible, So Many VersionsT, Sakae Kubo and Walter F. Specht observe, “Some people are of the opinion that there is a ‘glut’ of trans- lations on the market today. Some feel it is time to call a halt to the work of translation for a while until we absorb the flood of recent trans- lations,”‘

Despite the ubiquity of the Good Book, it is increasingly clear that the rate of biblical literacy has gone down rather than up. A recent American poll conducted by the Barna Research Group discovered that ro percent of the sample of more than one thousand persons polled said that foan of Arc was Noah’s wife, 16 percent were convinced that the New Testament contained a book by the Apostle Thomas, and 38 per- cent were of the view that both the Old and New Testaments were written a few years after fesus’ death. These replies are worthy of the old Sunday school howler in which the epistles are defined as the wives of the apostles. The president of the polling firm commented, “Clearly, most people don’t know what to make of the Bible. Adults constantly gave us answers which contradicted or conflicted with previous replies.”” Ii is not that people lie about their knowledge of the Bible; it is that they often feel that in order to maintain their moral credibility they must reply in the affirmative when questioned by pollsters, since most believe that they ought to read it. Many of these modern Christians are much like the Emperor Charlemagne who, it is òaid, slept with a coPy of Saint Augustine’s magnum opus, Thø City of God, under his pillow in the hope that this passive proximity to a great but difficult work might be of some benefit to him.

Heøring the Word